Tag Archives: cable tv

a repost Jul 2012 ~~ 9/2013

Posted by ADetailedHouse

in Architecture, Baths, Design, DIY, Flooring, Home Improvement, Interior Design, Kitchens, Lifestyle

The picture above are of a massive concrete floor. I could see some car enthusiast doing this to a garage floor. This floor has no thinset, merely polyurethane and epoxy (via Happy Roost Blog)

A Detailed House, Floors made out of coins, Floors made out of pennies, How to make a nickel floor, How to make a penny floor, Nickel floor, Penny floor, Portland Press Herald, Standard Grill

With two little ones running around the house, I am always picking things up off the floor. I am amazed, though, by the sheer number of coins! Granted, we play “store” a lot, which involves a cash register, spare change, and my youngest setting up “shop” where ever I am… no matter what I’m doing, working or not! They have piggy banks that they love to fill, so why are the coins spread cavalierly on the floor?

I tell myself it’s good for me – like exercise – and picking them up is the equivalent of toe touches, but not even an Army Drill Sargent would put someone through this Now my thought process is that I’m just going to start cementing them down, so I will eventually end up with these floors:

Instead of hunching over a floor, you could also glue them to mesh, like tile sheets

Pennies are about $1.96/square foot. Not too shabby for a unique copper floor!

(via apartmenttherapy.com)

Nickels are about $10/square foot. Here’s what you do to You need to make sure your floor is clean. Use a wax remover if applying over linoleum, which can be done.If you want shiny pennies, you can soak them in vinegar. Make sure the coins have the patina you want even if it means going to the bank and getting rolls and rolls of pennies to search for clean coins.If you want a design, lay it out first on the floor so you know how it will fit together.Glue the coins directly to the floor, preferably in the same direction and pay attention to heads or tails (if it matters to you). Weldbond, a tile or glass glue, was used for many of the penny floors, but some used Elmer’s Glue, which seems a little on the flimsy side, and Gorilla Glue.You now have two options:You can apply thinset (a chocolate brown was used on the pennies) OR You can apply a thick coat of a high gloss polyurethaneFor the final top coat, apply another coat of polyurethane and/or an epoxy sealer (pictured below) to seal and make cleaning the floor easier.

For the world traveler, you could make a floor that incorporates coins from all the countries that you’ve visited as a sweet reminder.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

A License To Kill

07/30/2015 Nativegrl77

By CAP Action War Room

As Florida Governor, Jeb Bush Pioneered The Nation’s First “Stand Your Ground” Law

This Friday, Jeb Bush is scheduled to address the National Urban League, one of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organizations. He is going to be on the hot seat – and deservedly so. As Governor of Florida, Jeb worked hand in hand with the NRA to pioneer the nation’s first Stand Your Ground law, brought to national attention when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. The results, detailed in a new CAP Action report, have been devastating. Here are a few of the findings outlined in the report:

1. Since the passage of the law, Florida’s gun homicide rate jumped above the national average – and has stayed there. In the 6 years prior to the law‘s passage, the rate of gun homicides in Florida was 3.7 per 100,000 residents, below the national average rate of 4 murders per 100,000 residents. After Stand Your Ground was passed in the state, the average gun homicide rate jumped to more than 4.5 murders per 100,000 residents in Florida while going down nationwide. In the two years following the enactment of the Stand Your Ground law, the number of gun-related homicides in Florida increased by more than 200 cases.

2. Florida’s Stand Your Ground law appears to have a disparate impact on black communities. A study by the Tampa Bay Times of nearly 200 Stand Your Ground cases in Florida found that defendants seeking to avoid criminal liability for a homicide by mounting a Stand Your Ground defense were significantly more likely to be successful if they killed a black victim than a white victim. In fact, from 2005 to 2012, defendants who raised a Stand Your Ground defense in Florida were 24 percent more likely to avoid criminal liability for a homicide if they killed a black victim.

3. The impacts of Stand Your Ground have translated to an additional 600 homicides per year across the country. Within one year of Gov. Bush’s signing, 21 other states had introduced the legislation and 13 had enacted expanded self-defense laws. A 2012 study by researchers at Texas A&M University found that Stand Your Ground laws led to more homicides: States that enacted such laws saw an 8 percent increase in homicides, which translated to an additional 600 homicides per year across all states with these laws. National Urban League’s own 2013 study found that in states that enacted Stand Your Ground laws between 2005 and 2007, the rate of justifiable homicides increased by 53 percent.

