What's up guys, Michael Rojaspi is doing a quick recap for our 2023 Tops Chrome Jumbo eight box case break. Pick your team number three done on Fanatics Live here is the list. And just a quick recap here, some of the colors, Shoes, Refractors, Rookies, Gold, Brian Reynolds out of 50, Indiana 99, Volpe, he's an Acunia Refractor, Corbin Refractor, Volpe, Young Refractor, Michael Harris Prism, Outman, Somatos here got a Brett Beatty, Jordan Diaz, Freeman, Capel, Stone Garrett, Purple to 250, Shea Langleers, Dermis Garcia, Anderson Espinosa, Buddy Kennedy, Will Brennan, David Hensley, James Outman, Swaggerty, another Langleers, Jonah Bride, Coronacion, Tristan Casas to 299, very nice, Jermaine Palacios out of 150, Jordan Walker out of 299, Masataka Yoshida out of 199, then we got a JRod image variation, very nice, Machado Orange out of 25, Devers Relic to 99, and a Judge Relic. So pretty nice case, but that does it, thank you to everyone who got into the break, thank you guys for watching, and I'll see you guys in the next one, bye guys.


Hello everybody, I'm Sundar Nadathur from Intel and I'm happy to co-present this talk with Sandeep Sharma from Arnaa Networks. In this talk, we will first introduce MCO and describe how it manages workflows. Then Sandeep will explain the work that Arnaa has done in using MCO workflows to automate policy-based service assurance for cloud-network loads. The Edge and Multi-Cluster Orchestrator is an open-source project to deploy and manage cloud-native applications and network functions across Kubernetes clusters. It is designed to handle geo-distributed microservice-based workloads which need to be deployed at scale across geo-boundaries in public or private clouds in telco or co-location edges and on-prem data centers. MCO is unique among app orchestrators in that it can not only deploy apps as hand charts but also automate the configuration of the environment around the application. For example, if the Kubernetes cluster has an ingress gateway, it may need to be provisioned with the HTTP routes for the application. Also, the enterprise deploying the app may have its own certificate authority. If so, an intermediate CA has to be set up for the cluster and certificates for MTLS and other needs need to be derived from that. MCO automates all these scenarios. MCO has been designed to be extensible. It has a microservice-based architecture and can be extended by adding more controllers or custom workflows. MCO can be used as a building block for larger stacks such as the 5G Super Blueprint from Lex Foundation. MCO has been a separate open-source project from 2019 since its origination as a modular own app. Since last year, it has been a part of the Lex Foundation. We have participation from several leading industry players including telcos. Commercial support is available, for example, from our non-networks as part of the AMPCOP platform. MCO is a part of the 5G Super Blueprint from Lex Foundation Networking. We have an active ecosystem and there are ongoing engagements with some telcos for deployment. MCO can be extended by adding new controllers that execute as part of the app deployment lifecycle. But you can also extend MCO functionality with workflows for situations where actions need to be taken outside of application lifecycle events or when you want to limit access to the MCO's shared resources and databases. MCO can handle workflows using the Temporal Workflow Engine since MCO's 22.03 release. You can launch workflows, monitor the status and cancel them all using MCO APIs. Temporal is a widely used open-source engine that offers resilience and proven scale. You can think of Temporal workflows as a set of distributed processes, each of which executes several complex stateful steps. These workflows may run for days or months and may even be crown jobs that repeat periodically. The Temporal framework provides many benefits, one is resilience, since the Temporal server records the state for each task and restores the state in the event of a failure. It provides a standard way to set timeout values and retry policies for workflows and their constituent activities. It also helps with observability of workflows with status checks and queries, and it is known to scale to a large number of workflows and tasks. These workflows can be written in many common languages. Let us now look at how Temporal can be integrated with MCO. In a cloud-native deployment, the Temporal server will be deployed as a container running in one or more Kubernetes parts. The worker processes will also be deployed as Kubernetes parts, perhaps in a different cluster. They may be deployed with a help shot across one or more clusters, possibly by MCO itself. A single worker can execute many tasks from different workflows. The workflow client will also be deployed as a Kubernetes part, and it may be in yet another cluster. One part may contain more than one workflow client, and each client may possibly handle more than one workflow. MCO needs a way to invoke this workflow client, so we expect the client is packaged with the HTTP server. This HTTP server takes an HTTP post call to trigger the right workflow client. The workflow parameters are included in the body of the post call. MCO is composed of many microservices. MCO may be deployed in a different Kubernetes cluster than workflow clients. We have added the workflow manager as a separate microservice that allows MCO users to define intents for workflows, including the workflow client location as well as timeouts and retry policies for each activity and for the whole workflow. The workflow manager initiates a workflow by adding a HTTP post to the workflow client. The workflow manager can also perform status checks and execute queries on a workflow by directly calling the temporal server. It can also cancel or terminate a workflow. I now hand over the floor to Sandeep. Thank you. Thank you, Sundar. Hi, all. My name is Sandeep, and I'm from Arna Networks, and I'm going to demonstrate a service assurance use case using MCO. For this purpose, we have introduced a new controller in MCO, and it is called the policy controller. This controller will enable users to define the closed loops and via MCO intents and deploy the closed loops in the target clusters. The policy engine that we have used in this controller is the OPPA, open policy agent. OPPA enables users to define policies declaratively, and OPPA separates the policy code from the application code from the microservice code flow. So with that brief introduction, I'll describe what the MCO policy controller is about. So MCO policy controller is a new microservice that is introduced in MCO, and it acts as the policy enforcement point. And as I have already described, the policy controller uses OPPA as the policy agent. So there are two parts to this policy controller. One is the policy agents. These agents are deployed in the target clusters, and their sole responsibility is to collect metrics from different resources. Prometheus is an example, and in our demonstration, we are using Prometheus. This agent is implemented as a Kubernetes controller, and we define custom resources specifying the kind of metrics that we want to collect, the intervals of metric collection, etc. These agents collect metrics, and they enrich these metrics with very specific information which the MCO controller requires in the central data center in order to complete the closed loop. The other part of the controller is the main policy controller, which sits in the central data center. Its main responsibilities are to serve the policy intent APIs, which the user specifies. And it also is responsible for calling the policy engine itself for the evaluation of the policies based on the KPIs and metrics that it receives from the agents in the target clusters. And after the evaluation, the policy controller also calls the actors. And as we know in a typical closed loop scenario, there is a component which executes the policy, and then there is a component which takes the actual action of auto correction. In our case, the controller that is doing the auto correction is the temporal workflow engine in MCO. And in our use case, the auto corrective action that we have to take is to migrate an application from one cluster to another. So temporal workflow engine as the actor is configured in the policy controller that I will show in the demonstration. So these are the responsibilities of the agents which sit in the central data center. So this slide explains the policy controller and temporal workflow integration. As I have already explained, the actor in this case is the temporal workflow engine in MCO. And the policy controller after the evaluation of policies will call specific workflow in the temporal workflow engine for performing the auto corrective action. This diagram explains the end to end closed loop flow. As we see, there are policy controllers in the central data center which are consuming events from the agents which sit in the target clusters. And policy controller is consuming these events and evaluating the policies against the metrics that are present in these events. And if the policy condition is met, the policy controller is then calling the actor which is the temporal workflow. So with this explanation, I will jump on to the demo and demonstrate the service assurance use case using MCO. In this use case, we are going to consume the memory utilization as a metric from application. And the condition that is fed in the policy is that if the memory utilization is above a certain value, we migrate that application from one cluster to the other. So in this demonstration, we are going to show the policy intent specification and the workflow intent specification since workflow is the actor in the service assurance use case. So we will start by showing the custom resource that is created for collecting the metrics. So as I had explained, the agents which sit in the target cluster are implemented as the Kubernetes controllers. So at this point, we can look at one of the custom resource that we have created. So the spec is very simple. All we are saying is that we want to collect CPU and memory related metrics. And with the specification of this CR, the controller will reconcile to it and it will start collecting these metrics from all the pods that are created via MCO. And these metrics are collected through Prometheus. And after collection of these metrics, the agent is going to enrich these events. And the enrichment is done by adding the deployment ID of these pods. So that MCO in the central data center could relate these pods to the composite applications and the deployment intent groups. Because the policy intent and the workflow intent, they are specified at the deployment intent group level. So this is how the whole relationship is getting resolved and maintained. So after this, we are going to prepare the actor. And so by that, what I mean is that we have to specify the temporal workflow intent, which Sundar already has described. This is the workflow definition. So it's a very simple workflow. All we are doing is we are going to migrate an application from one cluster to other cluster. And this will be triggered via the action that will be taken by the policy evaluation. Now we can start applying the intent. So this EML defines the intent. So we are applying the intent, the workflow intent. After the intent specification, now we are going to specify the policy intent. So this is the definition of the policy intent. So the intent has to know the endpoint of the policy controller and the workflow name, which it has to trigger. So this is the policy definition. And dynamically we are going to change this number, which is basically the memory usage bytes. So we will make it a more logical number so that this condition is hit. After changing the value of the memory bytes that is to be compared with, we see that the policy has hit. And it has already triggered the actor to take the action. And on the right hand side of the screen we see that the application has already started migrating. So it is terminating in the cluster one and it has started to come up in the cluster two. So that concludes my demo. Thank you.


