#local old lady has terrible skills in posting things online

[el-yon]

speaking is not communication - but sometimes it helps

or

“Inoue, are you ok?!” and “He’s so nice!”: the origin.  IchiHime Month 2022, day 5: He’s so Nice, and (late) Day 2: Inoue, are you ok? Read on Ao3.  This was originally a drabble that got cut off from the bigger project, but since IHMonth is on and the prompts were right there, I revisited it. It’s fluff, it’s silly, it has some lingering sadness to it, and very short, but I hope you enjoy -- because we’re all gonna need some fluff as TYBW rages on. 

Karakura Town Karakura High School, April 30th, 2001

Damn my old man, that freak…

Ichigo curses to himself as he enters the classroom later than he had planned due to Isshin’s insistent banter.

It had been a month since he started High School and, so far, things were going…

as well as they could be.

He was keeping up with schoolwork, their sensei was a bit whacked, but mostly alright, and there was this odd thing that happened when he entered the room, where he felt slightly better than how he would usually feel walking on the streets, or even on other corridors and grounds at that same building.

If Ichigo were to exaggerate, he would almost say that it felt good.

Somehow, the duo named Mizuiro and Keigo became a constant in his day-to-day activities, and even though the latter was definitely a hyper character, he was getting somewhat accustomed to their company. From what he gathered from their first interaction, it felt like a good thing.

Also, if he would admit to himself, it felt comforting to have Chad always close by, and he was glad to have Tatsuki around again – even though there was this lingering sensation of something being a bit off.

Ah, well... guess it can't be helped.

“Oh! Good-morning, Kurosaki-kun!”

And there was also that.

The first day she greeted him in such a cheerful manner on their entrance day, he thought she might have been over-excited about the beginning of the school year. Or she was being polite – Tatsuki did introduce the two of them just a couple of weeks before.

Maybe it was both.

But for some reason, he was greeted with the same “Good Morning” ever since, and while he was certainly thrown off by seeing someone who had been through what she had, and drew so much unwanted attention like she did bearing such a positive attitude, and he could not explain why she kept happily welcoming everyday… Ichigo appreciated it.

Sometimes he wondered if she had remembered him.

What was there to say, anyway.

... And he would never know how to approach her.

Gradually, the good morning greetings turned into brief conversations, usually with Tatsuki and the others about daily, mundane things.

He never really talked much, but he’d try to answer and participate every now and then. He did gather she liked some odd food combinations, different sorts of music, and she let her imagination run wild.

“… good morning, Inoue…”

He answered back, watching her hum happily to herself with flushed cheeks, and as soon as class started, jump into focus-mode and avidly write on her notebook.

It seemed she finished their assignment earlier, because when he glanced back at her, she was zoning out, gazing at the window.

That was another information he quickly learned about her.

Tatsuki would constantly snap at her for daydreaming, and he couldn’t help but agree with her – not with her methods, though. There have been too many days Orihime showed up for class with band-aids and bandages from bumps and small-accidents, which was bad in itself, but Ichigo felt this intense sense of concern thinking about her happy-go-luck, distracted-self walking around a world that was... unkind.

And to make matters worse, she was a nice, helpful person.

It was a good virtue – it just wasn’t a safe one.

Often, he’d notice her volunteering to help out after school hours, stock and clean things when she wasn’t supposed to, and never turning down a request.

That was probably why he caught her struggling with the cleaning-supply closet alone later that day, trying to reach a higher shelf by supporting herself on a chair.

Tsc, there she goes…

“… Inoue?... Do you need any help…?”

“Oh! Hi, Kurosaki-kun!” She greets, tilting her body back and turning to face him – and he instantly regretted calling out to her, because the second she turned, the teenager lost her balance.

Ichigo was fast, but the chair was faster, and Orihime fell alongside a bunch of cleaning supplies

– at the very least, he managed to prevent the mop from falling on top of her.

“Inoue, are you ok?!”

