Na enem od trnovskih blokov opozarja že kašna dva meseca. Očitno nikogar posebej ne moti.

These are this Tuesday morning’s top 10 analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen in Wall Street research calls:

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ: ADBE) Started as Market Outperform at JMP Securities.
BB&T Corp. (NYSE: BBT) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) Started as Underweight at HSBC.
Clearwire Corporation (NASDAQ: CLWR) Raised to Neutral at UBS.
Fifth Third Bancorp (NASDAQ: FITB) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) Started as Equal Weight at Barclays.
Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) Cut to Neutral at Merriman Curhan Ford.
Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) Started as Overweight at Piper Jaffray.
Tata Motors (NYSE: TTM) Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley.
Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) Started as Buy at Lazard.

You can join our open email distribution list to receive daily emails with analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, market rumors, merger activity, IPOs and secondary offerings, Warren Buffett and guru activity and more.

JON C. OGG

Here’s my new mixtape Sounds presented by PRC Clothing and JacquesMorel.com. It features Kyle Lucas, Hollywood FLOSS, Jesty Beatz, B/A, Willie Joe, Yung Nate, Charlie Rockz, Mike Dreams, Jay Who?,Choze (aka MattheEngineer) and more!!! Artwork by Shake from 2dopeboyz.com. Hit the jump for the tracklisting and download link!!

D O W N L O A D   N O W ! ! !

and dont forget to get your 15% discount from PRC Clothing by entering “cashflow” as a promo code!!!

Wer heute länger als 14 Tage verreist kann dies ja nur tun, wenn er auch fleißig bloggt. Na gut dann schwimm ich auf der Web 2.0 Welle mal mit

Bratislava. Ich bin jetzt da. Hat auch nur den ganzen Samstag gedauert. Ja, ich weiß alle schimpfen immer auf die Bahn, Telekom und Post. Aber wenn der Zug von Leipzig nach Dresden 2:20 braucht, also mit 40 min Verspätung eintrifft, dann klappt das halt nicht mit dem Anschlusszug nach Bratislava. Na gut, also 4 Stunden gewartet mit all den Dynamo Fans am Dresdner HBF und dann gings endlich weiter. Neben mir saß eine nette tschechische Lehrerin, so war die Fahrt nicht so langweilig. 20 Uhr: Bratislava Hauptbahnhof. Die Stadt ist so groß wie Leipzig, der Bahnhof nicht Eher ein etwas renovierungsbedürftiger Kleinstadtbahnhof. Egal, nette Vermieterin holt mich ab. Wir fahren zum Appartement und regeln den Papierkram. Schlafen. Zzzzz

Es ist Sonntag. Wo bin ich? Ah ich weiß! Ich gehe raus und kaufe ein. Das geht hier auch Sonntags Ich bummle durch die Stadt und versorg mich an der Touri Info und auf dem Weihnachtsmarkt. Mein schickes Appartement ist innenstadtnah im Erdgeschoss eines Altbaus.

Montag. Erster Tag im Büro. Ich gehe die 4 Haltestellen zu Fuß, da mir das Nahverkehrssystem noch etwas suspekt ist. Auf dem Weg gibt es einige Eindrücke aus vergangenen Zeiten.

Angekommen. Das Gebäude steht in einem neuen Gewerbegebiet zusammen mit lauter Banken und anderen bekannten großen Firmen. Hier ist der Aufschwung deutlich zu erkennen. Überall Baustellen neuer Glaspaläste. Von wegen Weltwirtschaftskrise!

So, ich bin im Büro. Schon wieder alle nett Ich habe eine Besprechung mit meinem neuen Chef und einigen Kollegen. Es klappt ganz gut mit dem Englisch. In der Mittagspause lerne ich auch ein paar slowaksiche Basic-Worte. Sie zeigen mir die Abteilung und erklären mir die Aufgaben. Dann kanns ja losgehen!