Ranking all 15 Call of Duty games since Call of Duty 4 modern warfare Hey, what's up guys, it's Josh here today I wanted to do a top 15 list on my top 15 favorite Call of Duty since cod 4 was released There's so many things that I want to say about these games and I did not write any pointers besides Listing which one there is so I know there's gonna be points that I wish I had made about these games So I'm just gonna have to accept that I cannot say everything that's on my head But that's just gonna be the way it is I'm just gonna be saying why I put them in the order that I did let's jump into number 15 And this is Call of Duty ghosts now. I was actually surprised that this one was actually gonna be number 15 There's only two Call of Duties in my opinion that literally feel Unfinished like they were literally in the middle of creating it and they just had to just put it out unfinished and Ghosts is one of them. It doesn't have anything that makes me want to play it. The maps are terrible They made the maps really big, but then they closed off the lines of sight So it's like you have these huge maps and just no open areas anywhere you go They made the killstreaks all really weak They gave you like support members and now you have like AI guys the gun balance was really basic in this game There was like two good ARs. There was like one or two extra guns in this This just was so incomplete and typically I'm a guy who likes infinity war style game So it was kind of weird for me to put this dead last just for how incomplete it is And it's almost impossible to have fun because of the flow of the maps the flow of the killstreaks It's just not fun number 15 Call of Duty ghosts number 14 This is gonna be Call of Duty World War 2 now. I absolutely hated this game This is the first game after the boost jumping now. I'm the first guy to admit it. I hated the boost jumping You know almost all the boost jumping games are completely forgotten from people's memories It's almost like people don't even want to talk about them They're just don't mention them and you talk about once after or before This is the first game after the boost jumping and it just showed off how if they don't have any good ideas Just making a simple boots on the ground is Terrible and there was nothing really new to get involved with they had this like perk or something to where You get all your killstreaks even if you die. So everybody has the best killstreaks in the game every game They didn't have to do anything The maps are terrible like Vanguard has very similar maps to where it's like it's Ridiculously spawn trappy and small to the point where you you can't even really enjoy it because it's just so Spawn trappy, you know and on top of that WW2 had these terrible simple three lane maps with again, no lines of sight This was a big thing for many years in Call of Duty three lane maps No big lines of sight. I just absolutely hated WW2 on top of that. It had insane Skill-based matchmaking. So you're on these little Simple maps with nothing new to really do fighting the best players just over and over and you've fought these gunfights a million times in a row and it's just Man, WW2, I remember literally just going to work every day So mad after playing this game that I literally had to stop because of how little Enjoyment I got of it and how much I just hated it every day. All right number 13 is black ops 4 now Black ops 4 is the other game in my opinion that is the only one of two that feels Actually incomplete at the start black ops 4 I It should have been a good game I think that they were confused with blackout and they had David von der Hor who created black ops 3 go You know move towards blackouts. So just some random people made black ops 4 It just doesn't have any of the love. It just feels so incomplete. It just feels so Blech like they needed more time. It needed more ideas It shipped with very very little maps and a few remakes.  I only really played Zombies to level up the guns for war zone. All right number 11 is Infinite warfare of all the double jumping games if this game was made as boots on the ground I think this would have been the best of the three jumping games had it been made boots on the ground So before this Infinity War did ghosts and then after this they did modern warfare ghosts and modern warfare are like Really campy slow trying to be so realistic that it loses some of the arcadey feel But infinite warfare. It was a quicker engine. It was it was a little bit more smooth It was a little bit more close to like modern warfare 2 or modern warfare 3 But it had the double jumping and the double jumping just absolutely killed this game Because there was really little Challenging things to do while double jumping you didn't have to do it to go to a unique area You barely had to use it people would just spam double jump because it was hard to hit And then on top of that the double jump was the exact same as black ops 3 and I understand black ops 3 was Probably the best double jumping game I'll give you that one so everybody who has played black ops 3 is Instantly going to be a hundred percent savvy with the jumping and I feel like that kind of takes away from the learning curve And it just doesn't make it fun. I really think of this game Infinite warfare had been boots on the ground. It would have been absolutely great. The maps were okay You'd have to see him on boots on the ground But they had a couple really interesting things here like that perk in warzone where it flashes yellow when somebody's looking at you That was created in this game I thought that was a totally interesting new idea to put in the game if somebody's looking at you while you're looking away It flashes yellow. I loved that They also had the phase shift and I just thought phase shift was just an absolutely brilliant idea where you hit this button and You're invisible no one can see you and you can't see anybody else for 10 seconds And I just thought that was just an unbelievably fun new mechanic to check out I just love the ideas behind it. They had a few good ideas here I just think boots on the ground absolutely or double jumping absolutely killed it. All right guys number 10 is advanced warfare now The only reason this one's probably a little bit higher is because double jumping was fresh and new So everyone had to get used to it Everyone had to kind of figure out the best most abusive ways to use it so it took a little while and I did have a little bit of a good squad for search and destroy and Pretty much the people that I play with now I kind of met around them like anybody before advanced warfare like I haven't really stayed friends with or if we do Almost never really play with them. It had actually some really good searching destroy I think it was like six rounds. It was a pretty terrible game on it percent And I think the double jumping should have been worked around a little better At least it wasn't boring like ww2 at least it was like, okay It's fresh and new and not just like boring like black ops 4 boring w2 boring All right number 9 is the new one called duty vanguard now this game really sucks. Don't get me wrong I only played it for maybe 20 to 30 hours, but it's bad. Don't get me wrong It's bad, but it's boots on the ground. It uses the model warfare engine Which is the best engine that we've had so far like I don't want to see any other engine besides the model warfare engine They did some new stuff with the guns. So it's gonna take a little while for everyone to master the guns I like that it has 16 maps on launch I do think that the combat pacing is kind of backfiring though Like you pick which combat pacing you want and it doesn't even give you that it gives you a random one So what's the point of even having that pacing and then certain maps? It's like 15 spawn traps on one map when you get the combat pacing with all the people There needs to be that perfect pace where a spawn trap could happen But not like five or six people are just looking at people spawn. I just didn't like that Definitely not a good game, but I've had to inch it just a hair over the other ones number eight is modern warfare 2019 now this one could have been and should have been number one But for those terrible glaring issues, it is just a miserable game to play the map design is weird I don't like when they design maps for like 10v10 and then I play them in a 6v6 like all of duty needs to have these tight Maps where it's not too small and it's not too big if it's at all too big or if it's at all too small It's a really miserable experience and so many of the maps are just designed for 10v10 They just don't work for this game the skill base matchmaking Oh my goodness this game when it probably shot up a few points if there was no skill base matchmaking And then on top of that there's it's cross play in this game So there's like a bunch of benefits that controller players have and there's a bunch of benefits that PC players have Namely the field of view and then the controller players get the aim assist So there's this big Gigantic gap in people's hardwares that wasn't there before you know normally I would play with somebody on ps4 We have this same everything, you know now I'm playing a guy with PC. Maybe he has a controller So now he has this crazy FOV, you know getting 200 frames a second all this stuff And I got to play against him and then the game doesn't really make it fair for each one It's just like oh, he's he's got the better system. Well, he's just gonna beat you this model warfare 2019 It should have been the best and it is where it is at number eight All right number seven is world at war This is probably the game that I have the least experience with but I definitely have played it for at least a few weeks Like really hardcore religiously playing it. I know I beat the campaign I checked out a lot of the multiplayer maps But again, this is the one that I have the least experience with but it takes that good cod for formula and Doesn't really do too much new with it But it gives us another version of that great cod for formula having kill streaks first time bringing in zombies First time bringing in dogs. I remember the hit detection was pretty good I'm certain other games hit detection gets really bad, but it was actually pretty good here with the maps I think were a good size too. I'm really picky about map size And I think the maps were pretty good at world at war just a very very solid entry for me All right guys number six is black ops 3 now again We've kind of forgotten about all the double jumping games But this was by far the best double jumping game And I have a buddy of mine who always says like this is the last game That was actually good because there was actually a lot of camaraderie on this game There's a lot of you know people getting together squatting up meeting new people just that classic call of duty vibes I also Absolutely loved the swimming in this game I love when they add an extra aspect or something you have to learn That affects the game. I think it was a perfect addition I think swimming should be in almost every call of duty and it just gives the maps such an extra level of depth I think the killstreaks here were very very strong like very in your face You got the hater on launch. It was the best Double jumping