All right, our time hasn't started yet, but, oh, there we go, okay. We're good to go. Thanks for being here. I am Frédéric Claudinois. I'm the Enterprise Editor for TechTronch, and with me today is Nathan from Graphcore, who you probably saw yesterday, but why don't you introduce yourself? Yeah, so I'm Nathan Harper. I'm a member of the Cloud Development team at Graphcore, and I've been working on integrating our hardware products into OpenStack for about the last two years at this point. And for those who weren't there yesterday, what does Graphcore do? So Graphcore, we have developed our own silicon systems, software, SDKs, all of which have been designed for AI machine learning from the ground up. And what does it look like in practice? What can I do right now on Graphcore? So right now, our systems are our IPU machines. So one of our IPU machines is it looks like a server, but you can't use it like a server. You can't log onto it. It's effectively a network appliance containing four of our IPUs. So then a user will then access that over the network. We'll try and obfuscate as much of that as possible. Users don't need to use it. From a practical user point of view, we have been pushing very hard to try and make sure that our SDKs and frameworks are as well supported as what you would see on other AI accelerators. So if you use PyTorch, you can use PyTorch on IPU. If you use TensorFlow, you can use TensorFlow on IPU. And if there's anything that doesn't work, these are things that we're interested in finding out about so that we can enhance that. We've been planning ahead for our next release of our SDK. And the intention is at that stage is that everything should be one-to-one. So if you have a model that has been trained and run on GPUs, you should be able to pick up that same in PyTorch, for example. You should be able to take that same thing and run it on IPUs without having to make any code changes. So you're basically the Nvidia of OpenStack.  Very enough. Add a feeling you're going to say something like that. Now you made this bet on OpenStack pretty early for your infrastructure, right? Can you talk a little bit about the journey and why you ended up using OpenStack? Yeah. So we had, you know, as one of the things I mentioned, the keynote yesterday is our reference systems. We have our Pod64 systems. You get some application servers, some IPU machines, and the networking that connects it all together. And the reference design for that was very static. You know, all of these things, all the systems we're in will be in a single VLAN for that pod. Each pod would then be, you know, entirely separate from all the others. And then most of the time, that would be fine. You know, it works. You'd absolutely hit all the performance that you'd expect. But the challenge came around, it was actually what the developers required. So if they needed something different, so an alternative operating system, if they wanted different packages, but crucially it was, if they wanted something different to what their colleagues who were also using the same machine or the same pod had. That was where we'd end up with users crashing into each other because they were both trying to do different things with the same hardware at the same time.  So when we started using OpenStack, it allowed us to be able to automatically carve up those systems in a way that we, you know, we weren't really able to do before. We could do that before, but it would all be driven by hand and, you know, would require administrators to go in and log into switches and switch VLANs and manage which VLANs are associated with what. What we've gotten out of our, the solution we have in OpenStack now is that users don't need to know what VLAN they are on. OpenStack and Neutron deals with that for them. Does the user actually ever see OpenStack? It depends on our users. OK. So, you know, for a lot of our users, they use the Asimuth self-serve interface and because that abstracts them away from all the complicated questions that they don't need to worry about.  Have they turned on the right features on their Neutron ports to make this work? So I'd say a good 80% of our users are using, you know, they're consuming OpenStack, but through Asimuth. So they don't have to look at it directly. The other 20% is either the slightly more power users.  And then the last chunk is actually the system-to-system comms. So one of the use cases we've got is for managing CI runners.  We don't get any kind of crossover. There's no crux being left behind. And this is one of the drivers in that particular case is if you've got your partners, be it, you know, kind of trusted or not, or if you're taking, you know, pull requests from external parties, running the CI on that, you're effectively inviting codes that has been written by someone else to be executed on your infrastructure. So absolutely having a fresh deployment every single time means that, you know, any malicious or not things that have been left behind. Well, those IPUs make for good crypto miners maybe? Well, yeah, these are problems that a lot of, you know, service providers have run into, you know, where it's like. Even if you're sadly, you know, even if people aren't using the IPUs, you know, if you've got some nice juicy AMD CPUs, people will always find a way to run miners on them. There you go. That's my business plan when I'm done here. But what does the scale look like for you right now? Like how many clouds are we talking about? How many servers? So at this point, we've got five clouds of varying sizes. The largest ones at this point are, I think, about 12,000 cores a piece with hundreds of IPU machines associated with them. Rather than deploying one large system in kind of multi-region, generally they've been deployed for different purposes. So we have internal systems made available to our developers. We have an external system so that we can make systems available to customers on a kind of try-before-you-buy approach. We have another system that we're currently bringing up at the moment which is going to be focused much more on bare metal deployments. And so we've just got a lot of flexibility. We've just decided, you know, rather than trying to make one cloud to do everything for us, let's build a system that has been focused and that way we don't have to worry about geographic complexity as well. Makes sense. And maybe just to take a step back there, what's really different about AI workloads compared to some other workloads and kind of where does OpenStack fit in there? So AI work, there's probably a difference between AI workloads that most people encounter and AI workloads in graph core lands. So for a lot of users using AI workloads, it is very much about access to GPUs. So those GPUs will generally be directly attached to your VMs or your bare metal systems. So that will drive a very particular sort of workload. Because of our disaggregated approach, there is much more of the, you know, slightly more traditional high-performance computing elements to it. So because we are our IPU over fabric protocol uses RDMA over Converged Ethernet, actually the performance of the networking and so being able to do line rate RDMA inside OpenStack is vital to making our systems work. Got it. And to make all of that work, I think you also had to write your own ironic drivers, right? So at the moment, we are carrying a patched version of ironic or particularly of the, to drive our IPU machines. The intention is we're going to be ensuring that that gets made available upstream.  