By Douglas A. McIntyre

Boeing (NYSE:BA) 777 aircraft engines can ice up and stop working. The engines in question are made by Rolls-Royce, and although the problem is very rare, it is dangerous. The 777 is used for very long trips, often over oceans. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The FAA rejected recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board to order affected Boeing 777 operators to swiftly replace parts on at least one of the two engines on each aircraft.”

Read more…

A friend of mine is just starting an agile project and is having discussions with her organisation’s top PM about how he believes he needs to begin to address the project’s needs, particularly in relation to staffing.

The approach he was dictating will be rather familiar to a lot of you:

1. A PM will lead and manage the project
2. A BA is needed to undertake analysis and design of the solution, perhaps coupled with an enterprise architect or a solutions architect.
3. A Developer (or three) is needed to produce the software solution. He’ll also work out how long the project will take based during the initiation phase on assessment of the number of use-cases in the requirements documentation
4. A Test Manager is required to do the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and ensure the solution doesn’t break when introduced to the big wide world.
5. You might need an IA or user-experience engineer to help with UAT at the end of the project, or if you’re really advanced in your thinking, they might be involved up front to help clarify the project solution and identify the sets of users’ needs from information classification to navigation paradigms.
6. … add 4 weeks for requirements and 2 weeks up-front for project initiation, 4 weeks for testing (UAT) at the end, and voila! you’ve got your project plan, n’est pas? (… hmmm … maybe not?)

Given her project is expected to last about 12 months, as soon as you put a PM and a BA on the books, even if its only the equivalent of 1 FTE, you’re already looking at $0.25 million or so before you actually deliver something. So, I put the question to her as to whether you start with roles or whether aspects of what users say they require need to be assessed, prioritised, and then look at the skills needed with people who have those skills to then follow.

Some people think it’s a chicken and egg thing. How do you know where to start if a PM doesn’t sit down and plan out the schedule and a BA assess what’s required? Do you need to do this before you establish that you need a PM to manage the project and a BA to do the analysis?

In essence, preparing for an agile project is just a different way of thinking. Gone are the days where I personally just automatically assign a PM and a BA because I just can’t afford the overhead of having someone to intermittently gauge project risks, update gantt charts (note: I now use Kanban instead) and dictate to the team the tasks they should be doing just because the schedule says to do so.

Here’s my top 10 on how I now begin my agile projects:

1. I write-up a basic project requirement — after all, you’ve got to start with a list of basic user needs and what that might mean in relation to a solution. I know some organisations who will spend about $10K and two weeks doing initial requirements gathering, interviewing users and/or conducting workshops, and producing something simple to communicate what the project needs.

   Me? I like to start with a collection of user stories, a few personas, create storyboards for them in a workshop environment with post-its and pens, and discuss what those user stories might mean in relation to features and sets of features. This typically takes me (and some SMEs like an enterprise architect and an experienced senior BA) a few days.

2. I then group the requirements into logical feature sets and prioritise them based on an initial assessment of value to the end-user. Card sorting with users is a good way to involve users in ascertaining priority.
3. I then draw a line in the sand that describes the most simple, skinny solution — one that essentially has to be delivered in about 8 weeks.
4. I ascertain what documentation might be required or activities that need to be undertaken
   