game and it's kind of hard because it's like I don't know if I would change the double jumping aspect to it Because I actually thought that it was unique, but it's an unfortunate that it's kind of forgotten in the double jumping error I think black ops 3 was actually really really good. All right guys number five is Call of Duty 4 now this just laid the groundwork for everything that we love about this game I think a lot of this stuff was very innovative. I loved having all the different perks I loved the the map size in here was pretty good. Most of the maps in here are pretty good There's nothing that's actually too big There are a few maps that they have like a lot of abusive angles and things like that like bog and a couple other Ones to where it's like you're gonna make those maps today You should put a couple more spots to defend yourself, you know But for it being released back then and people not knowing all the abusive stuff It wasn't nearly as bad because everyone's still learning, you know Nobody just memorizes the best stuff yet. Um, they hit detection was very very good in this game The first game with killstreaks good hit detection and good maps like that almost Sells it pretty much right there for me came up with the modern warfare story price things like that So Call of Duty 4 super good really enjoy it really appreciate it Obviously there was a couple other things we would want more in it nowadays, but it's so solid. All right guys number four Most people's number one is black ops 2 now. I really enjoyed black ops 2 I absolutely pretty much hated it when it came out and the whole life cycle and later on I've grown to appreciate It's pretty much everybody knows everything good about black ops 2 Mostly good stuff about black ops 2 that people like was things that was copied from modern warfare 2 like black ops 2 at Newtube so does modern warfare 2 Black ops 2 has crazy killstreaks same as modern warfare 2 black ops 2 has tactical insertions same as modern warfare 2, you know all the Guns in black ops 2 are overpowered. We're not overpowered, but they're really effective and strong same as modern warfare 2 so it's like What what new thing did it do like well? I'll tell you what black ops 2 did new it made all the maps tiny three lane Which I just can't stand I can understand it from a developer standpoint because it's super super easy to make those maps Just three lanes don't have to think too much But it just ruins the game with these little three lane maps and these little lines of site everything is kind of blocked off You know There was no real big lines of site and then on top of that this game had one of the like worse Lad compensations that I've ever played with in your life So you have these three lane maps without these lines of site So you're having the same gunfights over and over because there's not much variety because there's no open spaces like you know When you're in one area, there's a few places you have a gunfight and you have those gunfights over and over And then on top of that it's really really laggy You know what I mean so every game that has used like a modification of the black ops 2 engine It's been super laggy black ops 2 might have been like the most laggy game that I ever played and on top of that They had these one videos where you'd be crouched and then the guy would literally he would stand up and crouch down and On your screen, he never he never even stands up because there was that much there's that much lag in the game You know what I mean, so There's a lot of stuff. I like about it But almost everything I like about it was something that was already done in model warfare 2 very solid game lots of camaraderie Don't have anything to say about it. I just think that people like it a lot more than I personally do All right guys number three is modern warfare 3 You know, this is the game that I played the most So it's kind of hard for me not even to put it in my number one But I just absolutely love this game Admittedly the base game wasn't as good as the game with the DLCs I feel like all the DLC maps were absolutely fantastic here Lots of them should have been in the main game like overwatch comes to one black box comes to one a few other ones just that had Relatively good lag compensation like this game would lag more than other call of duties But it wasn't as bad as black ops 2 these maps were smaller on the base Than other call of duties and but black ops 2 made them even smaller than here So although it is getting smaller It is kind of taking a step in the wrong direction the maps still were very good and some of the DLC maps were huge Like there's this one on the oil rig. That was just gigantic Actually love the face-off modes here like I would actually play the face-off modes almost religiously for a few years after Love the themes of them sniping was pretty good There's a pretty good weapon balance the only real cause is that it had a little bit of lag and You did have these support streaks that really were terrible Like you got a free EMP and a free stealth bomber really didn't like that But overall I just really really liked modern warfare 3. It's definitely the game I've dumped the most in I think I had like a hundred days played on it All right guys number 2 is the original black ops now I'm gonna be talking mostly about multiplayer obviously, but black ops and my number one They're almost as perfect as you possibly could get the whole idea and feel of the game Like it has a unique feel all the characters the vibe of the story The maps the maps were perfect size. There's so many classic maps. We take it from this game They're not too big, but they're not too small like just classic maps great ideas They also had a lot of innovative things that they did differently here I know some of that. I think it was the first time we got a napalm strike kill streak I think there was lots of interesting gadgets. I think this is the first time we got a decoy grenade You could actually put like a camera in this one So like you can literally go put a camera somewhere and then run across the map And it'll show you like what that camera sees and it's like when has that been in any other call of duty and to me I like all these out-of-the-box ideas because if I get bested, right? I like when there's something we're like, oh, well, I could have done something else Like I could have put that camera over there and see that there's something I could have done And that makes me want to play the game more when there's not enough options And I'm just pushed into a corner with no options. That's what I don't really like it as much But I did have a little bit of lag. I'm not gonna lie But I just absolutely liked this game wasn't this is it didn't have as much like guns and options It's something like monorail for two or modern warfare three, but I just love the music of it I liked ice cube. I just like the whole it was like a perfectly well-balanced five The maps were probably won't top one or two maps of all call duties as well Just got to say it black ops number two. All right guys number one He sure you know by process of elimination what it is and that is modern warfare two now The main thing people are gonna say about modern warfare two is like, oh, you know, you don't remember how it was Oh, if it gets remastered, it's gonna be bad. Okay If there's things that are actually broken in the game and we could all agree on them patch them As you guys may know this game was almost never passed It was passed like I mean they gave us some DLCs and they think they patched one of the shotguns one time But this game is just oh, it's just perfection The model warfare engine the vibe like the vibe in this game is just better than cod for and it's better than Modern warfare three. I don't know what it is. It's like the sound the vibes like It just feels like it's it was meant to be like the perfect game Like the one call of duty to end all call of duties. We don't need to make any more the maps I love the map size the variety here Loved all the different guns all the different ideas. I understand something like one-man army is like completely busted But I like the idea of I always like when there's an option There's something I could have done to get out of the situation and when you have one-man army It's like, oh, well that just opens up so many doors. Obviously you have to balance it, you know But it just opens up so many doors like having all these crazy killstreaks like Modern warfare 2 started off the killstree craze like they could have given us half these killstreaks And we would have been fine But they just went over kill so fun to use so many different like actual useful perks like obviously things need Balancing like a commando lunge. Okay. It needs balancing, but just everything was effective You know every perk was like, you know last stand Whatever you use was just really really effective Absolutely love this game my favorite maps good hit detection the most classic vibes for any call of duty ever But anyways guys, let me know what your favorite call of duties are be very interested to see down below We're all gonna have our favorites and you know the older I get the less people will even have played these games Maybe people are starting in WW2. I actually know a lot of people who like WW2 and as you could tell I really don't like it But anyways guys one the road of 50,000 subscribers and I couldn't do it without any regrets I hope you guys are the best having a great day out here. Hopefully having a great day at home. See you on the next video. Peace


Okay, hi everybody. Nice to see you all. Welcome to our all day movie workshop. Looks like David's camera might be off right now. He might need to restart his computer or something if he can't get his camera on, but we'll just see. So yeah, I'll just let you all know about the setup for today. And so for those who are new, I'm Peter. I'm going to be hosting and how we run the day is we have, we're going to have David showing the movie to start with. And then afterwards, we'll have a 10 minute break. And then we'll come back for our breakout rooms. And that's where you can express any emotions or anything that came up during the movie. And then afterwards, we'll go into a 45 minute break. And then we'll come back for the Q&A session. And so we'll see if David's ready or not, but we might, oh, there he is. I can see him there. Great. I'll pass it over to you now, David. Just in the neck of time, I was going through some zoom settings because for some reason, the body wasn't appearing on screen today, but either way, we would have some fun if it was just my voice. You can have some fun. You can just imagine me wearing a Hawaiian shirt sipping a pina colada somewhere if it's just my voice. So how beautiful to have you along today. We're going to go on a beautiful journey and a deep dive. And yeah, I've been working with A Course in Miracles for 36 years and really teaching it for probably over 30 years. And I think some of you who are familiar with A Course in Miracles knows that Jesus uses three basic schools of thought and words vocabulary with His Course in Miracles. And those three are education and Christianity and psychology. So I've been teaching the Course for over 30 years using those terms because I was raised Christian and I have a psychological background. And I spent 10 years in full-time in university and before that, of course, yeah. High school, junior high, grade school, kindergarten, basically 20, 25 years. Maybe some years in education. But my guidance that's coming in now for myself is that I've been using all these different words that people have found very helpful. But I'm going to start in a couple of weeks, I'm going to start really speaking the same content in Christian language. I know some of you are like, you have different views of Christianity and you may have some grievances with Christianity, what the ego did in the name of Jesus.  