by: Jimmy AtkinsonMesothelioma is a rare cancer that attacks the body's mesothelial cells around the organs. The mesothelium provides a protective membranous lining for the internal organs and allows moving organs (i.e. the heart and the lungs) to glide easily against adjacent structures. The names of the three regions of mesothelial cells that provide protective coating are 1) pleura, the sac

by: Priya F ShahCancer cells and normal cells are known to respond differently to nutrients and drugs that affect glutathione status.Numerous studies have shown that tumor cells have elevated levels of glutathione levels, which confers resistance to chemotherapy drugs.One of the challenges of cancer therapy is how to deplete tumor cells of glutathione, so as to make them more vulnerable to the

The Distance Education Clearinghouse is a comprehensive and widely recognized Web site bringing together distance education information from Wisconsin, national, and international sources. New information and resources are being added to the Distance Education Clearinghouse on a continual basis. click...

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Home Schooling in Science If your child is among the 700,000 to 1,150,000 currently being schooled at home in the United States (Ray, 1996), you may have questions about the science he or she should be learning. Though children schooled...

Internet classes, a trickle in public schools a decade ago, are rapidly joining the education mainstream — so quickly that it's unclear what all the ramifications may be. Statewide, 10,161 Washington students — mostly in high school — took one...

My wife and I sat down and did a decision matrix on the three designs we're considering. It became pretty clear that the Heathcote (AV Jennings) and the Portland Mk2 (Fairmont) were the two we would be choosing from. The other design just feels too small, and the bedrooms coming off the main hallway is a real negative to us. The outcome of the session was that price would likely be the final deciding factor. I should say that the price is not just the building price, but also the likely time to build and the associated interest costs. My wife will call both builders during the week and get some ball park prices on the upgrades we will need.

OK we're back from holidays today. I spent a couple of hours marking up copies of the house/land layout for faxing out to suppliers for quotation purposes. I had four marked up plans showing:

1. Retaining wall positions and height plus including the design table for the walls as supplied by the engineering report.

2. Areas of the house to be carpeted and areas to be tiles.

3. A site layout showing likely stormwater drainage and including a total length of stormwater likely to be required.

4. A site layout showing the total area to be paved and the area of the driveway to be paved.

Once I'd prepared these drawings I faxed each one to several suppliers asking for quotations within 7 days. These quotations will help with our own budget but will also be supplied to the bank for finalizing the loan process.

Went and saw the salesman in his office today to sign the building contract. First piece of good news was that the house plan was given the preliminary go ahead from the local council despite the problems I discussed yesterday. Of course there is a chance that they may change their mind and we may end up having to alter the plan to comply with some bureaucratic requirement. This could potentially mean more costs.

The building contract we signed was the standard contract offered by the Housing Industry Association here in Australia. Using the standard contract, written in plain English makes the whole process a lot easier to understand. The salesman was great and took us through every section of the contract and explained its purpose and potential effects on us. Key things that came out of it are:

The whole process took a bit over an hour and included some preliminary selections for the house such as the shape of internal archways. It would have taken longer but the salesman's printer ran out of ink and some of the paperwork was not signed. This will be mailed to us in the next week.

In spite of not signing some paperwork with the main contract signed and the deposit paid the actual process of building can start. This will include drawing up a site plan, conducting soil tests and writing engineering reports, and submitting the plans to council for development and building approval. We've been told 3-4 months from today we can expect the foundations to go down. Here's hoping it's only that long!

We've decided to go with hard floor coverings (tiles or floorboards) in the living areas of the home and carpets only in the bedrooms. This will wear better if we decide to rent the property.

We got a quote back today for this:

$1600 for carpets
$4400 for tiling/floorboards

Total Cost: $6000

When we get closer to the house being actually built we'll decide on the actual floor covering we want.

One of the retaining wall contractors rang me just a short time (kudos to him) after receiving the request for quote. He was strongly emphasizing the need to have the retaining walls installed before the house was built or costs will be considerably higher. This goes completely against what I was told by our builder here. The retaining wall contractor said 'under the act' that we were to be given reasonable time to install retaining walls between levelling the land and preparing the land for laying the foundations.

I need to call our builder immediately and get this sorted out.

So I jumped on the phone and called the builder about having the retaining walls installed before the house is built. They put me through to someone who was a 'project manager'. He basically listened to my spiel, agreed with me, and then said it was up to me to negotiate this with my 'site supervisor' when we were assigned one. Blah.

I haven't posted for a while, simply because nothing has happened. It's been 9 weeks since we signed the building contract and today we received the engineers soil report and footings design.

The quality of the documentation and exactly what we were to do with it left a lot to be desired. I'm a professional engineer and I've got to say the drawings and report were thoroughly confusing to me, I'd hate to think how someone with no technical background would interpret them. The financial impact is an additional $1000 for footings (we had allowed $10,000) and another $500 for a site survey because there are no marker pegs on the site.