You get to actually talk to people face-to-face about some of these things. And, you know, we had the opportunity to talk to some of the ironic team about why we were doing what we were doing. And their response was like, that's a great use case. You know, let's try and make it so. So that actually, do you do a lot of, do you open source a lot of what you are working on? So in terms of the OpenStack sort of things, we've got reference architectures for how we've been doing things. There hasn't been an enormous amount of specific custom code. It's just about, you know, here are some of our best-working recipes for how to make Nova fly. You know, how do we make our VMs achieve the same sort of performance that we get out of bare metal? One of the things, so when in our keynote yesterday, John talked about when we were running ML Perf, that was our benchmark. And that was what we were using to basically ensure that we actually got, you know, achieved the kind of performance that we wanted. There were some firmware, you know, BIOS settings that actually, once we'd applied those, we were actually able to get better performance out of our VMs than we were out of our reference bare metal systems at the time. And, basically, when we then took those settings and applied them to the bare metal, the bare metal then it also got faster. But it's just the whole process that we went through and trying to drive this had a benefit for what we were doing in OpenStack, but then had a benefit for the wider GraphCore that weren't using OpenStack-based systems at the time. We were talking about that. You've been playing around with OpenStack for quite a while, but also some other systems before that, right? Now, if you had to go back, I think you started using OpenStack at GraphCore in 21, 2020? Oh, sorry, in terms of personally, or... At GraphCore. At GraphCore, yeah, we've been using it since, yeah, since 2021. Well, you've been playing around with it for much longer, right? Yeah, I was trying to work out what, actually, when the first OpenStack, I think it was a Cata was the first deployment that I perfectly... Goes back a while? Yeah.  So, I think with the benefits of hindsight, there were probably a lot of capabilities, features, inside OpenStack that, for good reason, we chose not to use. So, for our first deployments, we were very focused on achieving our goal, which was to take our IP machines and put them into OpenStack and achieve a very similar capability to what we got on our bare metal systems. So, as a result, there was a variety of features which we chose not to turn on. And so, but in hindsight, or with the benefit of hindsight, now that we've achieved that, there are a lot of things that we would, it would have been useful to turn on. And a notable one is our very first system, we didn't deploy Octavia, and which then suddenly became a bit of a headache whenever we wanted to start doing Kubernetes in that cloud because there's a lot of... Octavia, the load balancer? Yes, yeah. And so, yeah, it was just... But at the same time, that is with real benefit of hindsight because the thing we need to also manage is when you're building a new OpenStack cloud and you might be very easy, especially when you're using something like your Color Antibole or your Koby, when you've just got, here are all the things, do I want to turn them on? It'd be very easy to just go, yes, enable, enable, enable, enable. Yes, I want all the things. But then you might end up deploying things that you never use, or you might end up deploying things which might confuse matters, or some of the things, when you turn them on, they are just on. Others, once you've turned them on, there's post-configuration setup. And if you don't know exactly what you need to do, then you might just end up, you're biting off more that you can chew from day one. So it's definitely a balancing act, how much do I want to enable, but without making it overly complicated. What does it look like today? Like, compare your OpenStack deployments from a few years ago to what you're doing today. So the scale has definitely got bigger. Our very first OpenStack deployments were, they weren't static, they were still driven by automation, but we would generally be turning over one of our virtual pods every couple of days. Today, we've now, we get, I don't know, maybe about 70 vpods being deployed every day, and they get turned over every day, looking entirely different every, every time. So every day, our developers get access to a fresh, you know, a fresh system that may be way larger or way smaller than the system they had the previous day. Sure, and I always like to end on a bummer, because we only have 10 seconds left, but what's still your biggest challenge when it comes to deploying OpenStack right now? So, our challenge is that even, we've got a really nice process, a really nice template for how we're gonna do things, but when deploying into a new geography, a new data center, we run into different challenges. It's, a lot of it is around the networking or the networking that has been provided to us by the COLO or the data center provider that we're working with, and where things just look very slightly different, and it's the cascading, cannibal effect of, you know, oh, we're just, we'll deploy this. It's gonna be exactly the same as that last system, but we're just gonna change that one thing, and it's the unintended consequences of changing that one thing and how it goes, you know. I've seen that before. Awesome, well, thank you so much. Our time is up here. I'm afraid these 15 minutes go fast. They do indeed. Thank you, Nathan. Thank you.


Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrative Coordinator and co-host of this program with Chairman Bill Gehring. And today we're real pleased to have our guest Chuck Mayer with us, who is the Director of the Airport. As you know, especially if you've been watching this program over the years, we have a number of departments in Sheboygan County, including the Health and Human Services Department, Health Care Center, Sheriff's Department, Highway. Most people are familiar with what many people may not be aware of the jewel we have in this community, and that is the Sheboygan County Memorial Airport. Again, it's nice to have Chuck Mayer with us today. Thanks Adam. Chuck, please begin by sharing with us a little bit about your background and your time working at the airport. Well Adam, I've had the privilege for the past 18 years of managing that wonderful facility. Prior to the airport management, I had actually been with the County Planning and Resources Department for many, many years. A transition occurred from 1987 through 1990, where I actually had kind of a split position with the county. I was the airport zoning manager, excuse me, the county planning department's zoning manager, and then also the airport department manager, so it was kind of being pulled in two different directions, and it worked okay for about three years until we got the airport back on its feet and what not, and then the county board saw fit to basically re-establish that department, and I've been there ever since, and it's been a challenge and it's just been a wonderful experience. So how many years now have you been the director at the airport? 18. 18 years. And I know there's an interesting history with the airport, but certainly your involvement there, a lot of good things have happened. Why don't you share a little bit about the primary mission and responsibilities that your department has. The county airport department is probably one of the smallest departments in county government, and we oversee one of the largest holdings as far as real estate that the county owns. I think besides the Shboygan Marsh, the airport may be the next largest holding that we have. Presently the airports expanded to approximately 1,040 acres, and a lot of that acreage had occurred probably in the last 18 years because of our expansion and what not, and it looks like in the next few years we'll also be growing once again. But the responsibility of the airport department is to maintain that facility, to keep a safe operations environment for the air travelers, the flight departments that are there, a tenorant aircraft that come and go through that facility. We're also responsible for the operations budget, and especially something I'm proud of is the long-range planning that has gone into that facility, and as a real positive spin-off of the long-range plans, the environmental and economic impact studies that go with that planning is the fact that it's allowed the airport department to realize just an enormous amount of state and federal funding and grants and what not that come into the Shboygan County to offset the cost of projects at the facility. Now, you've been the director for 18 years, and in a moment we're going to get into more of some of that long-term planning and some of the projects that have come to fruition. But for our viewers who weren't aware of that Shboygan County operated an airport or aren't aware where it is, why don't you address that for them? Where is the airport, and how long has Shboygan County operated an airport? The airport for anyone who doesn't get out of the city of Shboygan is about seven-and-a-half miles due west of the city limits. You just take Highway 23 to the west, and when you get to Highway TT, you turn north and TT will just take you right into that facility. How long has the county had an airport? The airport has been in operation now. This is the 45th year. Interesting history as far as how that facility got started. A lot of smaller airstrips around the county, back in the 20s, 30s, 40s and what not, and an awful lot of debate between the city and county and other municipalities as far as a publicly owned airport. In 1956, the county board finally put that issue to public referendum, and it was the November 1956 election that was on that ballot, and it passed by, you know, it was a very favorable margin. At that point, from what I recall, Parks Property Aviation Committee was created. To oversee the airport, construction began, I think, in 1958. It was completed in 1960 and officially dedicated in 1962, and we've had it ever since. Now you mentioned some of the roles and responsibilities of your department. You said it was one of the smallest. Just how small is it? How many staff do you work with? Myself as a full-time manager, and I have two full-time airport maintenance technicians. This time of the year, when we get into some heavy snow conditions and what not for snow removal operations, then we have the privilege of being able to bring in a limited term employee to help us with the grounds, maintenance, plowing, things like that. And so far so good with that snow removal? So far this winter has been very kind to us, other than, you know, the snowfall we had the other week, and events like that just as an example, as far as the size of that airport. I've got three plow trucks, two fairly good-sized trucks, similar to what you find at the county highway department, and the six-inch snowfall, we dispatch those two trucks, and typically each truck will put on over 130 miles in snow removal effort, you know, to clean up that facility. And then we bring in some of the smaller trucks, and we've got some large snow blowers, and front-end loaders, and you know, it's quite the task. Now, if someone was heading out there for the first time, obviously they'd see a pretty impressive airport, and you have your office with your staff, and then there's the fixed-base operator. That's where, as you well know, where the folks come and go, primarily, when they come into the airport. Who is the fixed-based operator? The present fixed-base operator at Sheboygan Airport is Western Shore Aviation. And that's a full-service aviation-orientated business that provides air charter services. They'll provide flight instruction, they rent airplanes, they have a full maintenance shop for doing engine work, air framework, annual inspections, full service. Very good. And when you say full service, just how busy is this airport? You can put that in perspective for us. Yeah, it's something, again, one of the technical points I'm really proud of, as far as what we were able to do with that airport over the last 18 years, as far as attracting tenants that base aircraft there, industrial corporate flight departments that are based there now. We're up to about 135 aircraft based at the facility. Estimated worth of those machines are in excess of $80 million. We experience over 66,000 aircraft operations a year, take-off landings, things like that. The big picture, what is Sheboygan, or where Sheboygan Airport in relation to the other airports in the state of Wisconsin? Typically, I believe there's in excess of 103 public airports out there just in Wisconsin alone. Sheboygan would be ranked number six, as far as the number of based aircraft at a facility, and number 10, as far as yearly operations. Very impressive. And finally, before turning it over to Bill, give our viewers a flavor of the tenants that are primarily out there. You said you had over 100 airplanes that are based there? 135, presently right. What types of tenants do we have out there? The backbone of our facility is made up primarily of industrial and corporate and some commercial flight departments. I think we've got about 14 corporate and industrial flight departments operating out of Sheboygan Airport. Some of our main tenants out there would be the Collard Company, Bemis, Eclipse, Plastics Engineering, and the list goes on and on. We've got the large industrial list, plus we have smaller up-and-coming businesses, which is really great because historically we'll see the smaller up-and-coming businesses start on the east side of the airport where we have the small individual hangers, and in time all of a sudden they transition over to the west side of the field where we have the larger corporate hangers. It's kind of nice to be part of that growth and seeing that happen every year. Very good. Chuck, you and your staff do a lot of the maintenance and repairs on the airport itself, but you're also very involved in the planning for the improvement, the long-range improvement of the airport. How does that process work? How do you decide what to improve, where to improve? I guess, you know, just going back to, you know, when we first, when the county re-established its management role at that facility back in 1987, a lot of infrastructure, you know, had kind of been unattended to and whatnot, so