He asks, a bit panicked, instantly trying to help her get back on her feet – and just as quickly getting his hands back to himself the second she is standing.

“oh dear.... I made a mess…”

“… wha- forget about the mess… did you get hurt?!”

“Oh… hehe, no, no more than usual…” she waves him off, but as she brushes her bangs of her face, her eyes freeze

“… oh, no… oh…”

“What is it…?” He asks, concerned

“… my hairpin… I’m missing one….” She mumbles, checking the floor around them “I can’t lose it…!”

"... o-ok, don't worry, it's gotta be here somewhere...."

Ichigo notices the shape of the blue hairpin over her left ear, and helps her find the missing pair.

He can’t help but smile a bit as he notices the utter relief in her face when they find it.

A few minutes later, everything is safely stored again.

“… sorry that I startled you…” He blurts out - awkwardly - as they walk back, but she smiles

“No, no, you wanted to help… I was the one who lost my balance, hehe... I’m just happy my hairpin didn’t break… they’re very special to me…”

He wants to ask why, and in that particular moment, Ichigo resents the fact that his writing skills don’t make him good at expressing himself out loud.

Thankfully, she seems to read his eyes.

“… they were a gift from my brother, before… he passed away…"

She takes a breath

"... so… I wear them everyday”

Her brother.

“… I see…” His throat itches, and he wants to say more

I am so sorry for what happened, Inoue. I… I know how you feel.

“… I’m sorry about your brother”

Orihime softly thanks him, and he doesn’t know what to say next.

“… are you sure you’re ok? Are you not hurt?”

It comes out of him naturally, after a few seconds.

She lets out a small laugh, blushing a bit.

“Yes, Kurosaki-kun, thank you… but I’m more than fine, you don’t have to worry about me!”

He gruntles something, and soon they part ways as she heads towards Tatsuki’s Judo practice to meet the girl.

He watches as she walks away, and Ichigo is certain that not worrying about her was not an option.

Still worried, he did find himself feeling somewhat close to glad again.

... he managed to approach her.

___________________________________________________________

When she gets home, Orihime rushes to talk to Sora.

“… and I'm so sorry, Onii-chan, I know I should be more careful... but here, you see, they’re intact, shiny as always! And Kurosaki-kun helped me today… he had his scowling face again, but then he helped me and he was really nice!” She comments, grinning to herself, a weird tingling sensation rushing to her cheeks “… really nice…”

The feeling sticks to her as she bathes and cooks – she treats herself with extra-buttery potatoes, since the butter was on sale today (“Ya-ho! Lucky me!”) – up until when she tucks herself in and snuzzles under her covers.

Scenarios pile-up in her head about Ichigo as his concerned – yet gentle – voice echoes, again and again.

She had now picked up on the fact that he was probably the boy present on the worst day of her life, since Tatsuki told her his family ran the clinic, and she did remember – vaguely – that a boy had opened the door.

He probably didn’t remember her.

And there was not much be said, anyway.

Orihime turns around.

… he really was nice…

… so, so nice…

She hugs her pillow closer as the thought wraps her up in comfort, and she drifts into her sleep and enters her realm of dreams, where all imagination ran freely.

[bountyofbeads]

Gunman posted online minutes before killing 3 at festival

https://apnews.com/35e45f6d09e347c4a1c51c52cf77725c

Gunman posted online minutes before killing 3 at festival (Yet again, another racist destroys a family event and ruins lives.) #EnoughIsEnough

By KATHLEEN RONAYNE and JULIE WATSON | Published July 30, 2019 | AP | Posted July 30, 2019 9:35 AM ET|

GILROY, Calif. (AP) — Before a 19-year-old gunman opened fire on a famed garlic festival in his California hometown, he urged his Instagram followers to read a 19th century book popular with white supremacists on extremist websites, but his motives for killing two children and another young man were still a mystery Monday.