Oh my God, David's turning to an evangelist. But I hope you've enjoyed my last 30 years of using psychology and education and Christian terminology because I'm going to shift much more to Christian. It's the same me, it's the same Jesus. There really is only one Jesus. I think anyone who has taught that there's two Jesuses, there's a Jesus of the Bible and a Jesus of the Course, miss the mark. There's only one Christ. And this Christ has always been with us and it's who we are. And so the terms that came from Jesus have been misrepresented by the ego and twisted around for many years. And that's why people have such reactions. You're not really reacting to the people, you're reacting to the meaning in the mind. And really there's nothing about Christ that isn't love. Christ is all-inclusive. Christ is one who brings this all together and realizes we're one mind. There aren't two different Jesuses. There's only one and that one is who we are. He's a symbol of our very identity. So in doing this, I decided to devote the last two weeks, which will be this Saturday and then next Saturday to wrapping up my use of teaching, using terminology and things that are kind of like thought to be a bit beyond the Christian realm. Most people consider psychology to be of the mind and Christianity to be more just like a religion, a theology. But actually the mind is very powerful and I'm grateful for Sigmund Freud and all the psychologists that gave their contribution to show how powerful our mind is, to show that we have defense mechanisms that are guarding against the light, guarding against the discovery of who we really are. And I take my hat off to all the Carl Youngs, the Abraham Maslow's, the Carl Rogers, the great psychologists who have made their contributions. Even Carl Rogers, he's known for unconditional positive regard and his amazing sweetness and gentleness. And Carl Rogers was a Christian who got into the study of the mind and believed that everybody was good and everybody was discovering their true nature and the people shouldn't be guided that way by psychologists. They should just be loved unconditionally. Just love them unconditionally when you're with them and they'll find their way to God. They'll find their way to truth. Just love them unconditionally. And that's really the teachings of Jesus. Just love unconditionally and you will see that you are loved and that everything and everyone is love. There is only love. So, and when I start, in a couple of weeks I'll start speaking, you know, I'm gonna have to do a lot of teaching. I'm gonna have to reinterpret sin from a black mark on your soul that you'll pay for and burn in eternity for to, it's just an error to be corrected. And it's already been corrected. That's why I'm so happy. I'm here to share the good news. The error has been corrected. And that is important. Also, I'm here to teach and learn that there is no value in punishment. There is no value in guilt. There is no value in fear. There is no value in any type of terror that God is purely loving and we can teach that God is loved by our attitude, mainly by our attitude. And of course our actions flow from our thoughts and our beliefs. So that's why we're emptying the mind and we're clearing things out. So I hope you enjoy these next two episodes today and next Saturday. These are my last episodes. And of course what would I use my final two Saturdays for to emphasize except the mind, the power of the mind. That's what psychology is for is to come back and remember the power of your mind, your divine mind. Psychology is also for learning what's going on in the mind so that you can release the error and the distortions and the defense mechanisms and you can accept the wholeness, the completeness, the singleness, one mind. We love the sound of that. One mind, one mind. That's what psychology was intended for. That's what therapy was intended for. Remember that there's only one mind. There's only one of us. Isn't that amazing that the whole field of psychology has one purpose and that's to remember that there's only one of us. That's to remember that that wholeness doesn't need defense mechanisms. That wholeness doesn't need to study ego dynamics. It just has to be as it is. You see how fun that is? We're going to basically the next couple of weeks we're going to kiss the need for psychology and enter dynamics between people and all those stuff that was learned. I know Carl Rogers. I can feel Carl Rogers with me today with a big smile on his face. Mr. Sweetness of psychology is just smiling saying, I love you. I love you. That's what it was all for, to remember the love. It was never for anything else. We were never here to analyze or dissect anything. We were only here to remember the love. Nothing else. And that's the purpose of education too. If we're going to have education, why not learn forgiveness? That's the one lesson that we can learn. We can't really learn any other lesson. We can't learn anything in learning anything. Meaningful. We have to learn to release our perceptions of fragmentation and distortion. So the themes that you all voted on this week that have propelled me into this little chat this morning are this. The first theme that we're going to use today is that the Holy Spirit can use anything the ego made. That's your number one theme with 44 votes. The Holy Spirit can use anything the ego made. Isn't it great that the Holy Spirit can use the body as a means of communication for eternal love and for forgiveness? Isn't it great that the Holy Spirit can use everything as a means of communication for eternal love and forgiveness? Every breeze, the sky, the planets, even the black holes can use the galaxies and the cosmos of time and space to point back to the singularity of the mind that there's only one of us. Every molecule is there to be used by the Holy Spirit to teach us that there's only one of us. The Holy Spirit that we perceive is only one purpose and that's for us to forgive the world and remember our oneness as that we are a child of God, a perfect innocent child of God. So the Holy Spirit can use anything the ego made. The Holy Spirit can actually even use plant medicine. I know some of you probably have some ideas about plant medicine and psychedelics. Well, today I hope we rinse all those beliefs away. I want you to have a smile on your face. So when you think of psychedelics, you don't think of crazy drugs. I want you to think of the Holy Spirit's use of plant medicine to reach an experience, a state of mind that's so joyful and so happy that you can't even contain it.  Because I think many of us have grown up with conditioning around drugs. We all have grown up with ideas of addiction, of substance abuse, of kind of using drugs, including psychedelics, for more for recreational, temporary pleasure, recreational things. And those who have studied the use of psychedelics have basically said that the context is important, the context in which the psychedelics are used and the purpose, of course, is extremely important. Because Jesus teaches us the one question you can ask with anything is what is it for? So if you realize that the purpose and the context are very important, then you see that recreational use of substances for temporary pleasures or temporary highs is not really the best use. The ego will attempt to use the things of this world to generate pleasurable experiences. And we all know the flip side is painful. And that's why most of us have a conditioning to saying, well, there's highs with drugs and then there's withdrawal periods or there's deep lows and there's deep darkness, madness that's associated with psychedelics too. So today I'm going to take you on a journey today and next Saturday of completely dismantling every belief you've ever had about psychedelics. You know, I also want to mention that I really like the examples we have before us. Has anybody ever heard of Ram Dass? Ram Dass was a psychologist. You know, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary were psychologists at Harvard University. And then they kind of got into experimenting with different substances like LSD, for example. But I like the story of Ram Dass because he starts out as Richard Alpert. He's a psychologist at Harvard, one of the most respected Eastern educational institutes in the United States. And then with Timothy Leary, they start experimenting with LSD. And before you know it, basically Timothy Leary drops out from Harvard and so does Richard Alpert. He heads off to India.  And Richard Alpert, at the time, the psychologist has got a bunch of LSD in the suitcase. And of course, Shrimp Curly Baba, you know, basically says I want the suitcase. And he's like, he's very concerned that this guru is going to see all this LSD in his suitcase. So he goes with much anxiety and some fear. He goes, he gets the suitcase. The guru says, open it up. He opens it up. There's the LSD.  And Richard Alpert's thinking, I don't even understand this LSD stuff. But now my, oh my God, what am I doing?  