Three-hundred and forty-seven athletes are on the list -- 20 less than the number for Athens Olympics. There are 215 male athletes and 132 female ones, the latter comprising 39% of the total -- a larger percentage than 2004. Italy will be sending relatively more athletes to participate in individual events than for team sports. Teams will not be sent to compete in basketball, baseball or softball.

According to the Italian National Olympic Committee website, Italian athletes will participate in events including, track-and-field, swimming, water polo, volleyball, shooting, fencing and football. Forty-nine athletes will be competing in track-and-field, 34 in swimming, 26 in water polo and 24 in volleyball competition. Only one athlete has qualified for the badminton event – the country's smallest number of competitors for any one event.

CONI President, Giovanni Petrucci, and CONI Secretary-General and head of the Italian delegation to the Beijing Olympics, Raffaele Pagnozzi, told press Wednesday that without teams in basketball, baseball and softball, it would a challenge for the country to attain the same level of achievement as seen at the Athens Games where the country placed second in men's basketball. In 2004, Italy took home a total of 32 medals – 10 gold, 11 silver and 11 bronze.

The Italian swim team left for Beijing on the evening of July 23 to begin adaptive training and participate in warm-up matches. The remainder of the Italian Olympic team will arrive in stages over the course of the coming week.

Hemorrahagic cysts are not cancerous so there was nothing to worry about there.

She took me off the estrogen patch as well.  Just in the nick of time too.  My tummy was just starting to break out from it.  So I'm on a daily pill now.  I asked about what I had been reading about it affecting my liver.  She said that the pill and the patch would enter the liver equally.  And I can't go without estrogen so I just go with it.  I'm on a dose that won't require me to get my liver checked yearly and that was my main concern.

She did up the dose a smidge though.  She asked about hot flashes and she giggled a little about my description.  I can see why some men leave their wives during menopause :lol:

My doc did say that I didn't have to come up for my post op since I was doing so well.  I pondered it and tried to call yesterday to see if they could just release me to go back to work on Monday.  But she must have started her vacation Friday because no one ever called me back.  We really need the money and waiting until Thursday to go to work just sucks :(

But God has gotten us through this far and I'm sure he won't be going anywhere now :)

“A New York newspaper today called into question some issues around Steve and his health,” he said. “Would you mind addressing the situation?”

“Steve loves Apple,” replied Peter Oppenheimer, the company’s chief financial officer. “He serves as the C.E.O. at the pleasure of Apple’s board and has no plans to leave Apple. Steve’s health is a private matter.”

That was it. No insistence that he was cancer-free. No attempt to explain his gaunt condition. No nothing. When I spoke to Steve Dowling in Apple’s public relations department on Thursday, I got the same response. “Steve’s health is a private matter,” Mr. Dowling said. Then, just for good measure, he said it again. “Steve’s health is a private matter.”

But is it really?"

Read full article HERE.

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Takeaways:
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According to the sfgate -

"Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s $3.3 billion buyout of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. will mean millions of subscribers will be able to receive programming from both services, while executives say it will create huge cost savings for the industry."

This has been going on a long time, I can only hope this means more variety and lower monthly costs.....ha ha, who am I kidding? I am sure I will be paying the same or more a month.

"The companies voluntarily agreed to a set of conditions, including a three-year price cap and an 8 percent set-aside of "full-time audio channels" for public interest and minority programming. They will also adopt an "open radio" standard that may lead to a greater variety of features in radios and greater competition among manufacturers."

Another interesting part of the announcement is the Pay-per channel a la carte option - "Subscribers will not have to buy new radios to receive a mix of programming from both services, according to the companies. But if they want to pursue a special pay-per-channel a la carte option, they will need new sets."

I'm curious if more of the popular stations will continue to or start running more commercials, since the whole reason I got satellite radio and pay my monthly fee was to NOT hear those lousy music interrupters!

The Philippine Nursing (NLE) Board Exam or Philippine Nursing (NLE) Licensure Examination was held in Manila and all Regional Offices last June 1 & 2, 2008.

A total of 27,765 out of 64,459 passed the Nurse Licensure Examination given by the Board of Nursing in the cities of Manila, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Legazpi, Lucena, Tacloban, Tuguegarao and Zamboanga in June, the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) announced Thursday.

