text:
Pro Spotlight Ep. 5: Goran Gmitrovic On Increasing His Income And Accomplishing His Life's Dreams
Attaining your life's dream is satisfying. Doing so ahead of schedule is easier said than done. But that's something Goran Gmitrovic, a Taxfyle Pro based in Chicago, can cross off his list.
He's always wanted to own a property in Croatia to be closer to family. He projected to have that completed by 2030. When he found Taxfyle, he had the ability to increase his income while maintaining the flexibility necessary to focus on his accounting practice. Now, he's able to reach his dream well ahead of schedule.
Q: How long have you worked in accounting?
Gmitrovic: I've been in the accounting industry for about ten years now. I received my Bachelor of Science from DePaul University with a concentration in accounting and finance. And that kind of led me organically to this industry. Following my graduation from DePaul, you know, I went to a few gigs, and I kind of stuck to accounting, I learned that I was very good at it. And there's some days where, you know, I was a little hesitant, but it made most sense to me.
Q: When you were deciding what your career is going to be what is it about accounting that you landed on?
Gmitrovic: Accounting at the end of the day really only has one right answer. There are certain regulations and laws in place by federal authorities and state authorities that don't that obviously, there are some gray areas in the IRC code. But overall, everything's really black and white. And that always made most sense to me. So looking at your liberal arts looking at sports management, or chemistry or biology, all of those things never really connected to me. I've always been I've always had a very analytical mindset, very complex problem solving from a financial point of view. And that's what really drew me into it. And I understood that, you know, maybe I was born with a more analytical mindset than most people, but that that's really what drove me into this type of industry where I, where I felt that, you know, I could use it to its full potential in a way.
Q: What was the moment that you knew accounting was the right career path for you?
Gmitrovic: That's a great question. So my first job was as a staff accountant with a payroll tax company. And I absolutely despised that. It wasn't a good experience. I didn't enjoy working there. But I soon realized that it was more the company that I didn't enjoy working with, rather than the actual profession that I didn't enjoy working with. Shortly after the payroll tax company, I went to a lighting company, where I got to expand my accounting knowledge a little bit more, because it was a one-man accounting team. There weren't other team members around me. I was able to expand my knowledge as much as possible. It was all a lot of Google searches, a lot of YouTube searches, a lot of how-to guides. And it really put me in a place where I needed to learn to be able to take care of the health of a major company, a company that I wouldn't call it a startup, but it was definitely in growing pains. And it helped me become who I am today. Following that is where the click really happened. I joined, I was an assistant controller at a school bus company for about a year. And over there, I met some of the nicest people and had great bosses and they really gave me the freedom to connect with accounting the way that I haven't in the past. And it was impactful to the point where we were taking care of elementary kids, and middle school kids. And you would never think that accounting would have that type of effect, but it had that effect where we were building bids based on our profit and loss, based on our bookkeeping and so forth, and we were able to get more work based off of that, so over there it really click that, 'Hey, this is the industry for me, I want to continue to move forward, and I want to continue to expand enough.'
Q: How did you hear about Taxfyle?
Gmitrovic: I heard about Taxfyle through a newsletter. I mainly delete most of the newsletters that come to my inbox, but for some odd reason, I clicked on it, I opened it up, I saw a banner that read Taxfyle. And you know, as they say, the rest is history. I went into it, I completed my registration form, there was really too much activity going on the first few months. So I thought, 'Oh, well spent ten minutes creating a registration form, uploading some documents, not a big deal.' Until you know, one day I got a call from AJ at Taxfyle, and things just kind of started rolling from there.
Q: When you first saw that newsletter, what was it about Taxfyle that made you think this is an opportunity worth pursuing?
Gmitrovic: So right before I became a full-time, Tax Pro at Taxfyle, I was a tax director at one of the big four. And that really, that was an extremely stressful career, there were a lot of clients and my mind was starting to go to places where I wanted a little more freedom with my scheduling and monetary value. And not to say that I would trade meeting the clients that I knew, those experiences have built me into the person I am, but when I did see Taxfyle's logo, it showed me an opportunity that, and this was all emphasized in my head at the beginning, it showed me an opportunity where I can create my own schedule, I can drive my own income. And later on, I learned that the people of Taxfile, you know, have been amazing to work with and that that really cemented more of why I wanted to be part of Taxfyle.
Q: What other work outside of being a Taxfyle Pro do you do?
Gmitrovic: I do a bunch of work. So a lot of my services, are wealth management, bookkeeping, I would say there's a lot of student loan counseling that we have with that being as big as it is now. We do everything from payroll administration, budgeting, forecasting, things of that nature. So I did specialize in finance as well when I was in school, and that helped me kind of keep the service of individual wealth management alive for one of my services.
The business, you know, has grown steadily with those services where I can manage it with other commitments. But my main commitment at this point, being a tax practitioner for personal returns and corporate returns anywhere from you know, your partnerships, your single member LLC to your corporations to your S-corps. That's primarily my bread and butter.
Q: Do you run your own individual practice or do you work with other people?
Gmitrovic: I run my own individual practice. I founded Outlook Accounting and Taxes, which is my firm, back in 2014, and have been running it ever since. Like I said, I specialize primarily in corporate and personal taxes. That's really where the number one revenue comes from. But our business has grown steadily with that on the personal client side, but as well on the Taxfyle side. Taxfyle has put me in the position where you know, I needed to make a decision whether it was going to be moving forward with my corporate role or whether it was going to be moving forward with my business. And I decided to dedicate and commit all my time to growing my own personal business.
Q: Why did you decide that your time is better spent on your personal business as opposed to elsewhere?
Gmitrovic: So that's a very loaded question. Two primary things it was the freedom to create my own schedule. And most tax practitioners are going to find that funny because we don't have freedom to create our own tax schedule during the season. Or it gets hectic during that time. But another reason was to create my own monetary value that's based around myself to not have somebody else dictate how valuable I am. To dictate that myself. To not only help my own personal financial goals, but to help the team members that I've worked with. And it was time to give my business a fair chance. I haven't done that, in the past. I've had Outlook now for about eight years. And it's been a fantastic. It's been a fantastic experience. But every year, I would have, you know, an experience where I can manage that with everything else. But once Taxfyle came into the picture, it became apparent to me that, no, there's no way that I can manage the corporate world and my own personal business world. So I decided that with the time that I was in my life, with the goals that I had, and the dreams that I was trying to accomplish, I needed to give my business a fair shake, and see how we'll go out and, and put a little more risk a little more trust in myself and see how it was gonna go after the first year or two.
Q: How does Taxfyle help you balance full-time work with your business along with being a Pro?
Gmitrovic: So I would say Taxfyle at this point is my number one revenue stream. I'm wholly dedicated to Taxfyle and its clients. I have a couple of other team members that helped me with my personal client list. But the revenue stream is very consistent and very stable that comes in from Taxfyle. And I have learned that, you know, it's the 80-20 rule. I pay attention to what's most impactful, and I have my team members pay attention to my personal clients. And not to say that my personal clients aren't impactful, they are just, I gotta dedicate my time to where it makes more sense. So you know, having a team behind me has definitely helped me; not to say that there weren't any growing pains there definitely were. With managing everything at the beginning and understanding the growth patterns and understanding how many people I needed to be in my corner, it has definitely become more of a living breathing organism than anything else. I've learned that if you organize things appropriately, if you document things appropriately, and you have everything in front of you that you need, that you can be successful with it. So balancing it was difficult at the beginning, but now it's more so understanding where I need to split my time, and where it makes more sense.
Q: Earlier you mentioned having this financial vision for yourself that you wanted to reach. How does Taxfyle help you get a little bit closer to your goals?
Gmitrovic: So definitely, my financial and personal goals are really similar to each other. My personal goals, obviously, now, pretty cliche, but I obviously want to spend more time with the people I care about most have more freedom to you know, travel the world; have more freedom to go see my family in Europe and things of that nature. And to do that, you know, you need money to travel and Taxfyle provided me with both of those things. It provided me the fact that I can travel any day in the year and go wherever I please, as long as my work is complete, and have that income when and have that steady revenue stream that's coming in, to allow me to really do the things that I love.
My long-term personal goals are, you know, fairly ambitious. Me and my wife built out long-term personal goals a couple of years ago that we were planning for the year 2030, 2031. But now with Taxfyle's support, were able to achieve those dreams by 2025, and you know, that's a massive time difference. And you know, it definitely provides me the opportunity to be with the people I care about most. Six years is, you know, looking back at it might not sound like a lot, but being with family for six additional years being where we want to be you know it not only does it drive further, you know, further motivation in me to invest more time into Taxfyle, invest more time into my business, but it also gives me that meaning back and that impact back where I can spend more time with my family, help the community help me you know, be a good neighbor and so forth.
Q: What are those personal goals that Taxfyle helped you accomplish?
Gmitrovic: So my dream has always been build has been to build my dream home in Croatia. I was born in Croatia, and half of my family still lives in Europe. For those people that have traveled to Europe in the past, you know, it's a very different lifestyle than in America, a very, very relaxed lifestyle. My family, my wife, my dog, Bastian, and I are excited about the next chapters of our life. There's really no way to think the extra time this has afforded us to follow our dream. It has always been, you know, point and center for us to be where we want to be in, we always had those five-year goals and ten-year goals. And we always saw each other in specific places. And Taxfyle has made that become more of a reality than a dream.
With Taxfyle's support, obviously, the steady income stream, the scheduling flexibility, really the geographical flexibility as well, it's afforded us the opportunity to really put our dreams into reality. And we actually did start tangibly, taking care of some things back in Croatia, where we're about to close on our first plot of land, where we plan to build our home and we're extremely excited to start tangibly and tactically being able to take care of that goal, we didn't think that we will be able to but with Taxfyle it, it has become apparent that we're going to make this into a reality.
Q: What is it like knowing that you are that much closer to accomplishing what you've dreamt of?
Gmitrovic: I mean, you can't really put that into words. It's bittersweet, in a way. That's a dream that I've had for an extremely long time. I avidly speak about Croatia, and its beauty and its nature to people I meet, strangers, I mean, that's really the first thing that I go to, when I introduce myself. I don't introduce myself as what I do for a living, I introduce myself as who I am. To know that my retirement dream at one point was to be in Croatia, you know, by the time I'm 50, 55 years old, versus now saying, you know, I'm gonna have a home in Croatia in three years, I'm not even going to be 35 when it happens, well, no, that's not true. I'm not even going to be 36 when it happens. Is astounding, it really puts things into perspective. It's genuinely, the feeling is, it's unreal. I mean, every one of us everywhere, no matter where you're located, no matter what you do has a dream to accomplish something in their future. Everybody wants to have a good, happy future. And a lot of people keep that as a dream.
I never wanted to be the guy that works behind a cubicle. I never want it to be the guy that works for somebody else. I always wanted to give myself the opportunity to be the best version of myself and I think with Taxfyle's platform with Taxfyle's people and their resources and their understanding it's really provided me the platform where I can be successful and I can reach my goals and reaching those goals that are you know 15, 20 years ahead of the timeline is that I mean it's astounding. There's no better word for it. It's such a hard thing to really grasp into reality that you know, what you have dreamed up for so long is so close to you, and you're only there because you believe in yourself. You trusted yourself, and you move forward with your own company.
There's all these success stories out there you know going from Mark Cuban to Steve Jobs, and I'm not obviously comparing myself to those people but you always think well how did you know their businesses multimillion-dollar businesses, how do they achieve their dreams? They fell into a great idea this that in the other and I found that in Taxfyle might I might not be a millionaire with Taxfyle, but it provides me the personal freedom and opportunity to be with the people that I love to be with, the people that I care about most, where I care about most, and to be in the lifestyle that is conducive to me.
Q: What kind of qualities do you think someone like you has to have to be able to deliver on their ambitions the way that you have?
Gmitrovic: I would say first and foremost, it's patience. Things aren't going to happen overnight. I have built a practice with Taxfyle over the span of a little more than two years, I've built up a client list of several hundred clients. But that doesn't happen overnight. You have to have the trust of the Taxfyle team that's in your corner, you have to have the trust of your clients, you have to have the trust of your vendors. And with that, you're able to grow such an ecosystem where it all works seamlessly together. You have to be extremely organized. I have I don't think at any one point in time with Taxfyle I've had less than 100 active clients. You have to be organized and you have to stay on top of people. A lot of tax practitioner work is hunting down the right documents. And it takes time to understand all of that. It takes time to see where the numbers flow, to see what you have to request from the client to be able to do a prior to your analysis fairly efficiently. It also requires a lot of knowledge you need to continue to learn you need to continue to read. Tax codes change on a daily basis. And that's something that, you know, is scary for a lot of tax practitioners that get into the practice. Mistakes are going to be made, but if you learn from your experiences, if you learn from the things that you've accomplished, and you're patient with yourself and you're patient with, you know, what the clients and your patient with, you know, your overall company and you stay organized, I think that you'll end up surprising yourself. I think those are the most important parts about being a tax practitioner; always staying ahead of the eight ball and always trying to keep everything as efficient as possible with the client.
You do a quick draft of their tax return and you get the open items, send it over to them, you get the right documents, you finalize it, you close it out. And during that you remain kind, you remain responsive, and you remain at their disposal no matter what they need. Whether it be around taxes or personal wealth questions you always want to be there for your clients and you always want to show them that you care about them.
Q: What do you do to stay up to date and stay informed about all the changing tax codes and different policies that you know kind of make taxes a little complicated for people?
Gmitrovic: So there's a few companies that I subscribe with, for tax practitioners, where they send you emails of a change in tax code or you know the most important things coming up for next year. And I take that information, I synthesize it into something that's readable for your average person. And I include that in my tax organizer that I sent to clients every year. That tax organizer shows you 'Okay, this is the change in the mileage rate, this is how much you're able to deduct on your itemized deductions, this is where the cap is for this state based on where you live for your property taxes, this is the charity deductions that are above the line this year, this is etc etc, etc.'
So I take the information that I gathered through the year and for the upcoming tax year. I really put it in terms where most people are going to understand that I share that with those people. And I keep the quick a guide for myself during the tax season to understand that, 'Hey, this year but due to the COVID pandemic 100% of meals and entertainment are deductible. Unlike most years where only 50% of that is deductible.' Keeping the right resources in your corner the right companies that, you know, solely focused on that, and having them send me that information really makes it more attainable than one would think. I don't go into the IRS website on a daily basis and see what changes came out of their last meeting. I don't have time to do that. Nor do I want to do that. I pay other companies to get that information from me. And then I take that information from there. And it really, it really does provide a much easier process for me. At the end of the day, I don't have to dig around for precedences, I don't have to dig around tax court files and things of that nature. I think having the right resources in your corner definitely helps you grow your business, because ultimately, is to find, for example, that 100% meals deduction to find some time precedences of that to find the code number for that to find the subsection number for that could take maybe two, three hours, and in that time, I could complete a corporate tax return and that pays out a significant amount of money. So to me, it's always about, you need to find where your time is most valuable. And then you need to outsource the rest of it.
Q: How does your background in tax help the customers that you've gained through a Taxfyle?
Gmitrovic: That's a great question. So as I mentioned earlier, I was a tax director at the Big Four. The Big Four, obviously, has hundreds of 1000s of clients. And I had the privilege of meeting some of the best clients in the world and creating relationships and being put in a variety of situations where I needed to, not only, you know specifically learn about the client, but about tax coding, and about how forms flow into each other and so forth. It provided me the opportunity where it really built me into the tax practitioner I am today. I'm grateful and honored to have been in positions where the client has trusted me with the inner workings of their company.
You got to understand that when we are put into those positions, we play a critical role. And the loans that a company gets in the debt restructuring that a company can do in their cap table in the research and development expenses and credits for the company, and to read. And at the most granular case, I had this one client where they were thinking about reorganizing one of their departments, that was in a third-world country, and shutting it down. But we realized that the manufacturing made sense to stay there. So ultimately, our end memo was not to shut it down. And that resulted in I think I remember correctly about 150 people keeping their job.
It's impactful. It plays a large influence on people and people and employees of a major company. And you take it down to the granular level where you're talking about individuals, that you really can synthesize that information into all the workings that you do. So a lot of the clients that I have a Taxfyle, have, you know, large businesses have many employees, and, you know, are looking not only for us to pop in some numbers and do their tax return, but also for financial advice, also for figuring out the best next steps for them, helping them request a PPP loan or helping them restructure their debt or helping them figure out what the best next step is, if it makes sense to open up a brick and mortar location in South Carolina or is it better in North Dakota? What are the tax laws here, what are the tax laws there?
With the experience that I had from being a tax director to this right now, it was pretty seamless transitioning just because I had this wealth of knowledge from the seven years that I was in the big four. And it really provided me with the platform that I needed. The Big Four obviously has many, many, many, many resources that I've worked with on a daily basis. And you know, every day you're learning something new. And that definitely helped me become the practitioner that I I'm today and it helped me translate everything from that experience to what I'm doing now.
Q: There are a lot of free or inexpensive or cheap DIY tax services that basically just get the average individual filer to do the work themselves. What are the benefits of an individual instead using an accountant to file their taxes?
Gmitrovic: So it's, that answer is twofold. If a tax client came to me and they said, 'I have one W-2, I'm 22 years old, I make $15,000 a year,' I would by far tell them, 'Hey, go use a DIY software, it's not going to be difficult. You don't need to spend your money with me. It's gonna, it's gonna break it up for you, you throw in your W-2, you send it in, it's a 30-minute task.' But when you get to the point where you're talking about capital gains, where you're talking about prior loss carryovers, where you're talking about 1065 bases, where you're talking about how an 1120S can deduct their non-deductible expenses on a personal return, there is no software out there that can manage that.
There's always only going to be tax practitioners like me that can help a client with that. It's understanding the inner workings of a business, it's understanding what the business needs to file, if they have any foreign entities, if they have any foreign partners, if they have any 6198s, so passive loss, passive loss carryovers. If they have any, you know, all different sorts of tax legislation that isn't easily translated into a DIY software. It if you're looking, you know, at your top rate of software, it still doesn't provide you the support that you need.
I think a tax practitioner is obviously somebody who's competent, who has the knowledge, is always going to put the client in a better position because they know the inner workings of a tax return. And software that's really for more than just a W-2 or some stock sales. It's not going to give you that insight, that experience, and that future advice. For example, I had one client a couple months ago who made a good amount of money on their single-member LLC. They can file that through a DIY software, no problem. But they can also talk to a tax preparer who's going to inform them, 'Hey, you're getting hit with self-employment tax on your single-member LLC. What do you think about restructuring your company to a 1065 or 1120S or converting it to a C-Corp, where you have a flat tax rate?' Things like that.
You're not going to get from a tax software, you're not gonna get insights, you're not gonna get the experience of us tax practitioners. And you're not gonna have a better and better understanding of your business. At that point, all you're doing is recording, you're not reacting. You got to react to the growth of your business. If you're only there to record it. I would suggest Yep, stick with your software. But if you're there to react to where you are, react, how you want to get to your future than it's always good to have somebody in your corner.
Taxfyle Pros
When Goran found Taxfyle, he had the ability to increase his income while maintaining the flexibility to focus on his accounting practice.
Pro Spotlight Ep. 4: Mykaela Wallace On How Taxfyle's Platform Helped Her Pay Off Student Loans
Mykaela Wallace is a Taxfyle Tax Professional living in Oklahoma, and this is her story.
Pro Spotlight Ep. 3: Jeremy Miller On Changing Careers and Being A Taxfyle Pro
Get an insight on Jeremy Miller and how he uses Taxfyle to boost his income while making the most out of the flexibility of our platform.