A new op-ed drawn from CAP Action’s report and written by Ben Jealous, former president and CEO of the NAACP, highlights how Florida’s Stand Your Ground law poses an even larger threat in Florida because the states gun laws are so weak. In fact Florida’s gun laws remain so lax that George Zimmerman, who in addition to shooting and killing Trayvon Martin, was arrested for assaulting a police officer, the subject of a domestic violence restraining order, arrested 3 times for domestic violence, and threatened to kill a man during a road rage incident, is still permitted carry a gun in Florida.

BOTTOM LINE: America has Jeb Bush to thank for Stand Your Ground. And as research continues to suggest, America has this NRA-backed law to thank for hundreds more gun homicides every year and a disproportionate impact on communities of color.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

what a successful Presidency looks like

07/27/2015 Nativegrl77 2 Comments

The following sponsored message was sent to you by AlterNet on behalf of DCCC:

To be sure the numbers have shot upward

This is what a successful Presidency looks like:

President Obama Took Office (January 2009)		Today
7,949	The Dow Jones Index	17,573
7.8%	Unemployment	5.8%
-5.4%	GDP Growth	3.5%
9.8%	Deficit GDP %	2.8%
37.7	Consumer Confidence	94.5

In 6 years under President Barack Obama, we’ve made incredible progress as a country.

Often in the face of incredible obstruction, the President has continued to fight for us and lead us forward.

Will you add your name now and say that you’re still standing with President Obama in his final two years in office?

Sign your name to say you’re standing with President Obama:
http:// action.dccc.org/i-stand-with-obama

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Pursuing transformative technology with the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities ~ a repost

07/26/2015 Nativegrl77

When Laura Palmaro was 10 years old, she woke one morning to find that the central vision in her left eye had all but disappeared. She was not ill and had no genetic issues—it was completely out of the blue. When she was 14, the same rare condition struck her right eye, and she began her freshman year of high school legally blind. Suddenly she was forced to depend on other people to read everything aloud, from school assignments to menus. The toughest part, according to Laura, was losing her sense of independence—and not knowing when or how she would get it back.

Laura has since adopted technological solutions to her vision challenges, using a combination of screen-readers and magnification software to read, work and more. Now a program manager at Google, she is following her passion, helping Chrome and Chrome OS teams make their products more accessible. “Technology has truly transformed my life,” she says. “Assistive technology can tear down boundaries, and empower people to find their independence and fulfill their dreams.”

We agree with Laura about the power of technology to change lives. And in order to support more people like her—people who see obstacles as opportunities—we’re launching the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities. We’re putting $20 million in Google.org grants behind nonprofits using emerging technologies to increase independence for people living with disabilities, and today we’re issuing an open call to identify new areas of opportunity at g.co/ImpactChallengeDisability.

We’re kicking things off with support for two remarkable organizations. Each of these organizations is using technology to dramatically reduce the cost of and access to prosthetic limbs and auditory therapy, respectively—which could be transformative for hundreds of millions of people.

The Enable community connects people who want prosthetics with volunteers who use 3D printers to design, print, assemble, and fit them, for free. This dramatically cuts costs, increases speed of distribution, and meets unmet needs. We’ll support the Enable Community Foundation’s efforts with a $600,000 grant to advance the design, distribution and delivery of open-source 3D-printed upper-limb prosthetics.
Diagnosing auditory challenges can be a struggle in low income communities—the equipment is expensive, bulky and unrealistic, particularly in the developing world. With our support, and a $500,000 grant, World Wide Hearing will develop, prototype and test an extremely low cost tool kit for hearing loss using smartphone technology that’s widely available—and affordable—in the developing world.

The Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities will seek out nonprofits and help them find new solutions to some serious “what ifs” for the disabled community. We will choose the best of these ideas and help them to scale by investing in their vision, by rallying our people and by mobilizing our resources in support of their missions.

But of course, we realize there’s always room to improve our products as well. We have a team committed to monitoring the accessibility of Google tools; and we provide engineering teams with training to incorporate accessibility principles into products and services. That doesn’t just mean improving existing Google tools, it means developing new ones as well. For example, Liftware is a stabilizing utensil designed to help people with hand tremors eat more easily, and self-driving cars could one day transform mobility for everyone.

