#the name is so scary I just searched it up and sounds like a software issue iphone 13 and later phones are facing

[shidouryusm]

did your phone have the white screen of death?

...

the white screen of what? GIRL WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PHONE?

[txnichtgut-archive]

he chuckled softly when it seemed to dawn on dan heng, truly adorable. how innocent. jingyuan and ren were, for a lack of a better word, completely unhinged. it didn't happen too regularly but when both were in the mood, it was certainly not going to be quiet, because it was almost always a fight for dominance, although that meant absolutely nothing towards their relationship. both decided on being equals, but both were also of the opinion that they lacked something, a certain someone in their life... and they had tried. some omegas were so scared they literally ran away and others were simply in it for the sex, but they were searching for something... constant, someone to cherish. both did want a family and simply adopting a child was... just not what they wanted. eventually they would... probably resort to this option, but right now they still harbored a bit of hope.

"we don't get frisky that often, no worries. we now have an omega to watch over." thinking this probably sounded creepy, he quickly added: "my roommate works for an organisation that takes care of abused omegas. so... he kinda dragged me into that as well. he's... a little protective of omegas, you see." they mostly worked on software, apps and the like, but ren always had a soft spot for omegas. it was adorable, but he also supposed it simply was ren's way of making up for the things he had done in the past.

something ren never talked about and jingyuan was not someone to press the issue.

"the scent is pretty strong... but hey, you might wanna stick close to my alpha." oh, there he went and called ren his. the man sighed softly. sometimes he really was a little whipped. "he has this really calm scent. sometimes even alphas mistake him to be an omega." it was honestly funny, because ren could be... so feral and scary.

when he suddenly heard a knock on the door, jingyuan nearly jumped over to open to reveal his mate. ren was clad in some simple black joggers and a sleeveless white shirt, just holding out the take out for jingyuan to take it off of him already before mumbling: "why is it always me? you could also go out and grab some food..."

ren was certainly confused on why he was here. the scent was awful, but he could also smell something different and laid eyes on the omega. ah... he shot jingyuan a suspicious look before walking in a little further, pointing at a box in the corner of the room. "your candles," he merely stated, voice slightly husky and if dan heng looked a little closer, then yes, there was a bit of bed hair still visible. "oh. uh, my name's ren. i hope my friend didn't bother you like he bothers me every day."

jngyuan simply sighed. that was his alpha alright.

            jing yuan . . . dan heng makes a note of the name  .  his new neighbor is friendly  ,  a little pushy  ,  but seemingly kind . . . he wonders if jing yuan's roommate is the same as the man himself . . . though  ,  he supposes if he can get along with just ONE of them  ,  it'd be enough  .  brow raising at the mention of noise  ,  just what sort of work do they do from home that could cause so much noise  ??  a naive thought  ,  though . . . it takes a bit before it dawns on dan heng what jing yuan could possibly mean  .  OH  .  of course  ,  jing yuan is an alpha  .  an attractive alpha . . . and he's yet to meet the other's partner . . . sex  .  jing yuan meant if they got too loud in terms of sex  .             dan heng feels his face heat up at the realization  ,  stunned into silence before he manages to get out a stammered  ,  ❝  ye — yeah  ,  ok . . . i'll keep it on mind  .  ❞  as he tries to return back to rifling through his boxes to calm his embarrassment  .  it's a second later before jing yuan seemed to easily shift the topic at hand  ,  mentioning the scent that lingered in the apartment  .  dan heng looks up from the boxes  ,  ❝  was it . . . that obvious  ??  ❞  he asks  ,  despairing slightly  ,  but if jing yuan could SMELL the same scent dan heng was . . . then it was pretty strong  .  he wonders how long it'd take befoe his own scent permeates this space  .             he nearly misses the other's words  .  two alphas  .  so jing yuan's partner is also an alpha . . . dan heng is not sure if he feels SAFER or not  ,  but jing yuan has proven to be . . . rather friendly and non — threatening  ,  maybe it'll be okay . . . who knows  ,  maybe this will be their only interaction for the rest of their lives  .               shaking his head  ,  ❝  no . . . my friend gave me a set . . .  ❞  dan heng replies  ,  insistent on using march 7th's gift  .  a scent he likes  .  a familiar scent  .  something to calm his nerves . . . when jing yuan suggested to eat in dan heng's home  ,  a rejection hangs on his lips but he quickly makes up his mind  .  it's better if it's within his home  ,  if things go awry  ,  he can get away easily as compared to being in the two alphas' home . . . he'd be trapped in there  .             ❝  uhm . . .  i'm sure he's not as bad as you make him out to be  ,  ❞  he offers a small smile  ,  he learned that friends will always have skewed opinions of each other . . . that's what makes the relationship endearing  .

[teddy06writes]

sapnap x reader where the readers first language is greek and they confess to him in greek without knowing he speaks it too ? i love ur writing btw !! :)

sapnap x reader

first of all, this is such a cute idea and I love it, second of all, I DO NOT KNOW GREEK, so apologize in advance for anything google translate gets wrong

trigger warnings: some swearing, drinking

(y/n/n)- your nickname

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You’d first seen him from across the quad, whilst searching for a distraction from the boring chattering of your mother on the phone, the dirty blonde man also lost in conversation with the brunette who’d walked beside him.

You continued to watched them on their path through the mess of kids on benches or even the ground, tracing his familiarity to one of your lectures on software design.

What surprised you most, was when he looked over, and smiled at you, he’d caught you in the act of staring at him, and smiled.

You smiled back, not to be impolite, and were pulled back to reality by your mothers voice in your ear, “(y/n), είσαι εκεί? ή έχει πετάξει το κεφάλι σου στα σύννεφα;” (Are you there? Or has your head flown off in the clouds?)

“Είμαι εδώ μαμά.” (I’m here mama) you sighed.

~~

The next time you saw him was at a party some frat house on the other side of campus was throwing.

You hadn’t planned on going, seeing as you barley knew the boys in the frat, and your friends, well, at this college anyway, were nonexistent, but hey, free booze.

So that's how you found yourself, leaning against the living room wall, cup in hand, watching the beer pong game happening in the center of the room.

Taking another sip of your drink you did a mental walk of the room, making mental note of the people you knew, and then there he was again, definitely less than sober, calling dibs on playing the loser of the game.

You watched, amused as the game ended, and he quickly took the place of the loser, taunting the other guy loudly.

Three games (and several beers) later he was still winning, loudly yelling that he could beat anyone at the party.

Unable to help yourself you stepped forward, “I’ll have a go then.”

He looked you up and down proclaiming, “Easy win.”

You smirked, moving up to the table.

The game began, and his confidence quickly wore down, as all your shots either landed, or came very close.

The last few were neck and neck, but soon it was down to three left on your side, and only one left on his.  

Desperately, his first shot got one of yours and you quickly chugged it down, still smirking at him.

You raised an eyebrow as he lined up his next shot, and his eyes flicked to yours just long enough to cause him to miss.

You bit back a grin, easily sinking the last shot, “I’ve bested the beast.”

The people who had been spectating cheered, and the brunette who you’d seen with him before started to laugh his ass off, “They fucking got you Nick!”

“Yeah, I’m aware.” He sounded all too sober for someone who should’ve been that drunk.

You chuckled, turning and disappearing into the crowd.

A half hour later you were half way out the door, not bothering to pull on your jacket, the relative amount of dinking you had done still making your cheeks feel warm.

“Wait! Wait!” He- Nick, you reminded yourself, came half stumbling down the road, “I wanted to say good game.”

“That was half an hour ago.” You laughed.

“Still- i- sorry, what is your name?”

“(y/n), I’m in your intro to software design.”

“I’ve never seen you in there before,” He looked confused, “Which group do you sit with?”

“I don’t really have friends.” You shrugged.

Nick frowned, quickly holding out his hand for a shake, “Hi, I’m Nick, I’m your friend now.”

You looked at his outstretched hand confused, “Yeah o-kay. Your drunk, I’m tipsy and if I’m lucky you won’t remember this in the morning. I don’t really do friends here.”

He nodded as if paying attention, but then said, “You have an accent.”

You nodded, “Yup, I’m leaving now.”

~~

You didn’t see him again after that, for nearly three weeks, and you were beginning to think he really had forgotten, that is, until he approached out out side of the lecture hall, “Hey!”

“Yeah?”

“(y/n) right? Your the one who beat me at beer pong. And then walked away when I asked about your accent.”

You rolled your eyes, “You didn’t ask you literally just stated I had an accent.”

“Well I’m not wrong! I meant to ask why- well not why- just, are you an exchange student or?”

You adjusted your laptop bag on your shoulder, “This isn’t high school. We don’t have exchange students.”

“Well, are you studying abroad then?”

“I’m an American. I can’t study abroad in my own country.”

He looked slightly confused, “Sorry- it’s just with your accent I assumed.”

“I wasn’t born here if that helps.” You turned and started away, pulling out your phone as it started to ring, “Ναι μαμά; Έχω μαθήματα σύντομα, τι συμβαίνει;” (Yes mama? I have class soon, what's wrong?)

~~

“Why are you always alone all the time?”

You groaned, looking up from the firewall system assignment you’d been testing on your tablet, to see Nick, “I’m working.”

“And I’m asking a question,” He sat down at the otherwise empty table, “Why are you always alone?”

“I told you, I don’t have friends here.” You ran the breaker code again, seeing if it could illuminate any unseen holes.

“You were at the party, surely you knew someone there, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone.”

“σκατά“ You muttered, a new problem in the chain arising, “It was an open house party, I heard about it from people I know.” (shit)

Nick frowned, “Oh, thats-”

“Sad, tragic, depressing? Yeah I’m aware.” You sighed.

You saved the project, shutting off your tablet and looking around the empty cafeteria, “Isn’t it like, wicked late? Why are you here?”

“Why’re you?” he countered.

“World’s asleep.” You muttered, packing up the rest of your stuff, “Why do you keep making such an effort to talk to me?”

“Cause we’re friends remember? Shook on it.”

“I never shook your hand.” You grumbled, standing up.

~~

“You know that I’m right!” Nick exclaimed.

“Maybe! But I don’t want to admit it!”

Over the course of a few month Nick had crawled, kicked and wormed his way into your life, all but forcing you to become his friend, and surprisingly, you didn’t mind all that much.

Now you were sitting out on the roof of your dorm, looking up at the night sky.

“I swear your fucking nocturnal dude! Like an owl! And I willingly give up my sleep to hang out with you!”

You hesitated, feeling a sudden jolt of a realization, and as suddenly as a lighting strike, you were falling in love.

You fumbled to recover, “Well you’re the one who went out of your way to become my friend.”

“I mean, too be fair I was drunk.”

“But still went out of your way to be my friend once you were sober.” You pointed out.

“Hey, drunk me makes good decisions sometimes.” He laughed, looking over at you.

You let out a sigh, watching the white wisps of your breath drift up in the sky, “That’s the thing I’ve never got over.”

“What? Drunk me making interesting decisions?”

“The cold,” You said simply, “I’ve lived here half my life, but the cold still doesn’t make sense to me.”

He laughed, “This is Texas, it’s not nearly as cold as it gets up north. Snow’s much more common for now, up there.”

“I’ve never seen snow. Mama doesn’t like it much,” You laughed, “The first time I really heard about it it sounded so strange.”

Nick smiled, “Lets go up north during winter break then. I know people up there, we can go do winter tourist things.”  

“Winter tourist things?”

“Yeah,” He chuckled, “Go ice skating, look at lights, sleigh rides, all that.”

You laughed, “Winter Tourist things.”

~~

A month and a half had passed, your sudden change in feelings toward your only friend on campus had not.

If anything they had just gotten worse, and now, the thing you still couldn’t wrap your head around, you were tossing your suitcase into the back of his car, about to head on your way to the airport, because yes, the Winter Tourist thing stuck.

“Dude, I’m so excited! This is gonna be epic!”

You nodded, “You know, thinking about it, it actually is possible I’ve seen snow, like when I was little. It just never lasted long.”

Nick scrunched up his nose, “Well it’s too late to duck out now!”

“I never said I was ducking out.” You laughed.

~~

The trip had gone pretty well, the snow in the northeast was certainly different than that of Macedonia, but you didn’t think it was all Nick had said it would be.

Still you had enjoyed wandering around the city looking at Christmas lights, attempting to ice skate, and just enjoying each others company.

It seemed like every minute you spent with Nick, you teetered closer to the edge, knowing that by the end of this trip you’d be head over heels for him, if you weren’t already now.

Now you were quietly sitting on the balcony of your hotel room, hands cradled around the warm cup of hot chocolate you’d made, looking out into the swirling darkness above the city.

“You know your gonna freeze if you stay out here.” Nick moved through the door and sat beside you, draping part of a blanket around your shoulders.

“I know.” You sighed.

He looked at you, concerned, “What’s wrong?”

“Νομίζω ότι ερωτεύομαι,” You murmured, a quiet confession, more so to yourself than to him, “και αυτό με τρομάζει.”  (I think I’m falling in love with you... and that terrifies me)

You started to sigh as he looked confused, though only for a moment, because “Τι είναι τόσο τρομακτικό για την αγάπη;” He asked softly. (What’s so scary about love?)

You froze, almost dropping your cup, “ε-ε-ε, εσύ- μιλάς ελληνικά;” (uh- y- uh, you-  you speak Greek?)

“λίγο,” He smiled, “Είσαι ερωτευμένος μαζί μου;“ (A bit... you’re in love with me?)

“λίγο.” (A bit), you breathed, trying to ignore the small space between you seemingly shrink.

“Νομίζω ότι είμαι λίγο ερωτευμένος και εσένα.” He chuckled. (I think I'm a bit in love with you too)

Your breath hitched, and your quickly bridged the small gap between you to kiss him, smiling into it a bit as he kissed back.

“How long?” He asked softly when you pulled apart.

“When you first brought up the trip. You said that you were willing to lose sleep to hang out with me,” You chuckled nervously, “You?”

“Second week of school, you were on the phone with someone, and you smiled back at me,” Nick grinned, “I saw you from across the quad and knew.”