Complete Roll of Successful Examinees in the June 2008 (NLE) NURSE LICENSURE EXAMINATION:

Held on JUNE 1 & 2, 2008, Released on JULY 23, 2008

Important links to check:

Top 10 June 2008 Nurses

Letter A-June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter B June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter C June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter D-E June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter F-G June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter H-I-J June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter K-L June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter M-N-O June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Letter P-Q-R June 2008 Nursing Board Exam Results

Congratulations to the new Nurses...... Good luck...

TUAW reports - "Something is rotten in the state of Cupertino. Mr. Jobs, TEAR DOWN THIS NDA.

If the new iPhone 2.1 beta firmware is anything, it's a perfect excuse to say: "I told you so." It explains why the NDA failed to disappear on schedule. Apple kept its promise -- "Ve shall delivah the 2.0 iPhone und SDK on Yuly 11th" -- while working around the fact that that SDK was half baked at best. It was certainly not ready for prime time. The NDA simply expands the beta period. It offers cover to Apple, as they scramble to finish developing ready-to-ship software."

I too have had nothing but problems with the new iPhone 3G and the 2.0 software!
What happened Apple? Are you getting too big to care anymore?

(Via (TUAW))

I make it sound like have been.  Don't get me wrong.  I've never had a chance to attend.  I'm dying to attend the 2010 conference.  They will probably announce the date and location tomorrow night at the farewell dinner.  I just know how amazing it is from hearing everyone else talk about it :lol:

My bloggy friends will probably come back with a wealth of new information and some amazing stories.  So please check out my blogroll and go visit their sites next week.  I put a teal ribbon (signifies FXS) by the blogs that have fxs in their families. And if you deal with FXS and don't have a ribbon please let me know.  I was working on that under the influence of oxycodone.

www.yahoo.com

Whether you want to travel to exotic destinations, visit relatives, or simply have more time to care for loved ones, a career with flexible time off can make a big difference in your quality of life. While many Americans enjoy a mere one or two weeks of vacation time each year, some professionals spend two to three months of each year away from the job.

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that the following five careers will experience some of the fastest job growth of all careers over the next decade. Each one of these career paths offers its own set of perks in addition to seasonal scheduling:

1. Resort Chef

While most food reviewers fawn over eateries in New York and London, many of the world's most innovative chefs whip up dishes at resort hotels and spas all over the world. Tourism hot spots like Aspen, Florida, and the Napa Valley rely on seasonal workers with culinary degrees to impress guests and highlight local cuisine.

In many cases, you can attend culinary degree programs during the off-season and earn a salary to offset tuition and living expenses. Some employers even offer culinary school courses as part of ongoing professional development programs. A seasonal job as a hotel cook often pays over $28,000 per year, not including the travel benefits often offered by larger employers.

2. Teacher K-12

Many teachers use the summer to catch up with family, enjoy long vacations, and complete additional online education courses. Even with three months off, many K-12 teachers earn over $41,000 per year. Changes in recruitment policies now mean that you can start a teaching job in many places before completing a degree in education.

New state and federal mandates require job applicants to complete at least a few online education courses before beginning their teaching careers. Many school districts have even invested in dedicated recruitment programs designed to help professionals from other fields earn education degrees. For retirees, a teaching career offers the chance to stay active while earning an income and enjoying summers off.

3. Fashion Designer

If you love to work hard and play hard, a fashion design career could be a perfect fit. Established designers often enjoy a few weeks of downtime following the launch of a major collection. Fashion design degree programs can help you land internships with design houses or with the organizations that stage Fashion Week events.

For fashion design professionals with low-key personalities, specializing in a particular season's clothing or a niche accessory line can help you have more time free without as much stress. Upon completion of fashion school, you can often earn more than $28,000 per year. Starting your own business, as 25 percent of designers do, can boost your income above $55,000 per year.

4. Freelance/Fill-In Paralegal

A growing number of law firms and large companies hire freelance and temporary paralegals to cover for sick or vacationing staff members. Meanwhile, some freelance paralegals with criminal justice degrees focus on just the kinds of cases that excite them. Either way, a personal paralegal practice is one of the few careers in law that offers extended vacation time without the rigors of passing the bar exam.

A career as a freelance paralegal holds the same level of risk as running any kind of small business. However, a combination of paralegal training and business savvy can result in a strong income. Most full-time paralegals report earnings of over $38,000 per year. By charging a premium for short-term service, freelance paralegals frequently make more by working less.

