Sunday, April 15, 2018

California weather at it's finest.
My admiration for cool bikes.

Noises Are Extremely Distracting

my horrible attempt at a "selfie"
CLICK. CLICK. TAP. TAP. PAPER SHIFT. RATTLE.RATTLE. MECHANICAL BUZZING. I don't know what to write for this practice blog. Don really put us on the spot here. I hear everyone typing and clicking and I have no idea what to say.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Facebook and is currently its chairman and chief executive officer. His net worth is estimated to be US$62.2 billion as of March 25, 2018.

Audrey's smile
Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard University dormitory room on February 4, 2004 with college roommates and fellow Harvard students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The group then introduced Facebook to other college campuses. Facebook expanded rapidly, reaching one billion users by 2012. During this time, Zuckerberg became involved in various legal disputes brought by his friends and cofounders, who claimed they were due a share of the company based upon their involvement during its development phase.

Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year award. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.
random info about zucc

El Salvador

Our amazing weather!
El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador (Spanish: República de El Salvador, literally "Republic of The Savior"), is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. El Salvador's capital and largest city is San Salvador. As of 2016, the country had a population of approximately 6.34 million, consisting largely of Mestizos of European and Indigenous American descent.

El Salvador was for centuries inhabited by several Mesoamerican nations, especially the Cuzcatlecs, as well as the Lenca and Maya. In the early 16th century, the Spanish Empire conquered the territory, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of New Spain ruled from Mexico City. However, the Viceroyalty of Mexico had little or no influence in the daily affairs of the Central American isthmus, which would be colonized in 1524. In 1609 the area became the Captaincy General of Guatemala, from which El Salvador was part of until its independence from Spain, which took place in 1821, as part of the First Mexican Empire, then further seceded, as part of the Federal Republic of Central America, in 1823. When the Republic dissolved in 1841, El Salvador became a sovereign nation, then formed a short-lived union with Honduras and Nicaragua called the Greater Republic of Central America, which lasted from 1895 to 1898.
Ana and I staring at my dead camera
From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, El Salvador endured chronic political and economic instability characterized by coups, revolts, and a succession of authoritarian rulers. Persistent socioeconomic inequality and civil unrest culminated in the devastating Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992), which was fought between the military-led government and a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups. The conflict ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords. This negotiated settlement established a multiparty constitutional republic, which remains in place to this day.

Our tutorial's location
El Salvador's economy has historically been dominated by agriculture, beginning with the indigo plant (añil in Spanish), the most important crop during the colonial period, and followed thereafter by coffee, which by the early 20th century accounted for 90 percent of export earnings. El Salvador has since reduced its dependence on coffee and embarked on diversifying the economy by opening up trade and financial links and expanding the manufacturing sector. The colón, the official currency of El Salvador since 1892, was replaced by the U.S. dollar in 2001.


As of 2010, El Salvador ranks 12th among Latin American countries in terms of the Human Development Index and fourth in Central America (behind Panama, Costa Rica, and Belize) due in part to ongoing rapid industrialization. However, the country continues to struggle with high rates of poverty, inequality, and crime.

Dogs and Revolution

Flag of the French Revolution
If there is one thing I can tell [clients] to do to improve the lives of their pets, it is not to allow them to get fat,” Farcas said. “There are a lot of different perceptions about what ‘ideal’ is for certain breeds, but often times, those perceptions are wrong.

To create a standard for ideal body condition, veterinary nutritionists developed a body condition tool. This scale is used to determine if your pet is at an ideal body condition. It goes from one to nine, one being too thin and nine being too heavy. For dogs, four to five is considered ideal, and for cats, it’s five. It’s important that owners evaluate their pets’ body condition regularly.

Dr. Farcas also points out the benefits that can come with maintaining an ideal body condition, like extending your dog’s healthy years. According to a canine lifespan study that was conducted over 14 years, feeding dogs to maintain an ideal body condition throughout their lives can help extend their healthy years by an average of 1.8 years. 

The French Revolution was a ten year long, extremely bloody, social and political uprising, that despite failing to create lasting stability or representative democracy, left a lasting mark on not only France by the world. However, before the revolution could begin, a series of costly wars combined with misguided actions on the part of French kings, the effect of the crowns attempt to stabilize the nation by imposing taxes on the rich, and finally the long-standing poverty and squalor that the poor inhabited, all made up the nature of the fiscal crisis that triggered the French revolution.

Bikes

The Ivy League Connection

Now in its ninth year, The Ivy League Connection is a privately financed scholarship program designed to promote the college-going culture in the high schools of the West Contra Costa Unified School District in the San Francisco Bay Area. Founded by School Board members Madeline Kronenberg and Charles Ramsey and administered by Charles, Madeline, and Don Gosney, the ILC is a 100% voluntary effort by everyone involved. Even the school administrators volunteer their time and efforts.

Nationally and State recognized for their innovative approaches, the ILC works hand in hand with the District to provide scholarships to summer programs at highly selective Ivy League schools. For 2013 there are 11 programs at six schools available to the District’s students. For more information, see: '14 ILC Course Offerings URLs
Kayla!

The program is available to all qualified sophomores and juniors meeting the basic qualification standards of a weighted GPA (from the 9th grade) of 3.75. Applicants must submit a generic Pre-Essay explaining why they want to be a part of the ILC and then a lengthier program-specific essay. A selection committee will review the transcripts, test scores, and essays and develop a ranked list of applicants to be interviewed by a panel of professionals that may include doctors, lawyers, architects, scientists, elected officials, city managers, teachers and more. The panelists are given wide latitude with their selections with the proviso that the ILC will only send qualified students to these programs.