For most of human history, Mercury was a mystery, wrapped in superstition. As it orbits so close to the Sun, ancient astronomers could only see it when they had an open horizon, just after the Sun sets, or before it rises.
But now we've sent robotic spacecraft to all of the planets in the Solar System, including Mercury. Here's a listing of the missions that have gone to Mercury, and a few that will be going shortly.
Mariner 10 was launched on November 3, 1973 to fly past Mercury and Venus. It was the last spacecraft in the Mariner program (Mariner 11 and Mariner 12 were renamed to Voyager 1 and 2).
Its main objectives were to measure Mercury and Venus' environment, atmosphere and capture images of their surfaces (the cloud tops of Venus).
It was the first spacecraft to take advantage of the gravity assisted slingshot maneuver, using the gravity of Venus to bend its flight path to bring it into a good trajectory to fly past Mercury. It also used light pressure from the Sun to make minor course corrections.
It made a flyby of Venus on February 5, 1974, and then its first Mercury flyby on March 29, 1974, getting within 703 kilometers of the planet's surface. It completed a second flyby on September 21, 1974, and then a third and final flyby on March 16, 1975, passing as close as 327 km. Over the course of the three flybys, it was only able to map 40-45% of Mercury's surface.
Mariner 10 is probably still orbiting the Sun.
MESSENGER is NASA's second mission to Mercury. It launched on August 3, 2004 to study the planet. This time, the spacecraft will actually be going into orbit around Mercury to study it until its electronics fail.
The spacecraft has greatly improved optics and electrons, and is capable of resolving features on Mercury's surface down to 18 meters across. This is a vast improvement over the 1.6 km resolution of Mariner 10.
MESSENGER made its first flyby of Mercury on January 14, 2008, and will make a second on October 6, 2008, and a third on September 29, 2009. It will make its final orbital insertion around Mercury on March 18, 2011.
This is a new mission under development by the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to the planet Mercury. It's still in the planning stages, but ESA and JAXA intend to build a spacecraft that can split into two portions: a planetary orbiter and a magnetospheric orbiter. A planetary lander component was proposed, but the idea was scrapped for budgetary reasons.