it was a long and tedious ordeal getting infrastructure back in place with the assistance of the county resources committee for many years, who I answered to now in the last three years, it was the transportation committee. That was a real good sounding board to work with and helping to prioritize projects. We also have an airport advisory committee that is appointed by the county board and we also use, you know, that group as a safety net to kind of help us out and put all of these projects in perspective, prioritize, you know, what is necessary and then look at the cost, you know, as far as, you know, what's in the best interest of the taxpayer and, you know, where will the funds come from, you know, to, you know, cause these projects to occur. The current long-range plan actually reaches out through 2012 with a major capital improvement program for just about every year and I'm sure we'll be talking about that in a little bit too as far as, you know, what we've done and, you know, what's coming out. You always seem to be working on one project or another. What are the current projects that are underway? For this year, we're getting into the probably one of the biggest projects in the history of that airport and that's going to be the extension of our primary or our instrument runway. That'll be a four-year project, about 7.6 million dollars, so we're doing it in phases, you know, just as far as the economic cost of that alone, make it a little bit more bearable, you know, to have that project completed. And we're also looking at some of the design concept work for expanding the west side of the airport to create more industrial and commercial hangar lots, because at present time I've only got one industrial lot available on the west side of the field and we do have some tenants or potential tenants wanting to, you know, develop out there, so we need to keep up with with the demand. Are there any other longer-range projects or wish list projects that you have out there? 2012 is comfortable. We know what's needed as far as runway strengthening or ramp extensions, things like that, and beyond that. You know, I guess my crystal ball that we use really isn't all that clear at this time, and we'll just wait and see which way the flow basically goes as far as our development. What type of tenants, especially the commercial industrial tenants that come on board, what their needs are as far as runway lengths, itinerant aircraft coming into the airport also as far as size of aircraft that, you know, typically would like to frequent the facility and if we have to turn them away or not because of, you know, infrastructure limitations that we have. How are most of the projects funding? You don't seem to be coming to the county board for great sums of money, yet the projects do have a substantial cost. So who really is paying for them? Where is the money coming from? A lot of this, again, falls back on that comprehensive long-range plan, you know, that we work under. And by having that plan out there, that the Bureau, the Wisconsin Bureau of Aeronautics is, you know, dialed into and especially the FAA, by keeping both those levels of government informed with what our intentions are, what our wishes are, we have been able to program a considerable amount of money from Federal Aviation Trust and all of the, under the AIP program, which is the airport improvement program, State of Wisconsin is allowed a block grant every year of money from the Federal Aviation Trust and that money is funneled specifically into public airport improvements and with over 100 airports in the state of Wisconsin, we're all competing for that money. And those of us who have our ducks in a roll, as far as the planning, the studies, everything else, you know, we're pretty much, you know, right up on top there as far as being able to secure that funding. Can that funding stream state fairly stable or do you see it being cut back with all of the state and federal cutbacks that we hear about? Great question. Believe it or not, December of 2004, President Bush signed the Federal Airport Transportation Bill and which was, this is really surprising, is that the funding, federal portion of funding for airport improvements has increased from cost sharing of 90 percent, which typically that's, you know, the way it had always been, that's bumped up to 95 percent and that is guaranteed from this year through 2007. So the timing couldn't be better. Here, Sheboygan County is with this major runway extension, 7.6 million and the federal government now is going to cost share that 95 percent. Bureau of Aeronautics will be contributing two and a half percent. So now the airport, myself as the department head, only need to approach the county board for two and a half percent of that project. That's a great answer. We had started out initially in the county five-year plan. I had shown about 1.5 million in county funds needed to support that 7.6 million project. Now we're down to about $250,000. I'm happy. Talk a little bit more about the economic power of the airport. Somebody might ask me, well, why have an airport? What does it really do for the county? What does it do for our area economically? Going back again, tying in with the plans and the studies that we've done back, as far back as 1993, we initiated an economic impact study and then again in 95, 97, 2000, 2002. That's the latest. Haven't had a chance to, you know, to initiate another study but I guess the bottom line is average on these studies show that the economic benefit versus the expense of the airport 24 to 1 is typically what we're looking at as far as the indirect direct economic benefit dollars coming back into the community by having that airport, you know, and then looking at what it costs the county to, you know, maintain the airport and do the improvements and things like that. The last study, I think, identified about 17 million dollars of economic impact the airport had on Sheboygan County alone. Over 20 million impact of Sheboygan County and the state of Wisconsin combined as far as jobs, other supportive services, sales that occur as a result of the airport being their tourism, which is just as you know with our world-class golf courses, if it wasn't for that airport being an integral part of that mix. Yeah, it makes a big difference. Okay, thank you, Chair. Adam? And when you say 24 to 1, you're saying for every dollar the county puts into that airport we're getting a return of 24 dollars back in the community. Right, whether it be direct, indirect, that's the influence the airport has on dollars coming back into the community. Very impressive. Yeah. Very impressive. You talked about some projects, some projects that you're working on and I don't know if you mentioned the the new welcome center that's underway. What's the status of that and how did that come about? Yeah, we had some real dedicated airport tenants and a local EAA chapter 766 that teamed together and it took many many years of planning, fundraising that Sheboygan County Aviation Corp basically raised 1.7 million dollars in in donations, you know, for this welcome center and learning center to be built. And as the video is rolling I believe and the viewers can see, you know, the shell of the building now basically the superstructure is up. The Sheboygan County Aviation Corp is hoping to have that building done by wings and wheels again Father's Day which will be June 19th and that will kind of be the grand opening of this new facility. We're really looking forward to it. It's going to be such a great centerpiece to the airport. It's on fronting on the main ramp so that as, you know, folks fly into Sheboygan County that have never been here before, that first impression, you know, that that is so important to, you know, kind of what to expect of Sheboygan County. Well there's no question during your tenure there's just been dramatic improvements made to the airport and I imagine some of our viewers perhaps have taken the time to go out there for the wings and wheels event which is each year on Father's Day weekend I believe, is it not? That's right. And I think if you haven't been impressed in the past you're certainly going to be impressed this year when you see not only this new welcome center that they're they're hoping to, I think, open the doors for the first time on that event if all goes well and you've also had some additional expansion, have you not, to the what's south of the airport? Right and maybe if we could just take a look at the aerial photo of that we brought along here and just identify some of the things that have occurred out here at the airport.  