as I signed up for a Microsoft 365 subscription for a month's free trial, used my personal email address, which was at outlook.com account. It all went through. When I went back into my email a couple of days after to cancel the subscription, as it wasn't needed, my billing and subscription section said here, there was nothing there. Since October of 2022, I've received countless emails to pay the invoice. When I tried to access this account to take me to the payment page, it tells me I can't use my personal email, but that's the same email used to sign up for it initially. Thought it was a hoax email at first, but I do remember signing up for it with the amount information. Can't get through to Microsoft Customer Service, directs you to online support, but it's useless. I don't want to be racking up a massive bill if it is legit. So I wrote kind of a mini book there on this one. I know, yeah.   You'll be put in a pile that we'll get around to in a year or so. But the thing about this is there are more questions, because we don't know the whole context. There is no such thing as a free trial for an individual. So I don't understand what they actually signed up for, because 365 is free for individuals. So you can get a free 365 account, you don't have any features. I mean, you have just the basics, but there's no one month trial for individuals. Now, there is a one month trial for family accounts, but there's nothing for an individual. So I don't understand that, but you're going to have to get support involved either way, because when you sign up, no matter what subscription you're going for, when you sign up, it's actually creating an Azure Active Directory instance. So it goes out there and when you're only in a free trial, it still creates that instance. That's the back end of 365. So when it does that, it gives you what's called a control account. So there's an automatic control account, you have to give it a name. You have to, during the sign up process, you have to call it something, and it is your name at, and then a name you pick at.onmicrosoft.com. And that control account is like a backdoor or a last-ditch effort to get into your subscription in case none of your other accounts work.  I mean, literally, it should have sent you an email saying, this is your login ID that you used or this is your subscription ID, this is your account ID, something that tells you that you actually got the subscription. And you need to find that email, okay, because that's going to gather the information that you need to pass on to support. There's no, I don't see any way you're going to solve this without getting MS support involved. And if that's, you know, you have to email them and get put into a queue, that's what's going to happen. But I can tell you that I had an incident happen with a family member about the, the same thing happened with a family, well, not the same thing, but with a family member, where they signed up for a 365 account, they canceled it a month later and they kept on getting emails saying they had to pay a bill. Well, eventually, you know, I looked into it and I could get into the account and was able to get in and look at it. And it actually showed a zero balance. But the account still existed. So Microsoft just automatically sends out emails saying you owe money when you actually don't owe money. So, I know. So, number one, I wouldn't worry about it too much. As long as you can find the evidence that you actually signed up and you've got those emails and that you've actually, you know, haven't done anything because if you didn't enter, enter any credit card information, then there's no way they can bill you. There's no way that they can actually, you know, do that. And if they have, if you did sign up with credit card information or refuting that, then you've got credit history to fight back to push back against. And you've paid money and therefore they should respond faster than a free. They should. You have to find that information, though. You have to, you have to, somehow they sent you something that said they always do. And you need to find that info and then pass it on in the support because otherwise you're going to be waiting forever. Literally, you'll be waiting forever to get this result. I don't know about everybody else that like I don't waste my time calling in to Microsoft support, even as MVPs getting premium support and all that. It's just it's a nightmare. However, through email and for other issues where I'm that are rarer issues, I'll actually go in and search and find where people have had similar issues and I'll file it. I'll post it online in those discussions. And I usually get people responding within an hour or so. I guess it's amazing how they do watch a bunch of channels. I mean, I've had I've had experience with the email support where I literally do an email. I had a problem with one of my my family accounts. So I sent in an email. It took them three days to get back to me. But when they actually got the ticket after those three days, it took like an hour to fix the problem. But it took them three days to get back to me. Yeah, OK, so I get it. I'm not at a very high Q. I understand it's not an urgent issue. There's no way to escalate an issue.  But you can also fill out the online form so you can email Microsoft support, but you can also fill out this, you know this online form that asks you for more information. And I think that's part of the issue is a lot of people don't provide a lot of information when they do support tickets. It's indicative of a help desk, right? You know, they they help desk goes by a script and that's exactly what Microsoft Help Desk does. Believe it or not, every time you do support, they're going by a script. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have to. And they're looking for more information. They're looking for screenshots. They're looking for, you know, error codes, you know, error messages. They're look.  Yep, much faster than one that has nothing in it. Version number browser, bring the browser, whatever the version of the browser that you're on. Yeah, 10 and ID, 10 and ID, what all those things, whatever that you have, whatever information, all of that's going to help expedite. Yeah, I think also I've had to deal with this for friends and family too. And I think if you go to the partner page, you can also reach out to a partner. Sometimes a partner can get through and in at least a faster way or give you great advice like Mike did, right? So it's not even just so much about, you know, being able to do it, but sometimes they can help you at least navigate a little bit of the crazy. So Mike, you're gonna post your address and phone number here. I already did, I tweeted it out. Sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike Nelson, gun for hire. See, he'll get you out of a Microsoft jail. He's gonna help you with all your family. Exactly where you need to go. Oh, what's that? Phone number. I said, but also it might be nice to post where exactly you need to go to get to the right customer support area to fix what it is you need to fix it. Oh. There is an awful lot. There's just lots of support and lots of it doesn't work. Well, there's no way to go to write that email or fill out that form. Yeah, there's no dispute. There's no absolutely no dispute that the way that Microsoft support is implemented in terms of what the general public sees, the first time user sees, it's confusing as hell to me. I mean, it really is. They don't know who to call. They don't know what to do. They don't know who to email. They don't know what form to fill out.  It's a mess. It is. And they need to dumb it down too because they're asking for a lot of information that some folks just don't know what they're asking for here, especially when you're dealing with directly with end users. Cause remember companies were used to dealing with like IT groups. They're used to dealing with partners, but now they're dealing with individual, you know, individual folks that just have an M365 account, you know, and they need to work, walk, walk through that at a, at a, at a pace that's indicative of the person that's on the other end, you know, and nobody wants to get calls from support anymore because everybody's afraid it's a, you know, it's going to be a phishing scam or a ransomware thing. So they're not going to answer the phone. And when they say, oh, I'm from Microsoft support, your computer has viruses. That's why you can't get to your M365 account. So you need to give me your PayPal ID and, you know, deposit this amount and, you know, all that other kind of fun stuff. You know, there's all kinds of things, but Microsoft needs to do a better job at this. No doubt. No doubt. But some folks, you got to step up and take, you got to take some responsibility.  It's just fighting the right place to provide that information too. Yeah. One of the worst things that I see out there from, from my trips through the new, from news land is, is if you have a problem with an outlook.com hotmail, whatever account. And they say, and they, and you get, you get flagged, getting yourself unflagged is sometimes completely next to impossible because there's no such thing as a person. All there is, is a form that goes to an automated system that always wants information that you don't have. Or wants more information than you do have. Granted, a lot of the stuff I see is people who have a counselor, hey, I had this camp two years ago. I ain't never been in it for the last and I wanna get, and it won't do it. Well, that's because it's gone. It's just, it's not there anymore. You really shouldn't. I'm calling what it is. Yeah, it's gone. And there's no way to get that back. It's just never gonna happen. You need it, if you're going to open it. And that's, that's a lot. People, people will do that for their, their Xbox accounts and game passes and things like that. Hey, I set up my Xbox through this and I don't even know where it is anymore. I don't remember the password. Yeah. Don't even get me started on the whole, what account either? Are you saying little kids setting up game accounts that turn into Microsoft accounts could potentially be a bad idea? What? That turn into work and school accounts that have the same, you know, have the same name as a work and school account. Right there, Mike. One of them removes one of your accounts from an Xbox and what that does is not remove the account. It kills the account. You gotta be real careful with Xbox. Then I have my, my family member that sets up a Gmail account and goes through G apps and gives it its own domain name, you know, fredsbicycles.com, you know, and then they go into Microsoft and they say, you know what, I want to create a new account called fredbicycles.com. So now they have two accounts, two separate accounts, one in G apps and one in Microsoft. And they have no idea which one to use because both of them are, you know, maybe, yeah, one's gotta require, one requires a 12 character password, one you can just put a period and that's good enough for a password and whatever. It's just crazy. Yeah, yeah, okay. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have changed the subject, I guess. But the thing of it is trying to find the right support, find to find the right support avenue for your problem.  And I really do wish they would straighten that out and give you some way of getting to the right place without spending two days searching through phone numbers and calling the wrong people all the time. Well, they can bug Christian who can, you know, he's an RG. I am happy to help, so just send me, I need your social security number and credit card information and then I'm happy to help. He'll just fix you right up. Yeah. He can post it to the distribution list, the MVP distribution list, like I see all the time, like this case needs to be escalated. I'm like, oh, come on, really? Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we used to call that a punt. Yeah. Well, the ironic thing is you said that, you know, post in a forum and you'll get answers more, you know, quickly, that's what they did. That's where we got the question from. Yeah. Yeah. They're trying. They're trying to hand somebody to help them. Good effort. Good effort there, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.


