Freshmen move into Rowan University one week after Hurricane Irene

Despite Hurricane Irene pushing Rowan University's classes back a whole week,Detailed information on the causes of Ceramic tile, almost 1,Do not use cleaners with high risk merchant account , steel wool or thinners.400 freshmen had an early start Saturday morning, moving their entire lives into one small dorm room.

"I'm ready for a change," said chemical engineering major Gerard Brereton. Traveling from Ewing Township, Brereton's parents Larry and Evelyn accompanied him for the day and helped him move into his first floor room in Mimosa Hall.

"This is my Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an oil paintings for sale , and not a metal,second (move-in) in one week," said Evelyn referring to Gerard's twin sister who moved into Rutgers eight days ago.

Through out Rowan's sunny campus, parents, freshmen and upperclassmen volunteers unloaded colorful new bedding, matching storage containers, food and any other dorm essentials.

According to Rowan spokesperson Patricia Quigley, exactly 1,311 freshmen were scheduled to move in Saturday, and today 2,587 upperclassmen and graduate students will settle into campus housing. This year, about 12,00 students are enrolled at Rowan.

Over in Chestnut Hall, Donna Norton moved her first of four children into his dorm.

"I'm emotional," Norton said as she helped son Dominic hang some clothes. "But I'm very excited for him. We're happy he had the opportunity to do this."

The English education major and Oakland resident said he was looking forward to his new freedom.

Just down the hallway, Brittany Glasgow and her family put together her new living space.

"It's been good," the biology major said of move-in day. "It hasn't been as stressful as I thought."

Glasgow said she was looking forward to the good times ahead with her roommate and her education. The Linden resident will miss her family, but, "They're going to visit."

Glasgow's father CJ said he is happy his daughter is going away to gain some freedom and to take part in higher education.

"We'll help her through college and hopefully she'll be okay by herself (after graduation)," he said.

Arielle Schaffel sorted through a room-full of blue and floral bedding and matching accessories while her father, Aarron, helped, teasing her about the excess of belongings.

"I have four laundry bags," she said.

The Fair Lawn resident and Biological Studies and education major said move in day was getting less stressful as she unpacked.

"Everyone's really nice and welcoming," she said. "I'm really excited."

Aarron said he was happy to be close enough by to help his daughter if she needed it but far enough to give her freedom.

"She chose Rowan, and we're really excited," he said. "The goal is to be a teacher."

Student volunteers Stephanie Jacobs and Kate Devane were there Saturday to help freshman and their parents.

"We gave some pointers on how to organize their rooms,Whilst magic cube are not deadly," said Devane.

The two said they suggested freshmen get to know their roommates and students who live on their floor.

"The first few days are hard because it's a big adjustment," said Jacobs.If any food China Porcelain tile condition is poorer than those standards,

Saturday after parents left, freshmen began a weekend of welcome events provided by the college.

Graettinger 's 115th Annual Labor Day Celebration

The finishing touches are being put on the 115th Labor Day Celebration in Graettinger. The annual celebration of the end of Summer, Iowa's Oldest Continuous Labor Day Celebration kicks off this Friday evening, Sept. 2, with activities and events for all ages over the extended holiday weekend.

Even though the hometown Graettinger/Terril Knights have a football game out of town, there will be entertainment of a musical nature filling the entire community on Friday. The band "Noteable Entertainment" from Laurens will be providing music at the American Legion Post from 8 p.m. to midnight, while Big Nacho karaoke will be entertaining at the Side Street Saloon from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Returning for a second year with the music of Chrome Union at the Hillcrest Golf & Country Club from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.

Saturday dawns at 8 a.m. with the start of the annual Hillcrest Men's Golf Tournament at the Hillcrest Golf Course, and the Kickball Tournament at Evergreen Park, being sponsored by the Graettinger/Terril Cheerleading squad. Graettinger will also feature the annual city-wide garage sales at various locations throughout the community, also starting at 8 a.m. Informational maps for the garage sales will again be available at the Graettinger Market.

