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One Man's Struggle To Take It Easy"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in awhile, you could miss it." - Ferris Bueller 25 mars Ingenious Way to Cut Health CostsMany companies offer health care packages with fitness programs such as gyms, nutritionists, and weight loss programs but how effective are they? While any exercise or diet improvements can improve your health, it seems that more often than not employees do not fully utilize the benefits.
Given the cost of health care, this should be a big concern for a lot of companies. So the question to be asked is "if an employee's own health is not enough incentive to take advantage of the programs, what can be done?"
I stumbled across this article last week and thought the answer is simple yet brilliant - find something that employees do care about and offer it as a reward:
29 juillet Who is R.A.B.? (WARNING POSSIBLE H.P. SPOILERS)WARNING - IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN HARRY POTTER - THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE OR POSSIBLY WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IN H.P. 7 STOP READING NOW!!!
In a little under two weeks of owning the Half Blood Prince, I have almost read the book twice. The first time I read it quickly within 48 hours, so that I knew what happened. Starting on my flight back from Michigan this week, I have been reading the book a second time to catch those little clues authors drop to taunt us - which we laugh at in realizing we completely misunderstood what was happening.
The 6th Harry Potter book brought very few surprises for me. J.K. Rowling mentioned that a main character was going to eat it, and in my mind there was only one character whose death could be devastating enough to leave Harry completely on his own to take the lead in the final installment of the series. No surprises here.
As far as who the Half Blood Prince was. Rowling mentioned that neither Harry nor Voldemort was the Prince. By process of elimination, you could rule out half the characters in the book. The Weasleys and Malfoys were considered "pure blood". Hermione and Dean Thomas are Muggle born. In my mind there were three main possibilities - Seamus, Dumbledore and Snape (I thought about Hagrid too, but he is a major supporting character who wouldn't be a huge shock). From the early books, we knew that Seamus was a half-blood and if an obscure character had to step up he would make sense. The fact that the Prince used a school book that Harry inherits kind of threw him out early on. Dumbledore and Snape's backgrounds were both obscure, and both had roles that needed to play out in this book. I'll admit that I wasn't 100% sure which would be the Prince until it was finally revealed but needless to say I wasn't surprised.
What did shock me was the twist with the Horcruxes (which by the way was a really cool idea). Who is R.A.B. and what role will he/she play? Well Rowling has done a superb job introducing characters that she will use later - Susan & Amelia Bones, Hannah Abbott, Emmaline Vance, the Patils, Lavendar, Prof. Trelwaney, Sirius Black (who was introduced in the first book). So I believe that she won't let me down and introduce some new character. Who is R.A.B.? Regulus Black (Sirius' brother).
What's in the note:
1. The letter is addressed to the "Dark Lord" - only death eaters call him this
2. The author indicated a betrayal by stealing the Horcrux
3. The author expected to be killed shortly
What do we know about Regulus:
1. Sirius brother became a Death Eater
2. He didn't like what he was getting into and out of fear (?) tried to get out
3. Was killed by death eaters (Sirius doubted he was ever important enough for Voldemort to kill himself).
It seems to fit so I'm gonna stick with my theory unless Mrs. Rowling tells me I'm off my rocker =).
With regards to the Horcrux's:
1. Riddle's diary (destroyed by Harry)
2. Slytherin/Marvolo's ring (destroyed by Dumbledore)
3. Slytherin's necklace (destroyed by R.A.B ???)
4. Hufflepuff's cup
5. Something of Griffindorr/Ravenclaws
6. Nagini
7. Voldemort
I am curious whether Regulus will have gotten to multiple of the Horcruxes. If the Trio has to figure out who R.A.B. is and find the 2 remaining Horcruxes before facing off with Nagini and Voldemort, book 7 could get long or redundant. Nagini can be faced at any time during the pursuit of one of the other Horcrux's so I'm not too worried about him.
Rowling has also left several other hints which I am looking forward to seeing played out:
1. Wormtail's gotta come to the rescue somehow (too much foreshadowing to be fake neh?)
2. Malfoy's hesitation
I'm also not fully sold on Snape yet. I'm expecting another twist from either Malfoy or Snape, but am not sure which yet.
One last prediction - something's got to happen at Phlegm's wedding. With the exception of the last chapter of book 6, almost everything in the series has had a twist of some kind.
Oh well, two more years until I find out which of my guesses will pan out (but seeing as Rowling seems to have already plotted the course, I doubt my prophesies will affect future events =P).
25 décembre Online Movie RentalBlockbuster is slashing its online rental prices. Too bad I don't rent movies frequently enough to use it. http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000347024849/ They will need to do more than lower their rental prices if they want to compete against netflix and comcast in the future though. I was using Comcast when they came out with their On Demand service, and found it much better than going to the video store. For about 3 dollars, you can get the latest releases without driving to the store, waiting for the mail or worrying about something being out of stock. The digital era should drive prices down too (no more physical disks, or shipping and handling). With integration into DVRs, movie rental by store and mail may soon be a thing of the past. http://news.com.com/TiVo,+Netflix+sign+movies-on-demand+deal/2100-1041_3-5390718.html
23 décembre The next Harry Potter bookJ.K. Rowling made it official this week and announced that the 6th installment is now ready. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" will be available for purchase on July 16th. Last year, people lined up all day to buy the book from Borders or Barnes 'n Noble at midnight. A couple of days later I wandered into a small book shop at Pike Place and bought the book in less than 2 minutes. Part of me wants to pre-order the book, however I might just walk into Costco or some other grocery store and pick up the book a day after it has been released (seeing as most people tend to forget that book stores aren't the only places to buy books).
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