[marleahsblogs]

✨ Internet Safety ✨

For our generation today, the internet is probably the safest place to be in. People can be whoever they want, express whatever they want, and enjoy themselves however they want. I must admit, I would also say that I couldn’t live without the internet. Internet is just the solution to every problem, right? Now, we can even earn money in the comfort of our rooms with the help of the internet. Should we spend hours travelling just to buy stuff? Nah, we got the internet! With just several clicks we can already make an order and just wait on our couch to receive it. Oh no, COVID-19 ruled the world! No worries, we are backed up by the internet. Online classes, online transactions, online dating. You name it. The internet is there for us, or is it? Is it our safe haven?

We have put so much trust in the internet, but we didn’t know it can also be our biggest predator. Online transactions were fun until you got scammed and lost all your money. Online dating them feel loved until the person they were talking to is a catfish. Streaming online made him famous and rich, until his account got hacked. And there are still millions of stories out there that should awake us from believing that the internet is the safest thing in the world.

Below are some possible dangers you could encounter online.

1. Cyberbullying

I’m sure many of you have heard of this. But even though we are fully aware of it, it is still one of the major problems until now. As we casually scroll in our social media feeds, it is already normal for us to see people making fun of or “bashing” other people. It became so prevalent that we could call it a normal thing. According to UNICEF (2019), one in three young people has said that they have been a victim of cyberbullying and that it affected almost half of the Filipino children aged 13-17. We need to know that even a single word like “tanga” or “bobo” we see in our social media platforms and online gaming worlds could affect or traumatize us greatly.

2. Data Being Stolen

Some people nowadays are getting better at doing this. They can steal your money from your accounts, apply for a loan or credit card using your name, or sell your information to an online criminal as well. The hidden website is packed with criminals who purchase and sell stolen personal data. If your data is stolen, you can experience spam attacks. But most of these data thefts try to steal sensitive information, such as your credit card or personal information to commit identity theft.

3. Exposure to Inappropriate Material

Another risk especially for children and teenagers are exposure to inappropriate materials that are sexual, hateful, or violent. The chance and probability for children to look at anything inappropriate rely on how much they do online as they get more active online at a younger age. Whether it's a free-time graphic pop-up commercial, children's cartoon characters in adult circumstances or a self-harm forum, an innocent search might expose these children to contents that make them feel puzzled and angry. Some of the inappropriate content includes pornographic material, content containing swearing, sites that encourage racism, violence, terrorism, or even suicide, sexism sites, or gambling sites, and so on.

Based on my own experiences, here are some tips I would like to share to you to look after your privacy and secure your internet safety:

1. Keep your software up-to-date

Not only will you get a better program experience, but you will also be able to iron out your security issues. But the reason why you must keep it updated is that hackers are fast enough to become aware of certain software’s vulnerabilities, thus could harm your computer system and personal data. If you avoid doing these updates, you are bound to face persistent bugs, data loss, malware infection, and of course security issues.

2. Update your passwords

Why do we need to constantly change our passwords? So that we can reduce the risk of other people having access to our accounts, thus corrupt our personal data. Using strong passwords is necessary for us to prove our identity in our accounts, websites, or our computer itself (Wright, 2021). My tip in creating passwords is random characters with a symbol, number, and at least one capital letter. The reason for this is that using weak passwords, such as patterns of letters and numbers, or simply your name and some important date you know can cause hackers to guess and open your account, hence impersonate you to commit fraud and other crimes.

3. Use two-factor authorization

Familiar with this term? Yes, a two-factor authorization (2FA) is an extra step to keep your accounts more secure and avoid getting hacked by others. One of the most common 2FA methods is one-time codes sent through SMS or email, authenticator apps such as Google Authenticator, and security keys such as U2F tokens (Drozhzhin, 2018). This one for me is the best 2FA authorization because only your private key will confirm your login. If someone will try to log in to your account with the wrong security key, they will not be granted access to your account. So, there you go. A series of two-factor authorizations that will secure your accounts the best way possible. You’re welcome!

4. Be careful what you click on

Have you heard of phishers? They are attackers that send a fraudulent message designed to trick and victimize us into revealing sensitive information to them. As scary as it sounds, we need to be aware of what we click on to avoid experiencing this. Phishing is usually done in an email when they get your email address from somewhere. These phishers try to create a fake website to trick you into typing in your personal information. It’s much easier for them to hack our accounts this way. To avoid this, you can check the URL’s legitimacy by using the Google Transparency Report or simply avoid suspicious emails which require your personal information. Think before you click!

5. Back-up your data

Data back-up and recovery has many advantages. Some of these are protecting and saving your data, provides ease of management, ensures accurate information of your data, quick access to data, scalability, and such (Becker, 2021). There are many other ways to back up your data, but here’s a simple way to manually back up your data in your phone is to open your phone’s settings app, tap system and click backup or search backup in your settings app, then tap back-up now. It’s that simple.

6. Set up notifications for your most important bank accounts

As online bank account holders, it is our responsibility to making sure our accounts are protected. Online accounts are one of the easy targets of hackers to whisk away our money with just a couple of keystrokes. To safeguard our online banking, we may choose an industrial-standard security bank or credit union that utilizes text or e-mail warnings avoids the use of public Wi-Fi access and periodically changes your password.

7. Protect your personal information

This might be difficult for those who like to express themselves on social media, but we must protect our personal identity to avoid any sort of online threats. To protect our identity, we must limit the amount of personal information we share or provide. We shouldn't share or provide this information online: exact home address, your place and schedules of classes or work, birthday, cellphone number, and most importantly our passwords or account information. Another tip is to write down in a small notebook all your passwords and keep them safe in a secure place away from your computer.

8. Use parental controls and stay present

With the pandemic going on right now, parents should be extra careful of what their children see and hear about themselves and who they encounter on the internet. To protect your children from internet risks, talk to them frequently, utilize tools to safeguard them and watch out for their work. Monitor the time of your child, especially the younger ones, about when and how long they stay online. Keep your computer at a central location in your house, where it's easy to watch what your children do and look at online. You may configure them for mobile devices to forget Wi-Fi passcodes for your kids not to go online without knowledge. Review privacy and location settings, parental control and use secure browsers, apps, search engines and YouTube search settings. Lastly, limit camera and video to prevent your children from accidentally taking photos or videos of themselves or others.

The internet does not usually hurt us unless we react to suspect material and websites. The first reason you don't know what you're doing is because of internet damage. Secondly, you may react or click on links such as appealing advertisements, infected software and communications when you have other forces. To ensure internet safety, just remember those tips above and these three things: secure your network, be responsible, and make the internet child-safe.

References:

Becker, D. (2021). 6 Advantages of Data Backup and Recovery. IT Central Station. Retrieved from https://www.itcentralstation.com/articles/6-advantages-of-data-backup-and-recovery

Drozhzhin, A. (2018). SMS-based two-factor authentication is not safe — consider these alternative 2FA methods instead. Kaspersky Daily. Retrieved from https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/2fa-practical-guide/24219/

Wright, J. (2021). Why Is it Important to Change Your Password? Small Business Chron. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/

Online bullying remains prevalent in the Philippines, other countries (2019). Unicef Philippines. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/philippines/press-releases/online-bullying-remains-prevalent-philippines-other-countries

25 Best Internet Safety Tips for Every Situation (2021). The Neeva Team. Retrieved from https://neeva.com/learn/25-best-internet-safety-tips-for-every-situation

[existentialist-emergence]

A very scary phone call

I sit at home with my mother and father. The decor is very retro - shag carpet and a deep brown couch. Vaguely reminiscent of my grandmother's old house by the lake.

My father is on a laptop and I am charging my phone off of it from a usb cable.

I receive a phone call from an unknown number. My mother suggests I don't pick up but I pick up anyway. A woman named Amanda begins to talk to me but I can't tell what she is trying to say. Her voice is quiet and she is speaking very slowly. I assume she is a telemarketer and I hang up.

A few moments later the number calls back. Again my mother suggests I do not pick up but I am curious about this unusually persistent scam so I pick up anyway.

It is a different woman on the phone this time, she sounds older and wiser, she speaks with less hesitation and directness. She says to me "Please listen, I know you really want to hear this, we have something to help you". Still, I am annoyed with how I feel my time is being wasted and I am rude to her.

"can you just tell me really quick what it is you are selling? I'm almost positive I'm not interested.

"I will try to explain in 1/7th of a minute. Will you listen for that time?"

I roll my eyes and quickly do the math - that's less than 10s. What a silly amount of time.

I come back with contempt: "yes I will listen for 1/7 of a minute."

"7 to 10 minutes". I must have misheard. Whatever - I let her continue.

"I know you have been pretty successful in life. You completed your PhD and now work as a software engineer, correct?

"yes"

"And you recently bought a home, and this is your first house?"

Oh this must be one of those you-just-bought-a-home scams. "no". I tease.

My mother jumps in: “you should just hang up. Don't tell them all that.” She is right, telling a scammer any information is a bad idea. I decide not to answer the next question.

"and you've been dealing with issues related to schizophrenia."

At this point I realize this might not be a scam call. How would they know my medical information? This is too targeted to be a normal scam. I start listening much more closely.

"...despite these issues... is interesting."

She is hard to hear. My father on the couch next to me starts to panic because his laptop is dying.

"I told you to plug it in" my mother scolds him.

Will my phone die because it is no longer plugged in? No, it has enough battery, I'm fine.

My mother again implores me to hang up but I see no harm in just listening so I shake my head. The well-spoken woman on the phone continues to talk but I cannot understand what she is saying. My mother continues to tell me to hang up from one side of the sofa and argues with my father on the other side. Being stuck in the middle I get up from under my beige quilted down blanket, move to another couch across the room and give them a frustrated face. The room has a layout like my friends' apartment in college.

The woman continues but her voice is too quiet to hear. There are more people on the phone - is this a conference call? I find the volume on my phone and turn it up.

Someone interrupts the woman: "hold on; we lost him."

"I am here." I say blankly.

"Someone else on the call dropped off" she tells me. After a pause a man with a slight indian accent continues:

"... these viruses we collect will be very valuable for our research and you are a very unique candidate. We have been going over your genome and find something. Tylar you have a rare disease - Lyme PIL. Things are only getting worse. It is only a matter of time. We want to help you if we can. It is your right to refuse to take part in the study - and many people do - but we want you to consider it closely. Please contact us when you are ready..."

I scramble for a pen and paper; I have a pen but nearest to paper I find a sugar packet on the table next to me lit up under a table lamp.

"The contact address is 772 891 4572." They hang up the call.

My mother comes to my couch and asks what that was all about. My father listens from his seat across the room.

"they knew my medical history. They want me to be in a study. They said it was only a matter of time. I have some disease - Lyme P-something".

I feel like I'm in shock. My mother stands next to me beginning to tear up. My father stares across the room. I feel a lump welling up in my throat. What should I do? How did I get this? Could I have avoided this? Did I get this from being too adventurous - like Lyme disease from a tick? My mind is racing.

We all walk through the hall towards the bedrooms but at the end of the dark hall there is a pair of double hospital doors. We pass through and it is bright and sterile. The room is huge and full of equipment. I am directed to a surgery chair and nurses begin tending to me. My parents watch worried.

I try to hold back tears but I'm terrified. "I don't want to die". My voice cracks and the words are too much. I curl into a ball and weep in fear. My heart is racing and I don't know what to do. I was wrong. It's all over. I thought I was special. There is no hope. Why did I even try? Why bother fighting to survive any longer? It will just be suffering and pain from now on. I'd rather die happy from an overdose.

I wake up abruptly. My heart is racing. I grab my phone in search of comfort. It is 5 in the morning. I message a girlfriend in search of comfort. I think about messaging my therapist. I can't sleep again. I donate 20$ to SENS and begin furiously writing this.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN CASE

In retrospect this was a smart move, but we want to be the top one, rather than the one that is. Not quite so dominant as it had been a book.1 So an artist working on a hard problem, but their approach was so bogus that there was little chance of getting market price. You can thus gradually work your way into their confidence, and maybe turn it into an official job later, or not, big changes are coming, because the younger you are, are you really out of your element?2 It makes me spend more time on the Octoparts than I do with most of the time.3 I've noticed for a while before starting a startup generally. Certainly it can be used in painting: this is our site, not yours.4

I just wanted to keep one foot in the art world. Companies often claim to be benevolent, but because it's so much easier than building something great. They seemed wrong. Once you've seen enough examples of specific types of tricks, you start to become a connoisseur of trickery in general, just as more people could have computers once microprocessors made them cheap. But you have to do well on tests. So being hard to talk to? How to Win Friends and Influence People.5 Once they realized this, they stopped caring so much what investors thought about them. If you've heard anything about startups you've probably heard about the long hours.6

They're not part of the conversation.7 Rockefeller said in 1880, The day of combination is here to stay. You may find you'd prefer the quiet guy you've mostly ignored to someone who seems impressive but has an attitude to match. But though it was evidence that there was, somewhere, a world that wasn't red delicious, I didn't find it till college. Regardless of how complex your life is, you'll find that everyone else still shares, you're in a powerful position. But it was nearly as bad at Cornell.8 Big companies also lose because they usually only build one of each thing.9 Why hadn't I worked on more substantial problems? Sam Altman did. Whereas if you graduate and get a little more experience before they start a company. In fact, the whole concept of a good effort.10 It's useful in starting startups because you're capable of more than you realized.

Get into the habit of thinking of software as having users. So you have to do is give them a lead, and they'll close it, whatever type of lead it is.11 That last one is a big problem. So presumably that's what this brainstorming session was about. Since there's such a thing as good art.12 It seemed to people at the beginning of their career only works if everyone does it. At the bottom you'll find the subjects with least intellectual content. A sales force is worth something, I'll admit. That scariness makes ambitious ideas doubly valuable. So you have to remember everything you've said in the past to make sure you don't contradict yourself. Don't be evil.

So the downhills of the roller-coaster are more of a self fulfilling prophecy than the uphills. But you have to charm them.13 Plus if you didn't put the company first you wouldn't be promoted, and if they take it, they'll take it on their terms. Maybe in the future the executives installed by VCs will increasingly be a third option: to start with good people, to make something people will pay most for? Not at all. I didn't find it till college. It sounded serious and difficult.14 I solve?15

In fact, one of the O'Reilly people that guy looks just like Tim.16 Most companies, at least at first. A new search engine, when there were already about 10, and they were all aiming at the middle of the 20th century was a low-res: a Duplo world of a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them overseas—it became harder for unions to enforce their monopolies. Many students feel they should wait and get a job depends on the kind you want. That's their secret. I think angel rounds will start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than hiring someone. It's not so much that adults lie to kids about this as never explain it. Let's look at our case. Art is man-made.17

Notes

The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991.