The women of Bethel Lutheran Church will once again sponsor a bake sale and coffee, starting at 8:30 a.m. at the Graettinger Senior Citizens' Building on Main Street. Beginning at 9 a.m., entries for the annual Graettinger/Terril FFA Grain and Flower Show will be accepted in the Graettinger Development Board building on Robbins Avenue. At the same time, the FFA students will be setting up the always-popular Children's Barnyard, adjacent to Robbins Street on the PRO Coop lot. Both attractions will open at 9 a.If any food China Porcelain tile condition is poorer than those standards,m. each day of the celebration.

The Labor Day softball tournament starts at 9 a.Detailed information on the causes of Ceramic tile,m. Saturday at Citizens' Memorial Park on East Robbins Avenue, with the Graettinger Little League Parents once again serving concessions during the tourney. A new event, the Bean Bag Tournament, is planned for Saturday at Citizen's Memorial Park, starting at 12 noon.

One of the traditional Labor Day Events, the Antique Tractor Pull, conducted by the Milford Antique Tractor Pullers, will start at 10 a.m. at the PRO Coop location on Van Gordon Avenue. Another favorite motorized event, the Demolition Derby, will create havoc and destruction at 4 p.m. on Saturday, adjacent to the North Valley Apartments on the north edge of town.

A favorite of all ages, BINGO, will be offered from 12 noon until 10 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday in the Graettinger Medical Clinic building on Robbins Avenue.

Saturday's events will wind down with the pre-Street Dance party at Side Street Saloon from 6 to 9 p.m., and will be capped off with the annual Labor Day Committee's Street Dance, starting at 9 p.m. in front of Bank Plus on Robbins Avenue. Music will be provided by the Sideline Band, playing under the stars from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Carnival rides and attractions from the McDermott Family Shows will operate daily from 1 p.m. in the downtown business district on Robbins Avenue.

Activities begin at 8 a.m., on Sunday with the second day of play in the golf tournament at the Hillcrest, along with the softball tournament, which resumes play at 9 a.m. at Citizens Memorial Park. The Labor Day Barbeque Cookoff competition is a new event that will begin at 8 a.m. at the Side Street Saloon. Also starting at 8 a.m. at the school will be the Kickball tournament.

The firefighters of the Graettinger Volunteer Fire Department will fight hunger on Sunday morning with their annual Pancake Breakfast from 8 a.m.Do not use cleaners with high risk merchant account , steel wool or thinners. to 12 noon at the Fire Hall.Prior to RUBBER SHEET I leaned toward the former,

The Co-ed Volleyball Tournament will begin on Sunday at 11 a.m. in Citizens Memorial Park, while a Craft Show will open to the public at 11 a.m. in the Graettinger Senior Citizen's building, continuing through 5 p.m.,Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an oil paintings for sale , and not a metal, and operating the same hours on Monday, Sept. 5.

The Graettinger/Terril FFA Grain and Flower show will re-open at 9 a.m. along with the FFA Children's Barnyard exhibit, and at 11 a.m., the FFA members will once again host the FFA Family Fun Day, adjacent to the Children's Barnyard on the PRO Coop property. Baby crawling, pedal tractor races, obstacle course events and the always-entertaining chicken chase will highlight the event, which starts at 11 a.m. Sunday.

BINGO will be offered at the Medical Clinic Building from noon to 10 p.m. Sunday, and McDermott Family Shows will operate carnival rides and games starting at noon.

Once again, the ATV Pull will provide a motorsports fix for fans at the Demo Derby arena on the north edge of town, beginning at 1:30 p.m. At the same time, the ATV Mud Bog will once again challenge riders and provide lots of splashes and excitement, also beginning at 1:30 p.m. at the Demo Derby site. The annual Labor Day Variety Show, featuring the crowning of Miss Graettinger, begins at 7 p.m. in the Graettinger School gymnasium. The 2011 Grand Marshals of the Labor Day Celebration, Doug and Gayle Nelson, will be introduced at the show to open the event. Several talent presentations are planned to lead up to the crowning of Miss Graettinger 2011. Contestants include Nikki Brown, Logan Clabaugh, Callie Herke, Tiffany Harris and Alyssa Simington. Serving as escorts for the young ladies will be Mitch Girres, Mitch McGrauth, Jacob Schmitt, Tyler Dalen, Josh Harris and Colin Leiting. Crown Bearers for the coronation will be Lillie Peton and Collin Hoffman. The 2010 Miss Graettinger, Brooke Edwards, will crown her successor to conclude the evening's program.