Since 2002 there's been an awful lot that has happened at the airport. One of the biggest projects since that time is the relocation of County Trunk Highway Oll. County Trunk Oll used to run directly in front of the airport. As you can see on the pointer here now we've located, relocated that road further to the south to make room for additional individual hangers on the east side of the airport and then a corporal, excuse me, corporate and commercial development on the west side of the airport. So that's one major capital project that you know has been completed so far. This past summer the county highway department was able to construct an additional 35 hangar lot area for development before the highway department was ever able to get the asphalt down on that project. We had two tenants, you know new tenants wanting to build out there already. In spring, this spring at this point in time I'm expecting six leases to be signed with the county for development on the east side of the airport, you know, which is really great. And these folks are coming to us. One of the new tenants is relocating from West Bend Airport and I've got another tenant coming down to us from Manitowoc County, an auto supplier manufacturer wanting to develop here because of you know the progressive facility that we have. And when you talk about you know all the tenants that are out there, the multimillion dollar planes and obviously the buildings to house these planes, we had a real tragedy in our in our country's history in New York with 9-11 and there's been a height and level of security not only in everyone's lives but certainly at airports. What measures have you taken or has the county taken as a whole to improve the security at our airport? Okay, well I think it was a few years before 9-11 was upon us. We had other situations at county airport as far as problems with wildlife, deer running across runways and being hit by airplanes and things and it was not a very very safe environment. With the help of some funding from our corporate and industrial tenants and county board, we were able to come up with again you know cost-sharing formula and the FAA was able to again pay the majority cost of a perimeter fence. We've got 5.6 miles of perimeter fence around the airport. The fence is 8 foot high, a barbed wire topping. After the 9-11 incident we then basically moved forward to expand on that perimeter fence rather than animal abatement. Now it's kind of animal abatement and security. The nine gates that we have on the southern quadrant of the airport which is our terminal area I was able to transition all of those gates to key fob access where prior you know basically you just drive up to the white line in front of the gate and the gate would open automatically and anybody could you know ingress, egress you know on that on those locations that has all changed now. It is you know we got it buttoned up and then we also move forward beyond the security, access security and brought on board video surveillance at these gated accesses. Funding for all of this we were able to work with Homeland Security and funding on on those projects were paid for 100 percent. I know when the PGA rolled into town last year and obviously it was a tremendously successful event and you had a lot of people coming and going at the airport again you were able to get creative and garner some funds to improve the lighting out there if I recall correctly and what else there were there were a few other things that I thought you were able to do. We it enhanced the the video surveillance we had the the FAA in cooperation with the FAA they came in and provided a temporary air traffic control tower and just a whole bunch of other infrastructure improvements. We had a pledge from the Wisconsin Bureau of Aeronautics to pay up to $189,000 you know to to help the county with you know supporting that that type of huge public event funding from the Wisconsin Office of Administration was able to garner another $10,000 for airport security it was it was just great you know and so again our viewers listening today and hearing this perhaps for the first time certainly if they were under the impression that of this county airport was run under county property tax levy dollars though that's a part of the puzzle when you talk about the multimillion dollars that have gone into the extensions of the runways and everything else what you mentioned earlier to build a 80 90 95 percent reimbursement from the state and federal government just phenomenal and obviously a tremendous asset to the community. Definitely and I guess just to add to that a little bit as far as my operating budget per year as an example for 2005 I think we're at $398,000 it's total operational cost out of that better than one third of that amount is offset by revenues that are generated on the airport proper on top of that you look at the the number of improvements out there by private sector commercial industrial sector tenants the buildings that they have put up are assessed at over I think it's close to four million dollars that also comes back to us on the tax roll. We only had a 30 minute program to work with but I hope you certainly got a appreciation for the immense responsibility and the value that the Sheboyton County Memorial Airport brings to our community and and Bill and I certainly appreciate Chuck being here today to give us a brief snapshot of of the work that ensues out there. If you haven't had an opportunity to visit your airport I encourage you to do so all right now with the snow out there things being a little slick it may not be as pretty as it is in the summer but you don't have to wait till wings and wheels to get out there and again check out your airport and all the progress as you could see from the the aerial photo that Chuck was looking at earlier it's a it's a beautiful site and there's a lot that's been done and whether it's the base operator or Chuck himself I'm sure they'd be happy to share with you or answer any questions that you might have so don't hesitate to go out there and check it out. Next month we're going to have another department head as our guest and that will be Dale Pauls from the health care centers and as some of you may be aware we continue to be seeking to own and operate two facilities yet reduce the property tax levy to do so and that's been a tremendous challenge for the county board and our staff so we're pleased next month that Dale Pauls is going to be here to shed some more light on that and until then on behalf of county board chairman Bill Gehring and myself Adam Payne thank you very much for joining us.


While a career milestone for Bemidji High Girls basketball player, sophomore guard rumor Flatness scored her 1,000-point during last night's game against Grand Rapids. Flatness has been starting for the Jack since her eighth grade year and has been piling up the points ever since. Flatness credits her teammates and her coaches for their support and says hitting the 1,000-point mark is something she'll never forget. I shot the ball and the ref called the foul because it was an and one and it went in and I just kind of like stood there for a second and I was like oh my gosh I did it and I got super excited and my teammates were just really great everybody was like celebrating I was just really really excited about it. Oh man that's huge it's huge for a girl especially at a sophomore age that's a huge accomplishment and it's nice for her because she's been working so hard for it and it's a nice gesture or you know what compliment or I should say that how hard work really pays off. Flatness and the Jacks are nine and eight on the year and return to action Saturday at Alexandria. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Yeah, it's an exciting time, you know, when you don't do so well and then you have changes within the group to better things. Obviously, it's the moods upbeat and, you know, everyone's looking forward to the new season. Yeah, it's been fun, we've trained hard and we had a little bit of fun the other day as well, so we've had a nice balance, you know, we have a lot of new players in our squad obviously and it's been a great opportunity to come together and learn more about each other. Yeah, look, we want to do well in the FFA Cup, that's number one and, you know, step by step we're building and, you know, it takes time with the new side, but in the meantime you want to win things and, you know, it's a perfect opportunity on Tuesday against Brisbane to put a good performance together and a good result in front of our own fans in the West. Yeah, definitely, there's a big trophy there at the end of the day and, you know, if you want to be the best and, you know, you want to win everything, that's what it's all about, you know, winning trophies and filling the cabinet up, so this is another opportunity for us to do that, you know, and that's our main focus at the moment. I'm excited for the new season, I missed a lot of time on the pitch last year and, you know, I feel very good, you know, I'm in great shape and, you know, looking forward to a big season ahead and, you know, again, there's things to be won and trophies to be lifted, so that's the goal.