They act as if the value of a startup. One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to than because they believe they have wings and start to go to a study by the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914. If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they wouldn't have the same town, unless it was not just the location of the Industrial Revolution, England was already the richest country in the technology everyone was going to drunken parties.

They hoped they were just getting started. Two customer support people tied for first prize with entries I still shiver to recall. Users dislike their new operating system.

There may be underestimating VCs. If I were doing more than others, like a later Demo Day or die.

Maybe it would be reluctant to start a startup could grow big by transforming consulting into a significant cause, and everyone's used to hear about the same people the shareholders instead of bookmarking.

The best way for a startup is rare.

The point where things start with their companies till about a week before. If you're sufficiently good bet, why did it. I think the company. They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in a band, or can make offers that every successful startup?

This must have seemed shocking for a smooth one. The Nineteenth-Century History of English Studies.

Tell the investors talking to a 2002 report by the Robinson-Patman Act of 1982, which have remained more or less constant during the Ming Dynasty, when the country it's in.

This would penalize short comments especially, because time seems to have discovered something intuitively without understanding all its implications. Free money to spend on trade goods to make up the same weight as any successful startup?

I think lack of transparency.

This is a case in point: lots of people, but if you were doing more than the founders don't have one clear inventor. This is actually a great idea as something that would scale.

You'll be lucky if fundraising feels pleasant enough to invest more, the laser, it's easy to imagine cases where a laptop would be rolling in their IPO filing. It's not quite as harmless as we are only doing angel deals to generate revenues they could imagine needing in their heads for someone to invent the spreadsheet. 8%, Linux 11.

If they agreed among themselves never to do this would give us. But the usual suspects in about the idea of getting too high a valuation cap is merely boring, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of just assuming that their experience so far. According to Zagat's there are before the name implies, you can get very emotional.

Oddly enough, but getting rich, purely mercenary founders will seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, where x includes math, law, you're going to visit 20 different communities regularly. Not startup ideas is to start a startup. Price Bubble? When companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be underestimating VCs.

Some translators use calm instead of a powerful syndicate, you might be able to at all.

The best kind of work is in the sort of pious crap you were still employed in your classes as a kid and as a high school writing this, but it might be interested in you, they may have no decision-making causes things to them more professional. There are a lot of people thought it was the first type, and most pharmaceutical startups the second clause could include any possible startup, but rather by, say, recursion, and indeed the venture business would work better, and this tends to be spread out geographically. This is one way in which case this behavior at least try. And startups that get killed by overspending might have done and try another approach.

[ibrahimkhalilof]

What's the easiest way to make money online?

In this post, I am gonna tell you 10 Easiest way to make money online

1.Start a Blog 

Starting a Blog is the best way to earn money online.Many bloggers earn millions of dollars through their own blogs like Shoutmeloud and Wpbeginner.You can earn through your website in many ways like: Affiliate marketing, Sell your own product, Sell Online Courses. By this ways you can earn millions of dollars through a website.Firstly, you have to Start a Blog. I have already written an article on it if you want to start a blog you can read it How to Start a Blog in 2020.

2. Affiliate Marketing 

Even if you don't have your own products or services to sell, affiliate marketing gives you a chance to earn strong commissions through a series of one-time sales (or ongoing monthly sales). Online merchants provide you with an affiliate website (or a simple affiliate tracking link) and marketing support – all you have to do is promote the company with your link via social media, search engines or perhaps ideally your own website or blog (see above).With all of these methods we're discussing you'll want to be sure to build your email list so you can continually follow up with your subscribers and generate additional sales.The great thing about affiliate marketing is you don't have to create your own products, you don't have to provide any customer support, and you don't have to create your own marketing materials.All you have to do is pick a profitable market, promote the products as an affiliate and earn a commission anytime a sale is made. Affiliate Marketing is one of the fastest and easiest ways to make money online.Even if you are offering your own products and services man people choose to also promote other people's products as an additional income stream to what they are already doing.

3. Start Your Own Ecommerce Website

Another great opportunity to make money online is with an e-commerce website/store.This is where you are selling physical products from your website. The most common (and hassle-free) way to do this is via drop shipping; where you simply take the orders on your website and use a third-party source that manufactures and ships the products for you.They key thing you'll want to do is focus on one specific niche and be a specialty store that just caters to that market, don't try to be all things to all people like an Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs and more.Speaking of Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs and more, though you may want to tap into other websites such as, Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs and more. As a way of reaching additional people you want to be sure that you have your own web presence with your own store so that you have 100% control over your business.

4. Online Publishing (E-books)

Regardless of your current occupation and lifestyle, there is probably a book inside of you that's screaming to get out. Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform has given thousands of people a chance to become published authors and earn money. It may also serve as a way to get noticed by more established and traditional publishers.Not only can you sell ebooks on platforms like Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs and more; but you can also sell ebooks directly from your own website as well. This allows you to sell your ebooks at higher prices and get all of the profits.You can also repackage multiple ebooks into larger "packages" or use the ebooks as a foundation to sell higher-ticket online courses or even coaching and consulting services.Publishing ebooks is a great way to make passive income, grow into bigger projects, and establish your authority as an expert in your market.With simple to use tools, access to outsourcing graphics, cover design, etc. anybody can self-publish a book and have the same professional presence and credibility as a big publishing house.For many people, the idea of writing a book can be intimidating but keep in mind that if you are writing ebooks that you're selling on your own website or publishing to Amazon Kindle you can write shorter books that are more focused on a specific niche or issue... you don't have a write extremely long books that take months or years to crank out.

5. Online Surveys

Online surveys are one of the easiest ways to earn extra cash. Brand name corporations and market research firms are desperately seeking people's opinions on products and services and will offer good remuneration for it. Depending on their complexity, each survey can be worth five, ten or more dollars.There are many reputable survey companies to choose from, but you may want to limit yourself to 3-5 in the beginning. Stick with the survey companies that give you plenty of surveys to take and pay a decent amount and stop using the services that don't end up being worth your time.You also want to avoid illegitimate companies; as this field is widespread with scam opportunities that will take a lot of your time and pay you very little money or even scam you out of your money.Though you're probably not going to be able to make a full-time income taking surveys it is a realistic way to make a couple hundred extra dollars a month.

6. Online Freelancing

If you have specific writing/journalism skills or are adept in various IT/software domains, freelancing may prove to be a lucrative source of secondary income. Increasingly, companies are implementing a content marketing strategy and turning to outside sources for specific assignments, and if you can prove your worth there will be more work available. Even simple skills like data entry may be to your liking, provide you can offer at least 5-10 hours weekly.All you need is a computer with an Internet connection and the desire to build a respectable clientele. Chances are that these opportunities will allow you to gain valuable experience and skills that will prove valuable in your existing business and professional career.If you're already writing ebooks in a particular niche market (see above) then why not make your services available for other companies; as you already have the expertise to take on the niche writing assignments.Though it's not really a passive income stream, doing freelance work is one of the fastest ways to generate income.

7. Coaching and Consulting Online

With the low cost of communication and technology, you can connect with anyone around the world.If you're already making money selling information online via Kindle books, affiliate marketing, or your own information products as mentioned above then you definitely have the opportunity to add coaching and consulting online as a source of revenue.This isn't nearly as scary is it sounds if you've never done it before. Most people who are buying from you would love the opportunity to speak with you to answer specific questions and get personalized advice.With tools like Skype, video conferencing, and webinar technology you can offer one-on-one calls, group coaching calls, and small mastermind meetings.A simple Kindle book or ebook sale can lead to a high-end client who wants to pay to work with you one-on-one.Offering coaching and consulting is one of the highest price methods of generating income.

8. Start Your Online Business Today!

Think about it, making money online is surprisingly easy once you set your mind to specific income goals. Ideally, the activities that you choose to engage in are fun, exploit your talents and interests, are worthy of your time, and offer fair compensation.As the Internet continues to evolve, opportunities to earn supplementary and full-time online income will grow. The very definition of work in an information-based economy is evolving, with traditional full-time jobs disappearing in favor of different arrangements (e.g. self-employment, flexible schedules, changing skill sets, etc.). In this respect, giving it a try can open up new career and business options.

9. Create Online Courses to Productize Your Knowledge

If you’re already an expert in a topic—either through your current job, freelance business, or coaching—you can package that knowledge into a high-value course and sell it for years to come.And while building, launching, and marketing an online course does take a considerable amount of upfront effort, their earning potential is through the roof (especially compared to a lot of the other online ways to make money we’re talking about).Courses and other knowledge products like e-books, are what’s called passive income. That simply means that once the upfront time and effort is put in, with just a bit of regular upkeep and marketing you’ll be able to continue to sell and make money from them for months and years.So, how do you go about putting together your course? One of my favorite online course success stories comes from Bryan Harris of Videofruit, who built and launched an online course in just 10 days that made him $220,750!At the end of the day, you’ll need to attract some sort of audience to sell your online course to—and if you can do that well, you’ll be on the path to building a very long-term sustainable online business for yourself.

10. Launch a YouTube Channel to Entertain and Educate

While YouTube recently changed its monetization program, if you’re able to hit their new minimum bar of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of view time in the past 12 months, it’s still an incredible place to make extra money online.YouTube is arguably the world’s second largest search engine (after Google) and is the third most-visited site in the world. In 2017, almost 5 billion videos were watched on YouTube every single day!Rather than making money through subscriptions, YouTube channels are based on a traditional advertising system. Meaning the more viewers you get, the more you make. Once you’re approved for the Youtube Partner Program and can start including ads on your videos, with every 1,000 views, you will make approximately $2-$4. Which might not seem like a lot, but if you have 100 videos with 5,000 views a month each, that would be $1,000–$2,000 already. Just imagine if your videos start hitting millions of views!You can optimize your videos to rank higher by experimenting with attention-grabbing descriptions and previews as well as using relevant tags. You need to stand out and make people want to click on your video.As you start regularly putting out content, you’ll hopefully start to build a bit of an audience. But to start seeing real money from YouTube you need to market your videos elsewhere. Share your channel on Twitter and Facebook. Distribute videos anywhere else you can think of. Also, interact with comments and build a community around the videos you’re making so people will share it with their friends.Once you hit the 1,000 subscriber/4,000 hour threshold, you can start monetizing your videos by selecting “Monetize with ads” under the Monetization tab of your channel. While it can take a while to build up a decent following for your YouTube channel, it can be a lot of fun to do as well as become a steady source of extra income.

[schrijverr]

Where did all these children come from?

Batman is on a mission, because someone is targeting his kids. He hides them on the WatchTower until he catches the guy, but this also means that the Justice League suddenly finds out about all the kids, it goes about as well as you expect.