The Book of First Samuel is a narrative history that begins where the Book of Judges ended. It starts with the story of Hannah, which includes the first significant and direct mention of prayer in the Bible, and continues through the life of Samuel, a prophet in the last of the Judges. The Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant, but eventually return it. Samuel anoint Saul as the first king of a loose collection of tribes that will eventually unite under Israel's second king, David. After Saul's disobedience to God, Samuel anoints a young David as God's chosen king. During another Philistine conflict, David defeats the giant Goliath and illustrates his faith in Yahweh. The shamed Saul hunts David out of jealousy and fear. The book ends with Saul's suicide on the battlefield against the Philistines.


The results of this study suggest that there is a high prevalence of burnout and stress among emergency physicians in the kingdom of Bahrain's EDS. Demographic and occupational factors such as gender, nationality, rank, and number of hours worked per week were found to be strongly correlated with burnout and stress. Additionally, sleep disturbances and workplace violence were also identified as contributors to higher levels of burnout and stress. This article was authored by Furrah's H-Abuseyard, Lumer Bashmi, Priya Das, and others.


So there's going to be a bit of a new direction with this channel, so if you recognise this, you know, if you recognise me, if you recognise this channel or this channel name, then yeah, you may be surprised to hear that I'm going to be basically going, getting away from all the flashy colours, texts, stock footage, all the crazy, you know, distracting things that you may have seen on this channel. And there's a few reasons for this. I'm noticing more and more channels, by the way, do you like the scenery? It's in Montenegro. So I'm noticing more and more on channels, especially about lucid dreaming, that there's this trend, not just with lucid dreaming, but with many different topics, right, where there's this trend towards like really distracting texts and visuals and emojis and all these like pop-up stuff.  There's different like distracting things and flashy sound effects and all this stuff, when really what, you know, what really matters is the actual content value. And I feel that my channel over the last few years has gone towards that kind of trendy click-bait-y direction. And now, not that there's anything particularly wrong with click-baiting, if you know, if you actually deliver on it. But I really want this channel and my other ones to be more transparent, you know, I want it to be just a connection between me and you, me helping you and teaching you something or just even talking about my experiences with whatever the topic is, lucid dreaming or, you know, consciousness or whatever it is that I am talking about. So for that reason, I would encourage you to kind of go on this journey with me. And if you notice channels, if you notice channels specifically lucid dreaming channels or, you know, let's say if you come across one of my old bits of content and there's loads of flashy editing, just click onto my channel and watch my newer content, my most recent videos like this one. And from now on, I mean, I think I have a small handful of videos that have already been edited, kind of scheduled. But apart from that, you know, from this moment on, this channel will be much more direct. It will be much more just me doing what I used to do on this channel, which is directly answering your questions and helping you, you know, learn whatever it is, lucid dreaming or sleep tips, energy boosting, but mainly lucid dreaming. So I want to now get back to how this channel started, which was just me directly answering questions and making video response, answering your questions.  So it might be engaging, it might be fun in the moment, but the more of that content you watch, the less likely you are to lucid dream. So I would encourage you to just leave those channels, ignore those types of videos and watch more of the content where it's just somebody talking, just that you're just having a conversation with somebody. Not only will you learn more and have more of a genuine experience, but your brain, your ability to focus and concentrate will actually improve instead of decline. So I hope you understand this and there's been a big shift towards this, you know, in the last few months especially.  And it really takes away from the actual content, the actual visual and value-based content where somebody's just teaching and talking to you. And I want to get back to that because when I look at the videos that really did the best on this channel, the ones that really helped the most people, it was the videos where I was just talking to you like this. It was not the ones where I spent ages editing or, you know, there was this flashy thumbnails and graphically designed stuff trying to distract and, you know, capture attention. Hopefully the sound is not too bad. People doing roadworks. Yeah, so those were the videos that did the best, meaning according to the analytics, those are the videos people most want to see. So although there is a trend, like if you watch any tutorial or any guidance about how to grow a YouTube channel, pretty much one of the main things they all say is you need to be doing really graphic visual thumbnails. You need to be constantly changing up the angles, the camera, the editing, the transitions, sound effects, you know, people's attention span is just declining. And that's the advice across the board. But then when I think about all of the channels I personally watch, that I genuinely actually watch, it's not the flashy edited stuff. It's the more genuine one-to-one connections like this where you can actually hear what they have to say and you're not being distracted by a million different things. And also, I think there's merit in actually doing something that might require more effort, like for example, watching this video, if you're still watching at this point, your attention span is better than a large chunk of people. There's going to be a chunk of people who can't focus on things for this long, even just a few minutes. And I don't want to contribute to that. I don't want to make content that helps people's attention span decline and get worse. I want to make content that is value-based, that I enjoy making, that actually helps you. And, you know, if that means I lose a few of my audience who are, like, more heavily programmed by things like TikTok or, you know, these high dopamine release platforms, then so be it. But I think in the long term, this will actually help, rather than hinder this channel and also my audience. So I hope this kind of makes sense. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments. And by the way, from now on, I will be, like, really making a lot more videos, responding with a video to the most upvoted questions and problems and comments you have. Because, you know, that's what this channel was supposed to be for. It was not supposed to be, like, how can I get the most views by doing the most graphically designed thumbnails. But the algorithm and, you know, the way YouTube works has kind of, it kind of pushes creators to do that. And I don't think that's a good thing. So I want to try and bring things back to more direct content where it's just me and you, we're just talking, having a casual conversation, and I'm just helping you do things, helping you lose a dream, you know, answering your questions and that kind of thing. So that's going to be the strategy. And I think what I will also do is on social media platforms where it's intended to be very quick, short little clips, like YouTube shorts, Reels, TikTok, other ones like that. I will basically just chop up these videos. And if there's a little sound bite that I think might bring somebody in to lose a dreaming and help them, you know, find our community here, then I'll post that. But I will try and get the editing to a minimum. And I will try and focus on just making it a value base, you know, something that's actually interesting. I did actually do a poll on this channel's community, you may have seen it. I'll ask you guys what you wanted to see, whether you want, you know, more one-to-one content like this, or if you actually prefer the flashy editing. And most of you, I'd say over, I think about 20% said you want a bit of both. And then 60, something like 60% said you want just the one-to-one content like this. We'll just wait for that motorbike to quiet and down while we're waiting to look at the view. And then I think there was something like 5% said they actually wanted the editing, the flashy edits and the distracting stuff. So I think the most sensible thing really is just listen to what you guys are actually saying. And it's win-win, you know, because it means it's easier for me to make these videos. I can post more of them. I can get to more of your questions. And it seems like that's the content you prefer anyway. So this is the first of many that are going to be more just directly like this, you know, answering questions. If I'm, you know, barking up the wrong tree with this, if I have missed something and you actually do prefer the flashy edits and the distracting stock footage and, you know, the yellow text and all this stuff, let me know. But I have a hunch and also a data-based, no, analysis of this that you do prefer the more value-based one-on-one stuff when you're able to focus on it. And I think you can even start to see these videos that I post as a bit of an exercise.  Think of it like if nothing else, think of it as an exercise, okay? If you can watch a 10-minute video without being distracted and closing, you know, browsing other tabs and you're probably even scrolling down to read the comments as you watch this. You probably did that in the first 20 seconds. And that's fine. I do the same. But we have to remember to retrain our brains to be able to focus on things. It's a very important skill. And if you want to learn, if you want to lose a dream, that's one of the most important things is the ability to channel your focus into one point, one point of attention. So think of it like training.   But I believe in you, you know, I think if you're watching this still, if you're continuing to watch this at this point, I mean, it's been about what's Alex's gonna know. It's been almost 11 minutes, then you are massively on the right track. But even if, well, they wouldn't know because if they wouldn't be watching at this point, but even if somebody only watched for one or two minutes, that is still better than the average attention span on something like TikTok, which is literally less than three seconds. So keep it up. Leave a comment letting me know what you think. And hopefully this will be the start of more personal, you know, community building videos like this.