You know things about LSD. It doesn't take much. It's a very potent drug that takes small doses, produce big effects. So the guru keeps going like this. So he empties and puts, he fills the guru's hand with LSD and then much to his horror and shock, the guru swallows the whole handful of LSD. The whole handful and is completely untouched. His state of mind is completely unchanged by a whole handful of LSD. What does that teach us? Mind over matter. There is no causation in form. Jesus is teaching us the mind is causative and there is nothing in form, not plant medicine even is causative. Isn't that wonderful? So that's important to me. That told me a lot right there. I love reading that parable from Ram Dass. He later became a spiritual teacher. He let go of Richard Alpert and he became Ram Dass. Much like Siddhartha let go of Siddhartha became the Buddha. Richard Alpert became Ram Dass. And wow, I think that's a powerful lesson for all of us that there is no causation in form, that plant medicine is not causative. So even when Timothy Leary got blamed for starting the drug revolution in the United States, let's take the blame off of Timothy Leary. That wasn't Timothy Leary's fault because there is no fault. There is no causation in form. As much as it seems that way, for the untrained mind that believes in externals, then it seems like these plant medicines, LSD commonly referred to as acid, magic mushrooms, you know, basically the things of this world. And also we want to talk about ecstasy. Ecstasy is a drug, I think it's technically called MDMA. And the magic mushrooms are called psilocybin. I've had to learn new words. I'm not, I'm not kind of entrenched with the whole psychedelic situation. So I'm like, I want MDMA. I'm like, hey, psilocybin, LSD, of course we've watched enough movies, we hear about people on acid. That's what LSD is. But what I'm going to do today is actually start to take your themes and start to go into the mind. And so we can have a reinterpretation of psychedelics as being something external. They must be something that's being used as just symbols being used by the Holy Spirit to help us remember that we're the Christ. That has to be actually what's going on. So the second theme that we have here is 40 votes stepping into the unknown. I have no direct firsthand experience with psychedelic drugs. But I do know that anyone who goes on the spiritual journey feels like they're stepping into the unknown. And I know that anyone who's taken any one of these plant medicine things, they have to have something inside of them that has a bit of adventurism and a bit of exploration, a bit of courage to face the unknown. Because basically a synonym for the ego is control. And when someone seems to take a psychedelic drug, they realize, I think, before they put it in their mouth or before they ingest it in some way, that they realize that they are in for an experience that will be beyond their familiar perception of the world. They have to have some courage to let go of what they think is the known. Because we know that when you have expansive experience in consciousness, then you do start to perceive everything and everyone, including yourself, in very different ways than you had. So that's a really good theme stepping into the unknown.  Jesus, I want to know you. God, I want to know you.  And the perceptual world has become the known. It's backwards, you see. What we perceive every day through the five senses, we think that's the known. And God is the big question mark. Spirit is the big question mark, but it's reversed. So what we're really praying for is show me my true identity. Show me the light. Show me the source of my being. We're really praying for what Jesus would call the known. We're praying for the known, but the ego would say we're praying for the unknown. And the ego would say you're praying for nothing because the ego doesn't even believe there is a God. Or if there is a God, it's a punishing God, you see. And the ego either way is going to have you avoid God. The ego doesn't want you to know your source. Okay. The third theme is changing my mind about my mind. That's a teaching from a course of miracles you need to learn to change your mind about your mind. But we're not really talking about perceptual changes. We're talking about a shift from perceiving with the five senses and perceiving a fragmented world of distortions and illusions to accepting our divine mind. That's a pretty significant change. We're going from a fragmented perception into the light. And that's what it means to change your mind about your mind. You have to actually accept your divinity. You have to accept that your nature is spiritual. So when Jesus was talking about the kingdom of heaven, he was talking about the realm of spirit. He was not talking about changing the conditions of the linear time space construct. He was saying, you need to learn to forget this world and remember God. You've had a case of amnesia. You've been sleeping and dreaming of a fragmented world and you forgot God. God is pure spirit. And our true identity is the light. We're pure spirit as the Christ too, but everything is flipped. So when we say changing my mind about my mind, if you want the simple definition of what that is, is I need to accept my eternal nature. You see, that's what it means to change your mind about your mind. If I believe my nature is physical, I need to learn to accept my eternal nature. And Jesus would say that means you need to forgive the false and accept that the truth is true. Anybody who's studied psychology knows that if you study the DSM-3 or DSM-4, because I studied psychology, that it's a very thick book about the diagnosis of all the many, many disorders associated with the human condition, of all the addictions, of all the defense mechanisms. We've had schizophrenia as a diagnosis. We've had psychosis as a diagnosis. We've had PSTD as a diagnosis. We've had so many different diagnosis, and you're going to see some of the characters in this movie are coming from a psychological diagnosis, like OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. That is a very dark dedication to obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors. And in this series, I'm going to show you, actually what I'll show you today is we are going to see how the Holy Spirit can use the plant medicine to transcend the distortions of the mind. Even OCD, which can seem to take many years of treatment and oftentimes without success through psychological means, it is possible to transcend by having a shift of perception, which takes you above the control mechanism. The ego is the control mechanism of OCD. The ego is the one that brings in the obsessive-compulsive behavior with the obsessive-compulsive thoughts. And then the transcendent experience shows you in one instant that you're not that, that you are not that at all.  How beautiful. That's the purpose of A Course in Miracles, too. If you practice The Course in Miracles, it's the same aim to realize you have no control over the world you made. That's a quote from A Course in Miracles.  The next one is I named it after Jesus's, his little pamphlet that he dictated to Helen Shuckman, psychotherapy, purpose, process, and practice. It's now integrated into A Course in Miracles curriculum, but originally when the first notes came, The Course in Miracles came, and then we also had the song of prayer and psychotherapy, purpose, process, and practice. This session today and next week Saturday is really dedicated to that pamphlet that Jesus gave us because he's teaching us that the therapist and the patient are not different. He's teaching us that healing occurs the instant that the therapist forgets to judge the patient. Isn't that amazing?  Healing occurs the instant that the therapist forgets to judge the patient. Power Rogers, unconditional positive regard. That's what heals, love, love heals. And the final one is the helpful use of magic. So the helpful use of magic would be the helpful use of all the symbols of time and space. Words are magic. Winter coats are magic. Medicine is magic. Plant medicine, psychedelics, they're magic. Anything where you give causation to something in form is magic. If you believe that you need a device to communicate with all your 7.8 billion brothers and sisters in the world, and maybe you believe an iPhone is necessary for communication, that's just because you don't really understand how powerful the mind is and that you can telepathically be in direct communication with everyone and everything right now. If you believe it, if you withdraw all the limits, all the false learning in the mind on communication, you will see through direct revelation that you are in direct communication with everyone and everything simultaneously. Now that's communication. And in order to do that, all you have to do is give up the belief in private thoughts and private minds. That's all. You see personalities, private thoughts, secrets, private minds, that's the only requirement to have perfect communication with everyone and everything. So I have chosen with Jesus' help to show two episodes from a series that's on Netflix and the title of the series is How to Change Your Mind. What a lovely title. That really got my attention on Netflix. How to Change Your Mind. That's exciting for me. What's the simple answer to how to change your mind? Well, I can tell you right now that the Holy Spirit is the how. So there's a presence of love, the great corrector, the great comforter that Jesus referred to in the Bible. The Holy Spirit is the how. Most of the times when we think of how we think of a procedure, we think of an event or a situation. But remember the Holy Spirit is the great reinterpretor of this world. And the only problem that has ever been experienced is a misinterpretation of time. Time was invented by the ego to keep the mind asleep and dreaming. And you might say that probably the ego's two greatest inventions to keep you from knowing who you are, they are linear time and judgment. Hey, if you get past those two defenses, you're back to eternity. Those are the main blocks right there. Linear time, the perception of time as linear, past, present, and future, which even Einstein said is a trick. And the belief in judgment. And of course that is why the Holy Spirit is the how. How to change your mind is to tune into your internal teacher, which is the Holy Spirit. That's how Jesus did it. Jesus was an example of someone who believed he was a human being. He believed he was a man. He believed he was born in Judea to Joseph and Mary. And he believed he was human. And then there came a point where the Holy Spirit convinced his mind that he wasn't human. You see. And that's what the Holy Spirit is doing with all of us. Jesus was just the first. He believed he was a man. He saw he was mistaken and he accepted himself as the Christ, an eternal creation of an eternal God. So that's what we're doing here for all of us. Now, because judgment was invented, judgment didn't exist, doesn't exist in heaven, but it was invented after the seeming fall from grace, fall from heaven. Judgment was made to minimize fear without letting it go. So that's very sneaky. Minimize fear without letting it go. That's why judgment never serves us because whenever we're judging, we're blocking the light. It's plain and straight and simple. We're just blocking the light. And our goal is to remember the light, to remember the light, the perfection of eternal love, eternal life. So in this presentation today, basically what we're going to see is we're aiming to return to the source, return to God. We're admitting and acknowledging that the ego made time space. The ego made the world. The ego made the body. The ego made time space and everything of time space in hatred. The emotion that was behind the big bang was hatred. Jesus tells us that in the Course, the world was made in hatred. So, okay, it was made in hatred. But what was the purpose behind that hatred? It had been something underneath it. And the purpose of time and space is to make you mindless. It was to forget the power of the mind. So that's why the ego invented a body and a brain. To think that you're something else other than a mind.  