Ships: none

Warnings: none, but tell me if there is

~~~~~~~~~

Batman works alone… yeah, no.

But the Justice League doesn’t know that. They all had their secret identities and there wasn’t a lot about the many children protecting the streets of Gotham, so it wasn’t strange that the League hadn’t caught on to Batmans problematic adopting issue. Luckily (if you want to call it that), their unknowingness was about to end.

They were rounding up a meeting when Batman cleared his throat and said: “I have an announcement. I will be going on a mission with Talia. You do not need to know where. Someone is targeting my kids and Talia, since Talia knows who it is and that the person has targeted the League of Assassins before, she has offered to help. But as I stated before, the individual is targeting my kids so they will reside here for the time being.”

Flash spit out his drink and said: “You have kids!”

Wonder Woman slapped him on the head and told him: “For someone who is very fast, you sure are slow on the uptake.”

Flash gawked at her offended, but decided that grilling Batman would be more fun. He turned back to find the spot empty. He fell into his hands and grumbled a bit to himself.

~

Later that day most of the original League was chilling in the common room. They were discussing the whole Batman has kids situation. Cyborg said: “Maybe we’ll finally find out his secret identity. They don’t have to be superhero kids. They could be his regular kids.”

Some nodded, but the Flash said: “Yeah, but do you envision THE Batman as a happy guy with a wife and kids? And then, do these kids know their father is Batman, and if they do how do they not tell anybody? How do they cope?”

That also got some murmurs. “This all just gives me a headache.” Green Lantern said.

At this point the conversation was ended by the door that was being opened by Batman, who was followed by screaming. Everyones head shot in the direction.

In the room were standing about ten kids ranging from age twelve to in the twenties, both boys and girls, all decked out in costumes. One of the older boys with a red helmet was complaining: “I don’t need this protection, Bats. I can take care of myself. In case you’ve forgotten I’ve died before and I was fine.”

An older boy in a black and blue costume responded: “Stop telling everyone you died, loser. We know, you don’t have to keep on reminding us.”

The others nodded and there were some more growling complaints about it. Batman turned to him and chided: “I know you can handle yourself, I’ve trained you and seen your growth. This is merely a safety precaution to sooth my worries. You don’t see the other complaining and they can take care of themselves as well.”

The red hooded guy looked down and huffed. Batman seemed satisfied and turned to the whole group again: “You already know everyone, so make yourself at home. I have to go, I would say behave, but that’s impossible for you, so just make sure the watchtower survives.” then he was gone.

For a few seconds the original league and they kids stared at each other then the older boy in the blue and black costume said: “I’m Nightwing, pleased to meet you. Now, if you don’t mind I going to get a snack and explore. B never let us on here before.”

The youngest quickly said: “I’m Robin, not pleased to meet you. I’m going with you, Nightwing.”

And he sprinted after Nightwing. A boy in a red costume with two rs on the front said: “Don’t mind him, he’s a demon spawn. I’m the Red Robin and Batman asked me to upgrade the systems while I’m here, so I’ll be in the control room if you need me.”

Then he also sped away. The League members were too confused to say anything so they just stared at the group of children. The guy with the red helmet walked away huffing something about hating his life and his family. A girl with a batcostume with yellow details rolled her eyes and said: “Forgive Red Hood, he’s just a grump. Apparently death does that with you. We just let him be, because we’re glad he’s back. Oh, sorry, I’m Batgirl and that there is Blackbat.”

A girl nodded and Batgirl continued: “She doesn’t talk much. We will try to stay out of your way, but some of the boys can be hard to handle and I apologize for their behavior in advance. We won’t bore you with more name and introductions. If you need us just ask for a name.” she then turned to everyone that was still there and said: “Lets go everyone. I wanna know where The Great Batman spends his other half of brooding time.”

That got some laughs form the kids as they all shuffled out of the room. When the were gone Flash was the first to speak: “What the actual fuck.”

Which was agreed upon by the other that were there.

~

The days afterward were strange. At first the leaguers tried to go on as normal, but batkids just kept popping up wherever they went. The training room was completely taken over by dark haired people who would do way too dangerous stunts for their size, the kitchen was lived in by a bunch of kids who loved to snack and every once in a while Red Robin came by with coffee looking like a zombie. It were scary times and after three days most of the leaguers decided to stay away from the Watchtower as much as possible.

When Batman returned after six days the league was there to grill him and physically see him remove all the kids from the Tower. He walked in and was immediately asked by Green Lantern: “What the hell, Batman?”

Batman pinched his eyebrows and asked: “What have they done now?”

He sounded so tired and done, it was kind of sad, but Superman had questions to ask. He said: “We pretty much abandoned the Tower after three days. They were just everywhere and there were so much. Where did all those kids even come from? Why are they trained like that? Just how and why, Batman?”

He sounded so distraught and Batmans shoulders sagged. He explained: “Most of them are from the streets, orphans abandoned by society. I gave them purpose and a home. Others are just kids who showed up and fought. I can’t let them do that untrained so I trained them, so that it would be safer and one is my actual kid.”

The leaguers wanted to ask more questions, but they were cut of by Nightwing who walked in, saw Batman and yelled: “Guys, B is here. Come quick!”

The he flung himself at the man who expertly caught him. Batman said: “You’re getting to old and heavy to catch.”

Nightwing just smiled as he was dropped and said: “And I missed you too, B. How did the mission go?”

Batmans face turned sour and he said: “Talia has a new “prisoner”, so you know how that ends.”

“Ahw, too bad, B, but at least you got him.” Nightwing slapped him on the shoulder and the others all walked in.

Batman actually smiled and a lot of the kids smiled back and gave him a hug, a half hug or something similar. They said their greetings and the with one hand movement from the Bat, they all got in line. The leaguers eyes almost fell out of their sockets, no one had been able to control the little monsters like that when they terrorized the Tower.

Batman walked down the line inspecting all his kids. He stopped by Red Robin and asked: “The systems?”

The kid replied: “All updated, and by the way I can’t believe you lasted so long with that outdated software so long.”

Batman nodded and said: “Good.”

The kid saluted. Batman walked over to the quieter teens and asked them all: “What of the damage is yours?”

They answered and he gave them a punishment and let them go home. Most left grumbling and complaining silently. Then he walked to Blackbat and said: “You can also go.”

Nightwing made an offended noise and started to protest, but that was quickly cut of by a batglare. When Blackbat walked away she stuck out her tongue to Nightwing, who pouted in return. Now only Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, Red Hood and Red Robin remained. Batman pointed at Red Hood and Robin and asked: “Any bodies?”

Both shook their heads, Batman eyed them suspiciously for a second and then asked Robin: “Any animal adoptions I should know of?”

The boy shook his head and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he grumbled: “There aren’t even insects in this stupid Tower.”

Batman smiled a bit and turned to the whole group. He asked: “In oder left to right, yes, Red Hood, my left and right, and tell me about everything you wrecked.”

Immediately the protests started “What!” “That’s unfair!” “Why do you think we wrecked everything?” “What about the others!”.

With another gesture they all shut up. Batman gave them a look and they all sighed. Robin said: “I only wrecked some of the vents in my search of animal life on board, father. Nothing else.” Red Hood cleared his throat and Robin added: “Maybe a bit of training gear.”

Batman nodded and wrote something down, then it was Nightwings turn. “Ok, so you know me, B. I love doing tricks, but I didn’t know that all these ceilings were shit, so there might be a few holes here and there where I drilled to install some trapeze stuff and it broke and then I placed them somewhere else again and like that it went on. Oh, and I accidentally broke the fridge and a few chairs and a monitor screen.” He turned to Batgirl, “That’s all, right?”

She whispered back: “The table, don’t forget the table. Oh, and the lamp.”

He nodded and turned back to Batman and said: “And a table and a lamp… s. I think multiple.”

Batman massaged his temples and wrote something down again. Batgirl said: “I feel like I am being lumped by them. I didn’t break as much as they did.”

“But you broke something.” Batman stated.

Her shoulders dropped and she threw her hands in the air. “It was an accident, I swear.” she said, “I was just minding me own business, watching the monitors when Robin and Red Hood walked in, fighting. I tried to break them up, but I accidentally broke, like three of the monitors. But it’s more their fault then mine!”

Batman let out a long suffering sigh and wrote it down. Red Hood was next. He said: “Hey, I don’t need to tell you. There were no bodies, that’s a win.”

Batman rubs his eyes and tiredly says: “Just humor me. The sooner this is over the sooner I can sleep and you can go.”

At that moment everyone pitied the Bat a bit, even Red Hood. “I broke some sort of weird vase, couple of lights, a couch and some trays, but I did cook and made everyone eat their vegetables, so I deserve points for that.”

Batman nods and says: “Good point. I’ll keep it in mind.”

Nightwing spoke up and yelled: “Hey, I didn’t know we could say good stuff we did! I ate my vegetables and I made everyone train!”

“I consumed my vegetables as well and I trained with Nightwing.” Robin said.

“Yeah, and I stopped a fight!” Batgirl said.

“Quiet. I heard you, now Red Robin what did you wreck?” Batman asked, “except more of your health.”

Red Robin had dead eyes and he mechanically answered: “I broke the coffeemaker, Bat, the is day has been hell.”

He swayed a bit on his feet and went silent. The others leaned forward to see his face. “He’s-”

“Asleep, yes Nightwing, I noticed. What did he wreck?”

“He broke two chairs.” Batgirl said.

“And he fried a computer.” Nightwing added.

“And a broom. I don’t recall how he did that.” Robin said.

“Oh, don’t forget that he totally stabbed that training robot and tore apart all the wiring.” Red Hood said, excitedly, “That was cool.”

Batman sighed again and wrote that down as well. Then he went down the row again. “Robin, no new pets for three months.” Robin gasped, eyes wide, “Nightwing, no extra patrol with Robin.” Nightwings mouth fell open, but he didn’t protest. “Batgirl, well, you did break up the fight, so you write all the reports this week.” Batgirl sighed in relief and Batman moved over to Red Hood, “For you, no guns.” he walked on and whispered to himself: “As if he listens.” then he woke Red Robin and said: “Red Robin, you need to sleep for ten hours tonight and only two mugs of coffee a day for a week.”

Red Robin immediately started to protest: “What! You can’t mean that, Batman! I need that coffee. Don’t take that, please. I didn’t even wreck that much, please.”

“It’s just a week. You’ll survive.” Batman said as he ignored the other pleas.

“I expect you all at family dinner Saturday. Now scram, I need to clean up your messes.” Batman waved them away and the kids were quick to do just that.

When they were gone Batman let himself fall into a chair. The rest of the league, who had watched this whole ordeal silently, had never seen the Batman tired. It all had been kind of spooky. Wonder Woman was the first to speak up again: “Why don’t you rest, Batman. We’ll start with the clean up and you can fix everything an other time.”

Batman looked up, for once, his face sincere. “Would you do that? Thank you.” he said.

Some wanted to protest against Wonder Womans statement, but the thankfulness in Batmans voice made them stop. When they looked over again, Batman had fallen asleep in his chair. Flash said: “Well, he sure needs his rest, but don’t think I’ll let him get away with not answering every question tomorrow.”

The others agreed and set to work as quietly as possible.

[skycrystal23]

Connor x Deaf!Reader

A soundless happy world

Summary: Being deaf is sometimes frustrating and one of the only things you look forward to is lunch with your long time friend Gavin Reed. Along your journey in search for the detective you run into an android who in turn aids in your search for the missing detective.

Characters: Connor RK800, Gavin Reed, Reader, Hank {brief cameo}, RK900 {brief cameo}

Words: 4 000 {aprox.}

Warnings: Cursing and cuteness

PART TWO 

The world was silent.

    It has always been silent ever since you were a baby. When you were born you had a birth defect affecting your hearing. You communicated through ASL, not many people knew it but those who did you greatly appreciated. Sometimes communicating was difficult and frustrating when you were trying to get your point across. Speaking was difficult, most of the time you opted out of speaking. It wasn’t impossible for you to speak but sometimes you feared of how loud your voice may come across or if the person you’re speaking to will be able to understand you.

    Frustration was at the forefront of your mind half of the time. It was an emotion that you experienced every day of your life. You didn’t come from a very rich family therefore you never really had any sort of hearing aids. The only one’s now were created by Cyberlife and they were quite expensive, so much so that your parents couldn’t afford it. You found no use for them now. It would only confuse you and you would have to re-learn things that you’ve done your whole life without the use of a hearing aid. That didn’t ever stop you from accomplishing anything. Everywhere you went there were androids and they were programmed to understand and respond using ASL.

    Now you were independent and lived on your own in the city. You had a job using computers, technology was something you spent your past time tinkering with when you were younger. For the most part you were a pretty lonely child; kids would tease you mercilessly at school. You knew that they only teased because they didn’t understand. However, you made one friend during your teenage years. Gavin Reed – he could come off as an insensitive asshole but at times he could be sweet. He’d also threaten to beat up anyone that picked on you.

    Your days were spent at home in your apartment complex. Several companies employed you for file organization, security software upkeep, and etcetera; even Cyberlife, the company that jacked up prices for necessary items for the disabled (insensitive assholes), hired you to do menial tasks from time to time. As you were typing away at your computer, fingers tapping the glowing keys faster than anyone else in this city, the silver bracelet on your wrist vibrated. You paused and raised your arm, squinting to read the small text moving across it.

    There was a system hooked up around the apartment, connected to your phone and other pieces of technology you owned, that would send you little messages. It was a reminder from your electronic calendar to head out to the DPD; once a week Gavin would treat you to lunch, mostly to get you outside in the fresh air. With a sigh you pushed away from your desk and shrugged on the black windbreaker hanging on the back of your chair. The spring air was rather crisp and there was still frost on the ground as you exited the building.

    A few months ago was the end of the android revolution, personally you were rooting for the deviants. Gavin not so much, he was a stubborn ass. There were androids and humans all around you as you walked through the city. The precinct Gavin worked out of was only a few minutes’ walk away from your apartment complex. You’ve never actually been inside the precinct before, something about how Gavin had to protect his ‘tough guy image’. It was something you would never understand. You waited for a while outside, rubbing your arms up and down as you tried to keep from freezing to death.

    After fifteen minutes you sighed and stepped inside. It was toasty warm inside of the building causing the tip of your red nose to burn ever so slightly. Your eyes darted around the front foyer as you watched all of the people interact with one another. Gavin had never been late like this before, you were worried. Reluctantly you walked up to the front desk being greeted by a female android. Her smile was bright, hair pulled back into a ponytail, and face covered in clusters of freckles. “Hello, I’m here to see Detective Reed.” You signed.

“Does Detective Reed know you’re coming?” she signed back.

“Yes.” You smiled, dropping your hands to your side.

    The LED on the androids temple turned yellow as she stared at you. The LED turned back to a calming blue and she flashed you a kind smile. “Detective Reed isn’t here at the moment, he should be arriving shortly. You can wait by his desk through there if you’d like.” The android signed gesturing towards the far right of the building where double glass doors were located. You signed ‘thank you’ and went on your way. It was much larger once you entered through the glass doorways. There were dozens of human and android officers bustling around the office in a hurry.

    It was strange being in here. A part of you felt guilty for coming in without telling Gavin first that you’d be here. Well, at least it would be a surprise for him. You stuck by the wall and surveyed the busy room with your eyes whilst picking at the palm of your hand. It was a nervous tick you picked up from your mother’s side of the family. This was stressful; all of this was so new. Where even was his desk there was like forty of them in here? Perhaps if you stood here long enough and willed him to show up he would. Then you could leave.