5. Software Developer

During the first web boom of the early 1990s, software companies relied on freelance programmers with technology degrees to ramp up quickly and meet deadlines. Today, companies from all kinds of industries rely on contract professionals with engineering degrees to handle one-time tasks or to take on outsourced specialty projects.

Online technology courses allow freelance software developers to stay up to date on the latest coding standards. Combining an online computer science degree with courses in business and marketing can help round out the skill set necessary to land big projects, especially when separated by vacation-sized gaps.

Preparing for Extra Time Off

Like the five careers examined here, most jobs that offer more than the average amount of vacation time also require:

ü       a higher tolerance for risk,

ü       an entrepreneurial spirit,

ü       ongoing professional development,

ü       time management skills, and

ü       Money management skills.

Fortunately, training for a new career also opens the opportunity to build overall job skills. In most cases, adding a few key electives to a degree program can mean the difference between clocking in from nine to five and setting your own schedule.

It wouldn't be Philadelphia without angry journalists. So these angry journalists have called out a fellow one.

First, Inquirer columnist Daniel Rubin gave an interesting view of a day in the life of Larry Mendte. Perhaps his title -- "The obsession of Larry Mendte" -- is a double entendre. His obsession with Alycia Lane, our obsession with him?

The second comes from my new fave Jill Porter. She's followed up her Alycia Lane column with a Larry Mendte column, simply asking, "What more could he want?" And she hits each question that every one of us has in the back of our minds. Answers, however, are hard to come by.

Just passing them along. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Photo courtesy DN.

Along with the rest of us, he is having problems with MobileMe.

"Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can’t recommend it, at least not in its current state. It’s a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises."

It is becoming VERY frustrating and extremely Un-Apple like, to release software that is so flaky that you never know from day to day what it will do or even if it will work.

Come on Apple you are better than that. I hope you haven't become Applsoft!!!

"AT&T has developed a software trick that will allow iPhones to recognize voice commands without the need for specialized voice recognition software."

There is a video describing how it works - I can't wait until this comes out, very handy and very cool.

My pain is getting much easier.  There really hasn't been any severe pain in the first place so that is a big help.  It's more like major soreness.  The pain from the gas in my shoulder and ribs pretty much went away on Monday.  My ribs still yell when I breath deeply but I think it is just because of them expanding my abdomen with the gas. 

My incisions have been giving me fits.  Three out of four of them started to get infected.  I was able to drown them in peroxide and stop that fairly quickly.  Then the band-aids I switched to hated my skin.  The hospital ones were much better.  Band-aid brand latex ones are not my friends. I have psoriasis and they made it break out big time.  Kevin went to the pharmacy and got me some non-latex ones but my skin is so irritated that I haven't even tried to put them on yet.  I've just been lathering on the Cortizone 10. 

And the wonderful estrogen patch....sucks!!  I hate it.  It doesn't want to stay on.  It makes me itchy.  I think it is going to have the same result as the darn band-aids.  It is massively huge.  I plan on asking my doctor if there is something different I can use.  I don't mind a patch but something smaller and a different material would be nice.  I want to avoid the HRT pill because it can affect my liver. 

The bruising on my tummy is starting to go away nicely.  Probably by the time I go back to work I won't look like someone had used me for a punching bag. 

My post op is next Wednesday so I'll post how that goes then.

Drgaon Quest 5: Hand of the Heavenly Bride for the Nintendo DS released on July 17^th has been proven to have anti-piracy measures that prevent bootleg copies of the game from working properly. As reported by Yahoo Japan, game characters in the opening scene will be caught in a never ending boat ride instead of progressing forward in the game.

Japanese message boards began to light up on July 16^th as gamers began to wonder why their characters were still on the same boat one hour after getting on it. Rumours Square-Enix had implemented a “Copy Guard” began to circulate along with the logical theories such as a programming bug. The Anti-piracy theory was confirmed by Square-Enix public relations, “If gamers are playing a pirated copy the ship from the opening scene will never reach port. This is an Anti-piracy measure we decided to implement.”. A quick scan of the Japanese message boards reveal firmware and cheat code based solutions have apparently already been developed that allow gamers to get past the anti-piracy measures.

The form of piracy these measures are designed to combat are the Nintendo DS ROM Cartridges such as the R4 that allow gamers to load ROM files of their favorite games downloaded from the internet. The ROM cartridge fools the Nintendo DS into believing a real cartridge has been plugged in to the DS and are only limited by memory capacity in terms of how many games can be loaded. These ROM cartridges are being discreetly sold in Akihabara to this day despite Nintendo’s best efforts to crack down on these products.