Hey Psych2Goers, welcome back to our channel. We wanted to let you know that each and every one of your comments, likes, and shares help support this channel in our goal to spread awareness about mental health and psychology. You help us make psychology and mental health more accessible to everyone. So, thank you for your support. Now, on to the video. You may have heard someone who suffers from depression or another mental illness say they feel numb inside. What does this mean exactly? Do they feel empty? Do they always feel this way? Are they depressed, angry? Are they void of any feelings at all? Suffering from emotional numbness doesn't mean you have to feel nothing all the time. Your emotions can even merge together from an unconscious or conscious suppression to create a primary feeling that can accompany your numbness. Often this is anger as it's a powerful emotion. When you're not feeling this frequent primary emotion, you're otherwise numb. So it's very possible to feel more than just emotional numbness but still suffer from it. So how do you know if you feel numb? Well, here are six telltale signs you're feeling numb. Number one, you're living on autopilot. Do you feel as if you're not living your life fully present? You may stick to your familiar routine, which can be a good thing, but there are no highs or lows in your day.  While others around you are completing quests and winning battles, you're stuck in the lobby waiting for someone to take control. That's someone being you. The thing is, you can be aware that you're in this autopilot state and wonder why you don't feel more. You're observing yourself and you want to live in the present. Yet somehow you remain detached from your own life. Watching your own character live its life on autopilot with often no accompanying feelings. Number two, you don't enjoy the happy events, even the big ones. It's your birthday. Your family and friends secretly planned a huge surprise party for you and as you walk through the door, your closest friends and family jump out to shout, surprise your response. Oh, thanks. You don't know what you're feeling because there doesn't seem to be a strong emotion at all. You may feel a bit happy, but you notice your emotions during these big events don't seem as strong as others. Your friend had a birthday party last month and seemed genuinely happy. Your sister got promoted at work and was ecstatic. Your brother graduated from college and felt proud. But you, you feel a fraction of these feelings when you experience the same accomplishments or celebrations. Number three, when you do feel something, it's anger. You've been feeling numb for days and yet one small annoyance can cause you to go into an irritable rage. When we subconsciously or consciously suppress or block off feelings, they can build up and gather into one big emotion. With all these suppressions built up, these feelings will eventually burst out and usually a powerful emotion will be the one to let them out. Anger. It seems you only have two emotional states, anger and numbness. And when the time comes to feel anything, anger and irritability take the lead on this one. They're the player one who finally pushes play from your pause game, your autopilot state. And it's not a pretty picture. It's best to try to delve into the emotions you may be suppressing. Talking to someone such as a counselor or a mental health professional is a good place to start. They can help you take the steps necessary to manage your anger and to get to the root of your feelings or lack thereof. Number four, when you do feel it's through watching a movie or TV show or reading a book. Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? The romance is leaping off the pages of the script and it's as if you yourself are in love.  Love, wonder, happiness and it's great. The only problem is it's fiction. Somehow in real life you just don't feel those strong emotions. But when you open a book or turn on an engaging film your mind delves into the feelings of its characters. Maybe you empathize with the protagonist or it's as if you are the characters themselves. While this can be better than feeling nothing at all it's still important to make sure your real life is taken care of. If you feel empty in real life but emotions only start to present themselves when you watch a show or read you may be suffering from emotional numbness. Number five, you're dealing with emotional blunting. Certain antidepressants and medications can help us get back to feeling like ourselves again if we're suffering from a mental illness. But with the benefits some medications have some side effects that cause emotional blunting. Emotional blunting is a common term to describe the dull state many individuals feel while on certain antidepressants. Sometimes patients will describe that they don't feel quite themselves. This feeling is common in antidepressants and downers which is a name for drugs that are meant to depress your central nervous system. Several studies from Oxford University have shown that between 46 and 71% of antidepressant users have experienced emotional blunting during treatment. Although for some emotional blunting was viewed as a positive in the study 37% of the 819 subjects regarded it as a negative outcome of treatment while 38% viewed it as a positive. Generally those with severe blunting symptoms were likely to rate it as a negative. And number six, you can't empathize with others. Do you find yourself not being able to empathize with your friends or loved ones? Do you feel as if you have to act through the day to day motions but deep down you feel empty? Maybe you even feel a bit uncomfortable because you're unsure of how to react. After all, if you can't empathize with someone in a moment it may be harder to react genuinely and still show support for them. Loss of empathy can be a sign that you're feeling numb. It's not that you don't love and support your family and friends. You're just going through a struggle of your own and maybe with a little support from them or help from a counselor you can take one step forward on the path to feeling like yourself again. So do you relate to any of these signs? If so, what do you plan to do next? Let us know in the comments. And know that you're not alone. Even I've felt this way before. And if the feelings persist, consider seeking help from a mental health professional. With a bit of support you could soon be on your way to pushing play on your feelings again, not just in a movie and not playing on autopilot either. If you find this video helpful don't forget to click the like button and share this video with someone who might be struggling with emotional numbness. Subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell icon for more content like this. And as always, thanks so much for watching.


Studying Macbeth, here's how you can analyze Act 3 Scene 2 when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth plots to kill Banquo. Lady Macbeth is keen to know exactly where Banquo is and she asks herself in this interrogatory sentence to keep a track of his movements. She then says these words and basically the rhyming couplet here means that she's saying it's better to kill Banquo and eliminate him as a threat than having her around. Macbeth then enters and this metaphor shows that he wants to eliminate Banquo who he sees as a threat. He then uses this language belonging to the semantic field of terror to show us that he's now really paranoid. Yet Lady Macbeth thinks he's too tense and the caesura hair shows she's asking him to relax. Macbeth agrees and this metaphor shows that he realizes they should make the faces mask to cover what's in their heart. Yet this metaphor and exclamatory sentence shows that Macbeth is really tortured by his paranoia. Yet this exclamatory sentence at the end shows he's confident the murderers will kill Banquo.