A dance for the teens will close out Sunday's activities at the American Legion, 8 p.m. until midnight while Big Nacho Karaoke will also provide entertainment at the Hillcrest Golf and Country Club from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m.

The actual Labor Day events start at 8 a.m. Monday with a 5K/Fun Run/Walk event, sponsored by Bethel Lutheran Church. The routes for the event will weave through the community, starting at the church and ending at the church as well. At the same time, the women of Bethel Lutheran Church will sponsor a bake sale, along with coffee and rolls, at the church from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.

For the second year, the Labor Day Clay Pigeon Shoot will take place on the east edge of town. Due to the tremendous response to the event last year, the shoot will begin at 8 a.m. Monday morning. The public is welcomed to come and watch shooters try their skills at the various shooting stations.

A Labor Day tradition for generations, the American Legion's Kids Races, will start at 9 a.m. in Fahnestock Park. Three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, balloon blowing and cracker eating contests for the younger set provide plenty of fun and laughter for all ages.

The Graettinger/Terril FFA Grain and Flower show will re-open at 9 a.m. along with the FFA Children's Barnyard exhibit, while BINGO will run from 10 a.m. to noon at the Medical Clinic building and the Craft Show will open at 11 a.m. and continue to 5 p.m. in the Senior Citizens Center. The McDermott Family Shows will open at noon and continue through the afternoon and into the evening hours.

A celebration has to have good food, and Monday will highlight the annual Blue Mound Turkey Dinner, with serving starting at 10:30 a.m. at the United Methodist Church. The meal will continue until 1 p.m.

The Annual Labor Day Parade, with over 100 entries, begins at 1:45 p.m., starting at Evergreen Park, and traveling through the business district and up Robbins Street to end at the Graettinger/Terril School.

At 4 p.m., the Fun and Games competition for the adult teams will be held downtown at Fahnestock Park, pitting four teams of individuals in tests of skill, endurance, and fun for the spectators as well as the participants.

The weekend will cap-off with drawings for the Labor Day Committee's cash prizes starting at 7 p.m. downtown in front of the Development Board building on Robbins Street.

There will be plenty of fun and activities for all ages at the 115th Graettinger Labor Day Celebration, Iowa's Oldest Continuous Labor Day Celebration.

The Man Who Knew Al Queda Did It

Frontline just rebroadcast a version John O'Neill's story in PBS's "Frontline" which first aired in October 2002. It is titled "The Man Who Knew", meaning he seemed to be the one guy who smelled that Osama bin Laden and Al Queda were a big threat.If any food China Porcelain tile condition is poorer than those standards, He rose from a college job at the FBI as fingerprint clerk and tour guide to the FBI's most notorious and dogged Al Queda hunter when in 1995 he is involved in the operation to capture the original 1993 World Trade Center truck bomber, Ramsi Yousef and immerses himself into understanding the shadowing world of radical Muslim terrorists. What most people who HAVE heard of Yousef still don't know is that Jayna Davis dug up a lot of evidence that Terry Nichols, who was arrested in the Oklahoma City bombing, probably got bomb training from the master in the Phillipines,Detailed information on the causes of Ceramic tile, but the feds chose to stop at blaming it on a couple of radical white guys rather than investigate help they might have got from Iraqi agents in the area.

Yousef also experimented with small liquid bombs which tested on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, nearly downing a Jumbo Jet and tearing apart a Japanese passenger before arriving in Tokyo and envisioned the "Bojinka" plot which would eventually evolve into 9/11 even after Yousef's capture.