Santino William Legan posted the caption about the book "Might is Right," which claims race determines behavior. It appeared with a photo of Smokey the Bear in front of a "fire danger" sign and also complained about overcrowding towns and paving open space to make room for "hordes" of Latinos and Silicon Valley whites.

In his last Instagram post Sunday, Legan sent a photo from the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Minutes later, he shot into the crowd with an AK-47 style weapon, killing a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his mid-20s .

Under it, he wrote: "Ayyy garlic festival time" and "Come get wasted on overpriced" items. Legan's since-deleted Instagram account says he is Italian and Iranian.

The postings are among the first details that have emerged about Legan since authorities say he appeared to fire at random, sending people running and diving under tables. Police patrolling the event responded within a minute and killed Legan as he turned the weapon on them.

The gunman legally purchased the semi-automatic assault rifle this month in Nevada, where his last address is listed. He would have been barred from buying it in California, which restricts firearms purchases to people over 21. In Nevada, the age limit is 18.

Hundreds of people came out Monday night for a candlight vigil in front of City Hall in honor of those killed and injured.

"We cannot let the bastard that did this tear us down," Mayor Roland Velasco declared to cheers.

Legan grew up less than a mile from the park where the city known as the "Garlic Capital of the World" has held its three-day festival for four decades, attracting more than 100,000 people with music, food booths and cooking classes.

Authorities were looking for clues, including on social media, as to what caused the son of a prominent local family to go on a rampage. His father was a competitive runner and coach, a brother was an accomplished young boxer and his grandfather had been a supervisor in Santa Clara County.

Police said they don't know if people were targeted, but at this point, it appears he shot indiscriminately. Twelve people were injured.

Police searched Legan's vehicle and the two-story Legan family home, leaving with paper bags. Authorities also searched an apartment they believed Legan used this month in remote northern Nevada. Officials didn't say what they found.

Big Mikes Gun and Ammo, which appears to be a home-based internet gun shop in Fallon, Nevada, said on its Facebook page that Legan ordered the rifle off its website and "was acting happy and showed no reasons for concern" when the store owner met him. The post said it was "heartbroken this could ever happen."

In California, police had training in how to respond to an active shooter. While they prepared for the worst, they never expected to use those skills in Gilroy, a city of about 50,000 about 80 miles (176 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco known for the pungent smell of its prize flowering crop grown in the surrounding fields — garlic.

The city had security in place for one of the largest food fairs in the U.S. It required people to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched. Police, paramedics and firefighters were stationed throughout the festival.

But Legan didn't go through the front entrance. He cut through a fence bordering a parking lot next to a creek, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said. Some witnesses reported a second suspect, and authorities were trying to determine if he had any help.

Police arrested a 20-year-old man who claimed involvement online, but investigators determined he was just trying to get attention.

The police chief praised officers for stopping Legan with handguns without injuring anyone else.

"It could've gotten so much worse, so fast," Smithee said.

The gunfire sent people in sunhats and flip-flops running away screaming. Some dove for cover under the decorated food booth tables. Others crawled under a concert stage, where a band had started playing its last song.

The youngest victim, Stephen Romero, described by his grandmother as a kind, happy and playful kid, had just celebrated his sixth birthday in June at Legoland in Southern California.

"My son had his whole life to live and he was only 6," his father, Alberto Romero, told San Francisco Bay Area news station KNTV after the shooting.

Also killed was 13-year-old Keyla Salazar from San Jose, seen dressed in pink, wearing a tiara of flowers and smiling as she poses with relatives in photos posted on her aunt's Facebook page.

"I have no words to describe this pain I'm feeling," Katiuska Pimentel Vargas wrote.

The oldest victim killed was Trevor Irby, 27, a biology major who graduated in 2017 from Keuka College in upstate New York.

The wounded were taken to multiple hospitals, and their conditions ranged from fair to critical, with some undergoing surgery.

Troy Towner said his sister, Wendy Towner, was at the festival for her business, the Honey Ladies, when she saw a man with a gun climb over the fence. She yelled at him: "No, you can't do that!"

