Online College Resources

German Karaoke and Family Bonding

My husband is German, but despite his blond hair and blue eyes, you wouldn’t know it. There is only one thing that will turn his whats into vats: visits with his family. We’ve been married nearly three years and on each visit home he greets his family in German and quickly falls into his native language when talking about the drive down and the traffic. Their words bounce around the home like a ping-pong ball in a game that I don’t know how to play. But, to make me comfortable, they always switch to English. His parents and sister are proficient-to-fluent in the language, but there are still moments when some idioms don’t quite translate or the self-consciousness of speaking a second language creates a more formal tone to a family dinner. While w

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Aqua-Aerobic Systems’ New Microfiber Pile Cloth Media Improves…

Aqua-Aerobic Systems continues to advance tertiary filtration performance by developing innovative products to improve suspended solids and turbidity removal. The latest development in the company’s family of Pile Cloth Media is OptiFiber PES-14 Microfiber. The microfiber media is especially engineered to remove suspended solids, turbidity and fine particles up to 50% better than other filters or microscreen media. OptiFiber PES-14 Microfiber cloth media is ideal for fine polishing applications, and is proven to reduce total phosphorus to 0.1 mg/l or less. The ability to maintain high filtrate quality provides assurance for meeting even the most stringent effluent requirements.

The OptiFiber PES-14 Microfiber Pile Cloth Media was recently approved by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) for use in high quality wastewater reuse applications. C

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The continuing inequities of facilities funding for charter schools in Ohio

Since 1986, over 557 school districts throughout Ohio have taken advantage of a very generous program, courtesy of taxpayers, that allows school districts to pay for capital improvements done to their facilities.  According to the Ohio School Facilities Commission, this program has funded over 952 projects, involving over 6,089 buildings, at a cost of over $1.25 billion, while saving taxpayers over $115 million.  However, this privilege is open to district schools and their buildings only, and denied to charter schools. 

The program, formally known as the or the , enables school districts to make energy-related improvements to district buildings that in theory would generate enough energy savings to eventually pay off the improvement bond from which the capital originated from its issuance, along with the cost of financing.  The cost savings over 15 years for energy, operational, and maintenance must equal or exceed the cost of implementing the measures.  The program allows energy-related , as opposed to merely .  This may seem like semantics until the discussion turns on how exactly projects are paid for. 

In Ohio, tax levies are typically raised in order to fund capital projects, including improvements to school buildings.  Ohio

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Career advice: Mainframe career prospects

Cynthia Nustad of HMS

Title: Senior vice president and CIO Company: HMS

What are the prospects these days for an unemployed mainframe programmer/analyst with 30 years of experience? Interesting question. At my company, we just had a very lengthy discussion on this topic. We still successfully leverage the mainframe for some of our products and get great performance and scale from such equipment. One thing we considered in our discussion was whether there would be enough talent 10 to 15 years from now able to work on those tools. Our vendor was able to put our minds at ease by telling us about universities that are growing their educational offerings to teach students these technologies.

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Narrative Writing and Its Secrets: Everything You Need to Know!

Now, how about being a writer for a while? That sounds rather alluring, doesn’t it? However, as soon as you take your pen and notebook, you might experience the most common problem of all writers – the writer’s block. Indeed, it’s rather hard to write about something not even knowing what that is.
So the question is, what does writing narrative mean?

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Paralyzed ex-Spanaway Lake athlete trying to raise funds for walking aid

In 2003, former Spanaway Lake football player Logan Seelye broke his neck at a football camp at Central Washington University.

Here are his words about the ordeal:

My name is Logan Seelye. At the young age of 16 years old, on July 2, 2003 my life forever changed; I broke my neck and suffered a spinal injury while playing at football camp at Central Washington University. Now, to most people who have gone through any setback or troubles in life, the reasonable thought that would come to mind when you get paralyzed is to ask Why me?, but if you know anything about me, that is the last thing that I thought. Matter of fact, my first thought was I hope the other guy is okay.

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