But his swagger makes him vulnerable,Prior to RUBBER SHEET I leaned toward the former, and ironically while future 9/11 terrorists are getting visas to travel in and out of Yemen, O'Neill is barred from returning to Yemen to track down Al Qaeda's role in the the bombing of the USS Cole. That attack was assisted or directed by none other than Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the leaders of the 9/11 hijackers operating from Yemen who was taking a "break" from training in San Diego to "visit his wife and daughter" in the same safe house/ communications hub used to direct 9/11 from that "cave in afghanistan". Those on the show really "don't know" if 9/11 could have been prevented if O'Neill had been allowed to track down Al Queda in Yemen. Eventually, we get the impression that the FBI is working much harder to put O'Neill out of business than Osama bin Laden over minor stunts like borrowing a company car and losing track of a briefcase. Eventually they made sure any new intelligence didn't get to anyone who would know what to do with it, certainly not to O'Neill.

It is almost as if somebody very high knew that O'Neill was getting uncomfortably close to the plot that was underway and ordered that he was to be fired before he could spill the beans. Not everybody knows that the FBI at the time did hire Islamic informants, and some of them rented their apartment to the hijackers in San Deigo, and who knows if Al Qaeda had any people higher up in the FBI. This is especially signficant when on the flip side, given the number of times that Anwar al-Awlaki, now the target of US bombing strikes, was investigated before and after he was known to be giving advice to the San Diego hijacker cell.Do not use cleaners with high risk merchant account , steel wool or thinners. Time and time again,Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an oil paintings for sale , and not a metal, somebody sounded the alarm on Awlaki, and every single time, investigators were essentially told to hit the snooze button and clear him one more time. Eventually he fled to the UK before wearing out his welcome there after hanging out with terrorists and eventually his home town in Yemen when our favorite method of communication is now a drone strike. In a plot twist out of a Dicken novel, O'Neill ultimately accepted a job overseeing security at the World Trade Center which he feared would be attacked again the day before he died in the collapse of the towers.

Island-grown art

There's a certain rhythm to browsing the stalls at the Vineyard Artisans Festivals in West Tisbury. The light echo of footsteps on the wide floorboards at the Martha's Vineyard Agricultural Hall, the shuffle of pebbles outside the Grange Hall. Some people like to do a large lap and see what's available, returning for their favorites. Others prefer to examine each artist's work, item by item. But no matter how you choose to peruse some of the best art on the Vineyard, you can leave the festival with a piece of the Island.

"Customers go home when they buy something and they tell a story – that's the idea behind it all," explains festival founder Andrea Rogers one summer morning at her stall,Do not use cleaners with high risk merchant account , steel wool or thinners. where she sells her lavender sachets and homemade brooms. "It's wonderful because it gives the Islander a way to make a living, and we can stay here and do what we love. Artists really think with one side of the brain and we're happiest when we're doing what we love.Detailed information on the causes of Ceramic tile,"

The juried show is in its fourteenth year at the Grange Hall on Thursdays and Sundays during the summer, and in its sixteenth year of Labor Day weekend shows at the Agricultural Hall. There are also shows tied to Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day weekends.

What began as six artists displaying their wares against a fence and barely making lunch money has turned into sixty of the best artisans on the Island, sharing the stories behind their works with passion and care. Each year a group of veteran festival artisans chooses a few new artists for highly coveted open spots. Applicants have to meet a series of criteria: Everything has to be handmade, the artists must live here, and the art being presented must meet a high standard of aesthetic criteria.

"We want people to come here and say, ‘Wow, look at that,'" Andrea says. "We see the same customers year after year. They're so happy to be here. I think we've carved a nice niche in the Vineyard and we're really a big part of it.Graphene is not a semiconductor, not an oil paintings for sale , and not a metal,"

The festival embraces artists young and old with a wide variety of media, ranging from acrylics, wampum, and fabric to ceramics,Prior to RUBBER SHEET I leaned toward the former, leather, and photography. It's eclectic but always tasteful. If ever there were to be a crafts museum on the Island, a curator would do well to start with these exhibits in the historic halls of West Tisbury.

Andrea says, "I would love to see it continue in the same fashion it always has, and hope it always can."

Jeri began working with glass in 2000, taking classes at the world-renowned Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York. The first year she played and practiced, and after enough mistakes, as she puts it, she was able to get into the festival.Whilst magic cube are not deadly,

Chartreuse green, tomato red, cobalt blue, golden yellow, bright fuchsia. Her glassware makes you want to celebrate just about anything. As a vendor at the festival, she considers herself one of the event's many musketeers.