text:
You are here: Home / Explore / Sermons / Sermons / Proper 11, Year A – July 20, 2014
Proper 11, Year A – July 20, 2014
July 20, 2014 /in Sermons /by Britt
I'm very familiar with weeds; they are the thing that I grow best!
In fact, I don't have much experience with gardening or farming, nor do I have a great track record for growing things; cooking them, shopping for them, eating them, these are all another matter; but growing them is not my strong suit.
This is part of why I was so grateful for the commentators I read in preparation for today's service each had a solid grounding in agriculture, and could make sense of this parable, often referred to as "The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds," or of "The Wheat and the Tares," if you used the old-school language when you were growing up.
And they all pointed to truth embedded in the Gospel today: Jesus is a brilliant pastor, or Jesus may be a horrible farmer, or Jesus just might be both.
We hear all the time that Jesus was raised "The Son of a Carpenter," though that's really a King James-y way of saying that he was Joseph's son, and Joseph was a handyman, so he was probably a handyman; anyway, Jesus is a handyman, and of the guys he recruits for his entourage, the ones we have a pretty clear bead on are fishermen (Simon Peter & Andrew, and James, and John, the sons of Zebadee); we also know that Matthew was a tax collector; we don't know anything of Bartholomew, other than his friends would have called him "Bart" if they were around today; James was either a brother or cousin of Jesus, and was likely pretty handy himself; Philip, Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot we pretty much only have names to go on; and I have serious doubts that we will ever know what Thomas did for a living…
All of this is to say that we're pretty sure NONE of the gentlemen we have spoken of today, including our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ, had a solid, working understanding of how to be a farmer. And here's how we know this: Jesus is describing a genuinely crazy method of planting, cultivating, and harvesting wheat in today's Gospel.
Darnel, sometimes called cockle, or false wheat (or Tares, if you were raised on a King James farm) is a kind of ryegrass that looks almost identical to wheat right up until the ear appears, which is black when ripe, instead of brown, as in the case of ripe wheat.
Darnel is seriously bad news for anyone raising wheat; it saps energy and water from good wheat, and has absolutely no productive purpose, ever: and the real kicker is that a fungus can grow on it, which can make you feel like you have been poisoned with drunkenness, and possibly die.
This is NOT just "some weeds" that got mixed in with the good seed; this stuff is not to be trifled with. Another problem with it is that like any weed, the darnels' roots get all intertwined with the roots of the wheat also growing there, so when you try to pull out the weeds, you can end up pulling out a bunch of good wheat, too.
So having a field sown with tares along with good wheat is a nightmare for a farmer in any age, including the Gospel times, like we're talking about today.
You can almost hear the people listening to Jesus get the shivers when they hear him talking about it… "Did you hear about that Jesus guy, Rose? He was talking about someone who mixed up a bunch of darnel seeds along with the wheat, and sowing it all at the same time! Can you imagine the nightmare??"
That's what makes this parable so powerful for Jesus; the people listening to him would have an instant, emotional reaction to the image he's presenting.
But then Jesus takes a left turn; Jesus' plan for dealing with weeds has nothing in common with an actual farmers' process for dealing with persistent weeds like the darnel Jesus is describing in today's Gospel.
In the Gospel today, the householder's slaves come to him and tell him, "Look, we have a problem. There's not just some tares in the field, there's tons of tares in the field. Did you not sow good seed?"
As an aside, it's worth noting how uncomfortable we can feel when we encounter the word "slaves" in the Gospel stories; and I'm grateful that it's uncomfortable; given our nation's shameful history with slavery, "slave" should never be a comfortable word for us.
Anyway, the householder tells his slaves that an enemy has sown the darnel along with the wheat. One would expect some darnel in with a wheat field, but this bumper crop of poisonous garbage was sown by an enemy.
That's strange enough, but even stranger is how the householder wants the slaves to handle it; usually, there would be some darnel, and the field workers would pull it up.
But this householder wants them to leave it; the reapers will sort it out, and they will harvest the false wheat first, and bundle it to be burned, before harvesting and threshing the wheat.
Having never brought in a harvest of wheat, nor threshed said wheat on a threshing floor, it was not apparent to me at first how odd this plan by the householder was. Usually, you'd have the reapers pull everything up, keep the wheat, drop the darnel, and then gather the darnel up later to burn or make chicken feed from. None of this is the standard operating procedure, which would have been known by everyone who was standing there that day.
This is why I say Jesus is either a terrible farmer, or a brilliant preacher, or perhaps both: it's obvious that if he's really talking about farming, he's a little off his rocker (and so a terrible farmer); but if he's not talking about farming, but really talking about something altogether different, then he's preaching brilliantly, because his illustration is immediately clear, and connects with his audience in a visceral way.
Later, in private, the Disciples ask Jesus, "What in the heck were you talking about back there?" (at least I hope that's how they asked it.)
And notice that understanding doesn't come magically, when you are spiritual enough to really "get it;" the one teacher, Jesus, holds court, and it's only when Jesus explains what he means that understanding comes.
Jesus then lays out the whole thing, in logical order: the Son of Man, the Human One, sows the seed, and the good seed gets harvested at the end of the age, and the bad weeds will be bound up and burned.
It appears simple enough, but the details are where the real flavor is.
In the age to come, Jesus says, which is one of the ways Jesus refers to the Kingdom of God, the Son of Man will send his angels, who will bring in the harvest, and separate the weeds from the wheat, and throw the weeds into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (one of Matthew's favorite phrases).
One of the interesting things is how many details are left unexplained in Jesus's account of the parable: we don't hear anything about the sleepers, or the slaves themselves (who exit stage right after they ask their questions); we also don't hear why the enemy went to such extravagant lengths to foil the harvest; one wonders why someone would sow darnel, rather than just burn the fields, or cut down the wheat.
But Jesus isn't teaching us how to farm; he's teaching us how to be disciples, and he's teaching us how to be the church.
In the age to come, in the Kingdom of God, there will be a time when there will only be wheat, when the church is fully stocked with believers, and as with all the descriptions of the Kingdom of God, we can start making that Kingdom a reality on earth right here, right now.
But the Kingdom of God is both a reality we are working toward, and something that happens in the future, we're headed there, but we're not there yet; we can see it in the distance, like the Emerald City in Oz, but we have to get through these fields of poppies first.
And so now, the church, as we find it, has both wheat and weeds in it; after all, it's made up of people, and people are flawed, every one of us.
So there will be people in the church who are really just weeds, people who are there because of habit and not faith, or because it can help them advance in political life, or because it's the thing to do; as we pray in one of our Eucharistic prayers, we sometimes come to this table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.
There will be weeds mixed in with the wheat, Jesus tells us, and it's almost impossible to tell which are which until the time comes to gather the harvest. And Jesus says unequivocally: there will be wheat, and there will be weeds, and we humans are to LEAVE IT ALONE.
The angels will come at the end of the age and separate the wheat from the weeds; it's not our job to take care of that, and we're not going to be especially good at it anyway; we will pull up too much wheat if we try to weed ourselves, and Jesus doesn't want any of the wheat to be ruined.
And the other problem with our trying to weed, is that unlike an actual wheat field, the weeds and the wheat in the church are always changing. In the field, a weed is a weed, and wheat is wheat, and they can't change who or what they are. In the church, anyone can become a weeds, and come to the community by force of habit, and not really put the work in as a disciple.
But in the church, anyone can also become wheat, and find a true home, and a true calling as a disciple, and work to live their calling in the world, spreading the Gospel and making the Kingdom of God real, now.
That's the most important reason to let Jesus do the weeding: today's weeds are tomorrow's wheat, and if we pull up a weed now, it'll never have the opportunity to become the wheat that it can become. Jesus is setting a vision for his Church today: a place that weeds and wheat live together, working to make the Kingdom of God a reality.
The Church Jesus describes today is a place where everyone is welcome, and where we work continually to make more wheat, to spread the Gospel farther, to learn the disciplines of the faith, and to live that faith in community.
But how? How do we transform weeds into wheat?
By living our faith: through praying and worshiping as a community, through studying the Bible, through learning the history of the church, through serving in Christ's name in the world, through living as a community together, in silence, in conversation, in feeding and being fed.
And when we live our faith, when we build that relationship with Christ, and teach others to live the life of faith we live together, we help them transform themselves into wheat with Christ, and we welcome the Kingdom of God on earth.
It's not easy, this transformation; for individuals, it means radically reorienting the way you've lived your life, and living for Christ, alive inside you; and for our communities, it means being in the weeds ALL THE TIME, constantly working to life our lives more fully with Christ, and working to help others to the same, which some will do, and others will choose not to.
But it's the only way to make disciples; it's the only way to build the church; and it's the only way to live our calling in Christ.
If we were really honest, we might admit to ourselves that we're really prefer to be the ones doing the judging, and not the ones being transformed; sounds like a better gig, and sounds a lot easier. But Jesus does the judging, no matter how much we'd prefer to do it ourselves; frankly, we have enough on our plates, and we're not great at that job anyway.
Jesus has taken that off of our plates, and thank God he did; our vocations are full enough as it is: working to spread the Good News of Life in Christ to the ends of the earth, making disciples, that is, making wheat, of others and ourselves.
So we have our instructions: make the church a welcoming place for all the weeds in the world, so that they can become wheat (and so WE can continue to become wheat ourselves), and make God's Reign known on earth now.
We do this through living our faith, through welcoming others into our community, through saying our prayers, through sharing food as a community, and in so doing, we don't need to separate the weeds from the wheat, because when we do our part well, there aren't any weeds left in the field.
Let it be so, in Christ's name.
Vicar's Forum The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost | July 27, 2014