Historically, people living with disabilities have relied on technologies that were often bulky, expensive, and limited to assisting with one or two specific tasks. But that’s beginning to change. Thanks to groups like Enable and World Wide Hearing, and with tools like Liftware, we’re starting to see the potential for technologies that can profoundly and affordably impact millions. But we’ll all get there sooner if we make it a team effort—which is why we’re launching Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities today. Together, we can create a better world, faster.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director, Google.org

~ my 2cents ...

Outsourcing … the new American way? or retaliation and betrayal

07/26/2015 Nativegrl77

just another rant …

Outsourcing, you know; when the company’s bottom line is to get products made in large quantities but on the cheap? Therefore, they send thousands of jobs overseas where cost per employee is so low you cannot refuse in spite of the millions of unemployed Americans.

I have to say when there is a choice between getting cheap material, retaliating against President Obama, cheap labour or that word so many folks on TV involved in the market say “uncertainty”. We all have to compare and contrast what they want opposed to participating in helping America be number one again and the handwriting is clear … Profit before People and Country is the choice of those sitting on the sidelines of “uncertainty” have decided to take.

Unless you are living under a rock, you know or have heard that big Corporations are still sitting on trillions of dollars hate regulation, the rules, fair trade now seem to be fighting the government and the need to help their fellow Americans. The various companies who feel they have no choice as the “uncertainty” of it puts them at risk are leaving Americans jobless. Yes, they have every right to do so but in a time when your fellow American is jobless, your country is still in a recession what could be better for all parts of our financial system to come together and agree to fix the various strands causing our economy to deteriorate instead of participating in retaliation. It’s my contention that those sitting on all that money might be waiting for the 2012 elections and contrary to what Harold Ford suggested – soften regulations and stop criticizing , we have to make sure that the new regulations stay in place otherwise we will always have the uncertainty of systematic financial collapse. It is time for Wall Street, banksters and big Corporations to take part in the healing of America and stop playing the waiting game because given our choices Americans with any common sense will not dare vote for anyone else but Barak Obama in 2012.

In May of 2009 there was a rumor that GM was planning to outsource more American jobs to Russia instead of being a part of our financial solution by providing Americans with jobs, Bill Gates has outsourced to other companies as well as other well-known celebrities and who have started companies overseas in order to get materials on the cheap. Fortunately, President Obama did not allow GM and most of the auto industry to collapse though many politicians even Detroit politicians and current candidates for President felt they should meet their makers and go into bankruptcy which makes you wonder how American is that and what does that tell about their Presidential attributes. I could not vote for a person who would turn their back on a company so apart of what being an American is all about and in the end President Obama saved over millions jobs. While Teapublicans and some conservadems in Congress filibuster common sense efforts to get America back on track, meaning JOBs bills that will help everyone not just adding government jobs or an infrastructure Bank is something that will be available for the Private Sector and Public Service. This is good for everyone but Teapublicans on both the State and Federal level have one thing on their agenda and that is pulling down our beloved America to the edge of disaster in order to take down President Obama … ask yourself how American is that? Teapublicans seem to be out of touch and clearly have a narrow view of how they would govern. Teapublicans are clearly unqualified to govern and if you need evidence do some research on how well Speaker Boehner, Cantor McConnell are really doing and it ain’t for We the People.

Outrage cannot begin to describe how this should make Americans feel and is this what Americans have to look forward to from other so-called American companies more Wall Street and Bank retaliation disguised as an “uncertainty” in tax laws and other policies that will limit their ability to “beat” the system.(my take). We all know these companies were bailed out by Americans who then turned on us by deciding to sit on or use the money to go on trips, hold seminars and give huge bonus’ to their employees without real merit involved. We all know that the money we Americans gave the Banks should have been reinvested in America by providing small or huge business loans. So, what happened and what is wrong with playing by the rules, regulations, policies that are transparent, provide full disclosure, and might deter folks from betting against Americans to get theirs. If you listen to the rumors, Eric Cantor seems to feel betting against fellow Americans might be lucrative and unfortunately, this seems atypical of the Teapublican Party.

The practice of sitting on money, in our case trillions of dollars or offshoring jobs is unacceptable and if outsourcing continues unemployment will remain a problem.