On the variations schedule there were 9 points and I had to ring up and get clarification on each one. The two that concern me the most are the level the council has chosen for the house. It means that retaining walls are now required around the whole block. Bummer. The other thing that bothers me is a cryptic mention of 'rock encountered' in one of the 5 bores taken on the site during the soil test. The contract variation just says 'owner to take note that rock encountered during soil test'. On asking this means that we *could* end up being charged more for the site to be cleared.

Our responsibilities duing the whole process are quite vague as are the order in which things are to be done. If I hadn't phoned the builder I would have had no idea that it is our responsibility to remove all soil from the site after they have levelled it out. I also am very unclear as to when we can have the retaining walls installed. To me it makes sense to have them done after the block is levelled and before the foundation is layed to allow access to front end loaders and so on. However, the person I spoke to on the phone at the builder suggested we don't put down the retaining walls until after the house is built.

This doesn't sound right to me.

We got a couple of retaining wall quotes back today and one for the paving/stormwater.

Firstly, the good news, the paving/stormwater will be around $10,200. I was expecting $10,000 for the paving alone. So this is a good thing.

Now for the bad news. I spent 30 minutes on the phone to one of the retaining wall contractors and he detailed out the problems with retaining walls in the area we are building. Most of these problems seemed to involve rock and the trouble with shifting it. If they do hit rock when putting in the walls the cost of a drilling rig to get through it is $190/hr. Ouch. Anyway the two quotes we received were:

$17,500 + allow up to $10,000 for rock drilling
$27,800 (with no allowance for rock drilling so I guess these guys are expecting it).

These quotes are $10,000 more than I was expecting when we started this whole process. Unfortunately there's absolutely nothing to be done about it as the level of the house (and thus the height and nature of the retaining walls) is determined by the local council. Of course Murphy's law prevailed and they picked the worst height for the site they could have. Oh well.

Activision Value Publishing, a division of Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI), announced today that it has teamed with game developer WXP and paintball legend Greg Hastings to create the first-ever paintball game for a major video game console - Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball for the Xbox video game system from Microsoft.

WDP releases their new marker, the G7. The G7 has retained the Angels' classically beautiful form, albeit in a tighter, more athletic package, but that is where most of the similarities end...

Kingman unveils their new marker which should hit stores in mid-May. The Spyder Electra has a new grip frame that features a middle pivoted trigger frame to obtain higher BPS rates. We have heard that thing can rip.It also has Delrin ACS Bolt to minimize ball breakage...

On May 17, 2005 Activision, WXP, and Greg Hastings announced that Greg Hasting's Tournament Paintball MAX'D will be available for current consoles and handheld platforms this fall. Game developer WXP will provide a sneak preview of some new gameplay features, including the Breakout feature set at the 2005 E3 Expo.

WDP just released their press release on their new marker, the Angel Speed 06. This new marker looks like great new marker with some nice new features and claiming 30+bps. With a a price tag of $899, this marker will definantly be a competitor in the high end paintball market.

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AkzoNobel (AKZA; AKZOY) announced that Marya Salim has joined the company as Regional Marketing Director for its North America Automotive & Specialty Coatings (ASC) business unit, reporting to John Griffin, North America Regional Director, and Commercial Director of ASC. In her new role, Marya is responsible for all marketing activities for AkzoNobel’s Vehicle Refinish, Commercial […]

The post Marya Salim Named Head of Marketing for AkzoNobel Automotive & Specialty Coatings North America appeared first on CollisionWeek.

Axalta (NYSE: AXTA) has announced its global headquarters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, marked by a ceremonial ribbon-cutting and an employee appreciation event. This strategic relocation from Delaware County to the Navy Yard integrates the headquarters with Axalta’s Global Innovation Center, unifying operations under the ONE Axalta initiative to enhance collaboration and streamline decision-making. “We […]

The post Axalta Celebrates Opening of Global Headquarters in the Philadelphia Navy Yard appeared first on CollisionWeek.

ASA Board Chairman Scott Benavidez and Incoming Chair Dan Stander provided insight on the causes behind the rising costs of collision repairs in a November 7 article in the Wall Street Journal. Benavidez, owner of Mr. B’s Paint and Body Shop in Albuquerque, N.M. and Stander, owner of FIX Auto Highlands Ranch in Littleton, Colo., […]

The post Wall Street Journal Article on Rising Cost of Collision Repair Features ASA Leaders  appeared first on CollisionWeek.

The markets in the towns and villages of Languedoc are one of the great pleasures of our region.
From bric a brac and old car wheels through to fresh fish and heavenly cheeses.

Time in the languedoc is fluid and one needs to get accustomed to it to enjoy a languedoc life in the Midi.