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Is there any way to save out the mophed position of an object as a new object? I don't care what happens to the 'base'.
The script that I have was written by evenflcw. Perhaps he could post it on his website for others to d/l.
Just use the Apply Morph command.
I tried the object exporter lscript that I found in that thread, but all it did is export the object! Well it was worth a shot. Saving a morphed postion as a separate object is not something I often need, I was just curious. I solved the problem by starting over. --My LW mantra these many years: Start Over.
You need to pick up [base] in right bottom panel, before using Apply Morph.. Otherwise it's working on morphed vertexes.
After Apply Morph base will look like picked up morph is looking like, and you can delete all morphs from object. And you have just morphed state.


Will O'Donnell knows the lakes and surrounding mountains incredibly well after spending every summer in Grand Lake and living here year round for the past 20 + years. He has been with Mountain Lake Properties since the start of the millennium. Previously, he did real estate related work at Stewart Title right out of college, worked with Dana Crawford, a pioneer in Lower Downtown Denver urban renewal/development, with Liberty Savings as a loan originator, with Byron Miller Custom homes as a carpenter and with Grand Lake Plumbing in operations support. Will enjoys his 100 year old rowboat and can recommend many hikes and adventures in Grand Lake's back country. Ask about Ruff!
Lisa Simpson, her husband Bob and daughter Tigerlily have called Grand Lake their home since 1995. She joined the Mountain Lake Properties family in 2012 after enjoying a successful career as an architectural designer and construction manager, designing over 150 homes, condos and commercial projects in the Three Lakes area. She brings a unique design perspective to real estate in helping purchasers realize the full potential of their properties. Her relationships with the local contractors have proved invaluable. Lisa and her family enjoy boating, paddle boarding, kayaking, hiking Rocky Mountain National Park and alpine and nordic skiing on bluebird days in Colorado's high country!
"As a native of Denver and the daughter of an avid fisherman, I spent a considerable amount of time growing up in our beautiful Colorado Rockies. I have such fond memories of our quaint historic town and of boating and fishing in the beautiful lakes! I first purchased property in Grand County in 1978–so I've certainly seen the growth and appreciation that has gone on in our area! I worked in nursing for almost 10 years (including 2 years at the Granby Medical Center), then had a very successful career with Mile Hi Culligan Water Treatment before joining Mountain Lake Properties in 2002."
Donna Ready says, "Living in Grand Lake is like living in a Hallmark movie. We put on events year round for the enjoyment of the tourists and the vacation homeowners and we get to go to all of them!" She is deeply in touch with the past and present of this little Gem of the Rockies and enjoys sharing upcoming events and details of the past with those who ask. Like a chess master playing a dozen tables at a time, Donna keeps in mind the sequence of events for each seller and purchaser to complete their life-changing closing. After an agent helps you to select just the right property, Donna makes sure that nothing has been overlooked. Most items can be handled electronically and through e-mail; however, the multi-step process can take weeks. Donna has navigated through so many different and challenging situations that she know just how to manage your own details. Donna's friendly greeting continues long after a purchase to ensure that people feel welcomed to community events and know who to call for additional help.
Donna and Scott Ready, owners of Mountain Lake Properties, moved to Grand County in 1979 with Donna first working at a Title Company and Scott building their honeymoon cottage on a hill overlooking Columbine Lake. Donna started in real estate in Grand Lake in 1980, at the west end of the Boardwalk, where she met many of the folks who still come in to see her today. Scott and Donna opened Mountain Lake Properties at the sunny east end of the Boardwalk in 1992, with Donna as Broker/Matchmaker and Scott, the wizard behind the scenes, taking photos and creating and maintaining the 700 page web site, which we started when the Internet was new, at the same time we dropped out of the local Multilist in 1996. Scott loves to share on the website the deep back country places he has visited, in hopes that you too will get out there, by foot, by snowmobile or even by boat!
Meet Loki, our mascot: a big and friendly Alaskan Malamute. Loki is our official pack animal for treks into the mountains.
Look for him in the virtual hikes on our web site and also where he poses, especially while exploring the larger acreages that we have for sale.
the market, and showing and selling each other's property listings.
If you are already working with another agent and plan to buy property through them, please let us know before we take you to view properties. We will make arrangements for your agent to show the properties to you.
Otherwise, we thank you for letting us be of help and look forward to seeing you at fun events and along the boardwalk.


As computers are getting faster, CPU heat sinks are getting larger as well. At one point, a huge cooler that covered the DIMM slots and had 2 fans was normal. Noctua is going back to the basics, and creating a small single fan cooler everyone can use. The NH-U12S is a 120mm model for their classic U-series coolers. The S-version's 45mm slim design ensures 100% compatibility with tall RAM modules creating compatibility with all modern motherboards. The UH-U12S also uses Noctua's class leading NF-F12 FocusFlow™ fans with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) for fully automatic control as well as the ultimate quiet cooling experience. The heat sink uses Noctua's Securi-firm system, unfortunately dropping support for the LGA 775 and LGA 1366 sockets. The heat sink is still compatible with current sockets as well as future sockets such as Haswell's LGA 1150.
On the front of the typical brown Noctua box, we find a brief description of the fan and a silver badge addressing its award winning design. On the side, we find specifications for both the fans and heat sink, as well as the scope of delivery(?) and a 2D image of the heat sink. On the back, there is an explanation of what this design offers and why they chose to design this type of cooler, available in eight different languages.
Once the largest box is opened up, we find three nicely labelled and organized boxes that makes installation a breeze, while also being very visual appealing. There is one box containing the mounting system for Intel CPUs and another box for the AMD processors. A third box contains the miscellaneous accessories such as extra fan mounts and thermal compound.
Included in the accessory box are mounting clips for an additional fan, Noctua's NT-H1 thermal compound, four extra silicon fan corners, a Phillips screwdriver, a low noise adapter for the fan, anti-vibration strips which can be used with non-Noctua fans to reduce vibration, and an extremely thick metal Noctua case badge.
Noctua goes above and beyond the call of duty, having included literally everything you need to install the heatsink. Noctua is the only company I have seen so far to include a screwdriver with their products, allowing installation of the heatsink right out of the box.
At the very bottom lies the heat sink protected by thick pieces of cardboard. It's nice to see companies use recyclable packaging.
The NF-F12 PWM fans are a great match for this cooler as the fins are longer than the height of the cooler, allowing it to provide airflow to every fin on the heat sink. The cooler is is 158mm tall, 125mm wide, and 71mm deep with one fan installed.
From the side you can see the slim form factor of the cooler as well the the fan mounting system, there are notches on the side of the fin array that allow the metal clips to latch on. The mounting system allows for easy tool-less installation and removal which makes cleaning the cooler a lot easier.
On the back where there is no fan (although another fan can be installed), you can get an idea of how the grooves and teeth on the edge of the fins help break up air flow to reduce noise. You can also see how the heat pipes are spaced out.
Every fin in the stack has the Noctua logo embossed on it which is not only for show, but which also increases the surface area as well as helping to break up the air flow. There is also a hole in the centre where you can use the included screwdriver to remove the hold down bar for the Securi-firm mounting system. I don't know why you would need to do that, but the option is there. You can see the slight curve in the middle of the heat sink as well as the notches that help break up airflow.
The cooler is mounted by screwing the hold down plate on the heat sink onto the two brackets that are secured to the motherboard. The five heatpipes are soldered between two copper plates making up the base. The base of the NH-U12S is milled and has arched grooves across the entire surface. The base of the heatsink is completely flat with no deformation at the edges, ensuring uniform contact with the entire CPU. There are staggered heatpipes to carry the heat away to different areas of the fin array. The heatpipes are quite angled near the centre of the plate due to the small form factor of this heatsink.
The NH-U12S has the ability to be used with two fans, by using the extra metal fan clips that were included in the accessories box. This allows for better static pressure and better performance. It also looks cooler. The extra fan increases the depth from 71mm to 96mm. Even with two fans, this cooler is still compatible with LGA 2011 motherboards when all the DIMM slots are populated.
The Securi-firm system makes installation very simple. For Intel systems, simply align the extremely thick backplate with the three holes on the back of the socket and it should smoothly slide into the motherboard. for Socket LGA 2011, simple screw in the included risers into the built in backplate on the motherboard. Once the backplate is installed, flip the motherboard over and place the black risers onto the screws jutting out and screw in the top brackets with the curves facing away from the centre. All that's left is to screw it all down with the four thumb screws and you're left with an extremely secure platform to mount the heatsink onto. With the Securi-firm's extremely thick backplate, there will be little-to-no flex on the motherboard when the cooler is installed.
You will need to remove the fans to install the heatsink onto the brackets, but Noctua makes that easy with their toolless clips. Use the included screwdriver, or your own, to screw the two screws on the cooler to the brackets. The included screwdriver clears the top of the heatsink nicely and gives you a nifty tool to throw into your tool bag if you ever need it. The black springs ensure that the correct pressure is placed onto the CPU, so just simply keep screwing it in until it stops.
You can see that the cooler sits nicely right above the RAM I used. With two fans installed, it takes up more room, but still fits fine on the motherboard. The cooler can also be mounted in two orientations, blowing air horizontally across, or blowing air upwards.
*Temperatures were measured using RealTemp with an ambient room temperature of 24 degrees Celcius and the system was left to idle or run on full load for 10 min before temperatures were taken.
With a single fan, the NH-U12S offered temperatures of 60 degrees with a decrease of 4 degress with an additional fan. This offered a significant decrease of temperature compared to the stock Intel cooler.
Once the CPU was overclocked to 4.2GHz, differences can be seen. The difference between one and two fans is still 3 degrees but there was only a temperature increase of 9 degrees compared to stock clocks, allowing more room for overclocking. With the Intel cooler, the temperatures were quite high so overclocking with a stock cooler is highly not recommended.
The Noctua NH-U12S is $80 at our local retailer, NCIX, so the heatsink does come at a high price. The NH-U12S is also a high performance cooler so the parts and build quality are held to high standards. The heatsink offers great cooling without sacrificing silence. This is one of the quietest heatsinks we have tested so far and offers great performance. The NH-U12S is also compatible with all RAM modules so it is a great choice for first time system builders who are afraid of running into compatibility issues and reduces headaches.
Noctua has put a lot of thought into designing the NH-U12S and it shows in the final product. They have thought of ways to make life easier for the end user by using metal clips to secure the fans. A simple convenience such as using a single wire instead of fiddling with plastic inserts makes installation simple and the inclusion of a screwdriver means the end-user doesn't have to find one, or buy one if they don't own one.
Noctua has also tried to make installation of the cooler and backplate easier by reducing the amount of things you need to hold in place. They split the installation into small easy steps so there are no headaches or broken parts due to installation. Since they dropped support for LGA 775 and 1366, they can simplify the backplate, removing the need to reposition the screws to line up with the holes.
Noctua shows that you don't need a huge loud cooler for great performance, and that it doesn't need to be flashy with LEDs and plastic shrouds. All you need is great engineering to make a great cooler. If you are in the market for a CPU cooler, make sure you take a look at the Noctua NH-U12S.