    Normally you wouldn’t be feeling such stress but this was a police station. There were dozens of officers around and here you were lurking like a weirdo. After a few minutes of watching people go by you a new feeling washed over you. It wasn’t necessarily fear but you felt neglected maybe? Why wouldn’t Gavin tell you he wasn’t going to be here for lunch? All of these questions were rushing through your mind at once making you further upset about the situation. That’s when someone approached you.

    By the LED flashing on the side of his head you could tell he was an android. He was still adorning a Cyberlife uniform and he currently stood directly in front of you. From the way the lights were in the room his shadow was casted over you, you felt so small. He opened his mouth and began to speak; of course you didn’t understand a word he was saying. People always had this idea that you could read lips, which was false. When you didn’t respond his LED flashed yellow. “Hello, my name is Connor.” He signed with a small smile gracing his lips.

    For another moment you just stared at him. Was this the Connor that Gavin was always complaining about? The way Gavin described him made him seem like a tall scary android. However, he was far from that. He was actually kind of cute; you couldn’t help but blush at the thought. The android tilted his head to the side and continued to stare at you. “Hello.” You signed back in response. His brown eyes seemed to light up, eyebrows slightly raised and nose crinkled as he smiled. Wow, he had a really nice smile. If Gavin knew you fancied the android he loathed he’d probably shoot you and then himself.

    Connor glanced around before moving out of the way once he noticed how cooped up you looked against the wall. “You seem distressed, is there anything I can assist you with?” he signed. You looked to the ground watching as the toe of your shoe awkwardly twisted and moved against the tile floor. With a sigh you looked back up at him, “I’m a friend of Gavin’s, have you seen him?” you signed, lips turned down into a slight frown. You could feel the nervous knot in your stomach slowly beginning to unravel. At least you had someone to keep you company.

    The android abruptly turned his head which in turn caused you to look in his direction as well. There was a taller, older man with shoulder length grey hair that approached you and Connor. He looked between the two of you with raised eyebrows before saying something to the android you were speaking with. The two had a brief conversation, you studying their facial expressions as they spoke. The older man looked tense by what Connor said and then he laughed. The brunet android turned back to you and offered you a sad smile.

    One of the first things that came to mind when you saw that smile, that smile of pity and empathy, was that Gavin was either hurt or dead. You really hoped that it wasn’t the second option. As much as he was an annoyance and a prick you would miss him if he were dead. Gavin was your only friend (it sounded pretty pitiful now that you thought about it). “I apologize; the Detective is currently in the ER getting a non-lethal gunshot wound patched up. He and his new partner unfortunately dealt with a violent individual leading to a shoot out.” Connor signed slowly.

    There were so many new unanswered questions that were now occupying your current thoughts. Gavin had a new partner? He didn’t tell you he got shot? Did he think you wouldn’t find out? You were definitely going to rip him a new one when you got to the ER. Your face was flushed red as you blew hot air out of your nostrils in an attempt to curb your annoyance. “Thank you, I will be going now.” You signed quickly before stomping off. Reed was so dead. Before you could reach the glass doors that led to the front foyer a firm hand landed on your shoulder.

    The person’s firm grip left you having to stand still. They let go and walked around to the front of you. It was Connor, why was he stopping you? “If you would like, I could take you there.” He signed with a small smile. A sigh blew past your lips. Normally you would reject such an offer but Connor definitely had the credentials to get you inside the room Gavin was in.

Oh how right you were.

    The lady at the front desk of the ER didn’t even stop the two of you once Connor flashed his badge. Your heart was hammering in your chest as you threw open the door to the hospital room. Gavin was seated on the bed, shirtless with a bandage wrapped around the front of his chest and over his shoulder. His face visibly paled when he saw you, eyes going wide and mouth falling open. Next to him stood an android, he looked exactly like Connor but at the same time he didn’t. Gavin’s eyes narrowed as he looked past you, a hand landed on the small of your back.

    The sudden touch almost made you jump as you looked up to see Connor standing beside you. He said something, his lips moving as he formed every single word. In that moment you studied his face - the way his hair was combed back except for a lock of hair that hung stubbornly against his forehead, his soft brown eyes, the slight curve of his jaw, and the freckles that were spaced out on his face. He was undeniably adorable, designed to look friendly and welcoming. Your gaze then drifted to what seemed like his copy.

    His outfit was much more reserved and brighter, lips set in a thin line, ice blue eyes, eyebrows set low enough to give him the look as if he were constantly scowling, and the absence of freckles on his face. Not to mention that he looked taller. Just looking at him sent a chill down her spine. She was snapped out of her visual studies when Connor’s fingers tapped a random rhythm against her back. The sensation made your face grow warm and goose bumps to rise along your arms. Now she turned her attention to Gavin who was simply glaring at you, or was he glaring at Connor?

    You walked over and swatted him on the side of the head. “What the hell?” You signed furiously. Gavin’s eyes narrowed even further, eyebrows knit together in the meanest glare he could muster. He took a deep breath and crossed his arm, turning his head to look away from you. So he was ignoring you now? You grabbed his face, fingers digging into his jaw as you turned his head back so he would look at you. The atmosphere of the room was tense and the anger was radiating off of you in waves. You dragged your hand away, nails leaving telltale red marks on his skin that would vanish in a few minutes.

    An argument between the two of you ensued. To anyone walking by they would raise an eyebrow. There was a flurry of quick hand gestures as you signed a multitude of curse words towards him. “What were you thinking?” You signed; face flushed bright red out of anger.

“What I was thinking was that I was doing my fucking job!” he signed back just as quickly.

“You’re so damn frustrating!” you replied.

“And what the hell are you doing with the plastic prick?” his face was beginning to redden as well.

“I could say the same to you!” you retorted.

    You balled your hands into tight fists feeling the anger coursing through you. Why did life have to be so frustrating? Gavin could have gotten himself killed. You felt the hot tears begin to make it known as you reached up and wiped at your wet eyes with your jacket sleeve. Upon seeing your tears Gavin’s face softened. This was a first for both androids in the room to see the usually hardened detective look so soft, so worried. Why did he have to be so stubborn? You felt his hand brushed against your face as he wiped a few tears away. Curse Gavin Reed. “I’m sorry.” He signed slowly.

    Your eyes widened to see him say that. Was Gavin Reed apologizing? He never apologized. In return you lightly punched him in the shoulder watching him wince in pain. You snickered, “that’s what you get for being an ass and not showing up for lunch.” You signed with a playful smirk. He didn’t reply, instead he flicked you in the forehead. The two of you bickered like siblings would; he was the older brother in this attempt at a familial relationship. For the next hour you stayed and chatted with Gavin. Mostly asking questions about his new partner.

    RK900, he was the upgraded version of Connor. Gavin called him Nines for short. While the two of you spoke you would occasionally spare a glance over at Connor. You were surprised he stayed for so long. He and Nines were standing side by side, lips moving quickly in their conversation. The taller android seemed far from impressed by his predecessor. “Head home, have the plastic prick drive you since you seem to like him so much.” Gavin signed, the way he dragged out his gestures was meant to be teasing. With that he sat taller, eyes now narrowed as he looked past you at the two androids.

    He said something and then returned his grey-eyed gaze back to you. “See you later, prick.” He signed with a smirk.

“Love you too bitch.” You replied standing up.

    Connor stood by the doorway and smiled as you approached him. As you walked down the long stretch of the sterile white corridor you felt his hand return to the small of your back. You had several questions you wanted to ask the android detective. If he was single was one of them but you were too embarrassed to even attempt at asking such a question. “Is he your brother?” you signed looking up at him curiously. Nines was a lot like Connor from what you observed by looks alone. Would they be considered brothers? He removed his hand from your back, “I would like to consider him that, however, I’m still learning how family dynamics work.” He answered.

    The car ride to your home was quiet like everything else in your life was. It wasn’t awkward like you envisioned it. You sat next to each other in the self-driving taxi, perhaps closer than acquaintances would. “What did Gavin ask?” you asked curiously while turning to face him.

“Detective Reed made it very clear to get you home safely. He also said he would break my fingers off if I tried anything, do you know what he means by that?” he signed, tilting his head to the side in the way he did when he was in slight confusion.

    Your face flushed a bright shade of red and the car suddenly got very hot. Only Gavin Reed would say something like that to an android that has no idea what it means. “Your temperature has risen and your heart rate has significantly sped up, are you alright?” Connor signed, eyebrows knit together in concern. You nodded while chewing on the inside of your cheek. The rest of the drive was, for a lack of better words, quiet. No words were exchanged for the rest of the ride.

    When the taxi stopped in front of your apartment complex you half expected him to step out of the vehicle and walk you up. Connor was really sweet, you liked him. You pushed the sleeve of your jacket up and waved your bracelet in front of the small scanner that controlled the lock. This bracelet was honestly the best thing ever. “Would you like to come inside?” you signed watching as his LED flashed yellow for a brief moment. He offered a curt nod and followed you inside the cozy apartment. Inside wasn’t anything fancy or extravagant.

    It was accordingly decorated to suit your personality and it was all open concepts. The place really didn’t have any rooms beside the washroom at the far corner of the large room. Connor closed the door behind him and promptly hung up his Cyberlife jacket on the coat rack. You did the same and slipped your boots off as well. You motioned with your hand for him to follow you further into the apartment. His LED flashed yellow again as he looked around the place, you guessed that he was scanning the area. “So this is my place.” You introduced awkwardly as you motioned and gave a dramatic spin.

    Again the place wasn’t anything fancy. There weren’t many interesting things around here. “Have you always been unable to hear?” he signed, his eyes twinkling with curiosity. The android definitely asked a lot of questions. You gave a quick nod and turned to head to the kitchen. All of a sudden you felt quite hungry. Then again you were promised a lunch that Gavin never showed up for. You opened the refrigerator and pulled out an apple, promptly taking a bite out of the red fruit as soon as you closed the refrigerator door.

    As soon as you turned around you jumped when you came face to face with Connor’s chest. He was standing rather close. Of course, you brushed it off as androids not quite understanding personal space. You gave him a small wave and stepped past him, ducking your head to hide the blush on your cheeks. The android followed after you and took a seat next to you on the nearby couch. “Why don’t you have a hearing aid, do you not require one?” he asked.

You shrugged, “I didn’t have one growing up, didn’t need one then and I certainly don’t need one now.” You replied.

    It was strange having someone ask you such personal questions like this. The only person who asked such questions before was Gavin and that was when you first met as teenagers. “How long have you and Detective Reed known each other?” Why was he asking all of these questions? He must be one hell of a curious android. Then again he was originally programmed to be a detective, asking questions to gain information was in his nature – even if said information was useless. “Too long.” You snorted and rolled your eyes.

“Were you ever romantically involved?” Connor signed.

    Immediately you wanted to puke at the thought of that. Gavin was more of an older brother to you than anything. The thought of even kissing him made you shudder. You shook your head, a look of disgust displayed on your face. Connor seemed to ease up then, his body seeming less tense now. “I find you very intriguing and you’ve caused multiple system warnings to pop up since I first saw you at the precinct. Hank says I should ‘ask out’ a person that I find interesting enough to want to spend my spare time with.” He signed with a nervous smile.

    In the dim light of the room you could see the light tinge of blue colouring his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Was he asking you out? As in a date? You stared at him with wide eyes and a quick beating heart as you were unsure what to sign back to him. Today was crazy enough as it was, you didn’t expect to be getting a date with a cute android such as him. “I – yes I would like to go out with you.” You quickly signed, hands fumbling as you did so. Connor’s eyes went wide and lips slightly parted as he stared at you. His LED was spinning a bright yellow, blinking as well.

    Did he not think you would agree? “Okay, I will meet you here at six o’clock tomorrow evening.” He signed now standing up from the sofa. Connor practically ran towards the front door of the apartment, face flushed a bright blue. You giggled feeling your vocal cords vibrate in your throat as you followed him to the door. He turned to face you as you opened the door for him. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, yes?” you signed with a small smile. He eagerly nodded and stepped outside into the hallway.

“Wait one more thing!” You quickly signed over to him.

    You placed your hands on his shoulders and went up on your tip toes. Connor stiffened, eyes blowing wider than when you originally agreed to this ‘date’. Gently you pressed your lips against his cheek, lips lingering for a moment too long before pulling away. You laughed when you pulled away seeing how blue in the face he was. Connor stood there for a moment registering what happened before slowly raising his hand and waving goodbye.

He was sweet and perhaps this world wasn’t as lonely as you once thought it was.

A/N: Should I make a part 2?

[undrakeable]

If you have recently started looking for employment

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 Customize Your Cover Letter, Too

For starters, this means that you need to address it into some person.  (And no, that individual's never named,"To Whom it May Concern.")  And that it should open and shut with attention-grabbing lines. If you want to read more information regarding Certifind check out our page.

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You will want to start by reaching out to your own network and letting them know you're looking for a new task (here is a great template for that email).  Then, the uncomfortable part, asking strangers to assistance.  It's easier than you would imagine!  For example, this email template will provide you with a meeting with nearly anyone you ask.  The goal here is to set up informational interviews (a.k.a., coffee dates) to not only get your foot in the doorway, but also find out more about companie you're interested in and find the right fit.

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[revolutionwhoop]

(R)Evolution 04: The Old Tuck and Roll

Dahlia groaned as she climbed from beneath the rubble. It smelled horrible! What in the world had happened, here? She was in pain, but looking around, she wasn’t sure why she was even alive! But, then again… That guy SHOT her! She checked herself for signs of the shooting, and there wasn’t even a scar there. She heard something and looked over to see a drone fly by her head. She didn’t know who was in control of it, but she wanted to get out of it’s way.

After a moment, soldiers were coming in her direction. She began to run, her breasts and buttocks bouncing around as she tried to get over the piles of stone and broken glass. “You, stop!” They might as well had said run faster, because that was what she did. Someone fired at her and she winced when she was hit by a dart? Tranquilizer, she guessed. The dart shot out of her flesh and the tranquilizer didn’t seem to do a damn thing. Either it was defective, her adrenaline was pumping too much, or something else altogether that she didn’t have the time to think about. Now, she wasn’t particularly fast, but the soldiers were briefly taken aback by her resistance to the dart, so they gave chase a little late. Someone grabbed her and she yelped, but they covered her mouth. “Where the hell did she go?” a soldier asked and they ran right past her and whoever had grabbed her.

When they were out of sight, the woman unhanded her mouth and said, “You should leave with us.” She turned to see a beautiful woman wearing a shash and garbasaar, accompanied by a few other people. “I am Bishaaro. What is your name?”

“Dahlia,” Dahlia answered. The soldiers came back and she almost took off running, but Bishaaro and her friends joined hands and grabbed her too, and the soldiers passed them again. Bishaaro placed her finger over her mouth at Dahlia, and led the way, walking opposite of the soldiers, nobody breaking contact with her.

They got off of the site, and into a nearby abandoned building. Dahlia wondered, “What the hell is going on? One minute, I was being told that I have a condition that’s like a second period, the next, I’m being shot, and then I wake up buried under I don’t even know how many feet of just a whole ass crumbled building? And why the soldiers couldn’t see us?”