Hi there, I am Iris Rojas. I am a geology professor at College of the Desert in California. So let me tell you just a little bit about what I do other than teaching. So my specialty is geochronology and I also study igneous deposits, volcanic deposits or igneous rice, the deposits that result from a violent volcanic eruption most of the time. So how did I combine my love of dating rocks, putting an age to them and volcanoes? So what I do is that I put constraints on the eruption age of ancient volcanoes. I look at their deposits and I can tell you the chemistry of the magma or the lava that erupted and I can also tell you how old it is or how long ago it erupted. So that's what I did in terms of my research. Most of my days now are spent in a classroom, a lab or outdoors leading field trips. It's so nice to meet you. I hope you enjoy geology as much as I do and I'm just glad to share my story with you all. Have a great one!


Harper Children's Audio presents Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx by James Rawlins performed by Pedro Pascal, prologue, Valley of the Kings. No man could survive such a storm for long. Clouds of red sand blasted out of the Sahara Desert and swept across Egypt. The storm darkened the sun and grew so vast that it could be seen from orbiting satellites. And it was no better on the ground. For those unlucky enough to be caught in the storm, the winds scoured any exposed skin like coarse sandpaper. But the old man had been summoned and knew he had to obey. Professor Nisorkori was a senior curator of the Cairo Museum and the leading expert on the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The curator hunched against the stinging sand. His sun-leathered face was covered by a scarf, his eyes hidden behind goggles. As he hiked through the Valley of the Kings, he could barely see past his own nose, but he knew the way. Every Egyptian scholar did. Egyptian pharaohs had been buried in this maze of limestone hills and sandy gullies for millennia, including the famous boy king Tutankhamen. But Nisorkori's destination lay much farther out, beyond where most archaeologists searched. He fought the storm, moving deeper down the valley toward a new excavation. To anyone looking, it appeared to be nothing more than a well-being dug, a project to help bring water to the parched land, permits, uniforms and equipment all bore a black griffin, the familiar logo of the company that funded this excavation. Bledsworth Sundries and Industries Incorporated The corporation financed many such charitable enterprises throughout the region, but Nisorkori knew the true goal of this particular project and had been paid well to keep it secret, and now he had been summoned. Had the corporation found what it sought? Surely that was impossible. Despite the hot breath of the sandstorm, Nisorkori shivered as he reached the dig site. All the laborers had fled the storm, leaving the place dark and empty. Nisorkori crossed a maze of abandoned mining gear and piles of work gear to reach the hole in the hillside, framed by timber and sealed with a steel door. He punched a code into a security keypad and the door swung open. He hesitated at the threshold. Even with the storm howling at his back, he balked at entering the tunnel. The passageway dove steeply downward, lit by flaming torches set into notches in the walls. Swallowing back his fear, Nisorkori ducked inside.  Startled, he hurried forward. The quicker I'm done here, the sooner I can get home. As the way led deeper, the walls changed from raw limestone to stone blocks. Ancient steps appeared and led downward yet again, deeper and deeper. Nisorkori kept to the torch-lit path as the walls squeezed tighter on either side as if trying to push him back, but he had no choice. With sweat trickling down his back, he had to keep going. At last, the tunnel emptied into a cavernous space. It was a vast, domed chamber. The walls scryed with hieroglyphs. Other passageways led out from the room, but Nisorkori's eyes were drawn to the black statues that lined the walls. They were perfect renditions of ancient Egyptian warriors dating back to the Old Kingdom. Each man was unique in shape and size, but they all had one feature in common. Their faces were masks of terror. Their horrified gaze is all focused on the head of a stone serpent in the center of the room. It stood as tall as Nisorkori. From the flare of the hood behind its head, it was plainly meant to be a cobra. But this cobra had three eyes. Two carved out of limestone and a third that rested atop its skull. This last one reflected the firelight glowing blood red. It was a fist-sized gem cut into the shape of an oval orb. Nisorkori approached in disbelief. A harsh voice stopped him. It came from the tunnel on the far side of the cavern. The speaker remained hidden in the shadows. Only his words scratched out of the darkness. You know what it is. Nisorkori recognized that voice. It had summoned him to the secret meeting. The voice came from the man who had bought Nisorkori silence by paying for his dying wife's medical treatment. The money had saved her life. Sample complete. Ready to continue?


In this video, we are going to see how we can solve percentage problems. It could be any kind of problem and we will see how we can solve that. First of all, I would like you to create two parts of the page whenever you need to solve a problem. So let's just create two parts. Okay, on the left we will write total and on the right we will just write parts. On the left hand side, wherever we have written total, below that just write 100 and on the right hand side, we won't write anything for now. And now, let's read the problem. So on the left hand side, we have our space to work out the problem and on the right, let's just take any problem. The first kind of problem is like this. Find out 15% of 60. Now we are going to fill up the rest of the space here. So 15% means 15 out of 100. So if 100 is the total, the parts we are looking at is 15. And out of 60 means 60 is total. This is a critical information to get from here. You need to know what 60 is, if it is total or parts. We need to find 15% of 60 because we see off here, 60 is total. And we are interested in parts of 60 which is equal to 15%. So let me just put any variable here, say y. And now, we need to find out y from here. Once you arrange the numbers like this, you just simply need to cross-multiply and equate this. So if you cross-multiply, you get 100 y is equal to 60 times 15. And from here, y becomes 60 times 15 divided by 100. And that is equal to 9. And therefore, 9 is 15% of 60. Another kind of problem that we find in percentages of the type as follows. How many percent is 24 of 80? Now 80 is a total again. And out of it, we are looking at 24 parts of it. But we don't know how much percent it is or how many percent it is. So let's just assume some variable y again. And now, we will do cross-multiply again. So we multiply 80 with y. So 80y is equal to 24 times 100. And to solve for y, we get 2400 divided by 80. And that is 30. Because y is in the 100s row, we need to remember that it is percentage. And therefore, because y is 30, we can say that 24 is 30% of 80. Another kind of problem that we find is as follows. 36 is 12% of what? Now this what? Let's just make it a variable. Now we have 12% which will go into the parts column besides 100. 36 is 12%. 12% is in parts. So 36 will come along in parts. And we don't know the total for this case. And so we will put y in the total column. Now again, all we need to do is to cross-multiply and find y. Let's do that. 12 times y equals 36 times 100. Dividing both sides by 12, we can isolate y on the left. And we have 3600 divided by 12 which gives us 300. And so the total in this case has to be 300. And we can write the final answer as 36 is 12% of 300. And this is how we can solve different combinations of percentage problems for whatever unknown that has been given to us. All you need to know is where to write the known information in total or in parts and assume the variable for the correct quantity.


At Kaiser Permanente, we know how important it is that your visit with your doctor is the very safest it can be. We want to tell you about some of the changes you can expect when you do visit us, and all of the things we're doing to keep both you and our care team safe. When you arrive, before you enter the building, you'll be greeted by a staff member who will ask you questions about your overall health. You'll also need to wear your own mask or face covering, and if you don't have one, we'll provide one for you. In most of our locations, your temperature will also be taken. Even sanitizer stations will also be available throughout the building. We also screen our staff every day to ensure that our spaces are the safest they can be. Once you're inside, many of our facilities offer a variety of electronic check-in options, or you can check in with a receptionist. Acrylic barriers have been installed at the front desk for a contactless check-in. In our waiting areas, we've reconfigured the furniture to enable physical distancing. In most of our regions, we're also limiting visitors and staggering our appointments to prevent overcrowding, so it's easier to maintain a safe physical distance from others. We've increased the frequency of our cleaning schedule, and our surfaces and equipment are sanitized throughout the day. Our doctors, nurses, and care teams are working hard to make sure you get the very best care in the safest way possible, and that your visit is quick, easy, and convenient. Should you need to visit our pharmacy, you'll notice signs and floor markers that ensure that waiting in line is done at a safe distance. Acrylic barriers provide an extra level of safety. Many of our facilities also offer minimal contact pharmacy services, including drive-through or curbside pickup for high-risk patients. And remember, our mail order pharmacy delivers your prescription right to your home in just a few days. And for those that prefer the convenience of a virtual visit, we have many options available to you. Video visits, telephone visits, eVisits, and email are all ways you can get care wherever you are. Be sure to visit kp.org-slash-get-care for more information on how you can access care remotely. At Kaiser Permanente, your safety and health are our top priorities. Even though things might look a little different on your next visit, you can be confident that you'll still get the same great experience and high-quality care you've come to expect from us. Thank you for helping us to keep our spaces safe. For everyone.


MGM has finally managed to restore their systems to normal functionality after a massive ransomware and data theft attack which left most of MGM's electronic equipment offline, including slot machines, video poker machines and other electronic games for as long as 10 days. Wow, that's a long time to have your systems restored after a hacking incident. And this timeline also contradicts the one that we were officially given by MGM themselves. The company made an announcement on Wednesday afternoon on the blog site formally known as Twitter that their systems were restored but other people on the same platform were still reporting issues with the company's website and with their app when they tried to cash out their winnings. Now obviously these ransomware attacks are on the rise and these days the incidents usually end up being a very in-depth attack where hackers first penetrate your network and then they escalate privileges as far as they can usually to domain admin or global administrator depending on the system and they'll also try to target your backups because they know that if you have automatic backups that are going every day to a high-speed NAS which with the low cost of SSDs and 10 gigabit ethernet are becoming more common these days, if you have one restoring all your systems on your LAN can be done very quickly but only if that NAS doesn't get compromised itself which is likely to happen if a threat actor gets full administrative access to your network. Now we knew early on that MGM and Caesars were bringing on outside security firms as well as the SEC and FBI to help them with containing these incidents. The alphabet boys getting involved is pretty standard procedure with licensed casinos but getting the extra third-party infosec involvement as well as the 10-day timeline to restore these systems tells me that MGM did not have a plan for something of this magnitude and since the ATMs at the casino and hotel had to be taken offline MGM was basically cut down at their knees with no way to really make any money they were also losing a lot of money on comps for rooms because they had to basically go and prim and check people in with pen and paper so the outages that MGM experienced along with all of these comps were estimated to cost the company about 80 million dollars over the last 10 days. Now MGM as a company is valued at about 40 billion dollars their annual revenue is about 14 billion and they also apparently have hacker insurance for up to 200 million dollars so I'm sure that they can shrug off this incident financially but to me these incidents look like they could be the beginning of a string of attacks or heist against casinos and similar businesses. The prospect of losing millions of dollars a day due to your ATMs and game machines being down means the temptation to actually pay the ransom is much higher with these casinos than other companies and it also makes for a really good story when you have these hackers that are robbing a casino it's kind of like robbing a bank and you know it also carries this sort of moral thing with it where it's like robin hood right you're robbing the rich to give back to the poor although it is worth mentioning that Alf V is not charitable they're not giving back to the poor you know they mentioned that when they were grilling all these fake news outlets that were saying that they hacked the casino's slot machines and they're making them spill out coins onto the floor no these guys they kept that millions of dollars in ransom for themselves because they managed to get 15 million dollars in ransom paid by Caesars Entertainment which is a pretty good hit if you're a hacker I mean certainly it's enough for you to retire if you're living in some of these countries that a lot of these hackers come from but if your business has high revenue and low digital opsec like these casinos it's a perfect target for these ransomware and data expulsion attacks now it may be more understandable that these companies didn't have the best digital opsec you know their security incidents probably revolve more around cheaters most days uh and you can take care of them the old fashion way right just take them down into the basement of the casino and break their hands but when trillion dollar companies like Microsoft have security incidents caused by low hanging fruit like unsecured azure tokens those incidents are a lot less excusable a new report from wiz.io found a data exposure in Microsoft's AI GitHub repository which included 30 000 internal Microsoft Teams private keys passwords backups and this was weighing in at more than 38 terabytes of private company data and to make things worse apparently this data was exposed for a long time it was exposed for three years from like late july of 2020 to early july 2023 the misconfigured token also allowed for full control over the files instead of just limiting the permissions to read only meaning a malicious user could have modified these files they could have deleted them or renamed them as they pleased now this is particularly concerning because this particular misconfigured storage container is originally supposed to be used to provide training data for Microsoft's neural networks and the thing about neural networks debugging them can prove very difficult and so it's very important to make sure that the data they're being trained on is actually good which might be a little bit harder to do now that this drive has been exposed for so long for example with the full self-driving neural network that can be purchased in many of the teslas Elon Musk mentioned that for stopping at red lights training it to stop at red lights and stop signs they were only able to train the self-driving AI on less than 1% of the video data that they were capturing from tesla owners because most drivers don't make a full stop at stop signs you know they only slow down to a few miles per hour and then make a turn or go through so if someone were to poison the training data set for your neural network or large language model they could create bugs that are so obscure in the finished program that your only choice to fix them might be to start from scratch with new training data because these data sets are so huge that finding misconfigurations in them is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack you know it's funny how over the last year or two when AI became this new popular thing that people were having a good time with their GPTs and their deep fakes but then big tech and big government stepped in and said hold on we need regulations for this AI stuff we need rules and regulations rules for thee but not for me because it's really only dangerous for the peasants to have unrestricted access to AI but yet here we are with what is probably the biggest data leak that's related to AI training so far and the fault is at the Microsoft corporation hopefully the leaked data contains some secret sauce training models that can be used to create some kind of FOS AI which I think people really deserve considering that most of these training models most of this training data is just scraped from public information on the internet you know really this AI wouldn't be possible without the freedom of the internet so the people of the internet really should be the ones controlling it both collectively and individually like what we see with free software but let me know in the comments below what you guys think about these data breaches do you think that hackers are going to start hitting casinos more and more often and are we going to start seeing more massive data leaks from these companies that are storing all this AI data and trying to rush to create their own large language models in their own AIs please leave a like and share this video in order to hack the algorithm and also check out my website based on when where you can buy the Libre t-shirt and I've also got other hats and hoodies that are available for the fall and winter season and as always discounts are available store-wide when you shop with Monero XMR have a great day


Okay, first of all, wait a minute, dude. You didn't just say that. There's no way that that happened. Are you kidding me? Look, if a guy can go to to going from making 20,000 to making 60,000 by doing those two things, that's impossible. But you made it happen. Anybody that's watching this right now, their life just got changed. Just like that. Hey guys, what's up? It's Andy Elliott. I'm here today with my man, Ian Macklin. Look, you guys know him. He's one of the twins. We got Ian and Adam Macklin. Yeah, so check this out, guys. Look, this is going to be podcast number five. This right here is going to be about veterans, rookies, branding and marketing, and totally just dominating this wonderful, beautiful market getting paid what you're worth. So I got a couple questions. I'm going to actually interview him for a minute. By the way, Ian was number one salesperson in Nissan. You got to say you're number one twin first, just so if Evan's watching this, that he knows. So go ahead and say it. Yeah, so number one, you got to speak into the mic. All right. At least your brother knows how to speak into the mic. I might not be the smartest one, but I sold more cars. So that's the most important thing. Okay. So listen, I want to say this to you. Number one, he is a good looking twin. They're like, they look the same. The only way you can identify him is brother doesn't have a goatee, okay, a beard and he does. It's the only difference other than that. So I look at their chins.  But I want you to know this. If you're watching this right now, tell them a little bit about yourself, Ian. So I'm Ian. I'm the older twin, but you know, I'm the number one Nissan salesperson in the world. I know that sounds crazy, but 10 years running. Just crush killed it. Did lots of branding and marketing, but that's not all I do. Closing, negotiating, you know, I'm just obsessed with those things and really just being the best and really training people to be the most elite salespeople on the planet. So I know number one sounds kind of crazy when you're talking about a manufacturer in that many years, but anybody can do it. You know, anybody can do it. It's attainable for everybody. And I love, love showing people how we can do that within every day. So that's, you know, that's something that's my passion. Yeah. So look, guys, I want to tell you this is what I call the powerhouse power team. We want to teach you how to do power moves, right? So I want to start out and I'm gonna say, All right, Ian. So number one, right? Let's talk about veterans for a minute. All right. So if I got any of my veterans with me right now, we love you. We got your back. Hey, nobody gets sensitive during this. Okay. All right. Yeah, our veteran and car salespeople. What do you think about veterans right now? And let's talk about what we've seen.  