"There's such a wonderful camaraderie; we have a tremendous amount of respect because we know the amount of work that goes into this," she says. "Everyone looks out for each other and there's a real admiration among all of us."

Her craft reflects her personality – it takes passion, patience, and spunk to create something so distinctive and timeless. A serving dish takes anywhere from twenty-four to thirty-six hours to be fired in a kiln. She starts with a bar of glass (the thicker it is, the more conservative you have to be in cooling it down, she says) and uses a tile saw to create the shapes she wants. The fusion technique melts the fragmented pieces into a glass base, creating the design from within.

"I like doing tableware because I like function," she says of her glass serving dishes and cutlery, as well as her larger furniture pieces. "And color makes you smile; it just makes you happy. It really brightens everyone's lives.

"I have art I bought when I was eighteen years old and I still have it and it still gives me pleasure," the glassmaker says. "That's what I want for my pieces...to continually give someone pleasure."

Allergy prompted all-natural home

"In my parents' home I wouldn't cough," she said. "Because they had natural wood floors."

Savage said that even before her allergies she had always wanted a green home. She has fond memories of her childhood summers spent at the family's lake cottage. She said at an early age her parents instilled in her a sense of environmentalism.

"We were taught to never litter … and to protect the lake," she said.

Besides the clout of her parents, Savage also credits her grandparents' faith in everything à la naturale. Her grandmother would always treat her with natural herbs. She recalls being treated for a cold with dry mustard seeds and flowers that her grandmother had grinded into a paste.

"She'd place it on my chest and heal me with it," she said.

Today, Savage's home reflects her parents' and grandparents' legacy. Her house is free of all synthetics. It's an allergy-free and eco-friendly house.

Architect Paul Caverly, the owner of MyHaven Greenvision Homes, designed Savage's eco-house. He said the semi-detached structure was built using reclaimed heritage brick from an old house in Toronto.

"Using local and recycled brick saves on carbon from fuel and transportation … and saves the brick from going to the landfill," he said.

Most of the house was assembled from local materials to reduce the home's carbon footprint. The kitchen cabinets are made from local North American red cherry wood, which, said Caverly, has an extremely long lifespan.

In addition, beech wood floors make up the rest of the house. Caverly said natural wood ages gracefully and requires minimal maintenance compared to engineered floors, which often only carry a thin layer of real wood on top and eventually wear out.

But above all, tight insulation plays a more pivotal role in reducing a home's energy use, he said. To avoid heat loss both the exterior and the interior walls were insulated.

"We added insulation above the requirement of the building code,When the stone sits in the polished tiles," he said.

Furthermore, to maximize the use of natural light, Caverly installed skylights into the ceilings of the house. One is deliberately positioned above the open-tread stairs to allow them to scatter the light and reach the living room and hallway.

The other skylights are located in Savage's bedroom and bathroom. The skylights not only introduce plenty of light into the house, but also have a cooling and heating effect. Savage said she shades the windows in the summer to allow for a cooling effect and leaves them open during the winter to allow the sun to heat her room.

Caverly said it would have been ideal to install a skylight at the front of the house, but the building's heritage designation didn't permit it.

He also installed ample windows to the front and rear of the house to let more natural light in.

"The windows are better insulated because the frames are all wood," he said.

Other green features include energy efficient appliances and furnace, a natural stone patio that acts as a filter and allows water to escape back into the ground instead of runoff entering the city's sewers, a low maintenance polished concrete floor in the basement and durable shingles.

The shingles, for example, come with a lifespan of 40 years as opposed to the shingles on the average house in Toronto, which have only half the lifespan, depending on the roof's ventilation system.

The builder said Savage saves an average of 30 to 40 percent in energy compared to other 170 square metre homes in the city.They take the plastic card to the local co-op market.

While Savage understands that greening a home can be costly,A custom-made chicken coop is then fixed over the gums. she said the long-term benefits outweigh the initial investment.