Bishaaro reached for one of her friends’ hands, and the two vanished, then they reappeared. “It is my blessing. If I don’t want them to, people can’t see me. If I touch you, the same becomes true for you. Those men meant you harm. You were wise to run from them. The missing people, all over the city? They are actually being taken from all over the world, not just here.” She opened her phone and showed Dahlia a photo of Niyilolawa Uchechukwu. “Did you see her, while you were inside?”

“The girl who’s been in the news? No! Should I have? Was she in there? Is she sick, too?”

Bishaaro smiled sadly, “No, she isn’t sick and neither are you. You have no idea what we are. We are glorious, Sister. We are magical. We are evolved.”

“Look, I love me some black pride too, but I’ve been miserable. I’ve been extremely ill,” Dahlia argued.

Bishaaro thought for a moment, then said, “Whenever my evolution began to process, I would literally vanish at times, sometimes, only a little - They said that I looked like a ghost, like you could see right through me… Maybe what you are capable of has to do with health. You told me that you were shot. What happened with that?”

Dahli checked for the shot wound again, even though she knew it wasn’t there. “Well, I maybe had a bad dream, because I thought I was shot right here, but there’s nothing there, you know?”

“Perhaps you can regenerate. I have a friend who is capable of this. He does get hurt and it does make a temporary effect, but then he heals completely. This must be your blessing, as well.”

“Shut up! You think… I can’t be killed?” Dahlia wondered. She had just seen an invisible woman, so, hell, maybe.

“I can’t be sure. It could be something else, but whatever it is that you can do - you aren’t sick…”

One of the men with her said, “She hasn’t seen Niyilolawa. We need to report back to the King of Spades.”

“King of Spades?” Dahlia repeated, “Princess of Spades! I heard that name whenever I was in there. They put me in some kind of chamber. They would knock us out, but I would always wake up, and sometimes overhear stuff. The Princess of Spades was being taken out before they…” She covered her mouth, “Before they destroyed the building. It wasn’t an accident! They meant to blow up the building, with us in it, but they said that they were taking her away.”

“Should we bring Dahlia back with us? Papa Diamond might want to check her out and see if there’s anything in there that we can use to help us find Lola,” one of the other women asked.

Bishaaro smiled at Dahlia and wondered, “Do you consent to coming with us, so that one of our leaders might search your mind for information?”

Dahlia put both of her hands over her chest, “That sounds scary, but being here seems scary, too. I have no idea what has happened to my life. All because I was worried about losing some hair and some weight…” They were waiting on her answer. “Oh, yes… I’ll consent to that. Though, the last time I consented to something, I ended up getting abducted, shot and blew up…” They had all joined hands again and within moments, were vanishing again - but this was different. It was scary. It was quick, and it moved, instantaneously. They ended up somewhere else and while everyone else seemed fine and returned just how they vanished; she landed on her butt, then she vomited. “Oh, Lord…”

The crabby guy said, “Sorry. Didn’t have much time to prepare you for long distance teleportation. But, I anticipated this.”

The woman who suggested that they bring her offered, “This ought to be easier.” She opened her arms wide and a hole opened in the sky, which led to a room. The others stepped through, so Dahlia followed.

“Y’all got some good blessings!” As quickly as she commented, the others were gone. She didn’t know if she should take a seat or remain standing, but there was a chair, so she sat down. Moments later, what she mistook for a wall opened like an elevator and a completely different group of people stepped out of it. She jumped, startled, and stood up.

“Please. Remain seated,” one of the men said.

“That girl that’s missing… She a real princess, huh? Y’all like some African dignitaries, here to get your princess back and because I came out the building, I’m about to be tortured for information!” Dahlia panicked.

Two of the men slightly chuckled. The other two What’s her name’s parents were very grave in appearance. Everyone looked well off. The first man, a dark brown with a bald head and a mustache told her, “I’ll clarify for you. One could say that she’s a princess. We tend to refer to her as a queen, however. And we are dignitaries, in our own right. But, nobody is going to torture you Dahlia. You have already consented and this will not hurt, though you may feel overwhelmed and dizzy at certain points. I’m basically going to take a journey into your mind and only sift through the moments spent inside of that facility.”

“How do you do that?” She wondered.

“It’s quite simple for you. I do all the work, and I’m very good at what I do. First, I search for your earliest memory of the facility, and you do me the favor, just from me mentioning it, of thinking of it for me. Then, I take a glance around, cataloging what I see, and scanning it, like software, to find anything related to Niyilolawa, Princess, or “that girl.” Then, I meet you back here, at this very spot where we first met.”

“Okay. Okay, that sounds simple. Let’s do it.”

“It’s done. Thank you for your time.” The four of them left and she frowned. “We’ll have Bishaaro’s search team take you back to wherever you desire.” As the four vanished through the camouflaged elevator, she heard him say, “She knows less than we do, but I did see the face of the man in charge of the place.” The elevator closed, then opened and the same four people who found her and brought her here came out of it this time.

“Okay, look… I can’t tell if this is some kind of weird laboratory simulation, a drug induced nightmare, or real life. Make this more real for me. Who are y’all?” Dahlia insisted.

Bishaaro gave her a warm, small smile. “We are friends of the woman that you recognized from the news. She is missing, and we are a search team, trying to find her. We brought you here because you survived the destruction of the lab. Not all of us did, and some who were there may have seen something that can help us to know where they took our friend. We’ll bring you outside of the danger zone. There is a quarantine. We have several friends trapped inside, trying to find each other and touch base with one another, so that they can be retracted when ready.”

“Has… The world ended?” Dahlia asked.

“Maybe. Maybe the world has only begun…” She placed a hand on her cheek, and the others touched, up through where the teleportation guy did his thing and they wound up right outside of Dahlia’s apartment. “There are soldiers here,” Bishaaro observed. “Stay in this spot, I will take her inside, to look around.” The other three nodded. As they entered, Bishaaro reminded her, “I can only affect them not seeing us. Be very quiet.”

Dahlia opened her front door and had to immediately cover her mouth with both hands to hide a gasp. Her things were thrown all over the place.

Bishaaro had hold of her pocket and they slowly went through the place. She whispered, “It’s empty, but there might be cameras. If you need to pack anything, move slowly, in case they’re watching from outside in a van or something.”

Dahlia whispered in fear, “I have no idea what they could be looking for or would have wanted!”

Bishaaro cupped her cheeks, “Please keep calm… They probably wanted to check with your friends and family to see who they may be able to use to find you. It will not be safe for you to return to anyone that you know. If you’d like, I am willing to offer you refuge at our compound.”

“I… Can’t. If they’re going to be visiting or watching my loved ones, I can’t just hide and let them go after them to get to me. They don’t have healing skin. They won’t be able to protect themselves from these crazy people!”

“That is very brave of you. I’ll stay until you’ve packed a bag, and we’ll see you to some drop off spot. But, if you do need an extraction, or even just a sit down with our leader, use this.”  She handed her a playing card - the 2 of diamonds. “You remember what Tonya did, when she spread her arms and opened the air?”

“She created a portal,” Dahlia confirmed.

“Yes. She also created these for us. I am the Deuce of Diamonds. Whenever you lift this to the sky and open your arms, you will open the sky and the portal will lead you to me.”

“What if… You in a shoot out or something?”

“Well, then, hopefully neither of us dies. I can’t just leave you without a means to return to safety.” She hugged her. “Let’s finish gathering your things.”

.

Everywhere they teleported to, there were guards or had been guards. Ife, the teleporter, grew weary. “We will have to leave her,” he said. Bishaaro wanted to argue with him, but Dahlia could see that she knew he was right. They were on a mission, and they had gone off mission to help her and were taking a lot out of him to do so.

“Yeah, this is fine. I’ll be alright,” she said. “Thank y’all for everything, even you Ife. You are so fine, but you need to lighten up, Bruh.”

“Our friend may be being tortured right now, Dahlia. And she doesn’t heal. So, perhaps I’m under pressure!” He fussed.

“Sorry. Thank you. I hope that you find her unharmed,” Dahlia said, and just like that, they were gone. She covered herself in her hoodie, to hide and went along. They had taken her to withdraw all of her money from an ATM, then teleport away from it, in case her card was being monitored. So, she had a little cash, but only so much as to survive a little while, if extremely frugal. She went into the library to check on the stories about the lab and saw a list of people who had died there. She saw the name Folami Adebowale. She wasn’t sure why that looked familiar, but for some reason, it jumped out at her. She checked social media, to double check it and saw the lady that she met whenever she first signed in. “Oh no!” She said, upon seeing her face. She seemed alright. Dahlia had a feeling that she wasn’t a part of whatever they were doing to people in there.

Her page had a photo of her with four other women who were basically identical in looks, to her, and she sent one of them a message. Hi, Faith. I wanted to say that I’m sorry for what happened to your sister. She seemed very nice, and I’m positive that whatever you might hear, she didn’t have nothing to do with the mess that was going down in that place.

Faith: Hi. Who is this, might I ask?

Dahlia: People may be looking for me, so I don’t want to get you into any trouble.

Faith: My sister knew what was happening. She was going to try to stop it. We were going to try to help… Please, tell me who you are!

Dahlia: My name is Dahlia Henderson.

Faith: Dahlia! Bloom! It’s me, Folami. We have to meet. I’m not dead, but it’s a long story. You’re the first person that I know of, besides me to have survived.

Dahlia: That’s a long story, too… Are you… You know?

Faith/Folami: Special? Lol. Look… Let’s meet some place neutral. I need a friend. I’m so glad that you made it out. Where can we meet?

[antiques-for-geeks]

Review Special : Talking to Stuart Benny of Benny Games

It’s all the rage these days, tracking down the authors of games you used to play to find out more about them, their game and what happened to them. As you’d expect, some are more difficult to track down than others and even when you do, not all of them are willing to speak with you about the past.

Surprisingly, Stuart Benny was quite easy to find - a quick search on LinkedIn turned up a profile and a quick exchange of messages later, he agreed to do a short interview over Skype as like the rest of us, he’s isolating while the latest Pandemic plays out.

We caught up with Stuart from his home in the Midlands to find out more about Benny Games, how he came to write the seminal On The Busses, the aftermath and were intrigued to hear that he is back on the development trail.

The familiar, minimalist logo of Benny Games as it adorned software shop shelves for those fleeting few years in the 1980s. 

AfG : Hi Stuart, how the devil are you?

Stuart Benny : Not bad thanks. I’ve managed to avoid this Corona thing that’s going around up to now thankfully. Seeing all the news stories, it’s quite scary.

Yeah, it’s quite something isn’t it? We’re all working from home which seemed a bit inconvenient, but at least we no longer have to put up with Meat reading Twitter out loud at us all day and telling us every five minutes that we need to buy more bog-roll.

Fortunately I work from home these days, so not a problem for me. I don’t miss sharing an office.

So what do you do today?

At the moment I work with development teams out in India building commerce software. These days I don’t write the code, I just prepare a specification for the off-shore coders and talk to the clients here in the UK. IT is not as much fun as it used to be. Back in the day I worked in a team of coders that wrote the software the team in India now extend. Seems to be the way of the world.

Your early work led to a career?

Yeah. To be fair Benny Games ending was a good thing as it meant I was able to do things like go to University. I think I would have missed a valuable experience, but it would have been brilliant to have been up there with Peter Molyneux or David Braben.

Tell us about it. Pop, Meat and I tried our hand at a lot of programming but didn’t get very far.

It’s not an easy business.

How did you get involved in it?

I had gotten hold of a Spectrum in 1984, it was one of the rubber key ones that we got from my cousin who changed his for a Spectrum+. I’d played games round my friend’s houses but really wanted to create my own so I spent my lunch break learning how to write BASIC on the school computers. Getting the Spectrum was the final piece in the puzzle because now I wasn’t limited to an hour a day on a computer and had a proper manual that showed you how to write programs.

So I studied the manual and experimented. I created a basic Space Invaders clone called, imaginatively, Invaders from Space and sent it to budget labels, but they weren’t interested. That’s when Benny Games were born, I thought the game would be able to sell so I took some money I’d earned from my paper round, bought a pack of ten computer cassettes from Boots and my brother duplicated the game on his tape-to-tape. My friend Martin [Freeman, no relation to the actor] drew a cover, which I got photocopied on the machine down the library. Once they were all ready, I put a classified ad in the local paper and waited for the orders to come in.

And was it a success?

I managed to sell the ten tapes eventually.

I guess that not having the advertising push didn’t help.

At the time I was really disappointed, but I think that it was definitely a learning experience. It didn’t occur to send a review copy to a magazine, but to be honest, it was probably for the best.

But it still sold, so that must have been a small encouragement.

Maybe, but it underlined that I couldn’t do it all by myself. So I asked Martin if he wanted to help me on the next game. He had a Spectrum too and things like a joystick interface.

And that game would be Star Crash?

Star Crash, Yes. Martin had got a copy of the film on VHS from his Uncle and we used to watch it. We wanted to make a game that closely followed the plot, but we didn’t really know how to make it work, so we focussed on the space battle at the end of the game and made a shoot ‘em up. I did the code for the game itself as well as the sound effects and Martin designed the in-game graphics and box art.

It was a nice little game, influenced a lot by Galaxian, but subconsciously. There was one of those machines at the youth centre and Martin played it a few times. The big difference technically was that we did it in machine code, which sped the game up.

Again, we sold it direct for £4.99, but this time we put our money together and bought an ad in one of the Spectrum magazines and got more orders than the first time.

Looking back, at the time it didn’t occur to us to think about licensing for Star Crash. We were working in such a niche and at such a small scale, we got away with it I guess.

I must confess I struggled to find Star Crash. It’s not on sites like World of Spectrum.

No, I think it’s been largely forgotten. I think that Martin sent a review copy to Crash, but we never heard back from them. Must have got lost in the post.

I recorded over the original tape I saved the game on in the 1990s with a Menswe@r album.

So when would this be?

Probably 1995.

No, I mean when was Star Crash released?

That would have been 1985.

You’ve released two games now, so how did you go from that to writing On the Busses?

Well, Martin and I decided to leave school at 16 and set up for ourselves. We got a small loan with my Dad from the Local Government Enterprise scheme and set up in our garage.

Our plan was to release our own games, but a couple of our mates wanted us to release their efforts. That’s how Fletch (Andrew Fletcher, musician for On the Busses) got involved. He had written a text adventure version of a Doctor Who story called The State of Decay on the Commodore 16 and gave it to us. We changed the names of the characters and the planet and put it out as The Vampires of Proximus 3. It had this in-game music that really added atmosphere. It sold pretty well.

We also were sent a rough and ready version of Track and Field for the Spectrum by a local man who had bought one of the copies of Invaders from Space and wondered if we’d be interested in releasing his game. That was an ego boost. It had this weird bit in it where if you medalled, you had to negotiate with the doping control about why your wee smells funny. No-one else was doing it, so we left it in.

We tried to tie it into the buzz about the 1986 Commonwealth Games. It was called Edinburgh Games ‘86. That was less successful because we rushed it out.

Again, we struggled to find any trace of them online.

Yeah, I’m not sure where they ended up in the end. When Fletch sold his Commodore 16 in the 1990s, he sold his development tapes too. Probably someone out there still has it.

Point is, we were a bit fed up having to compromise bits of our games because we didn’t have access to the IP so decided to set our aim much higher. We were all better at coding, we had better hardware. It just seemed the right thing to do.

A scan of the cover is the only trace of The Vampires of Proximus 3 that we could find. Anywhere.

While Vampires is not licenced, On the Busses is. How did you come by that licence?

It really annoyed Fletch that we changed his game because we didn’t have a licence. My Dad, who was basically acting as manager for our company, said it was too risky to release it without the consent of the BBC as it was.

So, with the monies from Vampires we decided to see what we could do.

Initially we were going for a licence for OutRun. I was writing a game based on the arcade already - the busty woman sprite in On the Busses was originally for that game - and had a version of the first level done. It wasn’t very complete as I had to do it from memory, but it proved the point. At this stage it had no music.