5. I assess what skills are required to complete the activities. If in doubt, check what you needed last time to produce a certain widget, document, or feature set. Document and baseline it often enough and this task becomes a breeze. Record how long it took and suddenly you’ll be able to have a better guess as to how long you’ll need to complete the task.
6. I then source the people with the right skills and note during the iteration of what feature set when they are required. I don’t care if they call themselves a PM, a BA, or an IA. If they have the right skills for the right job then I want them.
7. To mitigate against loss of knowledge because different people are involved at different times I use virtual teams to baseline and benchmark specific project elements, like the UI, interaction design, systems architecture, etc. In practice, this means gathering together, for example, all the analysts to have their own stand-up meetings about twice a week and have the most experienced among them take a Sensei role. These Sensei’s have their own stand-up meetings with the Roshi to communicate issues with the baseline.
8. If I’ve got multiple feature sets to produce in the skinny solution I group the feature sets into logical bundles and assign each bundle to a team. Of course this can cause fragmentation of the solution, particularly with respect to the UI and interaction design. Leveraging the Sensei in the virtual teams however mitigates the likelihood of this occurring.
9. Each team then needs someone to champion user needs and mentor people to make them more capable to deliver what the project needs (now and in the future) — the team’s Sensei. I simply choose the person that has the most experience and willingness to mentor. Some agile practitioners call this the Product Owner, Product Owner Proxy, the Product Manager or even just the Team Lead (I’m quite partial to Japanese terms and titles though, particularly given they don’t carry a lot of role ‘baggage’ with them).
10. I then choose the most experienced Sensei amongst all the groups to be the Roshi — the person who will champion the project, teach and mentor the team members, be involved in producing aspects of the project, hold morning standups and communicate issues and risks to the Steering Committee. Some call this the Scrum Master, the Project Lead, the Project Director, or the Project Manager. I don’t care about the title overall, I just want them to:
    1. lead
    2. communicate
    3. champion the project,
    4. not be an ‘extra’ or an ‘overhead’. I want them to be part of the solution and intimately familiar with it.

    When I suggested this to a group of PMs in a government department recently someone asked me whether this essentially meant that PMs needed to go out and learn new skills. I simply responded by saying that this was an opportunity for PMs to adapt and learn in order to add greater value to a project.

Working this way to sort out how to begin your agile project isn’t hard. Importantly, it emphasises that from the outset of the project that adding value to users is important and your roles are subservient to that cause.

M

Storyboards are a great way to describe a user’s journey, their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, capabilities, behaviours and expectations, throughout a single scenario. They’re light-weight, easy to do, and as a visual tool can be used in workshops or just by a couple of members of the team. They also work perflectly on agile projects because they’re visual and, therefore, an instant placeholder for a conversation.

Here’s my tips for doing your own storyboards:

1. Do your personas first. This way you’ll know, even at a basic level, who the people in your stories will be, how they think about their work and their behavioural attitudes.

2. Put the persona into the scenario: From the persona’s perspective describe their thoughts and actions as they try to undertake the actions required of the scenario. This is where the user stories written on your agile story cards meet your personas on agile projects.

3. Stick to a single scenario: You’ll be tempted to start to include a whole range of other things in your storyboard. Just keeping it simple will help. The only rule is that the storyboard must be logical and tell a user’s story from beginning to end.

4. Stick figures are ok to! Many people shy away from storyboards because they think they can’t draw. But if you can draw speech bubbles, thought clouds, and a stick figure then you can draw storyboards. If you draw some hair on the stick figure then you can differentiate between Steve and John — which is very useful when one user in the storyboard is, for example, sending a message to another because then you need include both of them in the story.

5. Include thoughts and feelings: It’s easy just to describe the logical sequence of events. The story becomes more personal, though, and thereby more real, if you include thought clouds and speech bubbles. This will ultimately mean people will be able to identify with the story and thereby make your storyboards more effective.

6. Post-its and pens: I always use storyboards because I can do it in a moment’s notice with a Sharpie and post-it notes. This makes it very easy to swap post-its around, draw new ones, until I get all the logic right.

I then take a photo of the storyboard sequence (everyone has a camera on their phone these days) as a baseline and take the post-its into a workshop where I validate my logic by comparing it to the way users’ sequence the elements.

If necesary, I’ll then take the storyboard and convert it into a workflow diagram in Visio as a communication of the user-to-system interactions that helps to clarify use cases for the BAs and developers … but that’s a blog post for another day.

M

A slight delay.
Airport is quiet.
Canucks playing.
Montreal winning football.
Airport looks good, crazy changes since we arrived in 2000.
Back then I still thought it looked good.
Bye family see you soon.

Mr. T (born Laurence Tureaud ) is best known for his role as B. A. Baracus in the 1980s television series The A-Team. In 1984, he made a motivational video called Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!.  In it he gives helpful advice to children, and in one song he sings “Treat Your Mother Right (Treat Her Right)”, in which he enumerates the reasons why it is important to treat your mother right.

Now just between me and you I’m extremly grateful to Mr T for this video and that I got a chance to see it. If it wasn’t for this one song and its instruction to treat my mother right, then I can tell you my mum would have been on the end of some serious smackdowns when I was growing up. Thank You Mr T.

The original is below or watch the video here.

Mr T – Treat you Mother Right:

The Remix:

1. Identify your users’ stories

As I studied users’ thoughts, I found patterns in what my project was really designed to do, above and beyond what the project brief said. I listened to what my mind was drawn to listen to. These were the users’ stories — what was most important in their working lives.

There are no right or wrong answers in listening. Be honest with your users that you’re there to add value to the way they work and their stories – needs, expectations, attitudes and capabilities – will become clear.

2. Embrace your users’ needs

Once I am aware of users’ needs, it is far easier to design according to them. When faced with a decision, I can compare it to their values by documentation as personas, and see it will bring me closer to a solution that is fit for them, rather than what is easiest for the project team to produce.

3. Accept expanding feature sets

A ZenAgile mind does not struggle. It accepts users’ needs as they truly are. A rock is a rock. It will remain that way no matter how much you worry, wish, or pressure it into changing. Worrying about requirements and ever expanding user wants are the same way. I accept requirements for what they are, do not waste time or energy fretting over it, and group them into feature sets for delivery in such a way that, as a whole, they add value to users’ work.

4. Energise for change

A ZenAgile mind can give you extra energy for change as you are not wasting energy fighting against the inevitable. As above, there is a large rock in your way. You have three options:

• run into the rock repeatedly
• agonize about the rock being in the way, or
• find a way around the rock.

Before ZenAgile, I chose the first two options. With ZenAgile, I now accept the rock for what it is: an obstacle. I accept that you cannot go through it. I do not panic, and waste time and energy worrying about the obstacle. Instead I make my own path around the obstacle, either over the rock, around the rock, or under the rock.

This is Seijaku (静寂) — the energised calm.

5. Enhance knowledge of yourself

As I practice ZenAgile, I spend a fair amount of time in conversation with others and thereby understanding myself and how I come to terms with change: change in the project context, changes in requirements, and changes that need to occur to the solution.

In time, I’ve learned to quiet my mind. I’ve listened to the same fears for projects repeating themselves which inspired me to change what was causing those fears. I’ve realised, for example, that lack of a user-centred approach was a large source of anxiety, and so it was time for a change. Without time to think and meditate on the conversations in a project, we tend to ignore what our mind is telling us, and remain locked into our old patterns of doing things.

6. Gain confidence in the agile way

As you reflect on your inner self, you become conscious of who you really are, your role, and the skills you bring to aspects of the agile project. You learn what makes you happy, what is beneficial to your project, and where you fit into the multidisciplinary team. You bypass the fears and anxieties of your mind, what role you play — Business Analyst, Project Manager, Information Architecture, User Experience Designer, Change Manager — and focus on doing what needs to be done. Boldly and passionately complete the iteration. The opinions of traditional organisations like PMI, IIBA, ABAA, etc, do not matter, because you know you are doing what is right.

7. Appreciate the iterative project lifecycle

I accept the project as it truly is – evolutionary in nature, rather than revolutionary. You will always uncover new aspects of users’ needs. You will always uncover the unknown as you proceed boldly through the project. Some will be surprises like a starry evening, a stroll by the river, or a night of solitude. Each will have their own unique characteristics to be appreciated. Mundane user needs also hold their own charm. Observing the quiet details of the project lends value to the less appealing aspects, and brings peace and joy in commonplace tasks.

8. Increase consideration for others

Each person on the project is interconnected. We are all searching for the solution, requirements, and a meaningful project to work on. It is much harder to be angry at the user who argues with you about scope when you realise they are on the same path, just at a different point in their journey.

9. Simplify your project and your documentation

Conversation not documentation helps you differentiate between needs and wants. To document things completely today is to suggest that it will fix users and their workplace in time until the project has been completed. By focussing, instead, on a minimalist, simple project solution delivered in a short period of time, with just enough documentation to describe the decisions made, you are able to deliver value to people now and then build upon that solution to meet their future needs.

This is Kanso (簡素) — simplicity and elimination of clutter from the project

10. Cultivate a giving spirit by mentoring others in the team

When you are doing your role in the best way you can, your heart fills with joy. You are doing what you were put on this earth to do, and doing it to the best of your ability. Your life is simple, you are living your values, and you have a clear mind. You can then give to others, mentoring and teaching with a loving spirit, to help them along their path.

This is the True Way of ZenAgile

M

Here are the results of my poll about airlines in difficulty. Last week, I asked: “According to you, which of these airlines is in the worst spot?”

The first thing that the results showed is that all of these airlines are in a tough spot. Indeed, the votes are almost equally place the airlines in the same posture.

Among the airlines I mentioned, the results show that you think Iberia is in a worst spot with a total of 31%. The second “shakiest” airline is British Airways with 25%. I have to say that I put the poll online before the merger announcement; it could have changed the results if voter had known about the BA/Iberia merger.

Aer Lingus and JAL are, in other words, in a better spot than BA and Iberia. I believe JAL will survive because it’s too big to die, and in any case, the Japanese government will find a solution. However I’m less optimistic about Aer Lingus. The Irish airline won’t be supported by its government and no airline but Ryanair has showed any interest. I’ll bet that Aer Lingus will first go through a pretty critical and difficult phase.

I recently created a post on a BA’s role on agile projects. The essential message was, simply, that there is no BA role. There’s also no PM role either. However, both disciplines have an immense number of skills that are incredibly valuable in agile projects.

Sprint Zero

• Identifying users: Understanding who to talk to and who the prioritised feature sets and requirements represents if the first skill needed on an agile project. A BAs skills in stakeholder segmentation is the perfect starting point as is documenting them as personas.
• Collecting user needs described on story cards: BAs have a great number of skills in eliciting requirements. In Sprint Zero all that is required is documentation as a story card:”As a [role] I need to [activity] in order to [outcome]“This gives you great traceability throughout the project because everything as to tie into enabling the user to undertake the activity and give them the outcome they seek.

Articulating the skinny solution

• Prioritisation of requirements: What requirements are more important than others?  BAs have skills in negotiation, liaison, workshop organisation and execution. Pair a BA with an Information Architect (IA) or user-experience designer (UXD) and you get a good idea of the prioritisation of their needs and how they need to be articulated during the iteration phases as complete feature sets. Remember it’s not about having mandatory, desirable, etc. Instead, agile requirements are listed in priority order with a minimum set — the things we can’t do without — forming the skinny solution.This is where the BAs skills are essentially lacking because it’s more in the province of cognitive and behavioural psychology. The skinny system reflects users’ hygiene factors.Pair a BA with an IA, however, and the way to elicit the hygiene factors will become clear.

Planning an iteration

• Work estimation and benchmarking: What is the team going to produce? What skills are required? What activities will be done in this iteration? How long will elicitation and validation tasks take? These are all questions that BAs because of their ongoing involvement in projects are readily able to answer.I like to ensure that I’ve got a wiki handy to note the aspects of the estimation so that I can change the estimation into a benchmark once the work has been completed. Over time, this becomes a valuable knowledge tool because I can simply say “when we last did it, it took [this long]“
• Risk analysis: While doing work it’s the job of all team members to understand issues and risks as they arise and communicate them to the team’s leader, Sensei or Product Owner. The ability, therefore, to analyse on the fly is vital to the team and a skill that BAs have in spades.I find that differentiating between a fear and a risk is the hardest thing for peope to grasp. People often fear that something will eventuate, but when you start to boil things down into hard facts abouta) the impact the issue will have, and

  b) the actual likelihood of occurence (based on research) then fears can rapidly vanish when also paired with constant communication from standup meetings.

  In this way, the BAs skills are best applied in the Roshi, Scrum Master or Project Lead roles.

Understanding the context

• Elicitation and observation: Analysing how people work, why, and the outcomes achieved is an important part of a BAs skill set.  Whether done through interviews, focus groups or a contextual inquiry (my own favourite), understanding the context of use and communicating it is a BAs core strength in agile environments
• Communication: How do you relate to the rest of your multidisciplinary team that you know the context of use — both from a user and systems perspective? BAs have a variety of tools they use regularly coupled with a talent for customisation of communication mediums and messages so that information is passed on to others with maximum efficiency.So what are some of these tools?
  • Storyboards (which I love to draw!)
  • Plans on a page (epic stories)
  • User pathways
  • Behavioural and process flow diagrams
  • Context diagram
  • Logical data model

  Notice that these are all light-weight, can be done in a short period of time, are easily changed, and are, essentially, placholders for a conversation.

Understanding the human, strategic and system requirements

• Custodianship of requirements: Understanding context is one thing, but then drawing the relationships between context and the needs of different people, and then taking into consideration the constraints, is a BA’s bread and butter. Where other disciplines, particularly UXD, tend to have greater strength in understanding and documenting context, the BAs strength has always been in elicitation, translation and communication of requirements, and then the management of these requiremens through to solution design, validation and implementation.For people like me, who tend to like to work at the ‘big picture’, having a BA who is detail oriented is a must.

Solution design

• Translation, communication and business representation: This is my favourite part of the iteration. While other team members might be responsible for the organisation of information of a system, its interaction design, and its systems architectural design, the BAs skills best served during the design phase is in representation of business and end-users. This is largely because their role as custodian of requirements makes them the most familiar with what is required and what the outcomes need to be when putting everything together.

Validation of the solution

• Diplomacy, negotiation, and whole-of-project representation: While programmers use automated testing in agile environments one aspect that can’t be automatically tested is whether or not the system behaves in the way that matches the way users need and want to use the product. Here the BAs diplomacy is his most valuable asset to bring to the agile project. He has to balance the needs of everyone, as well as their expectations, to help negotiate an agreement that the solution works, or whether additional things need to be incorporated in order for the solution to be acceptable to those who will use it.Of course, the outcome also needs to be communicated to The Powers That Be. With their strong skills in diplomacy and negotiation, a BA is able to represent the team and project as its Roshi, Scrum Master, or Project Lead.Then there’s letting the team know they’ve not suceeded in producing a valid solution. Lots of people get very attached to what they think is the right way to proceed and having users tell you that it’s not what they want can be incredibly frustrating. It means that the BAs skills of diplomacy are not only valued as an outward facing ability but also as an inward facing one as well

Implementation

• Diplomacy and sign-off: Having completed the ISO13407 cycle final implementation the feature set needs to be signed-off. Someone has to remind users and the business of how the iteration has been conducted and the points of agreement throughout. This can be a delicate matter particularly given many users and sponsors want a big thick document to read at their leisure and then sign.I usually print and package all of the smaller deliverables and put them into a folder. The first page lists the milestones and activities, agreement dates and who was present/represented, and when agreement was reached. The bottom of the page has the dotted line on which to sign.
• Setting expectations: I’ve found other sponsors don’t care so much about being this formal, particularly given the BA has been in constant communication with them and set expectations along the entire feature set iteration.

Ultimately, while there is no actual BA role, a BAs skill sets are of incredible importance throughout an agile project. This is a breath of fresh air for those of us who are only invited by the PM to elicit requirements during the first stage of the a waterfall project only then to be brought back onto the scene to help with users acceptance testing. This, ultimately, is why as BAs, we should all be championing agile. And if you’re not, then you should be!

So where are your strengths? What skills do you use most often as a BA in agile environments?

M

Well here we are, three lines in to the offering formula and about to start on the fourth and last.  And here it is:

en ka en imakhy Senwosret, maa-kheru: for the ka of the revered one Senwosret, true of voice.

Sound like anyone you know?  Do you revere the colleague whose card or whiteboard you are embellishing?  Are they known for their honesty, the accuracy of their pronouncements or their karaoke prowess?  Never mind, it’s only a formula.  Let’s look at the first bit of it.

en ka en:  for the ka of.  Let’s do the easy bit first.   The Sherlock Holmeses among you will instantly have deduced that the squiggly lines top and bottom correspond to the en. 