The gunman shot her in the leg and her husband three times, while a young girl dragged their 3-year-old son under a table, Towner wrote on a fundraising page he set up for his sister.

Legan then approached the couple as they lay motionless on the ground and asked if they were all right. They didn't move, fearing he would finish them off, Towner wrote.

Towner said his sister underwent surgery and was expected to have long-term nerve damage, while her husband faces many surgeries.

Candice Marquez, who works for Wendy Towner and her husband, Francisco, told The Associated Press that she had stepped away to go to the bathroom and saw the gunman heading to their tent. She said her 10-year-old niece helped the toddler to safety.

"She was brave," Marquez said.

Jan Dickson, a neighbor who lives across the street from the Legan family, described them as "a nice, normal family." She said Santino Legan had not lived there for at least a year.

"How do you cope with this? They have to deal with the fact that their son did this terrible thing and that he died," Dickson said.

___

Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press reporter Mike Balsamo in Washington, Natalie Rice in Los Angeles, Scott Sonner in Hawthorne, Nevada, Ken Ritter in Las Vegas, and Martha Mendoza in Gilroy contributed to this report.

[freelance-arc]

Learning by doing, and how not to do it. 4 Things I learnt from my first business.

Guitar Solutions. My first business.

What an experience. So much time spent, and late nights. Trying and trying and trying again.

GS is on hiatus right now. It has been for a few years. It may well be forever at this point. I keep toying with the idea of following through with the big rebrand I had lined up shortly before I gave up and kicking it back into gear.

(Note -I did give up. I had a bad stint after the biggest opportunity that had ever presented for GS became a sour, arduous experience. I set it to one side, I needed a break, and never picked it up again).

The knowledge is there. The enthusiasm’s there. But, so is the key takeaway from it all.

You can’t just start a business and expect it to be financially viable. 

A successful business needs a little more thought than none at all.  I started GS because I needed more money, I wanted more money. I looked at my skills and thought “What can I do, I can fix guitars”, and went from there.

Musicians, as a rule, don’t tend to have a whole bunch of cash anyway. Especially after a couple of years in 2008 when the recession hit. People were literally losing their jobs. Things like a spanky service on the guitar was just too luxurious to consider.

If I’d considered it at all, I’d have realised that it was a very small marketplace, and I was going to struggle.

Now, any one of today’s sales and marketing gurus will tell you that getting right down to specifics is good. Find your niche. Make it super focused. 

This is great when the people in that niche have plenty of cash to buy your services. But if they aren’t there, it’s gonna be an uphill battle.

Thing is, those clients were there. I knew they were. I wanted them but was too scared to approach them. The impostor syndrome was so strong I didn’t dare promise them anything, which didn’t matter cos I didn’t approach them at all.

I didn’t consider learning to sell cos I thought of it as pushy, sleazy absolutely not for me or my customers.

People would ask me about work and I’d pitch them, and 4/5 times they’d say “Cool, I’ll give you a shout on payday”. Payday never came.

The most salesy I ever got would be to say, “I can squeeze you in this week, before XYZ for *name drop*, and we can sort out the other stuff (payment) after”.

This improved things a bit. The workflow increased, happy customers came back. Until the “pay me later” bit reared its head and I ended up waiting 2 months for payment for a big job. It shouldn’t have been a problem except that I’d sunk all the assets I had into paying the supplier to complete this one. Deposits I’d put down on items to buy and sell were forfeited. It cost me more to come back from than I made.

I rethought the pay me later approach. It was a hard lesson in Liquidity, the lifeblood cash flow of a business. 

If the cash flow stops, the business stops.

It served a second lesson too. Serving friends. The guy I did the work for was a friend, in a locally known touring band, they were doing well. It made total business sense, plus my mate wasn’t going to let me down on his end of the bargain, was he.....?

There’s lessons in owning your own business that you’ll NEVER expect. You end up doing things you never saw coming, and you get to see people you think you know really well in a very different light. 

