'News'-page-'googling' - 'Underachiever' ..{about a 'gal' no less}.
https://www.noozhawk.com/article/allison_moehlis_triathlon_training_a_humbling_experience_20160730
A Select Few of Us Earthlings ...
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Jul 31, 2016
0
#183
Discovered, under - 'Good Samaritan' -'News' page.
http://abc7news.com/news/man-saves-woman-from-attempted-kidnapping-in-san-leandro/1448328/
Aug 1, 2016
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#184
'A select few of us'.. Already intuitively Know, the "1st Step to 'Happiness' "!
http://motto.time.com/4418237/how-to-be-happier/
Aug 2, 2016
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#185
from, 'chicagotribune{dot}com'
'Civis' {Inc.}, tries to help companies be more data driven in their decision-making. This is the magic of data science. You can take a person, and you can have thousands of attributes, pieces of information about that person, and throw that against a modeling algorithm, and get back which of those attributes matter and which of them don’t for whatever outcome you’re trying to measure.
I didn’t personally work on the campaign, but during Obama 2012, our CEO, Dan Wagner, was chief data scientist of the Obama campaign. There’s a lot of technology that gets built during a campaign that sort of disappears when the campaign disappears. Eric Schmidt of Google, who was heavily involved with the campaign, was trying to change that. So he funded Civis Analytics to keep those brains together and see if they could take that data science and data analytics experience and bring it to other domains and other companies.
I manage a small team of, right now, two other engineers that work on the back-end infrastructure of our platform. When you want to solve a problem with the Civis platform, you want to build a model around data and make some predictions. We write the code that does the computation.
I’ve been into computers since I was like 5. We had a personal computer at home, an IBM, so I would play with it quite a bit. I used to write programs in it.
I went to school for computer engineering, and I actually didn’t really like it at all. I was an undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and I dropped out completely. My parents were very unhappy.
I got a job at Best Buy working at the service bench, which eventually became the Geek Squad. So then I started working there, and I moved from there into working with the local county government in Toledo, doing their information technology.
I think I was 28 when I decided I wanted to go back and get a degree. I went to Bowling Green State University and looked at what degree I could graduate the fastest with, and it was computer science. One of my professors asked me if I wanted to do a master’s, and they would fund me as long as I did an assistantship.
In the course of doing my master’s, I realized I actually really liked computer science. It’s easy to think of a programmer as someone who just sits in front of a computer and writes code all day. But the actual problems you’re thinking about and solving are very interesting. Sometime later, I went to Carnegie Mellon (University) in Pittsburgh for a PhD in computer science. My thesis was on modeling the strength of passwords.
While I was still completing my PhD, I applied to a small amount of places in Chicago that looked interesting, and one of them was Civis. When I started at Civis, I was finishing my PhD, and my wife and I moved to Lisle and had a baby. So it was sort of a lot.
One thing that’s really nice about working here is how much you can learn about other stuff just being here. There’s a journal club that I’m a part of. So every Friday we meet, and if anyone has read any interesting papers that week, they present them at journal club.
We also do lightning talks once a month. They’re five-minute talks about any topic you want. One person did a lightning talk about their childhood, like how they grew up. Someone did a lightning talk about how they built their house. There are a lot of food ones. Or beer.
We also have this thing called Wizard School once a week. It’s basically teaching programming fundamentals. It’s called Wizard School because the book they use has a picture of a wizard on it.
The perks are things like the Big Table. It seats about 20 to 25. A lot of people will go out and get a lunch and come back to the big table so they can be part of the conversation. It’s just a very laid-back environment.
When I started, I think there were 60 employees, and now we’re at 110. The culture is very open. It’s very collaborative. It kind of has to be because every part of the organization depends on another part of the organization to get work done.
Aug 3, 2016
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#186
Aug 3, 2016
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#187
Bristol is home to world champion in backgammon
| Posted: August 03, 2016
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Cecilia Sparke is the new world backgammon champion
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IT is one of the city's best kept secrets - but Bristol is home to a recently-crowned world champion.
Cecilia Sparke has been playing backgammon since she was taught the game by her father as a teenager.
And last week all the years of practice and playing paid off in stunning style, when the 44-year-old from Southville was crowned world champion at a tournament in Monte Carlo.
Cecilia works as a secretariat manager for the Research Council in Swindon but spends most of her spare time playing the board game, which originated in the Middle East.
She is a member of the Bristol Backgammon Club, which has around 100 members and regularly holds tournaments attracting hundreds of people.
Cecilia said: "I came from a family who played a lot of board games and I was taught to play backgammon by my father when I was a teenager.
"When I was at university in Edinburgh there was a local club and I played a lot then but I took it up seriously again when I moved to Bristol.
"Outside of London, Bristol has one of the most successful backgammon scenes in the country."
Cecilia has plenty of chance to hone her skills at home, as her boyfriend Chris Rogers is one of the top players in the country.
She said: "I guess I have always been interested in strategy games and I like playing card games, like bridge.