Despite more than 4 inches of snow this season spread across a dozen days, the wintery mix of precipitation has failed to significantly ease drought conditions across the region.
According to the latest Texas Drought Report, issued Monday, the drought statewide declined to 41.8 percent, which represents a drop of 2.9 percent from the week earlier.
However, most of the improvement is occurring in East Texas, which accounts for most of the 500,000 acre-feet increase in statewide reservoir storage.
For the six counties within the Herald's circulation area, most of the area is retreating to drier conditions.
Almost all of Briscoe County is considered in a severe drought, with the northeastern edge falling into extreme drought category.
The northeastern half of Floyd County is listed in severe drought while the southwestern half is classed as moderate drought.
Swisher County is in generally the same state as Floyd County, with the exception of its extreme southwest corner which is listed as abnormally dry.
For Hale County, the northeastern quarter is in a moderate drought with the remainder abnormally dry.
All of Castro County is considered abnormally dry, with the northern and southern edges of Lamb County also abnormally dry. The only area experiencing normal moisture conditions in central Lamb County.
The National Weather Service has posted a 20 percent chance of snow and patchy light freezing drizzle tonight, and snow Wednesday morning. No significant accumulations are expected.
Accompanying the light snowfall will be much colder temperatures, with the mercury remaining in the lower 30s today before falling to the lower 20s tonight. Wednesday's high temperature is expected to be around 40 with the temperature dropping into the lower 20s Wednesday night.
Thursday should be sunny and not as cool with the high reaching into the lower 50s.


STMG is a multifactional squad dedicated to the econ of the TRI Universe.
Rules of Conduct will be posted very soon in the mean time mind your manners, don't dump with out warning the sectors and get out there and have some fun.
REMEMBER YOUR ACTIONS NOT ONLY EFFECT YOU THEY CAN EFFECT THE SAFETY OF ALL SQUAD MEMBERS!!


Sharp and Fast focusing. Great for BIF and other fast moving subjects. Takes some getting used to at the long end and best on a monopod of tripod but can hand hold at high speeds and smaller f stops to give greater DOF.
A bit of distortion but minor and can be taken care of easily in PP.
I love this lens. Really great on my a77 and a700. Faster focus on the a77.


text:
Buhari orders immediate payment of N30,000 minimum wage for some civil servants
Google launches digital skills for Africa program in Sokoto
By Rakiya A.Muhammad,Sokoto | Published Date Sep 4, 2018 14:07 PM Oct 5, 2018 16:04 PM
The Google Digital Skills for Africa program has been launched in Sokoto with a target to train 500,000 Nigerians in the next 12 months and to triple that number over the next five years.
Speaking at event, Minister of State, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Aisha Abubakar, said the exercise was deliberately aimed at improving employability of job seekers and the growth of small enterprises, who are keen to join the digital world by improving their skills.
She noted that the provision of a favourable environment for enterprises to thrive as a key strategy in developing the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Nigeria.
"We know that for any enterprise to become relevant and competitive in this age of digital disruption, our entrepreneurs have to be equipped with modern digital skills. This is why this partnership with Google aims to create the right technological platform for Nigerian MSMEs to thrive and prosper by building a web presence through digital innovation."
For Sokoto, she said: "We projected training 1000 youths over the next three training days."
The Minister noted that over 50 million Nigerians are connected to the web via mobile devices but that they still lack the basic digital skills to accomplish critical tasks of promoting their enterprises.
"Starting and growing enterprises without adequate training, mentorship and hand-holding are factors that mitigate the growth of enterprises in Africa."
She stressed that having the requisite skills to start, grow and stay in business is key to developing a sustainable enterprise.
A press statement at the launch quoted Google Nigeria Country Director, Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor as saying: "The Digital Skills for Africa program is designed to address the growth needs for jobseekers and small business owners, and has to date been rolled out to about 100 communities across a number of countries including Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya."
She added "By engaging directly with the communities that can most benefit from the training, Google is able to identify the specific needs of these communities, support their local growth activities and ensure the impact is felt not just on an individual but also at a community level."
"Last year we announced plans to help more people in Africa prepare for jobs of the future through our local community-focused Digital Skills Training programs. Through these grassroot programs, we will be helping local communities in Africa take advantage of our 10M digital skills training initiative to grow, and to improve their knowledge of digital tools."
Manager Public Policy and Government Relations Google Nigeria, Seemer Nyager said the launch of the community-focused trainings was aimed at helping more people in Nigeria acquire the skills they need to leverage online tools for growth and to give them access to better employment and/or the skills to start their own businesses.
He said the program provides free courses, tools, and in-person digital training to students, educators, job seekers and businesses.
"It will empower individuals, it will empower businesses, it is good for Nigeria, it is good for businesses, and it is good for google."
In a message, the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar stressed the need to use the internet appropriately and responsibly.
Vice Chancellor Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto represented by Professor Atiku Garba Yahya assured of the readiness of the institution to contribute its quota to the programme.
Bayelsa guber: Meeting to adopt APC primaries mode ends in stalemate
2019 Hajj: Deal with officials alone, NAHCON advises pilgrims
NYSC to provide artificial limbs to corper who lost hands
Kano: Police arrest woman who burnt husband