In a world of time and space, instead of this realization that you are a divine mind, you are an idea in the mind of God. So that's going to be our purpose. I would say when we look at these beautiful experiences with psychotherapists and plant medicine, these are really inspired therapists. I mean, these are very inspired therapists that have the faith to allow the spirit within them to use plant medicine as part of helping themselves and their patients remember the mind. Remember the power of the mind. Remember, the ego made this world to keep you mindless. It doesn't want you to remember the power of the mind. It doesn't want you to be empowered. It wants you to be disempowered. It wants you to believe in it and feel like a victim of an external world. It wants you to feel weak. It wants you to feel sad, depressed, angry, fearful, guilty. The ego is a death wish. So it wants all of these death emotions and this kind of a heaviness to be accepted as natural. And then, of course, the ego's main goal is death. Everything of the projected time space world seems to end. The stars burn out. The bodies of the plants, the bodies of the animals, the bodies of the humans all seem to decay and pass away. They seem to age, decay, and then finally break down. In science, we call this entropy. You know, it's moving towards disorder. The era of time that seems to move toward the future is the era of disorder or entropy. And so now, how do we escape the entropy? Well, the entropy is just a belief. If we learn to forgive the belief in the ego, we forgive entropy too. We're letting go of disorder. We're saying, sorry, I'm the Christ. I'm one with my creator and bye bye disorder. We're letting go of diagnostics. We're letting go of all medicines, of all attempts to alleviate the pain of false existence.   And Jesus said, yeah, when you just keep repeating the same day over and over like Bill Murray and Groundhog Day, you've got your own obsessive compulsive disorder going. You're living by rituals.  How many times do you have to go to work and punch in and punch out? How many times do you have to mow your grass or clean your living room before you wake up to God? Jesus is saying, you've got a real good case of obsessive compulsive disorder going on. Don't point the finger at those people that are in the hospital. You've got your own. I said, well, I don't know. Do I have obsessive compulsive disorder? Jesus, do I have OCD? And he says, no, no, it's really more. You have FRD. FRD, what's FRD? False reality disorder. You have a false reality disorder going on. You've got a major case of FRD. False reality. Reality is eternal. God is the creator of reality. God creates in spirit.  Because you're believing in time space and God didn't create time space. You're believing in the body. God didn't create the body. You believe in the personality self. God did not create the personality self. God created you as Christ. And there's only one of us and we are the Christ. And we may deny it. And we may resist it, but it's our destiny. We're destined to wake up. There's nothing we can really do to stop from waking up to be the Christ. We can try to put up a fight, but in the end, we have to see that resistance is futile. As the Borg used to teach in Star Trek, resistance is futile. So in this, these episodes, I'm not just going to talk about just the psychedelics and the use of psychedelics. I haven't ever experienced a psychedelic and I'm happy. I don't even seem to need them right now. I'm just, I'm enjoying my psychedelic experience as a miracle. And for me, that's why it's called a course in miracles, but I want to demystify all the false ideas that have been projected onto the psychedelics, you see, because that's part of our forgiveness. We have to start to realize that in the end, the psychedelics are not positive or negative. They're just symbols that the Holy Spirit can use in a temporary way for some people. And for some people, they're very, actually very helpful because they give a glimpse of something beyond the everyday perceptions of the world. And that should not be discounted. If anything gives you a reflection of something that you're much more than you thought you were, that there is a much higher perspective than the everyday human perspective. Let's not discount that. Let's not just toss that away. This is a world of label and dismiss. So in politics, people just label something as bad or wrong or evil, and then they dismiss it. Let's not dismiss anything. Let's say, Holy Spirit, show me the helpful use of everything that the ego made. Whatever it seems to be, that's our top theme, that the Holy Spirit can use everything that the ego made.  You're going to be, I think, really blessed in this experience today. And then we'll continue on next Saturday with the second part. But enjoy the first part, and I will stop in and visit you during the episode here.


Currently 25. I live in New York with my family, and about an hour and 15 minutes north of New York City, in Westchester County. I'm still a student. I actually graduate in about two weeks. I'm an applied psychology major, and it'll be for my undergraduate degree, but I'm looking forward to finishing very much.  It was the fall of 2009, early October. I was working with a development and disabled girl, Respit Average, at her home, soliciting the appropriate social behaviors, so to speak, and I would take her out into the community and do things with her. She was very heavy, and she had a lot of atrophy on one side of her body, so I'd have to pick her up a lot. And in doing so, I got a bulge disc in my spine. I went to an orthopedist because I just felt shooting pains in my back and in my legs, and it was the same old thing that I always feel with most people when they go to the doctor. They go, okay, well, here's some anti-inflammatories, and here's some painkillers. Seen me in two weeks if it still hurts. So that's what I did, and I saw him back in two weeks. His name was Dr. Daniel Southern in Richfield, Connecticut. And he said, okay, well, you know, if the pain is still here, let's get an MRI. And I said, okay, good, that's good, that's great, because, you know, this pain is not going away, and it was awful. So then I went to get the MRI, and then it took about a couple of days to get that back. And I came to meet with him in his office with my mother at the time. And he said, yeah, you know, the MRI does confirm you have a bulge disc in your lower spine. And I said, okay, great. And then we talked about how we would fix that with an oral pregnant zone or an epidural into the lower spine into the disc. And that went well, and that was taken care of. And we had the whole discussion about how I was going to recuperate from that and what I needed to do for my back, and being a little more proactive about how I'm listing people and things along those lines. And from there on, I was about to actually get up and leave the office that day.  I wanted to share something with you that I had off the scene on your MRI. And I said, okay, sure.  And I said, okay, you know, I don't know what an MRI, I can't read an MRI. I have no knowledge of that whatsoever. And he said, this is what normal kidneys look like. And I said, okay, you know, looking at it. And then he showed me what mine looks like. And in my right kidney, he said, you see this part? And he said, it's really dark shadow, rather big. And he's like, I would like you to go see a urologist to just follow up. He's like, I'm sure it's just a cyst or a kidney stone or something like that. It's nothing to worry about. When I left that office that day, and it sounds silly to say it, but I just think that intuition told me that it's not going to be a good outcome. And then maybe I'm sure you can relate to that. And from there, I went to go see a urologist in Danbury, Connecticut named Dr. Broder, who sent me to get a CT scan and an ultrasound. And that whole process with Dr. Broder took about a month and a half or so towards the end of October through most of November.   You have no predisposition to it.  He's like, I'm really leaning towards an abscess cyst. He said that his urologist and his department had gotten together and assessed my case and said that that's what it was. And he sounded very convincing in that day, specifically my mother and my father were there with me. And the way he had said it just wasn't enough for me. He kind of looked at me and just said, I'm 98.9% positive it's not cancer. And I, as snippy as it sounds, came back and said, but you can't tell me that it's not, right? And he said, well, no. And I said, OK, well, then I would really like a referral. So from there, I went to go see Dr. John Colberg at Yale Urology in New Haven, Connecticut. And I had met with him several times. And at first, I think that he kind of also dismissed my case saying, you know, it doesn't really look like it. It was grayish and black. There was really no definitive answer. And then one day I was sitting in his office again, which was the fourth or fifth time that I had seen him because I was so adamant about wanting an answer because it had taken so long so far with no responses to what was really going on. And he started listing symptoms and asking me if I could recall having any of them. And the one that struck me the most when he was reading through different various symptoms was that I remembered having terrible night sweats that summer, the summer of 2009, all the way through the fall and thinking I'm like, you know, I always would sweat through my sheets and my mom and my dad would always say, oh, it's hormones, you're hormonal, you're a female, you're 23 years old, and we would dismiss it. But when I told that to Dr. Colberg, everything changed that day. He wanted to do a biopsy that week. So I went and had a biopsy at Yale. And about five days later he said, just call the office, we'll have the results and we're absolutely going to know what's going on at this point.  However, I would call every day, I still remember his secretary's name was Lucille, because I would call her every day after the five-day period of when those results should have been in.  And I said, okay, but I would be persistent and call her every day. I think at one point she was terribly annoyed with me because I would call her multiple times a day because then it was about three weeks later in that grace period of the five days. And on one day I called her, this was like mid-December, December 18th or so of 2009, and she said, oh, Jessica, your slides were sent out for confirmation to Sloan Memorial in New York City. And I said, oh, okay, great. And as many of you as this is going to sound, I didn't even know about Sloan Memorial Hospital. So when I looked it up on the Internet, it said Sloan Memorial, you know, Cancer Hospital. I said, oh, well then that's really what it must be. Which, you know, I had always felt that that's where it was going to be, but no one, I think, wanted to say that to me. No one wanted to put themselves out there to say that a 23-year-old perfectly healthy female with no previous medical history at all has cancer. And on December 21st, 2009, Dr. Colbert called me. I was actually walking into a Math statistics final at my university. And he told me that it was confirmed that it had papillary renal cell carcinoma type 1. You know, people ask me all the time, like how the story of it happening, how they even found it, because the odds of it, and Dr. Colbert had told me the odds of them ever having found it wouldn't have been until it was way later hadn't I gotten hurt. And it was also interesting for multiple other reasons that my tumor was inside, embedded right into my urinary tract or urinary ducts in the kidney itself. It was inside and not on the outside of the kidney. So my understanding that is why they had suggested that it had an abscessed cyst and so forth or a benign tumor of some sort. I can never pronounce the name of the one they always talked about. Angela Pile and Noma, I don't really know