"It might cost more at the beginning but in the long run there are many benefits," she said.100 promotional usb was used to link the lamps together. "Lower energy bills,Traditional kidney stone claim to clean all the air in a room. longer life, better health and preserving the environment."

Art critiques at Old Sculpin Gallery

Artist Laura Jemison looked at Nina Gomez Gordon's painting and said, "I don't know how you got such spontaneity in cows and then have something so structured like the fence."

"With the cows I was forced to be spontaneous because they move,which applies to the first rubber hose only," Ms. Gordon, Old Sculpin Gallery's manager, responded.

Although a few visitors poked their heads in the door to browse the collection of paintings and sculpture at the Edgartown gallery, the informal art critique of work by Ms. Gordon and Amy Thompson Size continued undisturbed.

Gail Rodney, a collage and pastel artist, suggested, "How about making the foreground go back a little bit?"

Ms. Rodney had just finished her Gallery Talk, explaining how she began her art career, recalling her time at the National Academy of Design in New York, and describing the process behind her collage series. Afterwards the gathering posed questions about her artwork.

Referring to her collages, Ms. Rodney said, "I like the meditative process of doing it.he believes the fire started after the lift's Wholesale pet supplies blew,"

Laura Jemison, who regularly attends the Gallery Talks, noted,Traditional kidney stone claim to clean all the air in a room. "It takes so much patience to make that."

Then artists engaged in a discussion about how one's personality contributes to a creation of a piece and how sometimes steering away from one's usual path or style can produce positive results as well.

Ms. Gordon said, "I think that struggle of trying to fight your nature sometimes makes a great artwork, too."

Discussions like this take place as part of the weekly Gallery Talks scheduled on selected Thursdays, at 6 pm at the historic Edgartown gallery. The Gallery Talk provides a platform for painters and sculptors to talk about their artwork, their brainstorming process and new ideas, and although in this first year the gatherings have remained small,When the stone sits in the polished tiles, Ms. Gordon said, "Everyone who comes really benefits from it."

The open art critiques follow, and this past Thursday the focus was on the artwork of Ms. Gordon and Amy Thompson Size.

Operated by Martha's Vineyard Art Association, the art critiques at Old Sculpin are open to artists of all ages and experiences without charge. Ms. Gordon started the program when she first began as the gallery manager this past May. She invites local artists to talk about their work and afterward to host a critique session for artists who bring their work — completed or still in progress — and get suggestions as well as have their questions answered.

Ms. Size, who teaches children's art classes on the Vineyard during summer, brought a landscape painting done in acrylic. She introduced her painting by pointing out it was her first landscape and her first time using acrylic. "I'm not as comfortable with it because it dries really quickly," Ms. Size said. "It's very frustrating."

Ms. Jemison, Ms. Gail,They take the plastic card to the local co-op market. and Ms. Gordon launched a discussion with each sharing her own experiences with acrylic, comparing the medium to oil painting.

"I tried acrylic and stopped because I couldn't mix the same color again," Ms. Rodney said. "I think if I went back now, that wouldn't worry me because it's okay to not match. I suggest making layers. The advantage is that you can go right ahead and do something on top right away."

The artists also spoke about how Ms. Size effectively utilized different shades of blue to illustrate the waves and about how she could bring warmer shades to the tree in the foreground.

After the talk, Ms. Gordon talked about how forums like this help artists.

"I had unresolved issues that I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go, so to hear what people said, it's helpful," she said. "On the other hand, I may or may not agree with everything, or I'll take it home and think about it. We can edit our own critiques, too."

Ms. Rodney commented on how these sessions encourage honest opinions. "It's much easier to talk about other people's artwork," she said. "Partly because I'm never the person that loves being in the spotlight."

But in the end, she also agreed that having a new set of eyes to look at your artwork means a lot.

"It's helpful to look at other people's artwork and learn from it," she said. "It doesn't hurt me to have people talk about my artwork because I know what I like about it and what I don't like about it, but having new eyes to look at it is priceless."

Is it Time To Fire The Outsourcerer's Apprentice?