Hello everyone and welcome to the 10 a.m. to 10 30 a.m. session of the 2020 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session, we are happy to introduce a presentation called A New Dimension in Grid Hosting. Our speakers are Steve Levine and Myron Curtis. Steve Levine is one of the founders of A Dimension Beyond Inc. He has been involved in virtual world since 2006. For since he first got into Second Life, he wanted to host virtual worlds on his own servers and now he does. Myron Curtis, a.k.a. Dark Eagle Darkstone, is retired from the Bute Glenn Community College and is a presenter at the Science Circle. He is CEO of A Dimension Beyond Founder, a developer, and owner of the virtual worlds grid. Please check out the website found at conference.opensimulator.org for speaker bios, details of sessions, and the full schedule of events. The session is being live streamed and recorded, so if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets to atopensimcc, wish the hashtag OSCC20. Welcome everyone, let's begin the session. And if we don't have time for questions, they will take questions at their booth number 13 in the Expo 3 region. Welcome Steve and Myron. Well, thank you. I guess we should start. Lucky Booth number 13. You can find it by it has a big cube like this rotating cube that's on the stage. Well, but much bigger and if the cube on the stage, if you want information about us, just click on it. Myron and I both have over 15 years experience in building virtual worlds and hosting them. Myron does own the virtual worlds grid, which is served on our servers. Right now we host OpenSimulator, DreamGrid, Halcyon, and CyberLounge worlds. We can do custom servers, website hosting, and more. Myron, you want to talk about some of your experience? Yeah, certainly. You know, I've been involved this from the beginning and I've watched it evolved. And there are a lot of things that we've been discussing over and over really at these conferences that are really kind of stagnating us. One of the first things, of course, is the fact that it's really difficult for people to get connected to a virtual world these days. They're used to having everything in a browser. Like a lot of people, we've tried to create a web-based virtual world. And that really has not worked out very well for anybody, at least not for me. So lately, I've been thinking about the possibility that maybe we should just create a web browser that also is able to browse virtual worlds. And that's something I'm looking at now. But in the meanwhile, our industry is at a very important crossroads. Unfortunately, due to a pandemic, a lot of people are looking at virtual worlds now as a way of getting back to normal. And we have a huge opportunity here, but we have to find ways to get people in. And we've been building these worlds for a long time. It's time to make sure that people know about it. So we have a huge PR issue in front of us and we need to start working on that. Well, this is part of the reason why we got into hosting. Hosting does two things. One, it makes it easy for people to get into virtual worlds and actually having their own grid. The other thing is that hopefully down the road, it will provide us more money for our development efforts. But we have our own servers on a redundant backbone connection. They're in a data center down in Phoenix, Arizona. We looked into the whole thing of servers. We could have rented space on the cloud or we could have rented a server from somebody else. And we kind of came to the conclusion that me as the bean counter, this group decided that, hey, we'll do our own server. And so we've actually got it so that we can have that server and not pay crazy amounts for it. So we've got this really excellent server. And we're hosting virtual worlds on it. And so one of the things we host is DreamGrid. And DreamGrid is rather interesting. Fred has done a wonderful job with it and made it really easy to use. It actually takes OpenSim and makes it so almost anybody can use it. So what we do is we do it a little differently. When we sell a server for OpenSim, most of our OpenSim servers are on DreamGrid except for Virtual World's grid, which Myron does in his own way. And but the thing is, we give you total root level control. When you get a server from us or a grid from us, you actually have a full Windows desktop for DreamGrid that you can go in and do anything you want with your grid. We're not doing the one click type of thing because we figured that people wanted a little bit more control. And part of that is I'm kind of a control freak. I don't like to have to go and put in a ticket every time I want to do something. So here we take it, we give you that server. You can do whatever you want with it. We also have custom setup with everything you need. Whatever you need, we can do it. And so we have lots and lots of help available to you. There's help files that go with DreamGrid. There's also a whole manual, PDF manual that we put on the server for you. It's basically very easy to do. So the other thing is we sell our services by what you're using on our server, how much CPU, how much RAM, how much hard drive space. So you can start out with a pretty small, like little 10-region server, or even a two-region server if you wanted to do that. You can start out with a really little server and expand it up. We have one grid there called Aeros Resort that started out small and kept growing. He's now up to a region equivalent of, I think, over 150 regions. And every time he needed a little more and we watched what the server was doing, we just added it to it. It was very easy. So if you want to, things like updates and all that are quite easy. We also can run the grid web page there with JOpenSim running on Joomla, which will give you all kinds of information about the grid and whatever else you want to put up there. The next thing is Halcyon. Halcyon is something that Bob Curtis does. We have several Halcyon grids right now that we are hosting. We can create a Halcyon grid of any size. We have a starter little single server Halcyon grid that we put together for people that want to try it out and see how it all works. And actually, Bob is working on a system right now that is a marketplace, the Mundo's Market. So then Halcyon grids will be able to have a marketplace, kind of like the Kitely marketplace. Cybelounge is another thing that we're in the middle of. When Myron said we don't have a good web world, I could argue with him on that one. I'm quite deeply involved in the design and working of Cybelounge with Dieter, who is the actual owner of it. It's a 3D world that is totally web-based. A Dimension Beyond is a North America distributor and part of the development team. We can host just a region for you or a whole grid of any size. It's a very feature-rich, stable, and extremely secure environment. Everything is encrypted. The other thing is, in a lot of ways, it has a lot more features than OpenSim has right now. The only limit to Cybelounge is it's running in a web browser. And the web browser will only handle so much. We also have, in Cybelounge, we have a couple of universities in Germany that are using it for their distance learning and are quite successful at it. Myron, do you have stuff you want to add to that? Well, I really think Cybelounge is probably the closest thing we've had to a working web-based virtual world that has a lot of features in it. And you've