how to say it, but I know that they kept saying that it was probably that. But it all changed when I had gone over that I had night sweats with him. I had surgery December 30, 2009. I was in the hospital for seven days. It was there for a week. We had decided it was my decision. Well, sort of my decision. I knew that I was going to have to have it removed, but it was either a decision between a full nephrectomy or a partial nephrectomy, removing the kidney. And to my knowledge as well at the time, there was no doctor who was willing to do this laparoscopically because of where my tumor was in my kidney. And it quite honestly was mortifying and probably one of the most terrifying experiences of my life to date. And I think that most people have been through quite a lot, whether it's medical or anything in your life. And this was the most terrifying experience. I also had an extremophobia of needles. So even thinking about someone cutting me open and removing a part of my body was just absolutely horrifying. So I went in for surgery December 30. And I was there for five days. I woke up out of surgery and it had felt like someone had taken a saw blade to the side of my body like they were cutting down a tree. It was just an awful excruciating pain. I never felt anything like that in my life, but I think that it makes me a stronger person now looking back. But I didn't get up the first day. I wouldn't get out of bed. And partially also because I found out that I was allergic to morphine. And I couldn't breathe when I woke up right away. I was on oxygen for a few days. And I had hives and I was very swollen. And then I was put on... I'm going to forget the name of the pain medication, but I was on that for the entirety of my stay there. And I didn't get out of bed till about day three. I had sat up on the second day, but it was just... I just can't even describe the pain. It's unbelievable. And then after my seven days, I also spent a year as even the hospital that year. I went home. My parents took me home and I didn't leave my house for about six weeks, according to what my doctor had wanted me to do. That I would not feel comfortable in a car. And I was in such cabin fever because all I wanted to do was leave the house.  You can hardly get out of bed. It took me about three weeks. I stayed in the guest room in my family's house because I couldn't walk up a flight upstairs because it was just too painful. But after about six weeks, I had gone back to let him look at my scar and how it was healing. And it looked fine. It looked great. Other than the fact that I'll have this six to eight inch scar on the body for the rest of my life, I think I'm fine. I'm perfectly healthy now. Sorry. It's such a difficult memory to talk about, but a very positive one too because it only makes anyone who's dealt with it or is dealing with it that much stronger. I think that it has made me an incredibly strong individual. I was never... I wasn't a weak person prior. I always found myself to be a strong person, an outgoing person, a leader in some ways. And after this happened, I think for the first year afterwards, I was distraught. I felt like, you know, why me? It was a very self-pitying attitude and I was never that person. And my mom would talk to me. She was the biggest... And my father, my mother and my father and my brother and sister and the most supporting people. Without them, I don't know where I would be, especially my mother and father. They would support me like no other and I think that it was through what they would tell me and, you know, that nothing, if I could beat this, that I could do anything.  Having this experience, having gone through this experience, I am such a strong person now. I don't let things get to me like they used to and if they do, I have to remind myself where I've been and where I am. And I think that it really has impacted my life in a weird way for the better, to be a better person. If I could say this bluntly, I would say to keep your head up and to realize that today sucks, tomorrow might be worse, the following few months might be even worse than the day that you had today. But if you can get through this and if you can keep your head up and realize that there are people who love you and support you and that you're not alone and that there are so many other people out there who are dealing with what you're dealing with that you can push through it. You can realize that there's more to life than letting something like this trying to ruin it. And that's what I've gotten personally from my own experience. And that's the best advice I could give anyone is that it can suck. The experience is not wonderful, but if you can get through it, you're going to be a very strong person and you're going to love yourself even more.


I'm a co-initiative lead of the Configuration Management Initiative 2.0 together with Alex Mike Potter. I have never been to a US DrupalCon and I didn't even really consider it. It was around the deadlines for the DrupalCon session submissions. Alex said that there's this grant and that I should apply for one. And so I thought, you never know if you never try and it doesn't hard to apply. If I don't get it, then Mike has the session alone. If I do get it, then I come here.


Now that we put the ego into perspective, that's what makes this life really an adventure. It's because you know you have the power within you to overcome anything that seems to be other than supreme happiness. Any feeling, any fear or guilt or fatigue. There's two lessons in a workbook of A Course in Miracles and Jesus gives a little bit of a dissertation on death and he lifts the definition up into such a beautifully high realm. He's teaching that there is no death, but he's not teaching that there is no death of the physical body. The physical body seems to be born, seems to die, but he's teaching that in an eternal state of mind there is no death. He's teaching a psychological definition that the ego itself is the death wish. Freud called it Thanatos, it's been called many things, the shadow by Carl Jung. But basically there is no death and he's saying that any feeling that you experience that is not supreme happiness is death. He even says in that lesson, even a sigh of weariness. Ooh, high definitions, he's getting way up into the ether there. A sigh of weariness, wow. Or the slightest frown. The slightest frown, the slightest frown. Yeah, now that's really getting up there. It sounds like Jesus in the Bible, you know. First it's thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery. Then Jesus comes along in the New Testament. Very, very, I tell you, the man has a lustful thought for a woman, not his wife. He commits adultery. He's like, wow. Where do we go? Up above the seagulls and the eagles. It's mind training. He also said some things in the Beatitudes about blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God. And in the Course in Miracles he says, miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first. So you might say that's why he called it a Course in Miracles instead of a Course in Revelation. Because Revelation just shows you the blazing light that's beyond this veil. But he says you need miracles to prepare your mind for that love and that light. Because the light is so brilliant that if you still are holding on to a bit of lived ego, then that light can seem frightening, terrorizing. So I know I've had three experiences in my life where the revelatory experiences where the whole veil just completely disappeared. But right after those experiences, the little ego was shaking in its boots. Because it was like, whoa, that's a little too far. And for the ego, light and love is literally its total undoing. It doesn't exist, so it simply has to try to interpret against that.  And these two parts are never in communication. That every moment you're either in one or the other. There's really, some teachers have even talked about decision makers and Charlie the Chooser and kind of intellectual concepts. But in the rules for decision, Jesus says it's always a decision. The Holy Spirit is a decision. The ego is a decision. And this moment it's like, what's it going to be? It really comes down for all of us. So we really get a lot of practice at exposing everything that we're trying to hide with the ego. Now, this plays out in relationships and communities. How many here were part of the Byron Bay community years ago? There we got a couple. Yeah, spiritual communities and relationships are fantastic grounds for forgiveness. If you want to take the fast track into eliminating the ego as a possibility in your mind just go for relationships or spiritual communities. That's because people are not really people. People are mirrors. And so when you have relationships in this world they reflect everything that you have in your consciousness. And they really can be especially good at reflecting unconscious beliefs and thoughts that you haven't even allowed them to awareness until they come along. And you should say thank you every time. They act out one of these unconscious thoughts and beliefs because they are giving you an opportunity to release what you previously weren't even aware, fully aware that it was there. So we look at an emotion like anger. It's a pretty common human emotion. And Jesus tells us anger is never justified. Wow, never justified. He's not saying don't get angry, but he's saying when you get angry just watch that mechanism in your mind that tries to justify it. It tries to see the cause in the world, give you good reason for it.  Well from my perspective. Even though the cats may chase each other and hiss and growl occasionally and we've been known to have some sessions where people will basically everyone's encouraged to speak their mind. Everyone's encouraged to express their emotions. Even when you go into a convent or a monastery or church or kind of a spiritual community there's usually a lot of rules and regulations. The ego likes lots of rules and regulations because it's afraid of chaos. It's already chaos but it's afraid there'll be further chaos unless there's some rules and regulations. That's why society has prisons and jail terms and rules and laws because the ego is afraid that without these laws and rules all would be chaos. And yet what you discover when you forgive is when you release all of these laws and rules all is love. The exact opposite of what the ego says. So we don't have any rules at the Peace House where I live just imagine living with no rules for some time. I have such a good time. But we do have two guidelines which is no people pleasing and no private thoughts which are really an invitation to, if you need to, speak your mind and we have a great trust in the Holy Spirit right there always with us to lift us beyond any seeming conflict or turmoil. So it gets very interesting sometimes but it's not the kind of suffocating environment that a lot of us were raised in based on our thoughts where you couldn't express your emotions or even talk about what you were feeling we're so focused on externals, you know the weather or what are we having tonight for dinner you know, things like that but this opens the way for a very open communication and then through this open communication there's very much of a clearing that takes place.