text:
past-perfect-mm
Past Perfect (MM)
by Pelaam
Science Fiction Alternative (M/M, Gay)
Ailill O'Brien was only expecting a holiday. Things started oddly when his booking for Australia became one for New Zealand.
When coincidence leads him past a pub, he sees a man he remembers from a year ago, and half a world away. Experiencing one of his strange fugues, his world is suddenly turned upside down, and nothing will ever be the same.
Faer sees a young man he'd never forgotten come into a bar as he relaxes in between missions.
When he realizes that Ailill's past is being targeted, to wipe him out of existence, he has no choice but to act.
Across time, Faer and his friends must battle dangerous enemies to protect Ailill's ancestors and make the past perfect.
But when Ailill learns the truth about Faer, will their still-burgeoning love be strong enough, or shatter apart at the revelation?
Be Warned: MPREG, m/m sex
Cover Art by Jay Aheer
"What made you come here? The mountain?" Faer waved a hand as if Mount Taranaki was about to sit and join them.
"Yeah. I thought it'd be nice to just chill for a couple of days."
"Where you met me. After a year. And you remember me." Faer shook his head.
"You're kinda," Ailill swallowed, hoping he didn't offend the guy. "Memorable."
Instead of getting angry, Faer's smile broadened. "I'm glad. So were you."
The next hour passed in a whirl of enjoyable chatter. Ailill's initial nerves evaporated, it was as if he and Faer were old friends. Faer was particularly interested in Ailill's stories of his great grandmother and his trips to Ireland.
"I have been there. But it was a long time ago." Faer shrugged when pressed by Ailill.
There was something about Faer's smile, as if he'd shared a private joke that Ailill just didn't get.
"I was thinking of going up the mountain tomorrow, or out to Oakura to the beach. If you're free, maybe we could hook up? I'm not going to be here that long. It'd be nice to get together again."
"Yes. It would." Faer seemed hesitant, as though torn, and Ailill decided he'd probably gone far enough and stuck out his hand. "I'm in the backpackers' up the road. Or I could give you my cell number."
"Ailill—"
Whatever Faer had gone to say was lost as the worst sensation of falling that hit Ailill hard. But worse than that was the visions that came with it—faceless creatures reaching out for him with black, claw-like talons, dead and mutilated women, his own great-grandmother staring at him blindly because her eyes were missing, a pyramidal tomb, a tall, narrow building, and something … else. Something Ailill couldn't describe, except for the feeling of evil it emanated.
"Ailill? Ailill, can you hear me?" There was a panicked tone to Faer's voice, and Ailill clutched tighter to the hand he held, trying to use both it and Faer's voice to get out of the void.
"Sorry. Fuck. I don't know what to call it. Just felt really dizzy for a second."
"That wasn't a second." Faer squeezed his hand. "Can you open your eyes and look at me?"
"Yeah. Sure." Ailill did, cautiously, just in case the sensation returned. "I'm fine. Hey. Where did my phone go?"
"It vanished, at the same time your drink did." If it wasn't for the suddenly serious expression on the other man's face, Ailill would have thought it all a joke.
"I don't understand. Those terrible visions. Death and blood. And something—something I can't even put into words." Ailill shuddered.
"I think we need to go. Quickly." Faer stood up, and Ailill shook his head.
"Go where? I need to report my phone as missing."
"It's missing because it wasn't in your hand as we touched. You don't exist anymore. We must find out why. Your meeting me here wasn't accidental. But we have to move fast before it realizes you haven't been wiped from existence."
"What the fuck are you talking about? I don't know what your game is, but if you don't give me my phone back, I'll get the staff to call the cops." A growing sense of fear wrapped around Ailill's heart and squeezed tightly.
"They won't see you. You don't exist here. Try it." Faer indicated the table next to them, and while a man stared at Faer, he gave no indication he saw Ailill.
"Excuse me, mate. Did you see my … friend … here hide my phone?" Ailill addressed the man who didn't react. "Are you deaf?" Ailill raised his voice. "I'm right here." When Ailill tried to touch him, his hand passed through the man's shoulder and then the man shivered.
Ailill went cold. There was a buzzing in his ears, and he was convinced he was about to faint. Dizziness swept through him and for a second, the world around him flickered to the void and then back again as Faer touched him.
"Don't do that again. It only emphasizes your fragile position in time and will bring things we do not want to have to deal with directly to you." Faer turned Ailill around and pushed him toward a door.
"Where are we going?" Ailill asked, although the way his teeth chattered, he wasn't sure Faer would understand him.
"In the first instance? Up to the clock tower here. That way we can jaunt away safely. Thankfully, it's just up the road. Just a couple of minutes away. Hurry."
Once outside the bar, Faer walked briskly, leading Ailill along the road and turned right to go up the hill to the clock tower. Although the sky was cloudless, thunder rumbled ominously close.
"They know. Hurry, Ailill." Faer increased his speed until he was almost jogging up the hill with Ailill panting to keep pace.
"Faer, look!" Ailill glanced back and stopped dead. A man dressed in grey stood behind them, although Ailill knew they'd passed no one. He seemed to be looking directly toward them, only it was not a man.
Where the creature's face should be was … blurred. There was no other way for Ailill to describe it. It was as if an artist, unhappy with the details they'd created, had simply wiped off the wet paint, leaving a smear in place of features.
"Don't look at it. Just hurry." Faer pulled Ailill behind him as Ailill's legs grew heavy, making it difficult for him to run.
"Is that responsible—?"
"No. A scout. Don't waste breath." Faer shoved Ailill up the steps of the clock tower.
"It won't be open." Ailill panted heavily as he fought to keep his legs moving.
"Don't need a tourist pass. Trust me."
The strange thing was … Ailill did. Even though he'd only met Faer once before and exchanged no more than a half a dozen words at that time.
When Ailill was close to Faer, he felt a sense of calm, of belonging. Part of him still wondered if he was having a bad psychedelic trip. At the back of his mind an elusive memory fought to surface, but there was no time to try and focus on it.
At the top of the stairs was a locked door. Ailill looked over his shoulder. "I said there was no—" The rest of his sentence was never uttered as he pointed down the main street.
Close to the faceless man, the air vibrated, and a black-scaled claw slashed its way into existence. Ailill gasped as if the claw had physically scraped down his chest.
"Outsider. Breaking through. Hold tight. We have to space jaunt." Faer grabbed Ailill around the waist. "Face me and hold tight."
Ailill didn't argue. He wrapped his arms tight around Faer's neck, their faces so close that if Ailill moved just a fraction, he could kiss the full lips so tantalizingly close. Then Faer somehow walked through the solid door and the bottom fell out of Ailill's world.
The Alpha's Ardor (MM)
Rebecca Brochu
The Beta's Beloved (MM)
Off-Limits (MM)
Forgotten No More (MMM)
Jools Louise
Archer (MM)
Fel Fern
If Tomorrow Never Comes (MM)
Mr. Russo (MM)
Soft Alabaster (MM)
Shawn Bailey
Rideaway Bride: MMF Menage Romance
Cari Griffin
A Second Chance (MM)
Edward Kendrick
Figure It Out (MMM)
J.V. Speyer
Off Sides (MMM)
Dianne Hartsock
Stealing West (MM)
Jamie Craig
Black Bird (MM)
Ofelia Gränd
Timeslip (MM)
Grab Bag 16: A Gay Erotica Anthology (MM) (MMM)
A Decade of Gay Romance (MM)
Velvet Claw (MM)
L.J. Hamlin


text:
package eu.chargetime.ocpp.test;

import eu.chargetime.ocpp.*;
import eu.chargetime.ocpp.feature.Feature;
import eu.chargetime.ocpp.model.Confirmation;
import eu.chargetime.ocpp.model.Request;
import eu.chargetime.ocpp.model.TestRequest;
import org.junit.Before;
import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.mockito.Mock;
import org.mockito.runners.MockitoJUnitRunner;

import static org.hamcrest.CoreMatchers.equalTo;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertThat;
import static org.mockito.Mockito.*;

@RunWith(MockitoJUnitRunner.class)
public class SessionTest {
    private Session session;

    private CommunicatorEvents eventHandler;

    @Mock
    private Communicator communicator;
    @Mock
    private Queue queue;
    @Mock
    private SessionEvents sessionEvents;
    @Mock
    private Feature feature;

    @Before
    public void setup() throws Exception {
        when(sessionEvents.findFeatureByAction(any())).thenReturn(feature);
        session = new Session(communicator, queue, false);
        doAnswer(invocation -> eventHandler = invocation.getArgumentAt(1, CommunicatorEvents.class)).when(communicator).connect(any(), any());
        session.open(null, sessionEvents);
    }

    @Test
    public void sendRequest_getUniqueIdReturnedFromQueue() {
        // Given
        String someId = "test id";
        when(queue.store(any())).thenReturn(someId);

        // When
        String id = session.sendRequest(null, null);

        // Then
        assertThat(id, equalTo(someId));
    }

    @Test
    public void sendRequest_sendRequestToCommunicator() {
        // Given
        String  someAction      = "Test action";
        Request someRequest     = new Request() {
            @Override
            public boolean transactionRelated() {
                return false;
            }

            @Override
            public boolean validate() {
                return false;
            }
        };

        // When
        session.sendRequest(someAction, someRequest);

        // Then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCall(anyString(), eq(someAction), eq(someRequest));
    }

    @Test
    public void sendRequest_fixedUniqueId_sendsUniqueIdToCommunicator() {
        // Given
        String someUniqueId = "test id";
        when(queue.store(any())).thenReturn(someUniqueId);

        // When
        session.sendRequest(null, null);

        // Then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCall(eq(someUniqueId), anyString(), any());
    }

    @Test
    public void sendConfirmation_sendsConfirmationToCommunicator() {
        // Given
        Confirmation conf = () -> false;
        String someUniqueId = "Some id";
        String action = "Some action";

        // When
        session.sendConfirmation(someUniqueId, action, conf);

        // Then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCallResult(eq(someUniqueId), eq(action), eq(conf));
    }

    @Test
    public void open_connectsViaCommunicator() {
        // Given
        String someUri = "localhost";

        // When
        session.open(someUri, null);

        // Then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).connect(eq(someUri), any());
    }

    @Test
    public void onCall_unhandledCallback_callSendCallError() throws Exception {
        // Given
        String someId = "Some id";
        when(sessionEvents.handleRequest(any())).thenReturn(null);
        when(communicator.unpackPayload(any(), any())).thenReturn(new TestRequest());

        // When
        eventHandler.onCall(someId, null, null);

        // then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCallError(eq(someId), anyString(), anyString(), anyString());
    }

    @Test
    public void onCall_handledCallback_callSendCallResult() throws Exception {
        // Given
        String someId = "Some id";
        Confirmation aConfirmation = () -> true;
        when(sessionEvents.handleRequest(any())).thenReturn(aConfirmation);
        when(communicator.unpackPayload(any(), any())).thenReturn(new TestRequest());

        // When
        eventHandler.onCall(someId, null, null);

        // then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCallResult(anyString(), anyString(), eq(aConfirmation));
    }

    @Test
    public void onCall_callbackThrowsException_callSendCallResult() throws Exception {
        // Given
        String someId = "Some id";
        when(sessionEvents.handleRequest(any())).thenThrow(Exception.class);
        when(communicator.unpackPayload(any(), any())).thenReturn(new TestRequest());

        // When
        eventHandler.onCall(someId, null, null);

        // then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCallError(eq(someId), anyString(), anyString(), anyString());
    }

    @Test
    public void close_disconnects() {
        // When
        session.close();

        // Then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).disconnect();
    }

    @Test
    public void onCall_unknownAction_callSendCallError() {
        // Given
        String someId = "Some id";
        when(sessionEvents.findFeatureByAction(any())).thenReturn(null);

        // When
        eventHandler.onCall(someId, null, null);

        // Then
        verify(communicator, times(1)).sendCallError(eq(someId), anyString(), anyString(), anyString());
    }

    @Test
    public void onCall_sessionAccepted_callIsForwarded() throws Exception {
        // Given
        String someId = "Some id";
        session.accept(sessionEvents);
        when(communicator.unpackPayload(any(), any())).thenReturn(new TestRequest());