Honestly, now, I avoid working with anyone I have a prior relationship with. Just in case.

I wasn’t gonna let myself be a mug again. It was the second time that working with a mate had burned me. The first time I started teaching lessons with another friend of mine. I put the word around, sorted a venue to teach in, hand wrote the lesson plans and teaching materials, and dealt with the contact with the client - a lady looking for guitar lessons for her two daughters, about 9 and 11 years old, during the summer holidays. The first lesson went really well, we got paid and I split the cash with him 50-50 like we agreed. 

The second week came, we started the lesson. He was hungover and swore, albeit casually in front of the girls. NOT COOL. I told him that if that’s how he felt then I’d do the lesson without him. They never rebooked. My reputation as a teacher was dead, thanks to my friend.

So, be very careful who you trust your time, money and reputation with.

Anyways, I persevered. It took a little while, but basically, I lent the business the cash from my own pocket. I wasn’t about to let all that effort lose steam and go to nothing. Custom was steady but slow. I tried to get people engaging online, to interact with the posts I found. I’d get a like. One post had a few shares, and no-one even mentioned GS. I was gutted.

I know now that I was trying to market, but didn’t know it. I thought if I post cool content then people will talk about GS. This is kinda true, cos content marketing IS a thing, but it’s one aspect. 

You need a call to action (tell people what to do - call me, email, message here, get in touch for your 10% discount, today only!) But you need to tell them how you can help them. Don’t just say “We’re so great, we’re the best, blah blah”. 

Try “We’re the best. We’re the best because whatever instrument you send to us will be so improved, and make your playing so great, whoever you like will fall at your feet pleading to go out with you! Oh, and the record company will offer you so much cash you’ll be crushed”.

Well, not quite like that, it’s long-winded for a start. But what it does is portray the benefits of your services. They imagine the hotties falling at their feet, and swimming in cash. 

Some people care about the height of the action on a guitar neck. Others care about it cos they know it’ll make them shred and look SICK. AS. FUCK.

Y’see the difference? 

What you do is one thing, but how it relates to the customer is the important bit, so tell them that.

On top of all this, I learnt about registering as self-employed and doing tax returns, which aren’t nearly as terrible as you think they are, getting adverts in relevant magazines, buying domains and hosting. Trying to set up a website (I was using the wrong platform).... The list goes on.

Choose your niche.

Cash is king

Be careful who you let in.

Learn to market yourself. Tell your customers how your services benefit them.

Read this. Remember the pitfalls I discovered. Set your business up anyway (after relevant research!) and GO FOR IT!

Good luck!

Follow Freelancerskil for more

[kansascityhappenings]

Gunman posted online minutes before killing 3 at festival

GILROY, Calif. — Before a 19-year-old gunman opened fire on a famed garlic festival in his California hometown, he urged his Instagram followers to read a 19th century book popular with white supremacists on extremist websites, but his motives for killing two children and another young man were still a mystery Monday.

Santino William Legan posted the caption about the book “Might is Right,” which claims race determines behavior. It appeared with a photo of Smokey the Bear in front of a “fire danger” sign and also complained about overcrowding towns and paving open space to make room for “hordes” of Latinos and Silicon Valley whites.

In his last Instagram post Sunday, Legan sent a photo from the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Minutes later, he shot into the crowd with an AK-47 style weapon, killing a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his mid-20s.

Under it, he wrote: “Ayyy garlic festival time” and “Come get wasted on overpriced” items. Legan’s since-deleted Instagram account says he is Italian and Iranian.

The postings are among the first details that have emerged about Legan since authorities say he appeared to fire at random, sending people running and diving under tables. Police patrolling the event responded within a minute and killed Legan as he turned the weapon on them.

He legally purchased the semi-automatic assault rifle this month in Nevada, where his last address is listed. He would have been barred from buying it in California, which restricts firearms purchases to people over 21. In Nevada, the age limit is 18.