Origami Crane

More and more of our students are being made aware that the chances for a better life are much greater with a high school diploma than it is without one. The same is true for people with a college education. We want our students to understand this and to embrace the opportunity for a better life.

How to Preserve a Pumpkin

Pumpkin carving and decorating is a favorite pastime during this time of year. After you've carved an amazing design or face into a pumpkin or two, you want to show it off through your window or set it out on your porch for the neighbors to see. Without knowing the tricks to save your holiday pumpkins, they can turn slimy, moldy, and mushy in as little as three days. 

This is your jack-o'-lantern ... right before it starts to grow mold. Image by Robert Xyster/WonderHowTo 

Don't let that happen — let everyone see your original masterpiece, not a mushy, sunken, sad version. Learn these tricks now and have the best looking jack-o'-lanterns in your 'hood for Halloween and beyond! Just keep in mind that if you live in an area with high humidity and/or lots of rain, your carved pumpkins won't last as long as those in dryer environments.

These jack-o'-lanterns definitely deserve to be preserved! Image by Shawn Campbell/Flickr 

Method 1: Soak It in a Bleach Solution (The Winner!)


This is an easy and effective way to keep your carved pumpkins from molding for up to seven days. The sodium hypochlorite kills microorganisms that make pumpkins rot and dries out the pumpkin. The steps for making the solution are super simple:
  1. After your pumpkin has been carved, rinse it out with water to get rid of excess strings and gunk.
  2. Take a large bucket or tub and fill it with three gallons of water.
  3. Stir three teaspoons of bleach into the water.
  4. Dunk in the pumpkin. Be sure to hold it down as it will try to float. The entire pumpkin should sit in the solution for two minutes. You might want to wear gloves, too.
  5. Remove from the solution and let the pumpkin air dry.
Image by Wikivisual/WikiHow
More information can be found at Clorox's website. It's also interesting to note that over at My Science Project, a bleach-treated jack-o'-lantern lasted for up to ten days with only minimal decay. Some people also spray their carved pumpkins with a bleach solution daily. This will also work, but

your pumpkin will decay quicker this way. It won't rot as fast as an untreated pumpkin, but it won't last as long as one soaked in the bleach solution.
While it may seem odd with so much airflow in a carved pumpkin, an opened packet of silica gel can really keep the rot away from your jack-o'-lantern. Mental Floss did a comparison of a few of the tricks off this list, and found that the bleach solution above and an opened silica packet were the best at prolonging the life of a carved pumpkin.
Since silica packets are a desiccant, it's no surprise they work well. They absorb moisture and keep things fairly dry if it's humid out, and a non-moist carved pumpkin means less mold growth and less drooping.

Big Brother

What Facebook retained about me isn’t remotely as creepy as the sheer number of advertisers that have my information in their databases. I found this out when I clicked on the Ads section in my Facebook file, which loaded a history of the dozen ads I had clicked on while browsing the social network.

Lower down, there was a section titled “Advertisers with your contact info,” followed by a list of roughly 500 brands, the overwhelming majority of which I had never interacted with. Some brands sounded obscure and sketchy — one was called “Microphone Check,” which turned out to be a radio show. Other brands were more familiar, like Victoria’s Secret Pink, Good Eggs or AARP.

Facebook said unfamiliar advertisers might appear on the list because they might have obtained my contact information from elsewhere, compiled it into a list of people they wanted to target and uploaded that list into Facebook. Brands can upload their customer lists into a tool called Custom Audiences, which helps them find those same people’s Facebook profiles to serve them ads.

Brands can obtain your information in many different ways. Those include:


Tag Team
• Buying information from a data provider like Acxiom, which has amassed one of the world’s largest commercial databases on consumers. Last month, Facebook announced that it was limiting its practice of allowing advertisers to target ads using information from third-party data brokers like Acxiom.

• Using tracking technologies like web cookies and invisible pixels that load in your web browser to collect information about your browsing activities. 


Whats up?• Someone you shared information with could share it with another entity. Your credit card loyalty program, for example, could share your information with a hotel chain, and that hotel chain could serve you ads on Facebook.

What Is Liechtenstein?

Liechtenstein, officially the Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked German-speaking microstate in Central Europe. The principality is a constitutional monarchy headed by the Prince of Liechtenstein.
Not the Liechtensteinian flag

Liechtenstein is bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and Austria to the east and north. It has an area of just over 160 square kilometers (62 square miles), the fourth smallest in Europe, and an estimated population of 37,000. Divided into 11 municipalities, its capital is Vaduz and its largest municipality is Schaan.

Economically, Liechtenstein has one of the highest gross domestic products per person in the world when adjusted for purchasing power parity, and the highest when not adjusted by purchasing power parity. The unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the world at 1.5%. Liechtenstein has been known in the past as a billionaire tax haven; however, it is no longer on any blacklists of uncooperative tax haven countries.

A license plate not from Liechtenstein
Despite its limited natural resources, Liechtenstein is one of the few countries in the world with more registered companies than citizens; it has developed a prosperous, highly industrialized free-enterprise economy and boasts a financial service sector as well as a living standard that compares favourably with those of the urban areas of Liechtenstein's much larger European neighbours.

On the country's national holiday all subjects are invited to the castle of the head of state. A significant portion of the population attends the national celebration at the castle where speeches are made and complimentary beer is served.