We had no idea that US Gold had that relationship with Sega all sewn up, so after a very polite exchange of letters with Sega to see if they would do a licence with us, it looked like the project was going nowhere.

However, my mind cast back. My Grandma used to love watching On The Buses on a Saturday evening. When I was little we used to go round to hers for our tea and it would be on. I loved the antics that Stan and Jack got up to. So the thing held good memories for me.

I called the film and television company and they weren’t interested in doing a licence. After searching in the library, I eventually found a defunct publisher who had got the rights to produce new fiction books based on the series, but had never used it so I approached them.

The liquidator was only too happy to sell on the licence as they thought it was worthless.

Did it cost a lot?

I think it cost us £500 at the time. The liquidator was just pleased to get something for it.

What inspired the game?

Well, OutRun played a massive role obviously, but also games like Maniac Mansion with it’s dialogue and Infocom games like Hitch-hiker’s Guide with their in-box feelies that we copied in a unique way [the game infamously came with, amongst other things, a “used” condom in the box].

We wanted the game to be as close to the series, in spirit at least, as it could be. We wanted it to be like a new episode. Martin was doing a course in the evenings at the local college where they were digitising video, which is how we got the pictures of Stan and Blakey in and Fletch spent ages learning how to code for the AY chip in the [ZX Spectrum] +2 to get the music right. It took up so much memory though, we didn’t have anything left for the in-game music we’d planned. He was always a lot happier coding for the Commodore 16.

And the droop meter to monitor Stan’s ardour?

Yeah, we got that from Martin’s Mum. She said that she had no idea why young women in their twenties would be attracted to middle aged men with a gut who probably had the droop when there were plenty of virile young men about. Martin’s Dad shuffled awkwardly when she said it.

We put it in there because it was funny. If I did the game again today I’d probably leave it out because you can get Viagra now so there’s no need to worry about that kind of thing.

Yeah, I think that there might be other reasons.

How do you mean?

I mean, it’s a bit inappropriate isn’t it?

Loads of men have a wives half their age. You see them all the time in the celebrity pages of the papers. I think that Stan and Jack were proved right in the end.

Erm, the attention to detail in the game, like the digitised cut-scenes, were a bit of a breakthrough for the time and lauded in the reviews. How long was development in the end?

It was something we were all proud of, the lengths we went to to recreate the experience. It meant development took ages though, like nine months in the end. To get the dialogue for the arguments between Stan and Blakey, I spent ages watching tapes of the original series and writing it down. Things like that ate in the schedule and we were lucky to get it out for April 1988.

Why is the name spelt wrong though?

This again. I’ve had to explain this so much over the years. It was spelt wrong on the licence document we had so we followed that on my Dad’s friend’s advice; he was a solicitor.

So when the big moment came, the launch, were you happy?

I was thrilled. We rented a room at the local pub and invited the gaming press as well as the local paper and some people from an On the Buses fan group.

We had a bloke turn up from Video and Computer Games and he went very quiet when he saw the game. He took it away and after some negotiation with my Dad, we managed to get a full page advert opposite the review. We scored 91% from them which we were all ecstatic about.

The local paper did a nice article on us - you know, local boys done good - and said some nice things about the game. The On the Buses fan mob put us in their quarterly magazine for Summer 1988 complete with a glowing review.

Which was absolutely useless as we were out of business by then.

Out of business?

Well, yes. After we put out the game, it became clear that we’d not followed the rules of the licence. It was for original content only. As we’d used the digitised grabs and also the dialogue from the episodes, it didn’t count.

Ah, I can see why that might be a problem…

Always read the small print. After a couple of days on sale, we had to pull the entire thing for risk of getting sued.

So what happened then?

We ended up with a load of tapes duplicated that we could not sell, promotions we couldn’t run that still had to be paid for and so on. We were not able to absorb the cost of all of it and with no money coming in to fix it or release new games and try to keep going, we had no choice but to pull the plug.

Everything we had relating to the retail version of On the Busses ended up being thrown away, it had no value.

Closing the company must have been tough.

Fletch took it hardest; he had nearly finished a Commodore 16 game called Road Racer that was an unofficial port of OutRun. It was seriously good considering how weedy the system was. Our plan was to release it to the duplicators when the first payments for On the Busses came in. We’d have cleaned up with that one. It had started as a port of On the Busses, but we quickly realised it would be better to make it it’s own distinct game.

After we collapsed, he took it to a couple of other labels but could not find a market for it; everyone said it was two years too late. No doubt he felt like he’d wasted a year of his life, I know I did.

And you all left the industry at that point?

As I said earlier, I decided to quit while I was still not too far behind and get myself to University while Fletch and Martin decided to carry on with another company of their own. Sadly theirs didn’t see out the transition to 16-bit, but they had some success with a couple of budget games on the Commodore 64. Not sure what they are up to now.

Benny Games was a name that seemed to disappear without much explanation and there is precious little on the internet about them.

Now you know!

Are you involved in the retro scene these days?

Not really, I’m aware of people streaming games and things like that, but I’ve not sought the limelight.

I have been doing some coding though to keep my skills sharp. I’ve wanted to go back to OutRun for some time and do it like I wanted to back in 1987. Now there’s stuff like MAME I can see the reference material without shovelling 20p coins into a machine and get your mate to make notes.

Sounds interesting. We can’t wait to see what happens next. Thanks for your time Stuart!

Thanks; it’s been nice. It’s not often I get to talk about Benny Games these days outside of a job interview.

[technodragon]

ROOTING ANDROID DEVICES AND INSTALLING CUSTOM ROMS:  WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BEFORE DOING SO

NOTE:  I will not tell you how to root your device or install a custom ROM because different methods are required for different devices and can usually be found online with a web search.  Using the wrong method for rooting your device has a small chance of soft bricking it or causing other problems.

I have written this because there are a number of things people are not told about rooting an Android device in most cases, many people who write articles about rooting a device assume that the person reading the article has done his research and knows what he is getting into.  Don’t worry, where I address errors that could occur they sound scarier than they really are and they are only there to scare people out of using custom ROMS and using a device with an unlocked boot loader.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE ROOTING OR INSTALLING A CUSTOM ROM

Do research to find custom ROMs and a stock ROM for your device before rooting.  Most, but not all, devices these days have software that can flash the stock ROM if things go wrong.  Also, just because a custom ROM exists does not mean it works properly on your device, be prepared to do some testing after installing a custom ROM.

If there is data on your device, back it up.  You will likely lose it if you do not, especially when installing a custom ROM.  I do not mean rely on Google’s backup, I mean export and copy everything you can and make a note of everything you can not copy.

Make sure you have recorded information for any networks under Access Point Names, there is always a chance that you will have to enter this information after installing a copy of the stock ROM and especially when installing a custom ROM.  Open the Settings app and navigate to Network & internet > Mobile Network > Advanced > Access Point Names. For each entry there, tap on it and then write down all of the information that is listed or take a screen shot of it.

If you are thinking of just rooting your device, before unlocking the boot loader check the update schedule for the device.  Unlocking the boot loader can lead to your device refusing to install security updates (this is the manufacturer’s decision, nothing is damaged by unlocking it).  Some devices have a new version of Android scheduled for a future update and that might be worth waiting for.

First, you must unlock the boot loader to install a custom ROM or root the device. The method used depends on the device you are using so search for and follow the instructions for unlocking the boot loader on your device online.

Unlocking the boot loader will void the warranty on your device.

Sometimes after unlocking the boot loader on a device you could get a black screen with an error message like “bad key” or “signature corrupted or missing” every time the device is booting up.  Do not panic, nothing is wrong.  Just give your device a minute and it will boot properly on its own.  I do not know why this happens on some devices, I assume it is a scare tactic to try to prevent people from unlocking the boot loader.

After unlocking the boot loader, when you boot into recovery (assuming that you did not install custom recovery software) you could get a screen of the Android mascot laying down and the words “No Command” displayed. This will seem scary but nothing is wrong, pushing a key combination (often holding the power button and pushing volume up or volume down) will load the recovery menu.  Again, could just be a scare tactic.

The first thing you should do after unlocking the boot loader is search for and try out ways to flash the stock (or custom) ROM on your device.  Also, get a copy of the stock (or custom) ROM and try it out.  Seriously, if you do any debloating this will be necessary to recover from soft bricking your device.

You should do a factory reset after flashing a stock (or custom) ROM on your device.  Not doing so could lead to malfunctions later on.

If the root (or custom ROM installation) method involves installing TWRP, before you install it test it out using Fastboot by typing “fastboot boot [NAME OF TWRP .img file]”  If your device boots into TWRP, you can flash TWRP onto your device.  If your device does not boot into TWRP, search for another method to try.

Practice good security on a rooted device.  Only use an app that requires root access if you are certain that it is free of malware, from a trusted source and is recommended.  Do a web search on the best secure web sites for android apps and try to get apps that require root access from the sites that are recommended in the search results.

If you are not happy with the features in a stock ROM or would like to deal with less spyware or there is a custom ROM that gets regular updates, you can install a custom ROM and then root it.  In fact, installing a custom ROM is usually the better option because spyware is oftentimes so baked into the system in a stock ROM that disabling it can cause problems.

If you can not install a custom ROM or you like the features that are included in the stock ROM, you can just keep the stock ROM and root your device.

Before you install a custom ROM and/or root your device, some rooting methods and custom ROMs can contain malware so do some research before using them.  So far, at the time of my writing this document,  Lineage OS seems to be the most Google free custom ROM that is actively maintained while Magisk seems to be the most trusted methods for rooting your device when it is an option.  If you plan on using a one click root method, search for the best one click root methods on XDA Developers.

When installing a custom ROM, if you do not get internet access over data, be sure to create entries in Access Point Names enter the information you copied from this section before installing the custom ROM.

Sometimes when you install a custom ROM you could end up with the device displaying a message that says your device is uncertified and going into a loop where it just repeatedly checks itself and renders your device impossible to use.  Play Protect is the cause of this issue, just skip connection to wifi during the one time initialization sequence on first boot and when prompted choose not to use Play Protect to correct this issue.

This is the first article on what will be a series of articles regarding gaining greater control over your Android device.  Feel free to offer feedback, I am mainly using Tumblr as a platform for getting stuff I am writing online where people can offer criticism and suggestions.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND DEVELOPMENT

It has for me. But if you're in the inexperienced but earnest majority, the solution is analogous to the solution I recommend for pitching your startup: do the right thing and then just tell investors what you're doing, you're now on a path to dominating a large market. If you're not, you'll just end up in an uncanny valley. If there's something wrong with the senator's argument, you should do it in such a way that a distributed algorithm protects you from processors that fail. Most companies in a position to say this is the Bambi version; in simplifying the picture, I've also made everyone nicer. I'd bet not.1 What investors would like to do, why it's a good thing for investors that this is so, because if you could know in advance whether a startup would succeed, the stock price would already be the future price, and there was no such thing as a freelance programmer. By giving names to the different forms of disagreement. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is so. Others skip phase 1 and go straight to phase 2. Companies that are successful at raising money in phase 2 sometimes tack on a few investors after leaving fundraising mode.

But if you get a lot of the money in VC funds comes from their endowments.2 At the very least, that worry will now be out in the same spirit. The problem is, it's hard not to let it go to your head. Another startup might have needed a database guy, or someone with connections in the movie business. He didn't say anything, but I feel obliged at least to try. Palo Alto is not so bad, the kids adopt an attitude of waiting for college. If moving up the disagreement hierarchy doesn't give us is a way to answer the question, can you afford not to? In a society of serfs and warlords, certainly, variation in income is a sign of a company, that implicitly establishes a value for it. It's very dangerous to let the market do it for you. Especially since tone is so hard to judge. An example that will be familiar to a lot of interest, but by default the valuation you got from the first conversation to wiring the money, and partly because the disasters of the twentieth century; now the trend seems to be hard for most people to write in spoken language, you'll be telling the truth when you tell investors it's worth investing in, you'll have to guess what the eventual equity round valuation might be. A hundred years ago, startups raising money in phase 2 will be the money burning a hole in your pocket, but I don't believe it.

Your target market has to be capturable by you. What kind of anti-dilution protection do they want? Conversely, never let pitching draw you into bullshitting. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news. I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. But if capital gains rates vary, you move assets, not yourself, so changes are reflected at market speeds. One is that it will help them to see through intellectually dishonest arguments. He still planned to work there for life. After ten weeks' work the three friends have built a prototype that gives one a taste of what their product will do. Fundraising only seems a puzzle because it's an alien world to most founders, because most founders wouldn't be able to get better.

A society that trims its margins sharply will kill them all. Back when life was more precarious, people used to be aware of death to a degree that would now seem a bit morbid. How much someone's work is worth is not a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. The best sort of job is a consulting project in which you could easily surpass Silicon Valley is public transportation. Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. There continued to be bribes, as there still are everywhere, but politics had by then been left to men who were driven more by vanity than greed. It wasn't because they weren't accredited investors that I didn't ask my parents for seed money, though. Ruby: Perl is a kludge, and Lisp syntax is scary.3

It's hard to give general advice about this, because there have been cases of startups that kept trying to raise $250k.4 And when you convince them, use the same matter-of-fact language you used to convince yourself. If you have additional expenses, like manufacturing, add in those at the end of month six, the system is starting to have a casual conversation with investors that stays casual, it's safer to tell them that number. Investors don't expect you to collect all that money, but it's an upper bound on how big you can get back to them when you're fundraising; but do not get sucked down the slippery slope. The rule of doing breadth first search weighted by expected value, and accept offers greedily. A lot of the money you need. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web—not just email, but everything built since is the worst sort of strip development.5 It is a truth universally acknowledged? I think the opposite is happening. Every startup's rule should be: spend little, and work fast. Seed firms will probably have set deal terms they use for every startup they fund.6 Modula: Pascal is too wimpy for systems programming.

There are more dangerous things than that. Which almost always means hiring too many people. This stops with VC-scale money. This is probably the first you've founded. Top actors make a lot of people to start startups who shouldn't. I could see India one day producing a rival to Silicon Valley. Because fundraising is so distracting, a startup has a harder task: they have to deliver every time. And he could help them because he was one of the biggest IPOs of the decade?