        // When
        eventHandler.onCall(someId, null, null);

        // Then
        verify(sessionEvents, times(1)).handleRequest(any());
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
HomeNationalMissing 1-year-old girl may be endangered amid 'suspicious' death in her home, police say
Missing 1-year-old girl may be endangered amid 'suspicious' death in her home, police say
Ansonia Police Department(ANSONIA, Conn.) — A 1-year-old girl is missing and Connecticut authorities fear she may be endangered.
Venessa Morales, 1, was living inside a home in the city of Ansonia where there is "an active suspicious death investigation," according to a press release from the Ansonia Police Department on Tuesday.
Police said that while Venessa was not in the home, "we have not been able to locate her" since the body was discovered Monday night.
Authorities were initially called to the house for a welfare check after family members had not been able to contact the Morales family for a couple of days and "were concerned," Lynch said.
Officers arrived at the home before 8 p.m. and found evidence outside that prompted them to force entry, according to authorities.
It was then that they said they found a victim. Authorities would not say how the victim is related to Venessa.
Family members told police the little girl "was always at the house," Lynch said.
Authorities are waiting for the medical examiner to determine the official cause and manner of death into the victim.
Ansonia is located about 10 miles west of New Haven.
Venessa has brown hair and brown eyes, police said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Ansonia Police Department at 203-735-1885.
Nor'easter moves out as new storms move into California
Man dead for years identified as suspect in 1984 murder of 15-year-old girl


text:
in Music News
Ariana Grande's "Break Up" Reaches Top 15 At Pop Radio; Jonas Brothers' "Sucker" Top 20
"break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored" and "Sucker" climb on this week's pop radio chart.
Ariana Grande - break up with your girlfriend video | Republic
by Brian Cantor Mar 10, 2019, 5:04 pm
As Ariana Grande's "7 rings" rises to #1 on the Mediabase pop radio airplay chart, follow-up "break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored" hits the Top 15.
Up three places, "break up with your girlfriend" earns #13 on this week's listing.
The song received 7,578 spins during the March 3-9 tracking period. This week's spin count tops last week's mark by 1,464 plays.
— Jonas Brothers' "Sucker" concurrently blasts into the Top 20 on this week's listing.
Played 4,541 times during the tracking week (+2,139), "Sucker" jumps ten spots to #20.
Now in just its second week on the chart, "Sucker" already ranks as Jonas Brothers' third-highest-peaking pop radio hit. Only "Burnin' Up" (#12) and "When You Look Me In The Eyes" (#16) went higher.
ariana grandebreak up with your girlfriend i'm boredjonas brotherssucker
More From: Music News
"7 Rings" Becomes Ariana Grande's 7th #1 Hit At Pop Radio
Songs By Lil Peep & iLoveMakonnen, Zedd & Katy Perry Reach Top 25 At Pop Radio


Andrews Vintage (1817 sq. ft.) is a home with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and -car garage.
Keystone Custom Homes is excited to build on the last six remaining homesites in the established community of Old Reliance Farms. The homesites are approximately 1/2 acre in size, or larger. Old Reliance Farms is located in Middletown Area School District, and is only a short 2.4 mile drive from Route 283, providing quick and easy access to Harrisburg, Lancaster, and surrounding areas. The community offers a peaceful, rural feel, yet it is very close to the Harrisburg International Airport an Hershey. Come visit out Victoria Abbey model home for more information!


This examples shows how to connect to other BLE device, using default connecting parameters. Waspmote will be the master and the remote device will be the slave. A remote attribute is read / written on the slave.
1 x BLE node to act as slave (can be another Waspmote + BLE module).
*  will be the slave. A remote attribute is read / written on the slave.
// MAC address of BLE device to find and connect.
//2. now try to connect with the defined parameters.
// 4. Now try to read a remote attribute.
// but the attribute chosen is 20 bytes length.
// with the characteristic 1.0 of user service 1.
// 4.1 Print attribute value. First byte of BLE.attributeValue is the length of the value.
// 5 Now remotely write an attribute with the data defined at the beginning.
// 6 Read attribute again to demonstrate write operation.
// 6.1 Print attribute value. First byte of BLE.attributeValue is the length of the value.
// 7. disconnect. Remember that after a disconnection, the slave becomes invisible automatically.


..:: GSM Biometric attendance system | ShamelTech|services ::..
Shamel GSM Attendance System is an Innovative Biometrics Fingerprint Machine for the time attendance applications. With built-in 2000mAh battery backup, it eliminates the trouble of power-failure. This system is based on 3G communication.
It is equipped with the fastest commercial-based fingerprint matching algorithm and high-performance, high-image quality optical fingerprint sensor. The screen can display more information vividly, including fingerprint image quality and verification result etc. 3G communication is standard and makes sure the data transmission between terminal and Server can be easily done within few seconds.


To help nonprofits achieve their goals, we have created a wish list of requested items and volunteer opportunities. Let's support these amazing organizations and continue to make a difference in Westchester.
Please contact the nonprofit directly if you are interested or need more information.
If you are able to fill a large or unique request, please send us a message so we can remove the item from the list.


text:
What Is Freedom of Expression?
25 February 2021 Legal News
The debates around freedom of expression are in the news these days. For example, there is the case of Mike Ward against Jérémy Gabriel, heard recently by the Supreme Court of Canada. There are also the discussions around academic freedom in universities. Do you know what freedom of expression is?
Free to Express Yourself
Freedom of expression allows you to express yourself. For example, you can say what you think about the most recent song of your favourite singer. You can also say that the government needs to make a new law to respond to a social issue. You can express yourself artistically (music, humour), in writing or by other forms of expression.
Certain physical acts without words are also protected by freedom of expression. Your expression must have a meaning for it to be protected. For example, parking a car is not protected expression. However, parking in a reserved spot as a way to protest something could be protected.
There Are Limits
Freedom of expression is vast, but it has limits.
For instance, acts of violence or threats are not protected by this freedom. So, a person cannot make threats of violence and claim they are protected by freedom of expression.
Hate speech against an ethnic or religious group is also normally against the law.
Your Rights and Freedoms Explained
Rights and freedoms are complex concepts. For more information, visit the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms Made Easy.
Confinement and Domestic Violence: You Can Still Leave


Position: Magento Front-End Developer Location: Columbus Status: Freelance ( onsite/offsite flexibility) Estimated Duration: Ongoing 40 hrs/week Starts: Ready to Interview Rate: Around $40/hr.
Position: Public Relations Manager. Location: Houston. Status: Freelance to Full Time. Estimated Duration: Freelance to Full Time. Starts: April 2019. Rate: Up to $30/hr // $65000/yr. Job Description:.
Freelance Apparel Graphic Designer - Remote Part-time remote opportunity available with a consumer brand and household name to add to your existing portfolio for apparel design. Who You Are.
Position: Digital Marketing Analyst. Location: Waller, TX. Status: Freelance to Full Time. Estimated Duration: Freelance to Full Time. Starts: January 2019. Rate: $23-$28/hr // $48000-$60000/yr DOE.
A Fortune 100 retail brand is hiring a Freelance UX Designer to help with A/B testing and conversions for the company's website. This is an ONSITE, 40 hour/ week assignment that starts ASAP.


text:
Southery is a village and civil parish in Norfolk, England, which covers an area of  and had a population of 1,324 at the 2011 Census. For local government purposes, it falls within the district of King's Lynn and West Norfolk.

The village's name means 'southerly island'.