Credit : Dailytech

www.stushietoon.blogspot.com

I think it would make a great addition to the line up and applaud Apple for using the iPhones popularity to do good!

AlleyInsider reports on AT&T's Q2 financial results. AT&T posted $30.9 billion in revenue, up 4.7% year-over-year.

"AT&T should have a monster Q3 thanks to Apple's (AAPL) new iPhone 3G, which launched exclusively on AT&T on July 11. AT&T says sales of the new iPhone 3G, after 12 days, and despite short supply, are nearly double the levels at which AT&T sold the first iPhone last summer. No real numbers to support that claim, and no surprise -- it's $400 cheaper -- but still a good trend."

I am curious what it will do for the foreign carriers as well.

That is what Mr. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has been telling a number of his associates, even as concerns about his health have weighed on the company’s stock price.

The latest flurry of talk was set off on Monday when, in a conference call after the release of Apple’s earnings, a company executive responded to a question about Mr. Jobs’s condition by saying that it was “a private matter.”

But in recent weeks, Mr. Jobs has reassured several people that he is doing well and that four years after a successful operation to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer, he is cancer free."

(read full Article HERE)

Photo by: Regine Mahaux / Getty

On June 29 at 8:55 p.m., Beatie, 34, a former female beauty pageant contestant, made cultural history as perhaps the first legally transgender male to give birth, bringing into the world a 9 lbs., 5 oz. baby girl named Susan Juliette.

"She's so precious, I just can't stop staring at her," Thomas tells PEOPLE in his first interview since he and wife Nancy returned with their bundle from Bend, Oregon's St. Charles Medical Center. "Just holding her is the best feeling in the world."

Susan – named after Thomas's mother and conceived through artificial insemination with donor sperm – arrived after 40 hours of labor, with Nancy at Thomas's side acting as his coach.

"When Susan finally came out, it was like in slow motion," says Thomas. "I was full of wonder." Echoes Nancy: "There were tears of joy."

Both father and daughter came through the birth in perfect health. "I weigh two pounds less than I did before I got pregnant," adds Thomas. "And I don't have a single stretch mark!"

At home, the couple is adjusting to their new nightly schedule: Nancy breastfeeding (by induced lactation, a process using hormones and physical stimulation with a breast pump) and Thomas keeping company while watching TV.

Crows Thomas, "Susan is a miracle! And we're finally the family we've been dreaming of."

www.yahoo.com

We are observing the death throws of a star on its way to becoming a white dwarf. Gasses spewing, used matter is shredded and  thrown out. The size of the once bright, powerful force rapidly shrinks as it collapses on itself. These are the telltale signs of a dying star.

The Star Tribune, once among the Midwest’s largest newspapers, was purchased by the Sacramento-based McClatchy media company in 1998. The "executive editors"  paid $1.2 billion for it from a family who wanted out of the business.

In less than 10 years, the rapid growth of Google, Drudgereport, Craigslist, E-Bay, FaceBook and Wordpress lured away much of the newspaper audience and built new readers/users that were not newspaper-friendly. So the advertising found new rising stars.

Last year, Avista, a New York-based private equity group, purchased the dying Star Tribune for less than half of what McClatchy paid only eight years earlier.

Since Avista’s purchase, the star has been shedding  reporters, editors, photographers, advertising sales staff and designers through two rounds of buyouts and the elimination of open positions. That was just a show for creditors.

The Star Tribune’s long-term business slump has continued, with revenue declining by about 25 percent, from $400 million in 2000 to $300 million last year, according to a Star Tribune story in July. While major expenses such as newsprint and transportation  increased.  Even those adult newspaper carriers throwning papers out of the window of their pickups, need to be paid.

Several weeks ago, Avista announced that it was writing down the value of its $100 million equity investment in the Star Tribune to $25 million. That's $75 million wiped out in one year. The Star shed more than $1.15 billion in value over nine years. The new owners are getting pennies on the dollar trying to restructure their debt.

The only candidates for buying into debt-ridden newspapers now are hedge funds, especially those that make a specialty of distressed debt investments, according to several industry observers. It’s called a loan-to-own strategy, they calculate that the owners like Avista will default on their new loans and the fund becomes the new owner for pennies on the dollar. What's left may be some downtown real estate and a false store-front Web site. This is the white dwarf stage. And there are hundreds more flickering, spewing gas and spitting out  used up matter.