All right. We have something very unique that's about to happen.  These are digestive organs. And the digestive organs are picking up nutrients from the outside world, yes? So your body has a little system set up called a portal system. And I just have to define a portal system right now because it's weird. A portal system, I think there's only three in your body, is a series of... I don't like that. It is a set of two capillary beds. I think series was a better word, in sequence. Okay, I like series. Change that to series. A series of two capillary beds in sequence. Now think about that for a second. If you're bringing fresh, delicious blood from the lungs, and I'm just continuing the thought of dealing with this yet, if we bring good, healthy blood via an artery to a capillary bed, we get exchange. Like, we're going to pull all the oxygen out of that blood, and we're going to get all the garbage from the cells and dump it back in there so that the blood that leaves in the vein is dirty.  And the logical thing to do is to send it back to the lungs. Let's clean it up in the lungs.  Why would we do that? Because really, the cells in this capillary bed, the cells surrounding them, they're not going to get Jack Doodaly out of venous blood. They're not going to get any oxygen. They're not going to get any nutrients. Like, it all has been taken out by this first capillary bed. So this strategy is ridiculous and doesn't happen except for in three locations. And the three places that it happens, it happens for functional reasons. Like, there is a functional need for a second capillary bed, even though it's weird. Okay. It happens in the liver through the hepatic portal system. Now, capillary bed, feeding the stomach, the spleen, and the pancreas.  Please understand that there's nothing anatomically correct. We're not going to name these veins. They totally have names. And we're not going to name any of them. We're just going to say, you know what? They all flow into a vein called the what. Oh, you know it's true. It's the hepatic portal vein. Please, not anatomically correct, but let's label that thing. This vein that everybody's feeding into is the hepatic portal vein. And we're sending the hepatic portal vein's dirty blood to the liver. Why?  Who would do that? And if you poison yourself, I want first shot at this before that poison goes anywhere else. The liver is filtering the blood, making sure that there's nothing bad in there. Notice that we also have a hepatic artery. So we are delivering fresh blood to the liver.  So the liver can do its job because we're not just delivering dirty blood, but every single nutrient that was absorbed in the digestive system goes to the liver before being dumped anywhere else. Now let's just go ahead and finish the story because the liver ultimately feeds into, and this again, completely anatomically incorrect, what vein are you going to anticipate drains the liver? It's the hepatic vein. So blood from hepatic portal vein and hepatic artery travel through liver capillary madness and drain into the hepatic vein. And who does the hepatic vein drain into? Oh, you know it's true, the inferior vena cava. While we're here, there is a renal vein that also drains into inferior vena cava. And so I feel like it would be, even though we're talking about hepatic portal system, renal vein, how am I going to do that? How am I going to do like that renal, that says renal vein? I'll draw my kidney right there. Look, it's a skinny guy. I just want you to know that the renal vein is in there. Draining into the inferior vena cava. And the hepatic vein is draining into the inferior vena cava. There's something else I was going to, oh, I was going to show you how our hepatic artery and our hepatic portal vein is kind of set up in the liver. This is a picture of a histology view, a microscopic view of the liver cells. And here it is. This is from the OpenStacks textbook, woof woof. This is my liver, gallbladder, yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic. But if you look at the actual histology of the liver, and we could look at the slides, I've never found them quite clear. This I find quite clear. The liver tissue is, liver tissue is organized into these really interestingly shaped structures called hepatic lobules. Do I need to write that down for you? We'll see if I can, because I don't see hepatic. I don't know if I can write on this. Yes, whatever. This is a hepatic lobule. How many hepatic lobules do we have? Well, look, there it is, it's labeled right here. One, two, three, four, and all of that, lots of lobules. Each lobule has a central vein down the middle of it. The central vein connects to the hepatic vein. So all these lobules are draining blood from the, like blood has to travel through all these lobules in order to reach the hepatic vein. Okay, wait. At each corner of the lobule, you have three vessels, and one of them is a branch of the hepatic artery. One of them is a branch of the hepatic portal vein, and the other one is a branch from the bile duct. All this means is that these cells in here are being fed by the hepatic artery. They're also being fed by the hepatic portal vein, and they're also, they have branches connected to the bile duct, which allows those cells to produce bile and dump that into the bile duct. The blood moves from these outer triads of vessels toward the central vein, and as the fluid moves through, gas exchange occurs and filtering occurs, and then we dump into the hepatic vein. How's that? Super clear. Okay, let's do, we've got the lower limb, that's it, and then we're done, so let's do that one next.


Attention, Platt Park residents. This is a community notification of a new sexually violent predator in your area. Please stay tuned to the following short program for more information. Hi, I'm Technician Ron Hackett with the Denver Police Department. The Sex Offender Registration and Compliance Unit at DPD is responsible for the registration, monitoring, and tracking of all registered sex offenders and sexually violent predators who live in the city and county of Denver. Here's a brief history of sex offender legislation in Colorado. Our state laws trickle down from federal government mandates. In 1994, we had the Jacob Wetterling Act, which mandated that states would establish a sex offender list. Megan's law of 1996 said that the public would have access to those sex offender registration lists. The Pam Litchner Act of 1996 stated that some offenders might have to have lifetime registrations. And the Adam Walsh Act of 2006 unified sex offender laws across the country. In Colorado, the legislature has determined that sexually violent predators, by definition, pose a higher risk to the community at large and therefore mandated that upon their release from the Department of Corrections, the community must be notified. Sex offender notification in Colorado happens in two ways. The first is passive and ongoing through the sex offender registration process, which is a list maintained by local police departments. The second way is active via community notification for those offenders determined to be sexually violent predators by the courts or by the parole board. Most sex offenders in Colorado are supervised by the criminal justice system in our communities. Most sex offenders engage in crossover behavior, which means they may have been arrested for one type of crime, but be apt to commit another.  There is no typical sex offender, but all tend to be deceptive, manipulative and secretive. 80 to 93% of sex offenses are committed by someone known to the victim. Sexual deviancy begins in mid to late adolescence. Sex offenses are not impulsive.  The community has a vested interest in helping offenders to be successfully managed in the community. Sex offenders have the same need for housing and employment as any other citizen.  There are approximately 16,500 registered sex offenders in the state of Colorado. About 65% of convicted sex offenders are placed in the community on probation. The remainder are in the Department of Corrections or Community Corrections. Offenders may be caught for one type of offense, but be at a high risk to commit another type. Crime of conviction is only one indicator of risk.  The offender's residence must be verified quarterly by the Denver Police Department. The full sex offender registration list is available by calling the Denver Police Department Identification Bureau at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Convicted felons and those with multiple convictions are posted online at denvergov.org slash police.   Now, here's a look at the newest sexually violent predator living in Denver. Here's an overview of the registered sex offenders currently living in Denver. There are 2,422 total living within city limits. In Denver Police District 3, there are 358. Precinct 313 has 61 registered sex offenders. Of those, 46 have felony convictions and 15 have misdemeanor convictions. Mitchell Wayne Bishop is a sexually violent predator currently living in Denver. He's 64 years old and was born on October 23, 1959. He's a white male, 6 feet tall, 270 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes. He's currently living at 1572 South Broadway Street number 10 in the Platte Park neighborhood of Denver. Schools located within one mile of this offender include 5280 High School at 1200 West Mississippi Avenue, McKinley Thatcher Elementary at 1230 South Grant Street, Grant Beacon Middle School at 1751 South Washington Street, Our Lady of Lourdes School at 2256 South Logan Street, Denver Waldorf School at 2100 South Pennsylvania Street. Parks located within one mile of this offender include Harvard Gulch Park, Pasquino's Landing, Aquagolf at Overland, Overland Pond Park, Harvard Gulch North Park, Vanderbilt Park, Overland Municipal Golf Course, Washington Park, Ruby Hill Park, Platte Park, Sanderson Gulch, Rosedale Park, Grant Frontier Park, