text:
All about Language Links in Wikipedia – Part 3

In this third and last part of the series about language links in Wikipedia, I am going to describe my first real internship task!

By Alfred T. Palmer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By Alfred T. Palmer, via Wikimedia Commons

We (Amir, my mentor and myself) wanted to calculate the following: for each language, how many of the articles appear in one Wikipedia (e.g., FR) also appear in another (EN). We focused on articles in the main name space (that is, “regular articles” about a topic, not talk pages, user pages, categories and such). I calculated this as the percentage of articles that exist in two languages from the total number of articles in each of the languages. This number was taken from here. (e.g., Intersection(EN, FR)/Count(FR)). We did this for all of the languages (287^2). This calculation is interesting because it gives us some sense about he connections between the Wikis. Also, it was very valuable to Amir have data to base his intuition on regarding which pair of languages to develop an extension to their content translation product.

As I mentioned in the previous post, although on first thought I wanted to use the table that saved the language data from Wikidata, it turned out to be a problematic idea. In the aforementioned Wikidata table there where 42,628,276 rows! 41,588,970 of theme included WIkipedia languages link information. Because I wanted to calculate the co-occurrence of every two languages, it meant joining this table with itself which would have resulted in 10^15/2 rows. So while the query that returned this result is the cleanest, the data structure of the table is not built for these kinds of calculations. Therefore, I queried 287 tables (actually 2 tables, langlinks joined with page), one for each Wikipedia.

The basic code for each table is simple (here it is for English Wikipedia):

SELECT 'enwiki' as source, ll_lang as target, COUNT(*) as count FROM enwiki_p.langlinks
ON page_id = ll_from
WHERE page_namespace = 0
GROUP BY ll_lang
The code counts the number of links the current language wiki has to all other languages.
A few things to notice:
  • The links are not symmetrical. there is on average less than one percent difference between the links from lang A to B (outlinks from A, taken from that language langlink table) compared to lang B to A (inlinks to A, other Wikis pointing at that language).
  • Using this method also enabled us to check whether there are irregularities in the data (like mistakes, disproportional difference between inlinks to outlinks). We found that on average, there was around 1% difference between the number of links.

For the actual code I wrote a python script that automatically created the simple script 287 times, one for each language, and then unites the results. The “complex” script return three columns, source language, target language and the count of the number of links that go from the source to the target. After getting that list, I used a pivot table in excel to transform it into a matrix (an easy python/R script can return the same result). Lets talk about the data (as represented by the matrix).

  1. The co-exist matrix of counts can be found in Google Spreadsheet.
  2. The links are not symmetrical. there is on average less than one percent difference between the links from language A to B compared to language B to A.
  3. Wikis with less than 3500 links (that means the has less than 100 articles) have on average more than 20% outlinks than inlinks.
  4. As the number of langlinks gets bigger (and for most cases, the size of the Wiki), the difference and variance between the inlinks and outlinks gets smaller.
  5. I did fund that some outlinks pointed to mistakes (zh-cn, zh-tw, nn) and fixed that.
  6. There are small languages with unproportional number of linked pages compared to number of articles. This is due to (I think) bot generated articles that don’t have interlinks in the text so they are not counted as articles.
  7. Arabic has 8% more in links than out. There isn’t one Wiki that caused this difference, so it’s not a bot.
  8. Lets dig deeper: a heat map of the number of links between Wikis with more than 50,000 articles. It is ordered by size. (sorry about the quality, it is the best I could do). the diagonal is between in zero for the number of language links between a language to itself.

As I mentioned, the triangles are not symmetrical because the counts (which are themselves not equal but are close enough) are divided by the number of articles in each Wiki. The heat map is between Red – high level of congruence to Yellow – low level. The interesting data is found in the lower triangle that shows the language links between small to large Wikipedias.

LangLink correlations
Insights from the heat map:
  1. Most languages have strong connections to English.
  2. There is a group of interconnected Wikis that are based on Swedish (Dutch, Waray-Waray, Cebuano, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Minangkabau). The Wikipedia community suggested that is possible these languages have articles about a lot of species and a bot created them (like LsjBot).
  3. Piedmontese (is spoken by over 1 million people in Piedmont, northwest Italy) is highly interconnected with Wikipedias from the family of Roman languages, as do Latin Wikipedia.
  4. Not surprisingly, Chechen is mostly connected to Russian.
  5. Telugu (which is a language in India) doesn’t have many interlinks, not to English, Hindi or Bengali.
  6. There are other visible strong connections (as Serbian and Serbo-Croatian) but they are not surprising as it is practically the same language.

I think the results are interesting, what do you think?

All about Language Links in Wikipedia – Part 1

LibraryOnce upon a time in 2001, there was a small internet entity named Wikipedia which aspired to be a free online encyclopedia which everyone can contribute to. Initially, Wikipedia was in English but not long after, new Wikipedias emerge in other languages like German, Catalan, Japanese, Hebrew, French etc.. Wikipedia was not a small internet site anymore.

Like with humans, part of growing is to confront challenges that you had never knew existed. I will focus here on a rather uncomplicated challenge Wikipedia encountered; How do you link the same topic in different Wikipedias (that is, language additions)? The straight forward solution is fairly simple: if you have two articles about “banana” one in English and the second in Hebrew, then connect them with some code in one article that points to the article in the other language. This is exactly what Wikipedia has done until 2013 (don’t take my word on the exact date). They have created a template named interlangauge-links that is part of the page’s code and looks like this: [[en:banana]]. You can see the “en” is pointing to the wikipedia version (enwiki) and the word “banana” is the title of the connected page.

Actually, the example I used here can’t be found on Wikipedia. The Hebrew page for banana is connected to the English page “Musa (genus)” and not to the page “Banana”. The page “Banana” doesn’t have a link to Hebrew. This is an example of one of the wonders of Wikipedia  – the Hebrew editors decided that the page will talk about the botanic genus and that the fruit doesn’t need a page of its own. The information about the fruit is not missing, it’s just one of the sections in the genus page. I think this is a great example of the differences between the languages (Elephant is another one) because we can learn a lot about the cultures that are the bases of these differences.

But I digressed. So going back to the structure of the language links, it seems as if a link should be undirected, that is, if there is a link between he:Banana to en:Musa then there should also be a link between en:Musa to he:Banana (in mathematics, we call this property commutative). If we take this property one step farther, also taking into account having several languages then we should also have transitive relation property between the language links. Is the language links always fulfill these requirements? usually they do… but sometimes, like in the diagram, links are more complicated than that (the diagram was taken from the article “Towards Building a Multilingual Semantic Network: Identifying Interlingual Links in Wikipedia” –  this should have been in a footnote but I don’t have a plugin for that yet).langlinks-pic Notice that if we assume these two properties, “en=Ball” would have two links for French wikipedia!

Another unpredicted case is when  a language link points to a subsection in an article and not to the article itself. I don’t have an example for that but these things have known to happen.

While taking into account these extreme scenarios, there are bots (that is, automated scripts) that are in charge of adding links between the languages. For example, if I just added a new article about banana in Hebrew and connected it to the English article than I don’t need to go to all the other articles connected to it (in other languages), the bots will do it automatically – Therefore, an underline assumption is that links are undirected. The downside of this process is that every article in Wikipedia has in its code the connections to all the other articles. So if for example, we have 5 articles that are connected to each other then we have 20 (n*(n-1) ~ n^2) lines of code telling us about them. Sounds a bit redundant, especially when n is bigger. This is where Wikidata comes into play (Wikidata has so much more to offer so if you don’t know the project, check it out). Since 2013 (again, I’m not sure when it started) Wikidata has a page about every article in Wikipedia that assembles all of the structured data of the article. One of the Wikidata page’s metadata is a list of Wikipedias for which the article exists (and its title in these Wikis). Therefore, instead of representing the links n^2 times, it only saves it n times – for the Wikipedias it appears in. That is a big difference!

Ok, now you know everything there is to know about the purpose of language links in Wikipedia! In the following post I will talk about language links representation in the database and most importantly, how all of this is related to my project.

My Open Program for Women Internship – Finally Writing

You know how you have your hypothetical amazing version of yourself? For me, in that version I always have time for everything; classes, school chores, doing research, friends, partner in life, family and well, life. I counted, I need to be studying/working at least 11 hours a day to make ends meet, not counting all the other activities I want to do. So this is my excuse for not writing how my internship is going – I just didn’t get around to it.

So I’m Neta and I’m never on time. Next.

I’m doing a really cool project with the international team of the Wikimedia Foundation. We want to try and estimate the fraction of translated articles in a given Wikipedia versus originally written ones. It turns out that this number is unknown because when someone start a new article, they usually don’t indicate whether it a new original work or was it translated from another wiki. Moreover, even if they do, there isn’t a feature in the data base that saves it.

Why is it interesting? First and foremost, it gives information about the editors’ behavior and how they create new pages. For example, finding that 25% of the Hebrew wikipedia is translated from English means a totally different thing than finding that only 5% is translated because it will highlight how Hebrew is dependent upon English. Moreover, it could illustrate to the Wikimedia Foundation that they should put more emphasis on the content translation tool from English to Hebrew in order to increase the number of articles in Hebrew (try it here – its new and shiny!).

Another reason why it is interesting lies on the fact that editors on Wikipedia represents, though not fully, their culture. Whether an article is translated and from which language tells us something about the dependencies and relationships between these cultures. Furthermore, we can try and divide our results into categories and see if different classes of articles may be drawn from different cultures. In fact, it may well be the case that different cultures “specialize” in different content.

Unlike most projects in the program, my project is a research based one where the task itself, the method I should use to solve it and the ending point are unknown. I don’t even know if it is feasible or whether we would get meaningful results … but that’s research. Exciting!

Ants 2

As more than half of the internship has passed, I think that it is a good time to go back to the start. The beginning of my quest was not easy and contained a lot of searching and reading and not a lot of code. My first goal was to learn the wiki world from different angles while emphasizing content that is related to translations :

  • Communication: Learning to communicate with other editors on village pump and on my talk page (its a weird concept, having my own billboard were people can write me messages and only hypothetically because my talk page is not interesting, everyone can read it).
  • Structure (data): Understanding the schema and tables of the wikipedia data.
  • Content: Getting lost in a good way in wikipedia in order to stumble upon relevant and interesting things related to translation. For example, did you know that in the Hebrew Wikipedia there is a page specifically for translation do and don’t.
  • Accessing the data: Getting to know the mysterious ways of the dumps, the Wikipedia API, SSH and query tool that are part of Wikimedia too labs. Here is where I got drawn into trying to understand Wikidata which is the central storage the structured data of all the wiki projects. I failed in that… (Amir, my mentor, asked me to blog about my frustrations so I will expand this in a different post).

All in all, I think that the decision to learn before starting to code was a good one. I actually feel that I now know what I’m talking about and what I need to do. That not to say that I don’t feel lost sometimes or still don’t have things to learn (SSH and dumps – I’m looking at you) but it does say that when I wake up in the morning with a list of tasks for the day, I actually know how to start working on them, at least most of the time.

Next time I will tell you all about working with language links, which became my first programming assignment.


Content-Type: application/http; msgtype=response

WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: text/html

WARC-Truncated: length

WARC-Type: response

text:
Welcome to my shop. Why don't you grab yourself a cuppa, put your feet up for a while and enjoy browsing the products in my store. You will find a selection of originals, giclee prints, cushions and other gifts.

All cards and other printed goods are designed, printed and made to order in my studio based in Scotland. All papers, mounts and frames are made here in the UK as I endeavour to support all things British made where possible.

Other products will be added to my shop in the near future so please do pop by again.

Shop orders £60 & over qualify for free UK P&P.

warcinfo:
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-164-221-253.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-43
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf


WARC-Identified-Payload-Type: application/xhtml+xml

text:
Days of Change

The Walker Dead | May 29, 2015

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but did you ever wonder why more liberal Democrats didn’t try to stop the war in Iraq or the PATRIOT Act after 9/11? The prevailing theory was that Democrats were desperately afraid of being considered unpopular or unpatriotic. I wonder if they didn’t use an opportunity to allow a war to distract from a president elected to cut spending and taxes and make smaller government. G.W. Bush was the first fiscal conservative since Reagan and had the benefit from learning by Reagan’s mistakes in trusting Democrats. With the full authorization to fight a way for civilization, fiscal sanity was a lower priority.

Of all the Republican candidates, and it is nearly all Republicans who could possibly be candidates, Scott Walker (only a potential candidate at the moment) best exemplifies the success of fiscal conservatism at an executive level. He disadvantaged a few union executives to increase take home pay for employees, remove union-created medical plans with huge margins, reduced a deficit and kept jobs. He also extracted a lot of union money from Democrats, both by reducing union participation and getting Democrats to blow so much money on failed attempts to oust him.

This makes Scott Walker the anti-Christ for liberals, otherwise known as Christ to everyone else. The current target on Walker’s back is over abortion. He signed a law, passed by a Republican legislature, that requires an ultrasound that can project the image of the unborn fetus. This is designed as a version of informed consent, where the mother is presented with information about what is going to happen. It does discourage some women from having abortions, but the percentage and the actual motivation is hard to quantify.

Liberals skipped over that argument and went right for the rape culture trigger. While there are no numbers, pregnancies less than 10 weeks may have the fetus blocked by the pelvis. In this case, a picture could not be generated unless something called a trans vaginal ultrasound is used. A small probe is placed exactly where you think it would be to get a sonogram from a non-obstructed angle. The claims began about “some” women being “forced” to be “raped” by a trans vaginal probe.

I understand the argument, If you want an abortion right now, these measures are infuriating. However, if one is getting an abortion, some devices will be applied trans vaginally regardless. Also, not doing a sonogram before an abortion means the doctor is operating blind as modern technology sits in the office unused.

Walker reignited the debate when he said that people, both pro and anti-abortion, really enjoy sonograms of their kids and of themselves as fetuses, calling it “cool.” In typical Goebbels fashion, the leftist media strung it together that Walker said women should be raped with sonogram probes because it’s cool. The reality is that a large number of people who consider themselves pro-choice are holding two contradictory opinions. When the child is wanted, the fetus is a neat thing to look at before birth, but in the case of abortion, the fetus is a version of Schrodinger’s cat, dead as soon as the mother decides it is unwanted.

Posted in Uncategorized

  1. Not to worry. With Rick, birth-‘
    control-harms-women, Santorum now in the “pick me” race, Walker will be replaced as the pro-life demon and his fiscal intelligence once again the libtard’s target.

    Comment by Mary — May 30, 2015 @ 2:05 am

    • But the liberals are smart enough to know that Walker is dangerous for them economically. They wouldn’t bother attacking Santorum because he can’t win. They’d love for him to be the nominee because it means Hillary or some other Democrats is sure to win.

      Comment by 1539days — May 30, 2015 @ 8:14 am

  2. Obama and the Dems had a super majority for a couple of years, they could have done a lot of wonderful liberal things during that time….instead, we got Obamacare.

    Comment by DeniseVB — May 30, 2015 @ 6:02 am

    • I was dumb enough to think “Well, Obama sucks, but the Democrats will probably do some protectionist stuff with China at least.” Hell, no. The administration has too many secret donors from there to mess with their imports.

      Democrats are no planning to rely on the electoral math to keep the White House and ride the imperial presidency as long as possible.

      Comment by 1539days — May 30, 2015 @ 8:12 am

    2016 Polls

    Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 16 other followers

%d bloggers like this:


text:
Finally it’s Friday!

Brought to you while listening to new music Friday on Spotify and riding the metro. It has been a crazy week! Work has  kept me late each night this week and I’ve been going in earlier, so I am definitely tired!

I am missing workouts and classes so I’ll be going to class tonight as a student (always nice to not have to think)

Trash Can Tuesday

Today was a crazy day at work. I got to de-stress by teaching after work which helped a lot!

When I got home, Santosh was making dinner and we got our newest purchase:

A trash can!

This is one of those moments when I realize being happy about a new trash can means I’m officially an adult (as I write this while watching 20/20) But it will be a huge upgrade from what we had. I’m thankful for that.

What else am I thankful for? Santosh making a yummy dinner of shrimp and quinoa and cuddling with this cutie:

When You Have Leftover Oats… Monday Madness

Brought to you while uber-ing to work. After almost a week of not feeling well (I’m pretty sure I had food posioning) I had a great weekend with the perfect combination of relaxing and being productive. That being said.. please excuse the lengthiness of this post.

Friday after work we went to a Costco for the annual welcome back party I was throwing for my Jazzerxise customers. Thankfully I work across the street from a Costco and it had everything I needed since I had been too sick to buy anything earlier in the week.

Saturday morning was the party and the customers were all very appreciative of the goodies I bought. Here is the spread:

The rest of the day Saturday was spent relaxing with Santosh which I am very grateful for because Sunday was a busy but productive day.

Sunday I taught class which was great as always! Here’s my set below:

After class, Santosh and I went to the Coupe for brunch. It had been forever since we had been there and we both love their food! I’m salivating just by reposting this picture of the food (I’m also hungry)

After brunch we went grocery shopping so I could do meal prep. I had chili in the crockpot and made two different types of oatmeal bars, no bake oatmeal peanut butter balls and a quiche (my very first one!) I had a lot of leftover oatmeal…

Here are my finished products!

Top left: I tried to make these a few weeks ago and they didn’t turn out too well. So Intried again with this Cranberry Oatmeal Almond Bar recipe.

Top right: I decided to try something new and used this Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars recipe but I substituted regular peanut butter for almond butter.

Bottom left: I used this recipe to a tee but added dried cranberries and used peanuts butter instead: No bake peanut butter oatmeal balls

Bottom right: I used the following easy recipe (why haven’t I made quiche before?)

  • 6 eggs
  • 1 cup of almond milk (unsweetened)
  • 1/3 cup of goat cheese
  • 1/2 an onion
  • 1 orange bell pepper
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Paprika

Super easy!

Sprite, Surprise Valentine’s and Tums Make it All Better

It was a really busy day at work and used a technique taught to me on this webinar that I attended through LifeHack Bootcamp.

I haven’t felt much better today and on top of it my stomach is now bothering me. Santosh picked me up from work and we stopped at cvs for a few things including something I’ve never had to really buy before:

Apparently I’m really getting up there in age to need tums. Just kidding! 30 is the new 20 I’m told. I hope they help along with the Sprite Santosh walked to the fireststation for (since our buildings vending machine is a piece of crap).

Aside from taking any form of medicine, I know love is a big proponent of helping to feel better (hence Santosh walking to get me Sprite). So when I saw I had a card from my niece for Valentine’s Day…I opened it and it read this:

I definitely teared up and then called my niece to thank you her. She proceeded to tell me about her Valentine’s Day and about how she’s learning about Abraham Lincoln and how John Wilkes Booth shot and killed him. Pretty incredible for a seven year old in my opinion. But it did make my day brighter. It’s the little things that make it better.

Take it Easy Tuesday

Today I spent the day at home which I needed as my sinuses are retaliating against the weather we’ve been having here! I’ve been sleeping a lot which is my number one indicator that I’m not feeling well (I’m not a big napper). This is clear indicator that there is no working out happening today.

While home, I tried to work on a few items I needed to take care of (that I could do while sitting on the couch) for Jazzercise. I’m hosting the annual Welcome Back party for all of the customers this Saturday where after class I provide as a thank for you for staying with Jazzercise breakfast items, including mimosas, fruit, breakfast sandwiches and bagels from Bethesda Bagels.

Continue reading

Love is Around Each and Every Day

I am so happy to be sitting on my couch while the snow is falling outside, eating my very quick take on Breakfast Enchiladas (corn tortillas with eggs and cheese on top):

The trick to keep the shape is to fill the tortilla and roll them over so they don’t break from the weight of the eggs and stay in the shape of the enchilada. I love cheese so I added some to the eggs and sprinkled the rest on top to make it look just like enchiladas without the heavy sauce.

Okay weekend recap!
Continue reading

I apologize for the hiatus..

and for my very long post which is brought to you while riding the very unpredictable metro train. Work and life have gotten busy! These last few days have been a perfect example of me needing to schedule out time to be able to blog.

What’s happened since I last posted? Well the Super Bowl has come and gone, which I dedicated my set to with all of the artists being only those who performed at the Half Time show. Here it is:

It was such a fun set! For the actual Super Bowl Santosh and I went to a Super Bowl party and I made sweet potato hush puppies pictured here:

The recipe was modified from a recipe found on FitMenCook. I used:

  • 7 sweet potatoes
  • 1 tub of crumbled goat cheese
  • 1 red onion
  • 4 egg whites
  • 1 box of Panko breadcrumbs
  • Salt and pepper to taste

The key is to bake the sweet potatoes first in the oven for 40-45 minutes at 400 degrees. Let them cool. Mash them up and add the onions and cheese. Roll them into small balls and dip them into the egg whites and Panko. Place them onto a cookie sheet. Place them in the oven for 30 minutes. They were a huge hit!

Work has been really busy and when I get home at night I honestly don’t want to touch a computer to blog but I will be better about this as I can post from my phone (case and point right now!)

Until tomorrow 🙂

Time for the Weekend to Be Here

Work has been so crazy this week! I am so happy tomorrow is Friday! I am also thankful I’ve been able to go to yoga on Wednesday and Jazzercise tonight.

Being able to watch this cutie play around in the apartment is a nice break from reality!

Hello February! (Brought to you while watching this week’s episode of Billions)

February is here and hasn’t slowed down since!

Sunday I got to meal prep with bagging snacks (blueberries, strawberries, grapes, clementines), making red bean chili and these new oatmeal cranberry almond bars pictures below:

Recipe is as follows (I edited it to what works for my diet):

  • 2 cups of oats
  • 3/4 cups of gluten free flour
  • 1 cup of craisins
  • 1 cup of applesauce (I substituted this for brown sugar, which you can also use bananas if you don’t want brown sugar)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup of almonds
  • 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 1 tbsp of cinnamon
  • 1 tsp of vanilla
  • 1 tsp sea salt

I liked them but they were a little dry compared to what I am used to. But considering I’m cutting down on sugar, it will work!

Work is really picking up, which is affecting my workout schedule. I need to plan out working out before work.

Thinking about my goals for February,  I thought about what I liked from Janaiary and what I would like to add/keep/delete, and decided on the following:

  • Workout 5-6 times a week
  • Schedule morning work outs
  • Get up in the morning to workout or meditate
  • Blog 4 times a week
  • Journal twice a week
  • Meditate 2 times a week


text:
What is ‘Lift” #2 in series

Quantifying “lift’ requires data sources that can verify a purchase having taken place that matches the manifest (marketing list). There are two ways to look at this. Overall lift based on the purchasing of a consumer and lift based on that consumer purchasing from the entity (dealer and marketer) that produced the campaign.

Both are important. Quantifying the higher percentage of buyers in a market purchasing a product similar to what the dealer sells, let’s us know if the list is good. Quantifying the number of buyers that bought from the dealer let’s us know two things: Was it good for the dealer and did the dealer perform well in responding to the inquiries generated by the marketing list.

Good ‘lift’ has been more attributed to ‘behavioral’ (hand raisers) marketing than marketing based on ‘models’ in recent years. Some of the stories relating to this phenomenon might surprise you.

About dealerite/in association with AP Level 4

National affiliations of professionals who are engaged in changing the culture of the automobile retail business. Associated with AP Level 4 and Edifice Group. These companies are bringing sustainable marketing which has proven quantifiable improvements in a dealer's market share performance
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s


text:
Motel in Excellent Condition #387537 posted Aug 11, 2015

  • Iowa, United States
  • $459,000

This well-established 12-room motel is pleasant and comfortable, and comes with living quarters for the owners. With virtually no competition for 30 miles, and a great reputation in the community, this business is poised to continue to be successful for years to come. The motel has four buildings, and...

Hotel Restaurant Restaurant Banquet Hall #465456 posted Mar 27, 2017

  • Clayton County, Iowa, United States
  • $359,000

This is a great opportunity to own a hotel and restaurant serving the local community and visitors to the area. This business is the only hotel in the area and has consistently high occupancy. Restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bar is open in the afternoon to serve the community and...

Fully Entitled 70 Room Hotel Development #472157 posted Jul 17, 2017

  • Faribault, Minnesota, United States
  • Available On Request

Proposed / Approved Limited Service Hotel Development at the junction of Interstate 35 and State Highway 21 in Faribault, MN. Only 45 minutes from Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport and visible from Interstate 35 with 30,000 plus vehicles per day (MnDot), this is a coveted site in the growing community...


text:
Claiming the Promises

Devo Scripture: Genesis 12:10-20
Key Verse: “The LORD knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will remain forever; they are not put to shame in evil times; in the days of famine they have abundance.” Ps. 37:18-19

I don’t think Abram expected it. A famine that is. I wouldn’t have. “Lord you brought me all this way for a famine? Really? I don’t understand. Why? Why are you allowing this?”

These…all things I could hear myself saying. Or maybe I should just admit…all things I have said. We pray. We seek God. We sense his leading. We take a step of faith. And then…a famine. Something so completely unexpected. Something so hard it makes us question if we really did the right thing. And maybe we didn’t. Maybe we stepped out of God’s will to serve our own purpose or pleasure. Yet other times…other times we can be sure, we’re right where he wants us. Right smack dab in the middle of a famine.

So that HE can show himself faithful. So tremendously faithful to every promise. To every single soul who reverently fears his wonderfully holy name. This is why the famines come. This is why the hard things happen. The unexpected things. So we will know him as faithful. Faithful to his promises. The promises we so seldom claim.

I am convinced if Abram had sought God for his needs Genesis 12 would have contained a story of God’s miraculous provision. I am convinced if Abram had claimed the promises of God he would have been a strong tower; a testament to God’s goodness; a refuge for many, in a dry and desolate land. I am convinced God would have blessed him for his faith.

Instead Abram fled to Egypt. He took matters into his own hands. (Something I am guilty of more often than I care to admit.) He lied out of fear for his life. (Fear being the opposite of faith. Fear being that which strangles our faith.) And got himself into a serious predicament.

Sarai was indeed his half sister (Gen. 20:12). So to protect himself (for it was apparently not uncommon to kill a man for his wife) he commanded of Sarai from the moment they entered Canaan “This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me. He is my brother” (Gen. 20:13). Then instead of killing him they would negotiate with him, giving him time to formulate a plan of escape from any would be suitors. (Unless of course the suitor ends up being the king of Egypt.)

Off she was taken…to the palace. At 65 years of age Sarai must have been quite the looker! I cannot even comprehend the anguish of Abram’s heart. He knew there would be no negotiating with Pharaoh. What had he done? I’m sure with every sheep, every oxen, every donkey, every servant delivered to his doorstep the guilt festered deeper within. Thank goodness he knew a God faithful to his promises. Did Abram pray? It doesn’t say. But when he walked out of Egypt with his wife and all that he had acquired, no doubt he knew who had delivered him. Pharaoh should have killed him. Abram jeopardize his entire household. And caused him much suffering. Yet he was alive and free and blessed with many riches. (Grace…God’s abundant grace)

But he missed it. He missed the opportunity to showcase God’s faithfulness to the world. His goodness to those who revere him. Did Abram get off scotch free? No. It was only a matter of time before the Egyptian servant Hagar, whom they likely acquired on this trip, would cause him severe grief. How different things might have been if Abram had simply claimed the promises and remained in the land of Canaan. I’m not saying it would have been easy. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have endured great loss. But God is faithful to his promises. Even in the days of famine…God is always faithful.

A truth we must harbor deep within our souls. Don’t be fooled by the heaping piles of food on the table. Right now, today, we’re smack dab in the middle of a great famine…a great spiritual famine. And I’ll be first in line to admit…I have concerns. I have fears. I have doubts but I know whom I have believed in. “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9).

Let’s prove to the world he is faithful by remaining strong and steadfast, deeply rooted, in this dry and desolate land. Even if our fears are legitimate. He is faithful. Do you believe him? Great are the promises we have to claim!

Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself, but he who reveres the commandment will be rewarded.” Prov. 13:13

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Phil 4:19

The LORD knows the days of the blameless, and their heritage will remain forever; they are not put to shame in evil times; in the days of famine they have abundance.” Ps. 37:18-19

The steps of a man are established by the LORD, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD upholds his hand.” Ps. 37:23-24

The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.” Ps. 37:40

But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” Ps. 103:17-19

Great are the promises for those who remain steadfast in the famine. Who keep the commandments of the LORD. Instead of compromising. Instead of taking matters into our own hands. Let’s wait for the LORD. Let’s not miss the opportunity. That the whole world may know…he who promised is faithful.

Contemplate and Evaluate:
What promise are you claiming today?
Are you a testament to God’s goodness in this dry and weary land? How so?image

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: Logo

You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s


text:
Ramblings and Images of a Deep Thinker

Words and Photos…

Archive for January 31st, 2007

Posted by deepthinker16 on January 31, 2007

I wish I had a photo for today, but I don’t.

Sometimes, things are better left as blank.

5  years of hard work, burned right in front of our faces.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »


text:
In the News

Red Bank Dental Office Hires Experienced Periodontist

RED BANK, NJ – A Red Bank family dental office has added a board certified periodontist to treat patients struggling with periodontal disease.Dr. Kenneth Gluck joined Dr. Denise DiBona’s dental team this summer. As a periodontist, Dr. Gluck provides periodontal maintenance, periodontal surgery, extractions and bone grafting. Periodontal disease, also known as gum disease, is the most ...

Read More
Red Bank Dentist Now Offering Sleep Appliances for Medicare Patients

RED BANK, NJ – Red Bank residents can now have their dental sleep appliances covered under Medicare at Dr. Denise DiBona’s family dental practice.Medicare is available to Americans who are 65 and older or those with disabilities. Dr. DiBona’s practice was recently accepted as a Medicare provider for sleep appliances after starting the process in December. “Patients have been ...

Read More
Red Bank Dentist Hosts Second Annual Patient Appreciation Event

RED BANK, NJ – Dr. Denise DiBona, a Red Bank family dentist, recently hosted her second annual patient appreciation event filled with family activities and prizes for children.The celebration and barbecue included free food and family friendly activities. Dr. DiBona's patients enjoyed entertainment from a stilt-walker, balloon animal artist, juggler, face painter and caricaturer drawer. Dr. ...

Read More


text:
Blog Archives

“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.”

– Arundhati Roy

Just like Jesus in His day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. threatened the power of the government, the military/industrial complex, and even the coffers of organized crime. Some say that this is what cost him his life, and that his death was not attributable to James Earl Ray or anyone other than the CIA and associated interests.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in America, and he was honored nationwide. Mail delivery was halted, many had the day off work, and services and remembrances were held in churches, state capitols and even on the floors of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Odd that, considering this same government is credited with killing Dr. King.

The cause of peace – real peace – would bankrupt many people, most governments and all weapons manufacturers and other purveyors of violence, death and destruction the world over. That’s the real reason MLK was killed. The love of money. And we know that the love of money is the root of evil in our world, because the scriptures tell us so. Over and over and over. Yet most American Christians continue to support the militaristic actions of their government, even though that support has helped spread more chaos and death among more innocent people than has ever befallen the earth in human history.

For more information on the death of King, and a trial that proved who the guilty parties are, go to:

Jesus commanded us to walk in peace, and we often fail to do that. As we remember a man who lived – and died – for the cause of peace, let’s do our part to fight injustice, stop war and reach out with God’s love to a world that hungers and thirsts for Him. Start by informing yourselves more, arming your mind with the ammunition needed to fight the propaganda of powerful forces in this world. Then take what you discover and spread it, so that others may hear and be set free.

Then occupy. That’s what Jesus told us to do: “Occupy until I come.” Funny how modern-day “occupiers” have filled cities across the nation in an effort to fight economic injustice. We should do at least that much as we work to share an eternal message of peace, hope and love.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Cor. 5:17-21

(Thanks to my buddy Mike for the initial reference on this post. Love you, bro!)

%d bloggers like this:


text:
web analytics

Burma, 1944

You may also like...

3 Responses

  1. Stronghold Barricades says:

    are they 15mm Derek?

  2. dmchodge says:

    15mm figs, mostly from Peter Pig.

  3. Chris Kemp says:

    Excellent terrain there by Kevan. Puts my efforts into the shade :O)

    Kind regards,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


text:
'Calypso' Bandage Dress

This stunning cold shoulder bandage dress gives the appearance of arm cuffs or a continuous line from arm to arm, playing with illusion with a devilishly straightforward approach.

  • Model is 6'0" and wearing a medium; runs true to size.
  • Colors available: lilac

* Dress length: approximately 40"
* Concealed center back zipper with hook/eye closure
* Stretch fabric: 90% rayon, 9% nylon, 1% spandex
* Gentle dry clean only

Most items are eligible for exchange, refund or store credit if returned within 15 days of receipt. For hygienic purposes, all undergarments are final purchase items.

Related Items


text:
Shoot me now.

I’ve been back at work for a month and things are settling into a routine. Clara is gaining tons of weight and turning into such a funny little girl. I really love this age. She’s close to sitting, she’ll stand holding onto the crib rail if I put her there, and she’s become so aware of the world that it can be a struggle to get her to eat, or to sleep, or to just relax for a few minutes so Mommy can pee!

At the same time, work has gotten pretty busy for me, and I’m finding it hard to get everything done that needs to get done. Between my commute, pumping, dinner-making and baby feeding, and, oh yes, sleep, my free hours for working are just about equal to the hours I need to be billing* and, as any lawyer will tell you, you always work more hours than you actually bill.

On top of all of this, we just put an offer in on a house, right before we’re heading out of town for Clara’s baptism. The seller wants the inspection done before the weekend so that if we decide to pass on the house, she can remarket it this weekend, which means I am now scheduled to spend half of my day tomorrow — a day in which I need to get some serious work done before taking off several days — at the house with the inspector. I have no idea when I’ll manage to pump, because I have to go from the inspection straight to a meeting at another firm, and I can hardly get there and bug out for 20 minutes to pump in a strange location. Oh, and then I need to leave work early anyway to pick up the dress I plan to wear for the baptism, and then take the dog to the kennel before 7, and pack, and get the baby in bed at a reasonable hour so we can leave for the airport early on Thursday morning….

In other words, f**k.

I keep telling myself that if everything works out — if the inspection is clean, if I manage to make my meetings, if I get the dress picked up and the dog dropped off and everything packed — it’ll be really amazing to go home and visit family knowing that we will be closing on this great house in a month or so. And if it doesn’t, I’m going to be really pissed that I’ve given an inspector $450 to look at a house I’m never going to live in.

And how is your week going?

* This is a bit misleading; my firm doesn’t have a strict hours requirement. I’m actually referring here to the actual amount of work I have to do to get stuff done for my clients rather than the amount of work my firm expects me to do.

A day in the life.

2:00 – 2:25 am: Baby wakes up, wanting to eat. I feed her, put her back to bed.

5:30 am: Baby wakes up again, but it’s too early to be up for the day, so I bring her into bed with me and we all go back to sleep.

6:30 – 6:45 am: Baby is still sleeping, but I go ahead and feed her while she’s sleeping. This actually works better than waiting for her to wake up, since she’s less likely to be totally distracted by our surroundings. I put the baby back to bed in her crib after feeding her.

6:45 – 7:00 am: I shower and blow dry my hair.

7:00 – 7:15 am: Baby wakes up, cooing and babbling. I grab her and put her on my bed while I get dressed. I take breaks to blow raspberries and make funny faces at her. I change her diaper and get her dressed for the day.

7:15 – 7:18 am: Baby spits up all over and down my shirt. I change my shirt. I do not have another clean nursing bra, so I clean it up the best I can and hope I don’t smell like spit-up all day.

7:18 – 7:30 am: Baby and I go downstairs and take the dog out and feed him his breakfast. She plays in the bouncy seat while I eat my breakfast (a fast bowl of cereal), gather up her bottles and all of my pumping supplies.

7:30 – 7:40 am: Baby and I play and sing songs.

7:40 – 7:52 am: I feed baby one last time before leaving for daycare.

7:55 am: We leave for daycare.

7:58 am: We arrive at daycare. (This is one of the best things about our daycare.)

8:05 am: I leave daycare, after having a conversation with our daycare provider about her naps (she doesn’t take many), and her eating (she can start having rice cereal a couple of times a day).

8:08 am: I arrive back home, where I drop my car and walk to the bus stop.

9:00 am: After delays on the Red Line, I arrive at work. I immediately pump as I have a meeting at 9:30.

9:30 – noon: Meetings and calls.

11:40 am: I pump again, while on a conference call, with my phone set to mute (I am not required to participate, I’m just an observer) because I have a lunch meeting and have to leave the office by noon.

12:30 – 2:00 pm: Lunch meeting is interesting, and thankfully, they feed us. Free lunch!

2:00 – 3:30 pm: I’m drafting a pleading, revising terms & conditions, and reviewing documents related to a matter that’s being transitioned to me from a departing associate.

3:30 pm: Pump. I take a break to read the internet, check my personal email, and relax a little bit.

3:50 – 4:50 pm: Continue drafting, revising, and reviewing.

4:50 – 5:00 pm: Gather up my stuff, taking care not to leave bottles in the dorm fridge in my office and making sure I have my Metro card, before dashing out for the day.

5:05-5:25 pm: On Metro. Read work materials.

5:25 – 5:45 pm: Arrive at Metro station and wait for bus that is supposed to leave at 5:30 but that never comes. Get on the 5:45 bus instead.

5:57 pm: Arrive at home. Take crying baby from dad. Try to soothe her, try to feed her. Nothing doing.

6:15 -6:35 pm: Prepare baby oatmeal and a little avocado and feed baby, trading off with dad in preparing dinner (pork chops, broccoli, rice).

6:50 pm: Eat dinner with baby on lap. She’s still fussing.

7:00 pm: Bathe baby, taking special care to get all the little bits of oatmeal and avocado out of her neck folds and from between her fingers. Messy baby is messy!

7:15 – 7:20 pm: Get baby in pajamas and ready for bed.

7:20 – 8:00 pm: Feed baby and put her down for bed. This is the only time of day when she’ll relax and nurse without fighting (unless I’ve fed her while she’s still sleeping). I consider (again) breaking the nurse-to-sleep connection and decide (again) that I just can’t do it. She’ll only be this little and snuggly for so long, and I don’t want to give up this time with her, even if takes FOREVER to get her into bed.

8:00 pm: Baby goes down in crib, and I go down to the basement with my computer and the baby monitor, to half-watch TV with dad and continue drafting, revising, and reviewing.

10:00 – 10:20 pm: Wash bottles, refill for tomorrow.

10:20 – 10:38 pm: Pump.

10:50 pm: Finally crawl into bed.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The days just slipped away.

So today was my last day of maternity leave. (The weekend doesn’t count, since I wouldn’t be going to the office on Saturday or Sunday.)

I am both sad and excited about this. I am so, so sad to leave my little girl; I’m also looking forward to a couple of interesting projects that are lined up for me. I’m actually terrified of daycare drop off on Monday, and glad to have a workplace that I actually like to go to after I leave my baby with her caregiver.

I have a lot of feelings about going back to work — but not many thoughts, at least not ones I can articulate in words. The one thing I know is that I need to go back to work, not just because of finances but also for my own sanity. I’ve loved this time, but I don’t think I’d last long doing it full time. Still, the thought of anyone else taking care of my baby just wrenches my heart. It’s hard to be positive about my job — even a job I really do love — when there’s such a heavy trade off.

Two months down, two to go

Clara turned two months old this week, which I find somewhat hard to believe — she’s only been with us for two months? How can that be? Our lives have adjusted and molded to her presence so much so that I have a hard time remembering what our day-to-day lives were like before she was here.

It helps that things have settled into something of a routine at this point. (I know, I know, that routine will get completely shaken up, probably several times, over the next few weeks/months/years. But for now, we have a routine.) At the risk of having things thrown at me, I’ll admit that she sleeps through the night beautifully, waking up just once to eat between 8 pm and 8 am, so Mr. D. and I are actually pretty well rested. She doesn’t nap well during the day, but that’s OK — it just means she spends a lot of time playing on the activity mat, and in the stroller for walks in the neighborhood with the dog (thank God for a mild winter), and in the swing with its funny little mobile. I manage to eke out small chunks of time to check my email and read the news and (most days) shower.

Never fear, though — things are not all sunshine and roses.  First, she is a fussy eater, so I’m never sure that she’s getting enough to eat, and I can’t even rely on her output to judge her input, as she only poops once a week or so. Her weight gain has slowed down, which I guess is normal, but it stresses me out nonetheless. Her pediatrician isn’t worried — she’s not falling off of her growth curve or anything — but I, the mama, am stressed out about it.

Second, I’m halfway through my maternity leave, and I’m starting to get a little stir crazy. I go to a new mom’s group once or twice a week, and I try to get out of the house on the other days to run errands or go to the grocery store, but we still spend a lot of time at home, and a lot of that time, the baby wants to be held.  The bulk of my adult interactions on a day-to-day basis revolve around baby stuff. We stopped by my office this week for a happy hour, and I realized just how much I miss being around my colleagues, how much I miss talking about stuff that isn’t the baby. Which isn’t to say I didn’t talk about the baby a lot at happy hour but I also got to talk about them and what’s going on their lives and how work is going. It was really, really nice. I am sure that, once I’m back at work, I will long for these lazy, relaxing days at home with my baby. But for right now, I’m longing for a little time for myself — to go for a run, to read a book, to focus on something (anything!) for more than 45 minutes at a stretch.

Anyway, short version: Things are mostly good. Clara sleeps well at night but not during the day, but eats and poops only OK. She’s gaining enough weight, even if I wish she were gaining more. And I’m halfway through maternity leave and feeling guilty because I think I won’t enjoy the next two months as much as I should.

My, how the time flies.

My kid will be 6 weeks old tomorrow. I don’t know where the last 6 weeks went.

Well, that’s not totally true. I actually do know where those 6 weeks went. In a perfect world, they would have been filled with cuddles and hugs, milestones (big and small), and lots of time getting to know each other. And the last 6 weeks have seen some of that. But they’ve also seen feeding problems and weight gain problems brought on by a really bad infection that took a lot of my attention away from watching my little girl grow. I spent the week between Christmas and New Years in quite a bit of pain (though it’s only in retrospect that I realize how much pain I was in), and that week culminated in a trip to the ER for me.  Two weeks later, I am almost fully recovered, though I’m still on antibiotics, and we’ll see what happens when those run out at the end of this week.

I feel like I lost a huge chunk of time, between getting sick and then dealing with trying to get better, and all the while living with huge amounts of anxiety over whether my little girl was getting enough to eat and whether I’d be able to keep feeding her. Luckily, as of today, it seems like everything is resolved — I think we are finally in the place we should have been in three weeks ago, feeding-wise — and that feels really good. But I’m still really sad for the two weeks (really, three weeks, since I was sick for about a week before I even saw anyone) that I lost in the fog of pain and fever and anxiety.

And of course, the 6 weeks that have already gone by mean that I am 6 weeks closer to having to go back to work. Which is difficult to contemplate right now. I am in a new moms’ group and I told them all yesterday that I’m not all that ambivalent about going back to work as a theoretical matter — I love my job, I’m good at my job — but conceptually, I have no idea how I can actually leave my little girl to go to the office. Luckily, I have more than two and a half months to figure that out. I hope I manage to do it in that timeframe.

For now, though, I am going to relish the fact that things — at least some things — seem to have gotten easier around here, and that from here on out, they should continue to get easier. And I have those two and a half months to keep enjoying my little girl 24 hours a day.

Giving thanks.

I’ve been pretty complainy over the last few days, when I should be focusing on the things I’m thankful for. So with no further ado, here’s my thanksgiving:

  • I’m thankful for my wonderful husband. Yes, I get annoyed at some of his habits and sometimes wish he’d pick up more of the slack around the house, but watching him get excited about this baby is one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen. And watching him work three weekends in a row to bank up enough paid time off to take a full month of leave has been amazing.
  • I’m thankful for my family. They drive me up the wall, but no one knows me the way they do.
  • I’m thankful for a healthy, easy pregnancy. I feel lucky every day that my body can do this.
  • I’m thankful for a job that I love and that I’m good at, for coworkers who genuinely seem to care about me and each other, and for a workplace culture that is accepting and accommodating of our growing family. It’s not all sweetness and roses, of course — I can’t imagine any workplace in which management would celebrate an employee taking off four months — but they’ve made it as easy as possible for me, and I am incredibly thankful for that.
  • I’m thankful for good health insurance. I’m so grateful that I haven’t had to stress about deductibles or copays or minimum contributions during my pregnancy. I wish everyone had access to such good health insurance.
  • I’m thankful for the excellent Indian restaurant that just happens to be 10 minutes from our house, and for the excellent shahi paneer I had for dinner last night. It did not kick off labor, but it was good enough that I’m almost OK with that.
  • I’m thankful for my smelly, stubborn, sneaky beggar of a dog. He follows me around constantly nowadays, refuses to eat his breakfast if I’m not close by, and has developed a bad habit of pawing at me for attention (mostly over the last few days, and I think it’s related to having houseguests and all the Thanksgiving hubbub), but he loves me unconditionally and protects me as much as a 17-pound terrier can. I couldn’t ask for a better dog.

But mostly, I’m thankful that, in no more than 10 days, we’ll be bringing home a beautiful baby boy or girl. We’re excited and we’re ready.

Let me explain….no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

So it’s been a while. Here’s what’s happening:

  • I am 38 weeks pregnant, which means this baby can come whenever s/he wants to.
  • I have two more weeks of work before I go out on maternity leave, but Thanksgiving falls in there, so I really have even less time in the office than that. Add that I’m working from home today and on Monday (having the house cleaned and having some repairs done before the baby gets here), and I’m only going to be in the office seven (7) more days. Holy carp.  (Note that this does not mean I am only working seven more days. I am working today, and will be working Monday and, if the baby is late, I will probably try and pick up some hours here and there even after I officially start my leave, just so I’m not totally bored sitting at home.)
  • I absolutely do not expect this baby to show up any sooner than three weeks from now, and would not be surprised if s/he holds out even longer. (See above note about picking up hours from home.)
  • Our extra car seat base, changing pad for the dresser/changing table, swaddling blankets, and some newborn diaper covers are still at my office, along with about 20 pairs of shoes, three blazers, three jackets, and two sweaters. I need to figure out when I can drive into the office to pick all that stuff up because I am not carrying any of it home on the Metro.
  • In case you didn’t pick up on the sly reference above, yes, we’re going to try cloth diapering. Our daycare provider seems on board, as long as it’s really simple for her, so I have a bunch of pocket diapers for her to use, since they’re the most like disposables, and I’m hoping to use mostly prefolds and covers at home and at night. We will see how this experiment goes. Luckily, I’ve gotten almost all of my cloth diapering supplies secondhand from Craigslist, and our total investment so far is under $300.  If the experiment is a success, that’s hella cheaper than disposables; if it’s not, I can resell pretty much all of it and recoup at least 75%, if not all, of that investment.
  • We are hosting my in-laws (and maybe my brother) for Thanksgiving, which means I have to go do epic Thanksgiving shopping this weekend. At 38-1/2 weeks pregnant. I hear tell that walking around Costco makes labor start, but I kind of hope that’s not true for me, because I really, really, really want to eat my Thanksgiving turkey. The baby can come any time after Thanksgiving, though. (Again, though, see above about how I don’t expect to be having a baby any time before the second week of December.)

So, that’s a lot of stuff to be dealing with here at the end of the longest nine months of my life. Though, actually, it’s really just been a really long three months — the first and second trimesters of this pregnancy really flew by, but this last third? Crawling along at a snail’s pace. You’d think that would mean I’d’ve gotten a lot more done in the last three months, but no. I’ve always been a bit of a last-minute kind of person, and pregnancy hasn’t really changed that about me. Heck, we just went and got our second car (a necessary purchase when you live in the suburbs and have a kid) last weekend.

I may have more thoughts soon about being career-oriented and maternity leave and my various fears/angst/worries. But for now, I’ll just say that I am looking forward to taking a little break.  My maternity leave will be the first time I’ve taken more than two consecutive weeks off from working or studying since I graduated from college! It’s a little strange for me to contemplate such a long stretch of time without some sort of intellectual pursuit, but I’m eager for the experience.


text:
html input element has more than one associated label

kyle shapiro asked on May 26, 2016 23:08

While trying to make my site ADA compliant, I get the issue of "input element has more than one associated label"

appears twice in the source code of the page. The layout of this form is a custom layout and I have confirmed that the label for phone only occurs once. Any ideas on why this may be happening? I can post the web page if needed. Thank you.

Recent Answers

Suman Layek answered on May 27, 2016 04:07

Which version you are using ? I am getting it correct in v 8.2. One label for each input

For your reference below should be a single row of custom form layout

        $$label:CategoryID$$
        $$input:CategoryID$$
        $$validation:CategoryID$$
0 votesVote for this answer Mark as a Correct answer

   Please, sign in to be able to submit a new answer.


text:
Hua Tou and Dzogchen

Pema Rigdzin
Posts: 1042
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 3:19 am
Location: Southern Oregon

Re: Hua Tou and Dzogchen

Post by Pema Rigdzin » Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:54 am

kalden yungdrung wrote:
Pema Rigdzin wrote:
kalden yungdrung wrote: When i understood it well...
Hey Kalden,

I've seen you use this phrase from time to time and it always seems like what you intend to be saying is "if I understood it well" or "if I understood it correctly" or something along those lines. I think you mean to be saying "if" rather than "when." Just trying to help ease the language barrier, so please don't take offense.
kalden yungdrung wrote: Mutsog Marro
I've also been meaning to ask you, out of curiosity, what the above (Tibetan?) phrase means?

Tashi delek,

- Yes, if i did understood it well does mean, that in case i did understood the teachings wrong, my answers here will be alo wrong. And it could be that i -
- could have misunderstood my teachings, that is possible........ :shock:
- Mutosg Marro is Zhang Zhung language, which is the maternal language of the Zhang Zhung kingdom(s), 18 in total, and it does mean:" May all be
- auspicious".

Mutsog Marro
No no, I wasn't suggesting you misunderstood any teachings. :tongue: My comments only pertained to a slight error in your usage of English; I just pointed it out in hopes of helping you more clearly express yourself in English. Anyway, thanks for the explanation of the Zhang Zhung phrase. That was very interesting. :anjali:

User avatar
kalden yungdrung
Posts: 2263
Joined: Sun Aug 01, 2010 10:40 pm

Re: Hua Tou and Dzogchen

Post by kalden yungdrung » Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:39 pm

Tashi delek Pema Rigdzin,

Thanks for your reply.
Now is the light on, now after a while did i understood your message.
When must be changed to if, ok that was the missing link.

Thanks for correcting my wrong used English.
One never is too old for learning.

Mutsog Marro
The best meditation is no meditation

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: lelopa, Majestic-12 [Bot] and 40 guests


text:
Going SOLO involves the whole school – blog post 1 from #SWATCONF15

Making flowers out of bits of foam at 10am in the morning, I wondered how this could ever help me in teaching Economics. SOLO taxonomy is a way of getting the students to order their learning to enable them to asses how they are progressing, what stage they are at and what they need to do in order to achieve top level. What I particularly like is that students can visually see how they can stretch themselves in any subject. I can visually see how students are able to become more independent learners if they understood exactly how this works.

The orders are PRESTRUCTURAL; Find out the key idea takes you to UNISTRUCTURAL; Find out more, do further research, ask questions takes you to MULTISTRUCTURAL; Go deeper. Find out WHY. Link knowledge and ideas to the bigger picture takes you to RELATIONAL; Think critically about the issue. Analyse and evaluate. Be creative. Think for yourself, takes yourself to EXTENDED ABSTRACT.

For Theory of the Firm in Economics it would look something like this:

PRESTRUCTURAL – I do not know anything about the structure of different markets

UNISTRUCTURAL – Explain how the market goes from Perfect competition, to Monopolistic, to Oligopoly to Monopoly. I can define what these are.

MULTISTRUCTURAL – Describe the characteristics of each of these markets. I can list and explain the key characteristics of each market structure.

RELATIONAL – Explain how different firms fit into different markets dependent on their objectives. I can independently analyse the market structure for long-haul and short haul flights (for example)

EXTENDED ABSTRACT – Critically evaluate how firms can move from one market structure to another dependent on their behaviour. I can analyse and evaluate using examples of different firms the type of market structure they operate in and how impacts on profit.

To help both the teacher and the learner in this quest, there are colour-coded symbols for each of the stages. We saw it effectively used in Art, Design Technology and French. During the student research presentations we saw it effectively used in History.  I can see it being used effectively in Economics, so does this call for a whole school approach to solving the dilemma of how to help the students visualise stretch and challenge?

I have lots of resources on how to use the method if you are interested in seeing if it would work for your subject.

Nicola Lilley @nicolalilley3

Teacher of Economics and Business

2 thoughts on “Going SOLO involves the whole school – blog post 1 from #SWATCONF15”

  1. Very interesting read I tried this out about 3 years ago and really tried to push it with my classes, showing them keynotes, explaining the theory and getting them to use it in their maths lessons – infact I still have it up in my classroom. Good to see you giving it a go. Good Luck.

    1. I would like to catch up with you to see what you have displayed in your classroom and how it has worked in Maths. I will be embedding it into my teaching of Y12 Economics after CEW so would like to invite you along to a class to see how it works. It would be great to discuss the effectiveness afterwards to see if anything needs tweaking and compare to your experience. Thanks for commenting

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s