I love you. Probably you're watching the training because you love it. Right. So you're one of the one percenters. Let's talk about veterans. Well, I'll just say, you know, I was the veteran that was always looking to climb a new mountain and stay on top. You don't just become number one at a manufacturer at any company. If you're not willing to just keep growing, keep going to the next level, keep finding training, keep finding passion to where you're just, you're eight up with being the best. You know, there's guys that dude, they'll become number one and then and women that'll become number one. And it's a one month thing. But can you put together the work, the training, you know, in the mindset really of what it takes to be number one for a decade or even for a few months.  They're here every month. They're here at the master closure seminars. They're getting inspired. They get motivated. They're always renewing that energy like the first day that they sold cars. And so then there's the guys that are burnt out and you know those guys and it's not a bad thing, but people can be burnt out in this business so easy. Managers, owners, GMs, salespeople.  And I think when you don't have that progress, I think that that is the thief and the killer of being number one for a long period of time, which, you know, we all want to make a lot of money and we all want to, you know, love what we do. And so I like the both sides of the coin. We got the guys that just crush it, kill it. They stay inspired. They stay motivated.  Dude, we love you. We want to talk to you and we want to show you how to relight that fire and get your new mountain man and get that burning feeling that you and I had when we first started selling cars that we were able to maintain for so many years. Yeah, so true. And look, I do want to say this to you.  If you feel like you're burnt out, if you feel like you're struggling, if you feel like your back's against the wall, you're on a grind, having a tough time. I don't know. Whatever. Look, we could just say all the above. Yeah, whatever, whatever it is. Look, shoot in a text. You can shoot in a text, right? Anytime. Anytime this guy will help you through a pain point, trouble point. All he wants to do is help you find pleasure on the phone. 22 hours a day. I only need like two hours of sleep. Maybe that's all he does two hours. Yeah. What's your cell phone?<PHONE_NUMBER>. So<PHONE_NUMBER> like the other podcast. Yeah, let's shoot him a text message. He's got your back for life, right? Let's roll on here real quick. Let's talk about rookies. Let's talk about rookies. Anybody's been in the business for under a year and anybody wanting to get in or who's just got in. I love that.  He reached out on my first day like five months ago and everybody sees Earl's story in Andy Elliott Car Sales Nation Facebook. You know, this guy reached out. He was a state trooper, 40 years old. You know, he was in the army before he reached out to you. You know, he started on the training, came down to a master closure seminar, went back yesterday. He posted that he was at 23,000 bucks made. So and just, you know, really unlocking and he, he got into the car business and it was amazing. It's like, I never had something like zero to 100 K courses. I never had an Andy Elliott to show me exactly what to do. I never had any of those things. I just had to try to figure it out, stand on point and things like that. Well, Earl's got the branding down these rookies.   Yeah, and some learning, but everything that you've set up for these guys, I'm just like, man, gosh, it's so tremendous. And right now I've just, I'm looking back in my career and some of these guys are just going to 30, 40 grand and you know, really, you know, at 20 years old and 21 years old, making that kind of money is just crazy. You know, right now is the hottest time in the car business ever, but we got some of the most young, hungry men and women on the planet. Like literally they're just eating up the training and they're kicking freaking butt. Yeah. And by the way, look, that, that hunger and that fire, it's created.  You, you can come on here every time. Yeah, you can learn to be jacked up. You can burn, you can learn, you know, to stay on fire. It's, it's a skill. Look, it's not something you just wake up with. Okay.  Those people, they feed into you. You feed into them and guess what? They push you. Okay. You're around five crack heads. You're going to be the sixth. Okay. Yeah. You know what I mean? You're making $10,000 a month. Guess what? Go hang out with some people that make a hundred grand a month. Right? Guess what's that was? That was one of the biggest things for me. You know, as I was a veteran and everybody said, dude, you're at the max of what you can make. Dude, nobody in this market is going to make over 400. You're at the max. You've been making it. Just settle man. Just settle. You know, you've made the most money out of anybody we know. And I thought that that was the best that I could do, right?  Fly down here and compare yourself to me, run with me and let me show you what to do. And I'm like, there's nothing you can teach me, but I'll come down there and run with you. Well, I never left, but I went back and had the best year ever that I've had put $10,000 on my paycheck extra on top of 30 grand. So literally had a half a million dollar year and just unlocked a whole nother level. And so veterans out there, you can unlock another level. There's more out there.  So you can either stand the one you're at and it's probably not going to be that good of a time or you can go up the new one. And I had to accept that. And that's what I did. So yeah, and I love it. And by the way, look, some of you guys that have been sitting maybe in the shadows for a little bit. Hey, I get it. I totally understand. Don't be shy. Okay, don't be shy. I always say my mentors in life are people that have gone where I want to go. Okay, that's important to me. So when I was younger, the mentors that I had, they were people that were unreachable. I couldn't reach them, couldn't talk to them. I couldn't text them, couldn't call them, couldn't call them. You know what? I just sat there and I could listen to maybe a cassette tape, right? I could listen to a CD, you know, I mean, I could listen to anything, but I couldn't get in contact with them.  Why aren't you earning 50? Let me just ask some simple questions.  Let's kick butt. It's that simple. There's nothing complicated. There's no magic tricks. It's just skill acquisition. Look, we just want to know, hey man, what do you need help with? 30 seconds. Boom, we'll help you. Done. Make sure you give him your cell phone number again. What is it? So it's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Yeah, yeah. And the best thing to do is shoot him a text. Just shoot him a text, say, hey man, you know, when you get a quick second, reach out to me.  Give me your number one more time before we roll. 720-720-278-5017. This time, not in Chinese.<PHONE_NUMBER>. Okay, let's talk about something real quick. Let's talk about how you was the number one Nissan salesperson in the world. How'd that physically happen? Well, number one, you was great at closing negotiations, objection handling. You're great at making connections with people. You're funny. You're quirky. You know, you made people laugh. When people laugh, they didn't think about spending money.  You didn't talk like your competition. So people didn't see you as the competition, right? They bought lots of cars. Look, 95% of the people that you do business with, look, they bought a car from somebody. Okay, they bought a car from somebody. The idea of it is they know what a car salesman looks like. And guess what? He didn't seem like one. He seemed like the trusted advisor, the person that was like the expert, right? The one that they wanted to be around. Plus they wanted to adopt you because they loved you.  You're always smiling, having a good time. Let's talk about how you created these leads. Let's talk about lead generation, branding, marketing, social media skills. How important is that? Well, it's more important than ever. Everybody's on their phone at all times. I mean, we've got our phones just sitting right out here. And so as I started to see the market change years ago, I'm like, man, first, you don't want to live by the door and die by the door. So I started to see like branding and marketing was just becoming such a huge part of this business, Instagram, Snapchat. And by the way, if you don't know something, you don't know what you don't know. So reach out and let's go over it. But what if somebody's an introvert and they're like, I ain't doing cameras. Well, I'll just tell you. Let's talk about that.  But here's what I'll tell you, the introverts right now, they're winning on our training and branding and marketing probably better than anybody. I just gotta tell you, we have introverts that once they understand and people can see them on social media and I know, you know, you might think it's scary. Well, if you don't have confidence in something and you haven't been coached in something, then it can be really scary. But once you get the hang of it, we have introverts winning at such a high level on social media that it's crazy, you know? And I'll tell you one thing.  So when people see me on social media, they're expecting a lot. When they see an introvert, they're voting for them. They're rooting for them on social media. People like vulnerability. They love the vulnerability and so the introverts that we're coaching on social media, I mean, extroverts, I'm just gonna tell you, while you're out there, you're gonna have to try a whole lot harder. You're gonna have to have a little bit better of a plan.   But you're gonna have a lot of people that when they reach out to you, it's gonna make you feel really good. You're gonna see the plan work and I don't know. I just really like coaching introverts right now. Yeah. So what resonates with people is what I love. So I'm too close to the mic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. We're just getting a little sign over here. Yeah. Saying Andy's too close to the mic. Dang it. You're right. All right. Listen, so let's just talk about something real quick. Yeah. On the branding and marketing, you're not good at social media skills. You're not good on the camera. You don't like talking to people, right? And I'm just saying like on a video, right? Maybe going Facebook live or something like that. Let's talk about some success that we've seen. Real success, true testimony story for some people who have gone out and done it. What about the guy in the dealership that you were talking about? Okay. That you said you guys own the store, you owned everything and then you guys convinced that introvert to get on and do his first Facebook live. Yeah. And then remember that you said that lady came in and you said, how can I help you? And they said, we're here to see him. Yeah. Well, you know, he's 52 years old, you know, he thinks he's not the best looking guy, but I think he's a great looking guy.  