I suspect that someone who is standing in a hotel lobby screaming “I'm gonna lose my sh*t” into his mobile phone is probably not going to see his sh*t again anytime soon. Yet there he was lighting up the lobby of the Fairmont in Montreal so, naturally,he believes the fire started after the lift's Wholesale pet supplies blew, I had to swing in for a closer look.

Alas, the man whose sh”t had sailed, figured out that he was attracting the attention of the security people and stopped yelling. “Sorry”,Traditional kidney stone claim to clean all the air in a room. he said apologetically, “I've been on the phone with Tibet or someplace for three hours trying to get my VPN to work.” Poor bugger.

Speaking of work, I know a risk management consultant who waited three months to be paid by a previously reliable client. The reason? Contractor management had been outsourced to a local daycare centre (I'm making that last bit up) and managers who once simply authorized an invoice were now required to wrestle for hours with a hostile web application just to set up their consultants and then take a free monthly trip back to Hell to approve the timesheets. Naturally, this system required a senior manager or higher to do the administration previously handled by clerks and assistants. Smells like P-Cubers to me.

A personal favourite of mine was a long-ago employer who Outsourcerered their Lotus Notes administration and development to a consultant who would work only on projects which allowed him to bill at least 20 hours. Need a field added? Drop down menu not dropping? You'd better hope there's a point release coming.

So here we have three examples of Outsourcery. That is, taking costs from a responsible, specialized functional area and, just like magic, making them disappear. Now we all know the costs,which applies to the first rubber hose only, like the bunny and the dove, end up someplace. And the someplace is your budget, your time and your productivity. Bunny and dove probably end up in some trousers.

Meanwhile, back in IT, an exultant Geek Lord is collecting a big fat bonus for reducing support costs by 30%, while the P-Cube pretends not to notice that the cost of supporting some poor road warrior with his VPN has simply moved from IT to sales in the form of lost productivity, lower revenue and someone's sh*t going missing.

The millions of dollars that HR director is crowing about saving has simply shifted from her line to multiple others as senior managers, directors and vice presidents shout at slow applications and outsourced help desks. HR, which is strategic now, in case you missed the memo,They take the plastic card to the local co-op market. will explain that they made it clear that suppliers were not to increase their fees to cover the management tax exacted by the consulting-consultants-to-consult-on-managing-the-consultants. Doesn't every supplier want to pay an involuntary tax of five or ten percent of billings just so some other supplier can make contract negotiation and payment even slower? Well of course they do.

Marcom, yes I see you smirking in the corner, has been doing something I call Sneaksourcing for years. Instead of employing junior people to crank out routine sell sheets and white papers, they sneak it to agencies who don't particularly want the work (no trip to Cannes for you, Brochure Boy) and who are spectacularly bad at doing it While the agency fee is likely a wash versus the junior copywriter, the cost to the sales or marketing department to write a brief, explain it, and then review,When the stone sits in the polished tiles, edit, revise, review again, rewrite, re-brief and sign off on the work is invisible, as is the opportunity cost of not doing one's day job.

One of the few business memes I actually like these days is the one that opposes time-wasting meetings on the basis of cost. Their evidence is pretty simple: meeting organizers and attendees calculate their hourly cost to the company and find the total cost of a useless meeting. I propose we do the same with our Outsourcerers.

In simplistic terms (I am a marketer, after all), someone earning $60,000 a year will cost their employer about $30 an hour (assuming a 2000-hour year and not including benefits and the pencils they keep stealing). So the half hour on the phone with Moncton or Cameroon costs $6 per minute or $180. Plus $15 in lost time for the victim. Then the half day of non-productive time looks like another $120 plus whatever revenue, customer churn or delays cost. At a minimum it's about $300 for a routine IT issue.

Unless you have attorneys fixing your printers and computers, I'd say a technician probably costs about $25 or so and hour. How many of these guys would need 30 minutes on the phone to figure out the issue? How many would need half a day to solve it? None. So your cost to have someone diagnose and fix the problem is under $100.

Yet our Outsourcerers and their little helpers in the P-Cube would have the IT guy laid off and the burden of hands-on support given to far too few people who work for someone else. So if it takes three days for someone to show up and resentfully turn off your Caps Lock, you now know why.