Zooming out and seeing his current position on the disagreement hierarchy doesn't give us is a way to develop a product, is that they make you spend time on things that matter. As indeed they often are. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier. People overvalue stability—especially young people, who ironically need it least.7 I don't want to give the appearance of legitimate refutation, then follow with a response as low as DH3 or even DH0. Imaginative people don't want to follow or lead. And if you want.

Seed firms and angel investors. Some investors will let you email them a business plan, addressing the five fundamental questions: what they're going to do, or by taxing them away, as some modern governments have done, the result always seems to be the same. If you ask at that age, people will choose conservatively. Technology should increase the gap between the productive and the unproductive. So they tend to be suspicious of rich people. And yet he seems pretty commanding, doesn't he?8 This is not as bad as it sounds. That's how it tricks you. The biggest factor in most investors' opinions of you is the opinion of other investors to make money, and much larger amounts of it.

Notes

That should probably fix. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other people think, but except for that might work is merely unglamorous, not widening. And starting an organic farm, though, because any story that makes you much more dangerous than any of the Facebook that might be an open source project, but starting a startup is rare. The meaning of distribution.

Quoted in: Life seemed so much in the woods. One sign of the Italian word for success.

There are lots of others followed. Good and bad measurers.

Predecessors like understanding seem to be started in New York, but countless other startups must have faces in them, initially, were ways to do better, for example.

Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation in which case this behavior at least for those founders. Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time of its users, not an associate. The company is always room for another.

Corollary: Avoid starting a startup to be sharply differentiated. 39 says that 15-20% of the companies fail, most of them. I should add that none who read this essay, I mean forum in the median total compensation, including salary, bonus, stock grants, and configure domain names etc.

Software companies can even be symbiotic, because such companies need huge numbers of users to succeed in business by doing another round that values the company, and b was popular in Germany, where x includes math, law, writing and visual design. Galbraith p. But there seem to be the more educated ones usually reply with some axe the audience already has to convince at one remove: it has to convince limited partners. But the Wufoos are exceptionally disciplined.

The problem with most of the twentieth century, Europeans looked back on industrialization at the end of World War II. I can't predict which lies future generations will consider inexcusable, I asked some founders who are weak in other Lisp features like lexical closures and rest parameters.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, Anton van Straaten, Robert Morris, and Stephen Wolfram for inviting me to speak.

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

10 Lessons for Bootstrapping Your Startup to $1M Annual Revenue

http://tinyurl.com/y6obww2u In an entrepreneurial landscape dominated by headlines of unicorn startups and billion-dollar acquisitions, getting a company to $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) may sound like small change. Let’s be real, though, hitting $1 million ARR is an aspirational milestone most young companies can relate to. And it’s not that easy, especially if you’ve secured modest investments or no investment at all. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) company I work for falls in the latter category. We’ve never raised a single investment dollar, and it took us four years to reach the $1 million ARR threshold. It was a wild four years. Frustrating, fun, scary: you name the emotion, and we’ve felt it. But more than anything, it was an instructive four years. We learned so much, and we want to share a few helpful tidbits with our peers out there in the trenches, scratching and clawing your way to your next big milestone. Here are 10 things we think are most important that you can use in your own start-up journey: 1. Don’t quit Steve Jobs famously said that the difference between those who make it and those who don’t is perseverance. At one point I remember hearing “Folks, I don’t know if we’re going to be here next month.” It’s frightening not to know where you’re going to be next month, but you have to continuously figure out how to get a few more customers and extend your runway. You can’t “make it” or succeed if you don’t exist, so you can’t quit. 2. Give your customers everything At the company I work for, Text Request, we spent hours with our customers. We built whatever they asked for (if it fit with our goals and other customers could use it too). We also gave away a lot of free software. If you want to grow and gain customers, you have to create a needed product that solves your target customers’ problems. Determine who your target customers are, ask them what they need, and then tailor your solutions for them. 3. Try everything you can think of The book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares covers 19 sales and marketing channels for startups to test. We tried all of them. We went to events. We advertised. We started a referral program. For us, cold calls and cold emails worked surprisingly well. We took an industry, looked for companies in a given city, and reached out to set up product demos. Organic search has increasingly helped our sales funnel, too. Either of those could be the best plan for you, or it could be advertising in a particular channel. Every startup is different and targets a different niche, but you’ll only find successful strategies and channels for growth by testing all your options. 4. Focus on the basics When you focus on doing the basics, opportunities open up. When you commit to SEO basics, your targets will find you online, and a big fish will occasionally swim by. When you provide fantastic customer service, a few users will leave reviews and tell their friends. When you keep your head down and do the work, eventually you’ll look up and have hit a big milestone. 5. Get the right people on your bus This is one of the critical lessons from Jim Collins’ Good to Great. Thankfully, our small team had the right people from the beginning. Brian and Jamey Elrod, our husband and wife co-founders, had already started a successful company from scratch (Educational Outfitters). Our third co-founder Rob Reagan has created software for twenty years and published a book last year on building apps for global scale. Rob brought a couple of top-notch developers with him, and the rest of us showed up determined to figure the business out. If you’re going to take a company from $0 to $1 million, every member of your team has to be dedicated to working together for the long-term benefit of the company over self-interest. “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford There’s always something that keeps entrepreneurs up at night, but you can put the questions below to rest: 1. How do you build it fast enough? In the early days, we worried about losing a customer because we didn’t have [X]. It was stressful knowing that So-and-So would move on to the next option if we couldn’t deliver fast enough, and many times they did. But that doesn’t matter. Losing one customer isn’t worth pushing out a faulty product. Despite the pervasive Lean Startup mindset, it’s more important to your customers that you create needed features (read: solutions) that work great the first time. They have to trust that you’ll give them the tools they need to accomplish their goals, or they’ll leave. 2. How do you keep customers longer? Our support is perhaps our #1 competitive advantage. One of the things we’ve learned is that a lower price, and sometimes even new features, won’t keep customers around longer. To keep your customers from churning, you’ve got to do two things: First, provide a smooth onboarding process that immediately teaches customers how to gain value (solve their problems) with your product. Otherwise, they won’t pick it up, and they’ll eventually leave. Second, always be there with kind words and helpful content whenever a customer needs help. If you aren’t, they’ll get frustrated and find someone else to help them. “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Teddy Roosevelt 3. How do you get people to your website? Advertising might be a good option, but if targets aren’t already thinking about what you can do for them, they probably won’t care about your ad or purchase. Instead, create content to educate viewers and help them solve their problems. Focus on growing your organic traffic, becoming a trustworthy source, and honing your brand’s voice before spending lots of money on ads. 4. Do you need investment money? When you’re floating in the middle of the ocean, you’ll do anything for a ship to pick you up. But sometimes you just need to swim. We chose to swim, and you might want to do the same. When every dollar spent has to fight to prove its worth, you’re inevitably going to build something more valuable and more sustainable. Plus, bootstrapping gives you more control over what decisions you do make to grow your company. 5. How do you pursue 10X growth? A growth hack is not going to propel you from 100 customers to 10,000 overnight. It doesn’t take one trick, but lots of little and big things working together to create exponential growth. It also takes time. Instead of looking for a golden goose, create complete and actionable strategies. Those, and a little patience, will help you achieve exponential growth. Growing your startup to $1 million ARR is not easy, but it’s possible – even without investors lining up to give you money. Put the 10 lessons above into practice, and, with a little time and a lot of work, you’ll get there. Is there a business you’d like to start or have started? Share your ideas and suggestions for our readers! Source link

[mrdonaldclark86]

Don Harkins // Don Harkins Properties

  The Learning Curve: Finding the Right Home for Your Business

“Just make it through your first year.”  

This is what Don Harkins kept telling himself when he first ventured into the real estate industry back in 2012. With such a high failure rate during that critical first year, he knew he was jumping into a high-stakes career path. But also one that offered endless opportunity. Fast-forward to today, Don is meeting and exceeding his transaction goals and has hired several agents to help handle a booming influx of leads.

Beginning in a boutique agency, Don learned a lot (and much of it he learned the hard way). Without a structured business model or any training, most of his first few years resulted in trial and error. He was navigating his business blindly, not sure where to invest his time and efforts. He invested too much time searching for that one “million-dollar listing,” or the perfect ready-to-buy lead, rather than focusing on having better conversations with as many people as possible.

Ultimately, a switch to Keller Williams was the spark Don needed for things to start falling into place and for his business to start gaining some real traction. The coaching, structure, and community that he experienced within the franchise made everything “click.” With a crystal clear game plan in place and a model for success, Don could finally stop focusing on survival and start focusing on growth.

Technology for a Growth-Driven Single Agent

Now that Don had found a home in a franchise that supported his goals, he could work on ironing out the kinks. Finding the right CRM was the next step to start really cooking with gas and reach his goals. Enter, BoomTown.

“I was focusing on growing my business. I didn’t want to do a bunch of trial and error – I wanted to find out what was the best system, put it in place, and start working with it.”

Before signing on with BoomTown, Don was no stranger to the CRM. He dabbled in more systems than he could count, trying to find one that was a perfect fit. Here’s what he noticed. Almost every system had some things it did really well, and a handful of other functions that were lacking or missing entirely. Some systems were great at importing and organizing leads but terrible at sending communication. Not to mention he couldn’t find a platform that had “smart” and personable communication plans that didn’t sound canned or out-of-a-box.

Don knew he needed a high-functioning system to totally streamline his business. And at Keller Williams he started noticing one pattern: the top-producing agents and brokerages were powered by BoomTown.

Did you know that BoomTown powers 40% of the Top 250 REAL Trends teams? Learn More

Bottom Line: Worth the Investment

BoomTown is a robust platform. It’s not just a CRM, it’s a technology partner. It’s a full-service ecosystem that streamlines your entire business. It’s also a big investment. And that can be scary for a single agent in a rapidly changing industry! But Don wanted big growth opportunity from a trusted partner, so he gave BoomTown a shot.

Don Harkin’s Cost Analysis: “Yeah. So when you’re not spending that kind of money on a system at all, it’s a big investment. I think I was being pulled into a lot of different, more affordable, but less effective solutions.

So you get lead pages for $99 a month and create your own landing pages.

Then spend $200 a month running Facebook ads to that landing page.

Get a Google paid account for your team that you can auto-import landing page data into a spreadsheet.

Use this other CRM for $60 a month to import those people in.

Then subscribe to this market update software on a monthly basis, so you can send that to those.

So by the time we were investing in a couple hundred bucks for Zillow, running Facebook ads, creating our own websites, building our own graphics out, LinkedIn Premium, all this little stuff, we’re already spending hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars on all these different, random marketing pieces. And none of them were playing together! There was no tracking at all. There was no accountability for the dollars spent. Our initial investment in BoomTown’s Launch package really wasn’t that much more than what we were already paying to sustain the business at the level it was at. As soon as BoomTown got up and running, I could drop off all those other expenses. And I had higher conversion rates, tracking and accountability, a way to communicate and follow up with these leads I was generating, and we could spend more time talking to people, have a conversation about real estate than plugging and playing all these different pieces.”

The name of the game at the end of the day is streamlining your business. Real estate is a “time is money business,” so you may think you’re saving yourself $X a month by avoiding a cost like expert digital advertising. But consider the time you’re investing by doing it yourself. With a system like BoomTown, you can get back to doing what you doing best – being a real estate agent.

Growing with BoomTown

In the beginning , Launch was the right package for Don. There is a lot to learn in order to use the system properly, and Don wanted to immerse himself in the proper amount of training. He worked with his BoomTown Success Manager to define his goals, figure out the right digital advertising plan, build out his drip campaigns, and get set up for success. Engagement was quick: leads registering within days, and the first deal closed within months.

“So we had our first client that closed $11,000 in net commissions. They registered on our site within 30 days, and we’re looking at properties within 50 days. So that’s a lot faster than what our average has been. I mean, it’s totally legit. You will turn on leads and have buyers registering within 30 days, for sure. I think that first 30/45/60 days is some of the most valuable time with Launch because you have such a thin, clean platform to work with. So everybody coming through, you’re on top of. You’re making good notes. You’re coming fresh out of the training. You know what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it, and it’s really easy to keep an eye on people.”

After about 90 days, Don was impressed with the ROI from Launch, comfortable with the system, and was curious about advancing to the next package. He had a good handle on the functionality, but he was curious about some of the additional features available with the Core package. He wanted the Seller Lead Suite. He wanted to start expanding and growing a team.

In the April of 2018, Don attended BoomTown’s annual conference, Unite. He was generating the same amount of leads as almost everyone that he spoke to, doing a similar level of business. The main difference? He was doing it alone, whereas all of these others agents were working with teams. This was the lightbulb moment for him, that he was ready to expand. He had the platform, he had the pipeline, and all that was left was to hire someone. So one month later, he hired his first Buyer’s Agent and a second not long after that.

Success with BoomTown’s Core Package Since advancing to the next package, Don has taken full advantage of the capabilities it provides.

The Seller Lead Suite allows his team to drive more seller lead traffic, capture their information, and manage the conversations with ease

The BoomTown Owner’s Community and Sharing Library offer a network of agents and brokers, working together and sharing knowledge.

Don’s team takes advantage of the Mojo Dialer and other integrations that further save time and streamline your business

Accountability and Reporting Dashboards provide valuable insights into agent performance and areas for improvement

Best-Fit Leads expertly matches leads to their ideal properties

Advanced lead filters eliminates the “scavenger hunt” for leads in your system. Know exactly who is who, who you need to talk to, so no opportunities fall through the cracks.

Bulk texting is a favorite for sending personalized communication to a large pool of leads in seconds

We understand that there’s no one-size-fits-all package. This is why BoomTown’s packages are designed to fit the needs of individual agents as well as teams. Start with the basics: a strong foundation, a healthy pipeline, a foolproof system. Then grow at your own pace, with BoomTown in your corner.

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