But, you know, he says, I'm not putting myself out there. You know, people don't like how I look.   We said people will resonate with you.  And once you do, you're going to see that the whole world is like you. You know, there's a lot of people out there that they're just going to be like, man, look at this guy trying so hard. And by the way, he reminds me of somebody and they'll connect with you. So, you know, our social media was dominant in our store. You know, our whole staff was on social media. We didn't need advertising, you know, and our whole staff was on it. Well, once he did his first live, you know, and he's using the social media skills that we went over, I'll never forget, you know, his first customer coming in, you know, we're all at the tower and this customer comes in and they say, hey, Jim, I saw your social media. And you know, he looks over and he's like, kind of like, what's social media?  You know, I want to talk to you about purchasing a car.  Get in there. And he's like, I just can't believe somebody actually came in on these things. Well, didn't he sell to that day? Yeah. Fast forward to off of social media. He's on fire on social media. And now he's like the social media whiz. He's just loving it, man. He's just, and you know what? Overall, it's made him come out of his shell, not just in the social media aspect, but closing deals. He's better at closing deals now than he had been in the first 10 years selling cars. You know, I think it's transformed across his life because he's now being who he really wants to be.  Him getting in front of that camera, him seeing the result of a customer coming in off of it, him creating the business, and he's never done it before. You know, that total buy in, total buy in, and it really changed. I really feel like he's probably getting out of the business. And you know, I think that that kind of changed things for him.  And by the way, look, guys, we trade 175,000 salespeople over 1200 dealerships, almost 1300.  Okay, all over. Okay, they were gone, you know, 15 days last month. And that's a lot. And they're, they're always here. This is our conference room. And they fly into a store and what they do, owners, managers, GMs, ASMs, closers, whoever, whoever is looking for great culture in their company. Listen, culture, which means unity. Everybody's on the same page. And they want to decrease, right? Spending money to get customers in cost per acquisition per customer, right? To sell a car. What happens is like the last just the very last store they flew into, okay, that dealership, this is their second time in there now within three months. When they first got in there, we're spending $80,000 in radio. Now they're spending zero. They completely cut out their entire radio budget. How will the twins go in? They teach your entire staff on how to do social media skills, branding and marketing, completely generation without the dealership going and watch this when the dealership pays for the leads, the salesman don't really respect the leads when they come in because they're just ready for another lead.  And by the way, your competitors, your competition that are in that dealership when all of the salespeople around the company are going and creating social media buzz, all the people that they're connected with, right? What do people do? Well, guess what? They hear things from people that they know.  We're going to give you a discount. That's no familiarity. But when everybody's on there saying, Hey, you know, it's what's going on. It's Ian Macklin. I'm here. You know, I'm at my favorite job. You know, this store is unbelievable. My general manager is amazing. My manager is amazing. You know, a lot of people ask, you know, do you got to have down payment by car? No. Can you buy a car? Bad credit? Yeah. Look, we do that here. I saved Ms. Johnson last night. She said I'm gonna show him for, you know, another dealership for three hours. We had her internet out of here for 30 minutes. Look, we love our people. We love you. Thank you for choosing us to be your number one dealership. We just want to say thank you. We appreciate you. If anybody has any questions, reach out. And man, every time on those lives, it shows just how amazing the culture and that dealership is. And guess what? That costs no money. And by the way, that's just a real like 1% of what they do. But just to show you that he paints the picture for these guys that they can have their own repeat their own referral and they can go get paid what they're worth and earn what they're worth for the rest of their life. And guess what? When they go in, the energy they bring is amazing. They do teach them to be the world's best automotive salesperson. And just like the proof is in the pudding being the number one salesperson in the world and Nissan, they can all be the number one in the world.  And what happens is that managers are very busy to learn how to sell cars. These guys live and breathe and eat and sleep 2021 2022 is about speed social media. Okay, everybody's on their phones. Everybody's scrolling. Do you want them scrolling on your stuff? If you do, if you're in management GM or dealer or anybody, you need to reach out to them. Okay, and just say, Hey, this is my store. This is where I'm at. Tell me how this works. They'll tell you how it works. Dude, it's dirt cheap, and it will change your life forever. Your whole team will be completely different. And hell, they cut out $80,000, you know, went from 150 car store to 300 car store. It's just crazy. And you cut the advertising out and make more money. Anyways, rock and roll.  Well, because they're all going to see the other salespeople, all it takes is a couple. And salespeople will see the bigger picture, you know, there are salespeople that are going to see the bigger picture when they start to see those results. Everybody buys it.  Well, when he starts to see the other guys getting leads chasing them, like who doesn't want business to be attracted to them? Who wants to go chase something to chase something means for it to run away. So I'm not chasing business. And if you see somebody doing those things and you want to be a part of it, you might not want to for a couple of days. I don't know. But everywhere we go, when we bring that energy and we're painting the picture of what can happen and you're seeing these guys with real examples and you're seeing across the country, these things working, you're going to buy it. I just don't think that anybody can't buy it 100% positive. And I want to finish. I've been in some of the hardest stores where they're like, I'm not doing this stuff. And it's like, okay, give us 10 minutes. Well, watch and on that give it 10 minutes part. I want to say the lot Porter story. Yeah. Can you tell them the lot Porter story real quick because just to show you how good and how fast they are. Okay. One of the sales teams they went in is like, All right, who's going to go first? We're going to rock and roll. And nobody would raise their hands. Everybody's buck cheats were puckered up. I didn't want to do this. I don't want to be here. And the lot Porter was there and he's like, I'll do it. Yeah. Well, the sales manager said that he wanted to get a job, you know, as a sales person, so they let him sit in on our dealer meeting when we flew in. And so, you know, we did our branding and marketing and branding is different than marketing, but that's a whole nother story. So he sits in on our branding and marketing, we go over a lot of things. And he's nervous. He's 18 years old.  I mean, that's scary, right?  And so as we, as he's not really technically a salesperson at the end of the meeting, I'm like, I'm going to show the first person exactly how to go live, what to say, you know, exactly how we're going to get business where we're going to position it exactly what we're going to do exactly what we're going to do. Who's going to go first?  He just jumped right into it. And he said, probably thought this is my shot to show the sales manager that I can do something here, you know, and fast forward, we went live. He had three customers come in that next day. He sold three that next day just off of branding and marketing and he's a lot Porter. Yeah. He wasn't even technically a salesperson. So, you know, that week they hired him as a salesperson. He started going live. He started doing the branding and marketing that he was set up to do, you know, and most guys in that store were averaging about 15 cars, top guys, 19, 20 cars. He did 23 that month off of social media and marketing didn't take up first, first month right off the gate, right out of the gate, you know, right out of the gate did 23 branding and marketing. And now he's just an animal. Yeah, he's just he's all over the place. So that's tons of fun. So that's what I want to talk about. Look, rookies, you know what you need to do. Okay, it's time to level up veterans. Look, you know what you need to do. It's time to level up. If you're not winning in social media, you're losing money. You're leaving money on the table. You're leaving money on the table. You're leaving money on the table. So lots of things that we love to do. And this one isn't about that, which is closing negotiations, objection, handling, we're talking about man, prevent and burn out, pushing yourself to new levels, staying fired up, staying passionate about what you do.  Be jacked up, be fired up. Look, we love you. We want to drop a quick podcast, put a couple little few things in your ear.  People either getting dull or they're getting sharper. They're gaining ground or they're losing ground. Look, that's it. Nothing stays the same. Nada. Okay, with that being said, hey, we love you guys. Let's rock and roll. Let's kick butt. We appreciate you. Yeah, shoot them a text. One more time. What's that number? So it's<PHONE_NUMBER>. Doesn't matter if you're Eastern time Pacific, just shoot me a text. Tell me where you're at. Everything that we went through, man, I can't wait to hear from some of you guys. I get jacked up and fired up over this stuff. I mean, I really eat and sleep this all day long. So reach out to me. Reach out to me. I'm serious. Reach out to me right now. If you're watching this and that resonates with you, you want to learn. You want to go to the next level. You want business chasing you. You want to become the better you. You want to see the better version. Just reach out. Yeah, dominate your backyard. Let's dominate the backyard, man. Yeah, where you live, then you need to own it. All right, we love you guys. Rock and roll. See you soon.