Elementary.   And speaking of elements, the squiggly line in hieroglyphs represents the watery one.  It’s a ripple of water:

See the resemblance?  We’ve already seen wavy lines representing water, in the post on wabet.  But we haven’t had them as the actual letter n.  Here’s an original:

It’s a zigzag line.  What else is there to say?  The ka, on the other hand…

The Egyptians didn’t have souls.  Or rather, they didn’t just have single souls.  The deceased Egyptian exploded into a whole menagerie of afterlife entities:  the body, the shadow, the akh (a heron-like bird with a lamp who circled the skies with the stars), the ba (a human-headed bird that hung around the necropolis and twittered mournfully – they’ve made a comeback on the Internet lately) and the ka, or life force.

The ka had its advantages and disadvantages.  A disadvantage was that it was confined to the tomb, unlike the ba and the akh.  Maybe it kicked the ba and the akh out, so it could get some elbow room, with the body and the shadow.  Maybe that was why the ba twittered mournfully.  The advantage was that the ka got to ascend the burial shaft, come out through the false door into the offering chapel and feast upon the food and drink brought by the family or magically invoked by the passer-by.  The ka was the life force, and it fed upon the life force of the food.  But we’ve been through all this before.

The hieroglyph for ka is a pair of upraised arms, as found on the head of this royal ka statue:

What a beautiful, slender yet well moulded pair of arms and  shoulders, and delicate, detailed hands.  They didn’t always put so much work into the hieroglyphs,

although they have taken care to paint this ka the dark red colour they used for male skin (men being more likely to be outdoors than women, and therefore more tanned).  I draw my kas very simply:  three straight lines plus a little crescent at each end for the hands.

NB:  this ka is not to be confused with the ka meaning bull of a few posts ago.  Katie Hughes tweeted a good idea about that some time ago:  kh1369  @SusanLlewellyn Egyptians would be sustaining the ka (“spirit”) with ka (meat)? What a multi-purpose word! Also, is “kau” like “cow”? Easy!  She’s great at making these connections.

Blah Blah Blah Institute

Affiliated to Blah Blah Blah University

Offers Courses & Degree

B.Com – Rs.24000

B.A. – Rs.20000

BBA – Rs.18000

BCA – Rs.36000

B.Sc – Rs.30000

B.E - Rs.3, 20,000

And Many More………

Eligibility Criteria : Money in Your Pocket

Entrance by Exam ( In Formal )

100% Un-Employment Guarantee | We Assure You will Not get a Job

Learning After The Degree : “ Are You Joking “ Nothing !!

Buy Now | For SALE

© All Rights Reserved Saurabh Goswami
www.saurabhgoswami.info

15 female (former BA) Hong Kong based flight attendants are squaring off with BA legal in England tomorrow on grounds of age discrimination. The flight attendants claim that once they reached the age of 45, they were let go. Meanwhile, other internaitonal crews are allowed to stay with BA well passed 45. The Hong Kong crews are upset at the age discrimination practice and want the anti-age discrimiation laws passed in the UK, to apply to them.

More on the story can be found here: cranky, old HKG BA crews.

Too bad airline gals don’t look like this anymore:

the good old days

While I don’t really go into depth about the study of Criminology, which I’m doing my honors BA in, I have to say that it’s been a real eye-opener into what human beings are capable of. My highest marks are in a course entitled Multiple Murder, which is taught by a globally renowned expert on the subject, who I’ve gotten to know quite well.

I’m also involved in research with a professor who has interviewed the notorious Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo personally. I can only imagine being in such a situation with such a mentally ill person.

While completing my manuscript, I’ve found myself looking into the proverbial “abyss” that a famous quote refers to, and I’m analyzing people more than ever now. This is indeed uncharted territory for me, though I certainly find it fascinating, I do admit.