"The skill of backgammon is working out what your best strategy is based on the numbers you get. There are a number of different ways to play the game.
"You can be defensive or go on the attack. You also have to try and work out what your opponent is trying to do, so you can block them.
"I have always been into games that have involved strategy and numbers - I guess it is just the way my mind works."
Cecilia has taken part in a number of tournaments around the world but this is the first time she has come out as a champion.
She said: "I had to play in about four games but the best was when I beat the (previous) world champion, who is from Japan."
Read more: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/bristol-is-home-to-world-champion-in-backgammon/story-29576768-detail/story.html#ixzz4GKOgo700
Follow us: @BristolPost on Twitter | bristolpost on Facebook
Aug 4, 2016
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#188
Like, More-than-a-few-people - My Coping-with-Life-Mechanism, is to focus on things, Primarily, Not having- to-do-with-myself!
.. As a sort of, 'observer' 'At-Large'..{if sometimes, for my own benefit}, Since, that's one of the Main forms of 'consciousness'.. I'd think - Ie. As an, observer .. and, ideally - Not being, an overly opinionated one, at that! .. he-he ..
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The newest addition to Philadelphia’s skyline is the world’s 152nd Mormon Temple, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints gave the media a rare look inside.
Standing 19 stories high, and topped with a golden Angel, the Philadelphia temple is the first in Pennsylvania.
“A temple is a place of peace, inspiration, learning, and sacred ceremonies,” says Milan Kunz, an Elder in the LDS Church.
He and other elders of the church gathered in the new meeting-house on Vine Street and then invited reporters to come inside the 61,000 square foot temple next door.
“When you cross the threshold of a temple, you come into the household of god– that is unlike any experience you can have in this life,” says Larry Wilson, Elder, LDS Church.
The temple will serve more than 40,000 Mormons in the region, provide a place of peace, prayer, and a sacred place to perform the LDS Church’s most important sacraments.
Reporters had to ditch their cameras, but church leaders provided video footage and photographs of the interior of the temple. When you walk into the entry way, the first thing you notice– is the silence.
There is a waiting area, but only members of the LDS church are allowed to go inside the sacred walls that hold a baptismal fountain, instruction rooms, a sealing room, holding areas for wedding parties, and finally, the holiest space, known as the celestial room.
The temple’s Celestial Room.
(credit: LDS Church)
“You experience a feeling of sacredness, a feeling of peace,” says Wilson.
Church leaders say the temple is built to last and was made with the best materials. The church commissioned oil paintings, colonial style chandeliers, and used 18th century architecture throughout. The details are astounding, with elements of Philadelphia and American history on every floor.
“We sold fruits and vegetables and everything we had to go there,” says Vai Sikahema, a member of the LDS church who oversees 13 congregations in South Jersey.
Sikahema, who was born on the Island of Tonga in the South Pacific, says his family saved for years to trek to the temple nearest to his homeland at the time; it was in New Zealand.
“It took my parents six years to save– and they only had enough for one way passage,” he says, “it is my earliest memory.”
Sikahema says the journey to a Temple is supremely important for Mormons.
“The crowning blessing of membership in our faith is to enter a temple,” he says, “people sacrifice to go there.”
Now, the 40,000 LDS members in the region, including all of Pennsylvania, Southern and Central New Jersey, Delaware and Northern Maryland, can get to a Temple more often and bask in its splendor.
The Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple will be open to the public from August 10th to September 9th. So far, 150,000 are expected to take the tour, but church leaders say they can accommodate more. Once the temple is dedicated in September, only members of the church will be allowed inside.
“We invite everyone to come in and see this beautiful new structure and what goes on inside of it,” says Wilson.
To find out more about the LDS church or to register for a tour, go to philadelphiamormontemple.org
Aug 5, 2016
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#189
Aug 6, 2016
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#190
Aug 7, 2016
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#191
Aug 8, 2016
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#192
Aug 10, 2016
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#194
Call it an 'archaic'/outmoded thought, if you want.. But, aside from being, seriously disturbed..{see link}.. Me thinks, that 'nurse'..{the offending one}, Also, had/ has - Several indwelling 'demons'! o:
Aug 11, 2016
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#195
Brah
Why are you talking to yourself?
Aug 12, 2016
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#198
Re. 'Airing' the Church's 'dirty laundry'.. It would seem!
Aug 13, 2016
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#199
Aug 14, 2016
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#200
H-mm .. '30 minutes'.. to 1st 'quiet-ones-mind' ?! ..{it must relate, to our collective, 'fallen' 'Adamic' nature!}.
http://www.summitdaily.com/news/23395405-113/walking-our-faith-better-than-meditation-column
"Good-on-ya, mate"! ..{assuming, I have an 'Aussie' doppelganger.. and, imagining his reaction, to the following {news- bylined}, link.
http://www.thesportreview.com/tsr/2016/07/roger-federer-luthi-has-no-doubts-its-incredible-how-positive-and-inspired-he-is/