Legan grew up less than a mile from the park where the city known as the “Garlic Capital of the World” has held its three-day festival for four decades, attracting more than 100,000 people with music, food booths and cooking classes.

Authorities were looking for clues, including on social media, as to what caused the son of a prominent local family to go on a rampage. His father was a competitive runner and coach, a brother was an accomplished young boxer and his grandfather had been a supervisor in Santa Clara County.

Police said they don’t know if people were targeted, but at this point, but it appears he shot indiscriminately. Twelve people were injured.

Police searched Legan’s vehicle and the two-story Legan family home, leaving with paper bags. Authorities also searched an apartment they believed Legan used this month in remote northern Nevada. Officials didn’t say what they found.

Big Mikes Gun and Ammo, which appears to be a home-based internet gun shop in Fallon, Nevada, said on its Facebook page that Legan ordered the rifle off its website and “was acting happy and showed no reasons for concern” when the store owner met him. The post said it was “heartbroken this could ever happen.”

In California, police had training in how to respond to an active shooter. While they prepared for the worst, they never expected to use those skills in Gilroy, a city of about 50,000 about 80 miles (176 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco known for the pungent smell of its prize flowering crop grown in the surrounding fields — garlic.

The city had security in place for one of the largest food fairs in the U.S. It required people to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched. Police, paramedics and firefighters were stationed throughout the festival.

But Legan didn’t go through the front entrance. He cut through a fence bordering a parking lot next to a creek, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said. Some witnesses reported a second suspect, and authorities were trying to determine if he had any help.

Police arrested a 20-year-old man who claimed involvement online, but investigators determined he was just trying to get attention.

The police chief praised officers for stopping Legan with handguns without injuring anyone else.

“It could’ve gotten so much worse, so fast,” Smithee said.

The gunfire sent people in sunhats and flip-flops running away screaming. Some dove for cover under the decorated food booth tables. Others crawled under a concert stage, where a band had started playing its last song.

The youngest victim, Stephen Romero, described by his grandmother as a kind, happy and playful kid, had just celebrated his sixth birthday in June at Legoland in Southern California.

“My son had his whole life to live and he was only 6,” his father, Alberto Romero, told San Francisco Bay Area news station KNTV after the shooting.

Also killed was 13-year-old Keyla Salazar from San Jose, seen dressed in pink, wearing a tiara of flowers and smiling as she poses with relatives in photos posted on her aunt’s Facebook page.

“I have no words to describe this pain I’m feeling,” Katiuska Pimentel Vargas wrote.

The oldest victim killed was Trevor Irby, 27, a biology major who graduated in 2017 from Keuka College in upstate New York.

The wounded were taken to multiple hospitals, and their conditions ranged from fair to critical, with some undergoing surgery.

Troy Towner said his sister, Wendy Towner, was at the festival for her business, the Honey Ladies, when she saw a man with a gun climb over the fence. She yelled at him: “No, you can’t do that!”

The gunman shot her in the leg and her husband three times, while a young girl dragged their 3-year-old son under a table, Towner wrote on a fundraising page he set up for his sister.

Legan then approached the couple as they lay motionless on the ground and asked if they were all right. They didn’t move, fearing he would finish them off, Towner wrote.

Towner said his sister underwent surgery and was expected to have long-term nerve damage, while her husband faces many surgeries.

Candice Marquez, who works for Wendy Towner and her husband, Francisco, told The Associated Press that she had stepped away to go to the bathroom and saw the gunman heading to their tent. She said her 10-year-old niece helped the toddler to safety.

“She was brave,” Marquez said.

Jan Dickson, a neighbor who lives across the street from the Legan family, described them as “a nice, normal family.” She said Santino Legan had not lived there for at least a year.

“How do you cope with this? They have to deal with the fact that their son did this terrible thing and that he died,” Dickson said.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/07/29/gunman-posted-online-minutes-before-killing-3-at-festival/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/07/30/gunman-posted-online-minutes-before-killing-3-at-festival/