If you are buying or selling you will probably want to find a real estate agent.
Here's a directory of languedoc real estate agents by town or region.

The French view of their education system as one of the best in the world is hardly reflected by their leading establishments' low rankings in the world.
In the top 100 world universities or further education establishments, France manages just two entries at 26th and 28th, the ENS and the Ecole Polytechnique.
The ENS and the Ecole Polytechnique have a combined annual intake of 694 students. They are 'Grand Ecoles' with all the snoberry and elitism that one associates with the finishing (...)

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries has made a fortune telling boys what to wear, and making his brand of sexy masculinity the standard in the United States. Over the years he has slowly taken on the qualities he is trying to instill in American youth, with frightening results. And what does he have to say about it? "Dude, I'm not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders." Check out Salon's [PARTIAL POST: VISIT THE SITE TO READ THE REST AND SEE PICTURES]

Posted by Frank On 02/01/06 At 12:17 PM

I later found out the fate of the poor sandwich from yesterday's entry. At least he left this world gazing upon beauty [PARTIAL POST: VISIT THE SITE TO READ THE REST AND SEE PICTURES]

Posted by Frank On 02/03/06 At 12:16 PM

James McMackin is the roommate of a friend of mine. He once helped my friend Kristen and I get the #1 score in Erotic Photohunt at the Albatross Bar in Astoria, NY. James and I were also both standing around in Union Sq. on Election Day 2004 trying to get on a bus to go petition for John Kerry in Pennsylvania. He went missing this past Monday night in New York City. Please if you [PARTIAL POST: VISIT THE SITE TO READ THE REST AND SEE PICTURES]

Posted by Frank On 03/01/06 At 04:57 PM

Michael Prosser, a prominent figure in the study of intercultural communication, and distinguished professor of Shanghai International Studies University explains in this article that a major obstacle for Americans to learn about the real China, and the causes of the misunderstandings about China, is the lack of personal experience of the country.

Dr. Hyman Minsky's explanation of boom and boost in a capitalist economy is based on structure (or rather change of) of financial relationships. It is highly relevant today as it describes what is happening with the housing sector. The practice...

I stumbled onto Haskell around 2 months back while searching for resources on spreadsheet programming. I wanted to do Buy vs Rent calculations before deciding to buy a house. Microsoft Excel is pretty good. However, after a while it simply...

The Giamonster captioned this video “POV: u can’t sit right cuz your boyfriend taught u a lesson.” Looks like it will have been a memorable one! See Also:A Harsh Switching And Anal SexRiding Crop Spanked During Anal SexAnal After SpankingJoey's Anal PunishmentRosebud And Red Welts

The legendary fetish queen Bettie Page just won this catfight, and now she’s rubbing in her victory with a solid hand spanking: See Also:"Paddle Royal" Silly Catfight SpankingCatfighting And Spanking For The CustomersFine Art: Goya's Spanking CatfightLose Your Catfight, Get SpankedA Spanking Good Catfight

Riley from AAA Spanking is getting double punishment in this screenshot. She’s getting her hands spanked with a heavy leather strap while she’s holding a sudsy bar of soap in her mouth: Presumably she gets a lot more with the leather if she drops the soap. See Also:Mouthsoaped And CryingHer Mouthsoaping Punishment BeginsA Rich Girl […]

How do you know you’ve got a good wife? When she’s pointing out things at Home Depot that you should buy for your pleasure: Elsewhere on Bondage Blog: A Good Girl Waits On Her Knees Makeshift Tongue Clamp A Good Wife's Bondage Facial Old Fashioned Submissive Salad Tossing Why Pervs Like Hardware Stores Staples And […]

In this 2005 shoot from Wired Pussy via Kink.com, Dana DeArmond is thoroughly ball-gagged and drooling down her chin: Elsewhere on Bondage Blog: Gagged And Drooling On His Cock Bondage Mouthsoaping Treasure Trove Mystery Hogtied Beauty Serena Ali, Bondage Beauty Bridle-Gagged Red-Head Jennings Mouth Gag And A Bit Of Drooling

Brand can be a really fuzzy concept. Plenty of small business owners think that brand = their logo. They’re not necessarily wrong, since a logo is part of an overall brand. But what many don’t know is that their overall brand is a whole lot more. What I hope to break down in this article is explain a little bit more about what is included in an overall brand as well as how to get [...]

The post What Do You Do and Who Do You Do It For – Uncovering the Keys to Your Brand appeared first on Create + Design + Market.

There's a clear difference between simply maintaining a social media presence and actually using the platform to engage with fans and followers. Social media really is all about engagement. This post takes a closer look at that and offers some tips and information on how to go about getting more interaction going on your Facebook or Twitter.

The post Social Media is All About Engagement appeared first on Create + Design + Market.

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