who sent us his son as a herald of salvation and who continually pours the Holy Spirit of truth in our hearts be with you all. The wisdom of God is beyond imagining and his goodness a boundless treasure. He unfailingly enlightens our minds, enabling us to share information, ideas, knowledge and aspirations with each other. The discoveries of technology, if used properly, can be of great service to the human family, not only to bring help in times of need, but also as resources for education and entertainment. It is also incomplete accord with the plan of God who wants us all to be bound closely together in a union of truth and freedom. Let every tongue then proclaim God's wonder, saying how wonderful are your works, O Lord. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we pray today for your protection for this human resource center. Grant that this building may be preserved from fire, hurricanes and all other dangers. We pray for all who gather here for work, study or leisure. May this be a place where light shines in the darkness, where exciting new insights are gained, where both knowledge and wisdom find healthy nurture, where for generations to come, people are empowered to rise to the challenge of daring to be wise. Grant that all the activities which take place here will build up a spirit of community among us and lead us to the well-being of all our people, helping us to communicate truth, force the love and to uphold justice and right through Christ our Lord. The Lord's prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen. May God the Father of goodness who commanded us to help one another as brothers and sisters, bless this building with his presence and look kindly on all who enter here and use it, amen. It is with great pride and pleasure that I welcome you to today's, to witness this momentous occasion that we in the community of Gruzile have long awaited the opening of the Human Resource Development Center building. Some 10 years ago, when the Honorable Spider Montute commanded the commencement of the construction of this building, he knew how important it would be to the people and the community of Gruzile, a building that would serve multiple purposes, beneficial to the development and enhancement of almost every sector and facet of this community. The ICT Lab, for example, which will be used by our students for a variety of purposes, not limited to homework, research and after-school programs. Adults would also be welcome to use that facility to accomplish tasks that require the use of computers. In essence, the main goal of this lab would be a general improvement in digital literacy, amen residents with the tools to survive in a technological world. In addition, housing this building is a recording studio. One can only imagine the advancement in the music industry that can be realized through the use of this facility by our local artists. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Calypso Monac hails from the town of Gruzile. That would have been a great achievement and testimony to what this facility can provide. There is also an auditorium which will be available to host community social events. Besides that, the building contains huge conference room and with the potential to host meetings, workshops, and the like by both governmental and non-governmental entities who would have not only the room at their disposal, but also a first-class restaurant to cater to their needs. This project may have taken much longer than anticipated, but we are later to finally be able to take possession, to take advantage of this HRDC building, and to appreciate the facility that it offers. And I pledge today, on behalf of the people of Gruzile, to take full advantage and to make full use of this important resource and to maintain its upkeep so it can serve us now and for many years to come. Once again, on behalf of the people of Gruzile, I wish to welcome you to this most beautiful town in St. Glacier and hope that to our visiting guests that you get a moment to explore a little bit more than just work. I thank you. Today I stand here humbled and honored as Minister of Equity, Social Justice, Local Government and Empowerment. And I'm honored as this ceremony marks the official opening of the Gruzile Human Resource Development Center, which represents the achievement of a major milestone for our country, my ministry, and indeed my constituency. I name this opening a major milestone as this community has waited for this occasion for many years, as was mentioned by his lordship, Mayor Edwin. To the community, I must say a special thank you for your patience, as I am sure that you are pleased with what the eventual outcome is. I have to indicate, however, that our assembly here today would not have been possible without the assistance and generosity of the government and people of the Republic of China, Taiwan, who provided significant financial resources for the completion of the State of the Art Human Resource Development Center. This center is equipped with the space and technology to house a State of the Art Theater, a training room, a music lab, conference room, office space, and a restaurant, among other things. From a ministerial perspective, this facility will allow for a greater ease of service delivery for community programming. As you may know, the ministry in particular, the Social Transformation Unit, has an important mandate for the development and empowering of communities. Inclusive in this programming are initiatives such as after-school programs, skills training, and enrichment courses, as well as life skills offering. I am sure that new programs will emerge as time goes on, much to the benefit of the residents of Grosile and beyond. The inclusion of the theater within this facility has enabled us to acknowledge and honor a St. Lucian Prodigy of the literary arts by naming it after him. Ladies and gentlemen, as parliamentary representative of Grosile, I take much pleasure in announcing that this theater will be named after Mr. Vladimir O. M. Lucian, who is a writer, actor, and critic who ails from the community of Grosile. I believe that Mr. Lucian's passion for the arts and the outstanding talent of many from the community of Grosile will facilitate a rebirth of the arts in this community and St. Lucia at large. I therefore anticipate a cultural renaissance. So, ladies and gentlemen, who really is Mr. Vladimir Lucian? Permit me if you will, Mr. Master of Ceremonies, to just read a short bio on Mr. Lucian by way of introduction to those who do not know him. Vladimir O. S. Lucian is a writer, actor, and critic from Grosile, St. Lucia, and his writing has been published in the Caribbean Review of Books. Woffrey, Small Arts Journal, The PN Review, BIM Magazine, Washington Square Review, Caribbean Beat and other regional and international journals. He has been awarded the first prize in the poetry category of the Small Arts Literary Competition in 2013 and is the winner of the 2015 OCM Booker's Prize for his debut collection of poetry, Sounding Ground, published by the People Tree Press in May, 2014. And he, ladies and gentlemen, is the youngest writer ever to have won that prize. He is also the co-editor of the anthology, Setley C. Poems and Arts of St. Lucia, which was published in November, 2014, and the screenwriter of the documentary, The Murkins, which premiered in the Trinidad and Tobigo Film Festival in 2013, sorry. From January to May, 2016, Mr. Lucian served as writer in residence at the University of the West Indies Monarchampus. In February, 2016, he was hailed by the CBC Books based in Canada as a young black writer to watch. Pamela Mordechai, who recommended him highly to CBC Books, states that his poems are hefty, accomplished, and undirived, rooted in the Creole cultures and there are two for our guests, for the benefit of our guests, there are two cultures in his homeland enjoying its orality and deploying its languages with aplomb. The poems have none of the determined inaccessibility that discourages the ordinary reader. If one of these days, he finds himself like Juventusco, reading poems to arenas filled with thousands, I wouldn't be surprised. Lucian has been featured at many regional and international festivals, including the Caribbean International Literary Festival, the Read My World Festival in Amsterdam, Jaipur Literary Festival, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and Miami Book Fair. And he has poems translated into Dutch, Italian, and Mandarin. Of course, that is good news to our visitors. You can at least be able to read some of his work. He has been featured in the BBC's Poetry Postcards program as well as the BBC's program, The Verb, and at the BBC's, at the BBC contains Strong Language Festival. In October 2018, Lucian was part of a cadre of poets selected to pay homage to the Heath or Toe on song West Indian heroes of the First World War in a publication entitled, Unwritten Poems After the First World War. And this was edited by Karen McCarthy Wolfe. And ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Lucian is undoubtedly one of the major voices in Caribbean literary today. And I predict that perhaps St. Lucia's next Nobel Prize may come from this. In terms of a cultural renaissance as the prime, this is a prime location here at this centre. It's expanse of space and the technology available will enable a rebirth of creativity which can be highlighted and expanded as an extension of the grossly Friday night experience. I envision inclusion as the showcasing of plays from musical performances become part of the social and cultural life of this constituency. Further, my ministry holds the responsibility to work towards endowing and fostering independence through training and the development of skills in the adult population. This is a responsibility that we take seriously and I am pleased at the availability of the training room which will facilitate more thorough and organised training experiences covering a wide range of areas of expertise. I view this centre therefore as a catalyst for growth and development of grossly and the neighbouring communities. Moreover, training exercises do not have to be limited to that of the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice, Local Government and Empowerment. As a management committee comprising of professionals, skilled and dedicated individuals has been appointed to ensure the continued and efficient utilisation of this state-of-the-art human resource development centre. The esteemed individuals who comprise this management committee are Mrs. Kathian Belma Angeloni, Mrs. Sonia Sifli, Mr. Irvins Springer, Ms. Devina Lee, Mr. Daniel Beliza who will be representing the Grossly Constituency Council, Mr. David Moise who is the Social Transformation Officer for Grossly representing the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment and Ms. Daniel Dubois. I want to thank you for agreeing to be part of this committee and accepting the responsibility to manage this facility, certainly as parliamentary representative, I do not envy your task. I also firmly believe that the centre presents an avenue for income generation for the community, a process which needs to be managed adequately with passion. This income generating comes with the renting of the restaurant space, for example, as well as the theatre and training room. Given the demand for conference and training spaces nationally, anticipate those rooms to be booked consistently. Now that I have highlighted just a few of the many ways that this resource development centre can benefit the Ministry of Equity, Social Justice, Local Government and Empowerment and the community of Grossly, I wish to again acknowledge the contribution of the Republic of China, Taiwan. And on behalf of the government and people of St. Lucia, I extend sincere gratitude to the President of the Republic of Taiwan for your benevolence. Your unwavering support of St. Lucia has enabled the implementation of a facility which will undoubtedly empower the people of the community to thrive and shine. Additionally, you have created the avenue for a ministerial department to function more optimally. I look forward to our continued partnership and the genesis of talent and growth which will be showcased in the people of this community through the utilisation of this facility. Mr. Master of Ceremonies, permit me a few more minutes as parliamentary representative of Grossly. LAUGHTER I stand here proud as the parliamentary representative of Grossly to be part of the opening of this centre. I say so because in my election campaign of 2006, I made a pledge to the people of Grossly that should I be elected, this would be one of the projects that I would embark upon. On September 24th, 2011, we planted a seed by breaking ground for the commencement of this structure. Unfortunately, I was in the round between 2011 and 2016, and unfortunately, we did not see the completion of this centre. But through the great good graces of the people of Grossly, I have been returned as parliamentary representative. And if there was one project that I wanted to ensure that I fulfilled, it would be the opening of this centre. For me, this is a proud moment. I say so because on behalf of the people of the constituency of Grossly, I envision great things to come from this centre. Let me just say that there are a number of people at the local level that I wish to thank. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge the contribution of my then ally and good friend, Ren Lucian. He had a big part to play in the conceptualisation of this end product. But let me just say that what we envision is not what we have today. However, our good friends are here with us, and I do not want to abuse their generosity. I do not want to sound ungrateful. Our Prime Minister is here with us, the Minister of Finance. So let me just say that there are few additional features that we wish to see in the near future. Ladies and gentlemen, the original design was intended to have retractable seats for the theatre, which was removed. We were supposed to have a system under this building because this building, and a standby generator, because this building was supposed to double up in the event of a catastrophe such as a hurricane as an emergency shelter. These were taken out. I want to say that we will, we can no longer dig the foundation to build a system, but we will have water tanks installed and we will have a standby generator for this building. Originally in the plan, they were supposed to have been an exhibition room that has been converted to a music lab. I think there'll be greater utility in the music lab, and I'm sure, again, people of the creative industries will welcome that development. So I say to the people of Grozile, you have waited a long time. It was long in coming, but you now have your Human Resource Development Centre. I think a state-of-the-art facility such as this deserves a better name. And so, as parliamentary representative, along with my social transformation officer who's the master of ceremonies today, we will launch a competition among our schools very soon upon reopening of school so that our young people can give us a more jazzy name for this centre. So very soon it will be renamed to whatever the decision they make. It is theirs, it is for them. I want to thank Madam President, Ambassador, on behalf this time specifically of the people of the Grozile constituency, I want to thank you for your benevolence. You have heard much about the works that you have done throughout the length and breadth of St. Lucia, but let me say to you, the amount of work that you have done in this constituency is simply too numerous to mention. We have a number of ICT centres in the rural areas, and this morning we talk about the GI-Net programme. That is providing a facility to rural residents, especially students, to fulfil and pursue their education. The number of food paths in remote areas, roads, and many other projects, like I said are too numerous to mention, but we want to express our sincere gratitude to you. And I want to say to you, Madam President, your embassy is located in this constituency. And I hope Ambassador does not mind that I give you a report on his embassy. You have heard many speakers between yesterday and today refer to your Ambassador and his staff as friends. In Grozile, they are family. So once again, we can never say thank you enough, we can never say thank you too much. Thank you on behalf of the people, the constituents of this great constituency, Grozile. It is a pity you will not be available to partake in our famous Friday Night Street Party tomorrow evening. I would have loved that you and your entire utterance be our guests. I look forward, Madam President, to the visit of our sister town in Taiwan, Lion Town, with which Grozile is twin, that they come here. I know it is a town that is rich in culture. Let them know that we have a facility for them to share their culture with us while we exchange ours with them. Ladies and gentlemen, at this juncture, I want to say once again, it is a proud moment. However, the true value and benefit of this center will be seen for generations to come. I thank you. It is a pleasure to be here today as we celebrate the dedication of the Grozile, Human Resources Development Center. This center will provide a crucial forum for education, local cultures, and the arts. It will also foster growth in tourism and municipal development. I know Prime Minister Shesnet has quite a hat for tourism and has made it a major policy focus in the well-equipped community center here in the beautiful Grozile. It will definitely help to achieve those policy goals. Here, people will be able to take part in classes to learn crucial job skills. The center will also provide the community with a space for young people to come together and hone their artistic talents. So with the completion of one project, we are helping to bolster economic growth, revitalize local culture, and spur tourism. I can see that Grozile is a vibrant community and the addition of this center will help to bring the community closer together and better showcase your cultural diversity. This center was made possible thanks to our country's joint community development project. Through the CDP, we have completed more than 2,400 infrastructure projects in communities across San Lucia. These include flood control, drainage systems, sidewalks, and roads. These projects have created more than 25,000 jobs opportunities, spurring nationwide economic growth. At the same time, they are also helping to mitigate the impact of climate change, a key issue for both our countries. Our cooperation model means that firms and communities from both our countries can participate and reap the benefits. We refuse to allow our allies to fall into debt traps because our goal is genuine win-win collaboration. In closing, I want to congratulate all the Grozile residents here today on the completion of this center. I hope that you will make good use of it and I look forward to seeing San Lucia unlock even further potential. Thank you. This is certainly an important day in the life of the town of Grozile. The largest one of the most developed and vibrant districts in San Lucia. This Human Resource Development Center has been a long time in coming, but is finally here and I want to congratulate all of those involved in making this a reality. In the manifesto which brought my government to power, I hate that word power, to office in 2016, replaced much emphasis on empowering our people, especially our young people in the fields of endeavor so that they can take their rightful place in the development of this country. For instance, part of our strategy for good governance, we said would be empowering communities through local government and embracing and promoting such organizations as the mothers and fathers groups, youth and sports councils, clubs, religious and other civil society organizations. Over the years, we have realized that one of the detriments to fulfilling such a mission in many communities has been the absence of appropriate facilities for meetings and activities associated with community development. Consequently, we've embarked on a program of building the community centers and human resource centers in several parts of the island. This program was given an added impetus from 2007 when we were able to encourage Republic of China to Taiwan to finance our constituency development program, which seeks as well to develop rural communities and the people who live therein. In fact, it was funding from the Republic of China, Taiwan, that financed the completion of this project after work had come to a halt. President Tsai, we are most grateful for this timely intervention by your country which has delivered today this fine building for the benefit of the grocery community. I must point out too, the fruits of the constituency development program are visible all over our island, touching the lives and empowering entire communities with projects that have improved the physical landscape while at the same time providing employment for our people. With CDP funds, we've undertaken flood mitigation, drainage and soil stabilization projects, built community access roads and footpaths and bridges, created green spaces and parks and also build human capacity. Overall, these projects have enabled communities to become more closely knit because they utilize the skills and talents of workers and contractors from the same communities, helping them to grow and creating an enabling environment for the people to have a say in how they should be developed. In so doing, our people now have a voice and a stake in their own development which will in the long run result in pride in themselves, the communities and more importantly, their country. In more recent years, your Excellency, we have switched the focus of the program a little into more sustainable projects that bring economic benefits to our people. The new dimension seeks to encourage entrepreneurship and create employment in the line in which the overall objective in powering our people in a variety of areas. It is the same kind of empowerment that we hope this new center will foster. In our sincere hope, it is our sincere hope that this building will be used as a regular meeting place for the people of Groslet. The various groups operating here so that they can plan and organize activities that will improve both themselves and the various communities that lift the entire district to new heights of achievement. It is well known that Groslet has for years been the home of the biggest street party to be found anywhere in the Caribbean. In fact, it was the first. Perhaps thought can be given to using this center to prepare and rehearse new attractions that can be added to lift and enhance this weekly Friday night activity while at the same time ensuring its sustainability in the long run. I want to take a moment to really commend the hard work and the dedicated of the dedicated parliament rep your Honorable Leonard Spidey12 and his team. He has always remained focused and passionate about this project with also houses and ICC tents at center. In fact, over the last few months, he has managed to open five ICT centers in communities around Groslet. Congratulations to you. Congratulations to you on the opening of this center. I know that it will serve the community well. I'd like once again, President Tsai, to thank the Republic of China, Taiwan for the tremendous assistance you have given to Saint Lucia over the years and that has helped in our overall development in so many ways. This Human Resource Development Center will, I am sure, represent one of the hallmarks of the relationship between your country and ours. For this, we say a very hearty thank you.