Gallery

Notes

http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Norfolk/Southery

External links
Village Web site Southery.Com

Villages in Norfolk
Civil parishes in Norfolk
King's Lynn and West Norfolk

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home / Council Minutes / Council Minutes for March 10, 2015
Council Minutes for March 10, 2015
Posted on March 10, 2015 June 30, 2015 by admin
Approved minutes
Present: Josh Gormley (President of Council), Phil Haslanger (Pastor), Rebecca Malke (Director of Faith Development), John VanOverbeke (Financial Secretary), Sarah Fritz, Damon Smith, Betsy Robbins, Jeanne Prueher, Janine Bessemer, Jacy Boldebuck, Jan Klawitter.
Pastor Phil opened the meeting with a prayer.
Josh Gormley asked for approval of the minutes from the Council meeting held on February 10, 2015. Janine Bessemer made the motion for approval and seconded by Jacy Boldebuck. Motion passed.
Tom Pugh and Ree Hale were introduced as representatives of Campital Campaign – the effort by the two United Church of Christ camps in Wisconsin to raise money – and they conducted a presentation to the Council. After the presentation, the Council had a discussion regarding the Campital Campaign. On April 12, 2015, a video of the Campital Campaign will be shown to the congregation.
FINANCIAL REPORT: John Van Overbeke reported the MUCC Budget was right on target with no real issues for income or expenses. The Endowment Fund has a balance of $13,728. The Pastor's Discretionary Fund had a donation of $1,800, plus an additional $200. Lee Enterprises refunded $998 from Pastor Phil's 2013 insurance premium. Josh Gormley asked for a motion to accept the financial report. Janine Bessemer made the motion and seconded by Jan Klawitter. Motion passed.
PASTOR'S REPORT: Pastor Phil reported $350was donated by MUCC to the Madison-area Urban Ministry for Tony Robinson's funeral. He delivered cupcakes to the Fitchburg Police Department and remembered Sue Williams, assistant chief of police and a member of Memorial, in prayer. The wider UCC is involved in dealing with racial gaps in our community. On March 22 there will be a service at Zion City International Church and MUCC has been invited to attend the church service and social time following. Members attending are asked to bring snacks for social sharing. Pastor Phil was contacted by a representative from Weight Watchers requesting to rent our Fellowship Hall beginning mid-April. More information to follow on the decision after receiving additional information. Pastor Phil asked for approval of Jacy Boldebuck to be the delegate to attend the Delegates Association Annual Meeting on Saturday, April 11 from 8:30 AM – 3:00 PM. Janine Bessemer made the motion for approval and seconded by Sarah Fritz. Motion passed.
FAITH FORMATION DIRECTOR'S REPORT: Rebecca Malke reported she attended an area Faith Formation Director's meeting and she indicated it was a great three-hour meeting. On April 29, there will be a class/workshop at MUCC on gender identity. It will be conducted by Orin Wells from the Central Office of the Madison School District and will be a 60-90 minute discussion. Kelly Jetzer is contacting families to extend an invitation to attend.
Faith Development: Sarah Fritz had nothing to report.
Trustees: Jacy Boldebuck, liaison to the Trustees, deferred to John Van Overbeke for the report as he is a member of the MUCC Trustees. John reported the Trustees approved three requests from the Endowment Fund. One $500 request to Verona Area Needs Network "Move the Food Campaign" and another $500 matching grant request to East High School Kenya Project to send students to Kenya. Also a request to Catholic Indian Mission for maintenance and teaching for $25. The Council approved a request by Nona Suhr for $1,000 for Lakeland College, a UCC affiliated college in Sheboygan to help fund a program in Philosophy, Ethics and Christian Thought. A request was made for $1,600 for tuition for Bright Stars of Bethlehem Dar Al Kalima College, a project of MUCC's partner church, Christmas Lutheran. This would supplement the money raised in December at the Cookie and Craft sale to fund a full tuition for one student. John Van Overbeke asked for approval of the Trustees report. Janine Bessemer made the motion to approve the two grants exceeding $500 and it was seconded by Jeanne Prueher. Motion passed.
Adult Programming: Janine Bessemer reported the Adult Programming Committee had not held a meeting since the last Council meeting. Pastor Phil reported Al Krug was on target for the Easter Breakfast.
Membership: Jeanne Prueher reported some of the discussions of the Membership meeting were welcoming new members, care card distribution, over 80 luncheon, Christmas care packages, new picture directory website and signing up for fellowship.
Outreach: Jan Klawitter reported the Outreach Committee discussed the loose-plate offering and during March it will be given to One Great Hour of Sharing. In April, East High School will be talking about a project in association with Kenya. Jan also reported Shirley Robbins is looking to phase out of being the representative to Allied Partners and she is asking for an understudy.
Worship: Betsy had no report from the Worship Committee. Pastor Phil indicated Lent and Easter decorations are the main focuses for the committee.
Building and Grounds: Damon Smith reported that Mikos Pitas is working on his Boy Scout project of a walkway to the MUCC Memorial Gardens. David Ast is assisting Mikos on this project. Pastor Phil reported the wireless network is being upgraded.
Josh asked for a motion to approve the committee reports. Jan Klawitter made the motion with a second by Betsy Robbins. Motion passed.
Pastor Phil gave an update for the Music Director search. One application has been received and the application deadline is the end of March 2015.
The Council met on February 17, 2015 for a review of Council goals and to set new ones for 2015 and they are as follows:
CONNECTING THE CONGREGATION AND THE COMMUNITY: Building bridges with racial and ethnic communities, an array of faith traditions and through service to the community.
CONNECTING MEMBERS WITHIN THE CONGREGATION: Strengthening bonds through worship, outreach, events and social media.
CONNECTING WITH OUR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT: Focusing on sustainable use of our resources and wise use of our property.
Make our status as an OPEN AND AFFIRMING congregation more visible to the public.
Update the structure and descriptions of OUR COMMITTEES.
Josh asked for a motion to adjourn the meeting. Jacy Boldebuck made the motion to adjourn.
Minutes submitted by Jan Dunaway, Recording Secretary
← Council Minutes for Feb. 10, 2015
Council minutes for April 14, 2015 →


text:
Healthcare Industry News: EUSA Pharma
Biopharmaceuticals Oncology Licensing
News Release - July 8, 2020
APEIRON Biologics and MaxCyte Enter into Clinical and Commercial Licensing Agreement for APN401
APEIRON to utilize MaxCyte's ExPERT® platform for siRNA-based cell therapy APN401 targeting solid tumors and secures manufacturing for upcoming clinical trials
VIENNA and GAITHERSBURG, Md., July 8, 2020 -- (Healthcare Sales & Marketing Network) -- APEIRON Biologics AG ("APEIRON"), a private biotechnology company specializing in the discovery, development and commercialization of novel immunotherapies for cancer and respiratory diseases, and MaxCyte, Inc., a global cell-based therapies and life sciences company, today announces the signing of a clinical and commercial licensing agreement.
APEIRON Biologics will obtain non-exclusive clinical and commercial rights to use MaxCyte's Flow Electroporation® technology and ExPERT™ platform for the advancement of APN401, a siRNA-based cell therapy currently in clinical development for various solid tumors. In return, MaxCyte will receive undisclosed development and approval milestones and sales-based payments in addition to other licensing fees.
"Securing access to MaxCyte's ExPERT platform and unique electroporation technology is a crucial next step in the clinical advancement of our lead checkpoint inhibition Cbl-b candidate APN401," said Peter Llewellyn-Davies, CEO of APEIRON Biologics.
Doug Doerfler, President & CEO of MaxCyte, said: "We are proud to support APEIRON in the development of a siRNA-based treatment that could help patients facing cancers with various forms of tumors. This agreement represents an important achievement for MaxCyte, and highlights the value of our next-generation technology platform to companies across the globe seeking to unlock the potential of their engineered cell therapy programs."
MaxCyte's ExPERT instrument portfolio represents the next generation of leading, clinically validated, electroporation technology for complex and scalable cell engineering. By delivering high transfection efficiency, seamless scalability and enhanced functionality, the ExPERT platform delivers the high-end performance essential to enable the next wave of biological and cellular therapeutics.
About APEIRON Biologics AG
APEIRON Biologics AG is a European private biotechnology company based in Vienna that specializes in the discovery, development and commercialization of novel immunotherapies for cancer and respiratory diseases. APEIRON's approved cancer drug Qarziba® is being marketed by EUSA Pharma Ltd.. With APN01, APEIRON is conducting a clinical trial in Europe for the treatment of COVID-19, for which market approval is being sought. APEIRON's APN401 clinical program is a "first-in-class" autologous cell therapy for strengthening immunoreactivity via the intra-cellular master checkpoint Cbl-b. APEIRON's products and technologies are based on a strong patent portfolio and partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions. For more information, visit www.apeiron-biologics.com.
About MaxCyte
MaxCyte, the clinical-stage global cell-based therapies and life sciences company, uses its proprietary next-generation cell and gene therapies to revolutionise medical treatments and ultimately save lives. The Company's premier cell engineering enabling technology is currently being deployed by leading drug developers worldwide, including all of the top ten global biopharmaceutical companies. MaxCyte licenses have been granted to more than 100 cell therapy programs, with more than 70 licensed for clinical use, and the Company has now entered into eleven clinical/commercial license partnerships with leading cell therapy and gene editing developers. MaxCyte was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, US. For more information, visit www.maxcyte.com.
Source: MaxCyte
Search: MaxCyte
Search: APEIRON Biologics
Search: cell therapy


MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Attorney General Josh Kaul is signaling he likely won't represent the state in the latest lawsuit challenging Wisconsin Republicans' lame-duck laws.
The laws weaken the powers of Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers, both Democrats. A coalition of unions filed a lawsuit Monday alleging the laws violate the separation-of-powers doctrine. The League of Women Voters filed a lawsuit challenging the laws last month.
Kaul declined to comment to reporters on Tuesday on whether he would represent the state in the unions' lawsuit. But he noted he decided not to defend the state in the League of Women Voters lawsuit because the laws affect the state Justice Department, leading to a conflict of interest.


Coursework in our program is intended to provide students with a solid knowledge of historiography in their specialty, substantial experience in archival research, and the opportunity to explore new fields, themes, and methods of inquiry.
Generally, doctoral students take three courses each semester for their first two years in the program. All students must take the Core Colloquium in their first semester and complete a two-semester research seminar. In addition to choosing from the list of offered courses, students may arrange for individual tutorials with faculty, or seek out a Consortium course from a participating university in the area. Students who matriculate with an MA degree may petition for advanced standing, which reduces the courseload requirements. Students are guided in their choice of courses by their Mentor and Advisory Committee.
Entering students are expected to have reading competency in at least one relevant language, and are tested before they start their first semester of classes. Students cannot register for the third semester of classes until they pass at least one language exam. All students, except those whose major field is United States History, must pass a minimum of two language exams before scheduling comprehensive exams.
Our Comprehensive Exams are intended to prepare students to teach in their specialties and launch them towards their dissertation research. Doctoral students usually take their exams some time in their third year.
Ph.D. students at Georgetown prepare three fields: a Major field, a Research field within the Major, and a separate Minor field. While the Major field must be one of our formal fields of study, students have a great deal of leeway and creative license to determine their other two fields. This flexibility is a hallmark of our program of study.
Students prepare a written exam in the Major Field and Research field and a written portfolio in the Minor field. Passing the written work qualifies a student to move on to a two-hour oral exam. Passing the oral exam qualifies the student as a Doctoral Candidate.
Writing a great dissertation is the goal of every student's doctoral training. After passing their comprehensive exams, students form a dissertation committee, write a dissertation proposal, and move forward on their research. Ideally, students spend their fourth year doing archival research and their fifth year writing their dissertations. The doctoral students have a standing writing workshop for dissertators to share and critique each other's work in progress. Our students have won prestigious external fellowships to fund their research and writing, including the ACLS and ACLS/Mellon, Newcombe, Ford Foundation, Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays, among many others. Click here for a list of completed dissertations and dissertations in progress.
Our doctoral students have plentiful opportunities to teach. Students on renewable fellowships usually serve as Teaching Assistants in their second, third, and fifth years. Every year, a handful of Davis Fellowships are awarded to advanced doctoral students to teach their own upper-level undergraduate seminars. Students who are nearly done with their dissertations or have recently completed their dissertations sometimes teach their own undergraduate survey-level classes. Ph.D. students in the History Department work closely with Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship to improve as teachers. Our Ph.D.s enter the academic job market with extensive training and experience as teachers.