told me recently that you can now do some building in there and starting to work on the avatar appearance and abilities. So yeah, that's growing fine. And I like that. When I was talking about before about the failure of web-based system so far, I was really referring to the fact that you don't have a lot of, well, what do you call it, gesturing and other things that we're so used to. And we really need something that's simpler to use. But the second two things that we have are addressing here is, like you said, control. And the third one is basically mobility, being able to go from grid to grid, very much like an internet. And that's hypergrid. And we're getting that slowly, but surely in Cybelounge. And that's going to be huge. We have hypergrid working in Cybelounge right now. Oh, that's new. Cool. Yeah, that just come up in the last week. Deeter's been working on that. And you can go with your avatar from server to server, keep your same avatar, go wherever you want in the Cybelounge world, or in the Cybelounge metaverse, I guess. So yeah, we keep on looking at these little things. We put them onto the roadmap. And we're working on Cybelounge right now. Cybelounge is in late beta. We're working towards 1.0, probably in the spring. And so we've got our little list of stuff we want to do. And I think it's going to be really, really good. It's huge. So yeah, that's the big thing. Cybelounge is really cool, because it's very simple.  And you could have your own grid running on a Raspberry Pi, which is a very small computer. But I see some real growth potential here, and possibly even something to go on beyond OpenSim. Yeah. Some of the things that we also want to talk about are free meeting spaces in Cybelounge and OpenSim grids and free regions available for schools. Earlier on in this conference, we had different instructors talking about wanting to have a space and a place to work. And needing servers and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But we've got them. And I'm more than willing to help people that need space. We've got grid space. We've got region space. We've got Cybelounge space. Let's get together and do something about this. Get you guys going. The other thing is we can do custom conference hosting for any size group because it's really easy. We've got servers. We've got the technology. We can do region design and execution. We've got people who are really good builders working with us. We also do web hosting if you'd like that because when you have a server, you can serve all kinds of stuff. But the main thing with our hosting is we do it in a different way.  That's basically it. Anything more, Myron, that you want to say? Yeah, actually, there is. What we're doing is what a lot of people are trying to do. I think we're taking a slightly different approach to it and giving people basically a virtual machine that they can run their system on and have complete control over it. That's wonderful. But the one thing that all of us are failing on is getting the message out to the general population. It's classic. We build it and we expect everybody to come. And they're not going to if they don't know about it. So we have to come up with a way of marketing what we're doing. Kylie is kind of doing that a little bit. And Second Life is starting to do that pretty well. But the rest of the open sim worlds are kind of falling behind on that. And that's something we really need to get together on and find a way of marketing our industry as an industry to get people involved in it. And basically, we need to find out what the world wants and offer it to them. OK, I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. That's OK. That was very interesting. We are out of time. And I just want to remind everyone that you can ask Steven Myron questions at their lucky booth number 13 on Expo Region Number 3. Thank you. I would like to thank you again, Steven Myron, for a terrific presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. Following this session, the next session will begin at 10.30 AM in this keynote region and is entitled, Understanding Lag in Firestorm. Also, we encourage you to visit the OSCC20 poster Expo in the OSCC Expo 3 region to find accompanying information on presentations and explore the hypergrid tour resources in OSCC Expo 2 region along with the Surreal Museum region and the sponsor at Crowdfunder booths located throughout all of the OSCC Expo regions.


This is go mustangs sports comm I'm Griffin bass here with women's soccer head coach Tati Korba after their 2-0 loss to Widener came up just short. Can you walk me through what kind of happened there on those two goals in the second half? Yeah, I mean first, you know It was a two-nothing game. It was You know, we hit the crossbar. We we missed by a couple inches on a few others. So You know, we feel like this was a Game that I mean it could have gone either way. It could have been to to just as easily as it was to nothing. So Yeah, you know, I think Mike made a great save on the first goal They got that rebound and then on the second one You know, she said she lost it actually in the lights and and the girl kind of just ran through it. So You know, they they Finished their two chances and and we knocked it off the crossbar and and missed a couple by a couple inches And that's the difference. Yeah, you mentioned it. We were really inches away from nearly being tied You know, just a couple feet either way Are you still proud of that? You know the effort that the girl showed even despite being trailing for much Last half an hour. Yeah, for sure.  I thought it was a really well-played game by both teams And it's just you know, it's soccer. It just kind of goes one way or goes the other and Really proud of our effort and I think we're really coming together and I think we're You know, we're really we're playing our best soccer. I think at this point and that's what you want So they're a great group.  You know, no matter what lineup you roll out. Yeah, you know It's we've got a lot of depth and we've got a lot of injuries. So it's kind of crazy that we've been able to Kind of mix things up as much as as we can and we've literally got like eight or nine people out with injuries as well So we're fortunate to have the depth and everybody's doing, you know, a great job and training and You know, some people it just depends on the game We're looking for speed or we're looking for physicality or we're looking for this or that but Yeah, I think, you know, it feels like things are like I said coming together


The heart rate variability and emotion regulation, HRVER, study tested the effects of HRV biofeedback on young and older adults. The study included baseline measurements of brain activity using functional MI, FMI, as well as physiological measures such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and end-tidal CO2. Participants were randomly assigned to either increase or decrease their heart rate oscillation levels over five weeks. After this period, participants underwent additional FMI scans, as well as psychological assessments and plasma sample collection. The results showed that HRV biofeedback had no effect on brain activity, but did improve sleep quality and reduce stress levels. Additionally, the study found that HRV biofeedback may be beneficial for reducing amyloid and tau levels in the brain. This article was authored by Hume Juyo, Kairi Nishiro, Jung One Minute, and others.