Tomorrow, I’ll be going over the autopsy reports of a serial killer who killed over 10 children/young people in Canada many years ago, and I’m sure the specifics will scar my psyche to a degree…For this is how it is – no one gets out unscathed from such endeavors. Morbid curiosity can indeed drive one mad if they aren’t careful to put everything into proper perspective. The crime scene photos I’ve witnessed are enough to make you sick to your stomach, and then some. They are enraging to say the least.

I thought I’d add this, since through all the stress and ambitions I’m in the midst of, I’m appreciative of the life I have, and those around me. Many people aren’t here today due to violent acts, and victims rarely ever get the media coverage that the “glorified” killers do, which is ludacris.

- Jeff Emmerson

BMAS: Eckpunktepapier – Neuorganisation der Aufgabenwahrnehmung im SGB II / vom 17.11.2009 (lokale Kopie)

EasyJet apologises for Holocaust fashion shoot

BA-Iberia merger – bigger, but is it better?

Aer Lingus looks to move for the long-haul

Ryanair passengers miss flight in airport mix-up

Ryanair leaves passengers stranded

JAL Seeks 40 Pct Pension Cut For Survival

The beleaguered Aer Lingus may relocate from Ireland to UK

AirAsia: Ancillaries and brutal cost control deliver 17.6% after tax margin for Malaysian operations

Emirates to fly to Tokyo

Branson Says Competing Airlines Should Start From Scratch

watch Velez Sarsfield BA vs Racing Club – APD-Argentina-Primera online live stream TV sport 11/23, 23 Nov 2009. This Sport Games Starting time will be at 19:00 ET (US) or 01:00 CET (Europe). We will update the link several hours/minutes before the scheduled starting time. The live stream feed provided from free video tv hosting sites like ustream, justin tv, p2p, sopcast, tvu, tvants, uusee, etc. You can watch online Sport Live TV stream channel on November, 23 2009. The sport tv we cover here is NHL, NBA, KHL, NFL, AHL, NCAA, MLB, AHL, MLS, Soccer, EPL, Champion, UEFA, FIFA, U20, U17,  Football, Hockey, Basketball, SERIE A, NASCAR, F1, GP and others. If there is any of free tv hosting that airs these sport tv channel, we will update the link for you. Dont Miss to watch live sport tv between Velez Sarsfield BA vs Racing Club – APD-Argentina-Primera online . Please click on below link to watch, online, free, live, stream, sport, tv, at 11/23 2009, Velez Sarsfield BA vs Racing Club – APD-Argentina-Primera.

Click here To watch Live stream free online Sport TV
Free live internet TV by online streaming is the best way to enjoy your sports shows on internet. Especially with the arrival of high-speed Internet today. It allows you to live stream and watch your favourite Live football, live basketball, Live soccer, Baseball and Hockey league matches via online streaming. Today there is game match between Velez Sarsfield BA vs Racing Club – APD-Argentina-Primera. Other famous game in these categories that we coverhere are NBA, NCAA, NFL, MLB, AHL, KHL, NHL, MLS, UEFA, Champion League, FIFA, U20, U21, U17, Uropean Cup, Serie A (Italy), EPL (England), NPL (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany),  NASCAR, F1, GP and others.

There are thousands collections of Live internet TV hosting sites and video feeds. You can Watch Live streaming TV Stations or channels from many source. But to search and point your intended channels sometimes is very difficult since one site can offer thousand of free TV sport channel in just one day.  So Here, we provide summary of links that will provide free live streaming TV sports. In this site We focus on the  Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, soccer and other more spesific segment. Most watch free TV stations we cover for  Sport here are from, USA & Canada and some other popular sports in Europe and arround the world. Check out our featured free tv sport online live stream today 23 November 2009 (11/23) for Velez Sarsfield BA vs Racing Club – APD-Argentina-Primera.  We will find the links from ustream, justin tv, p2p, sopcast, tvu, tvants, uusee, etc. So don’t need to worry about miss one of our favorite TV sport game match, we can now catch them online, usually just 24 hours later it will be stored in the hosting site, it depends on their policy. You can easily select and click to watch Velez Sarsfield BA vs Racing Club – APD-Argentina-Primera and others sport channel online stream here.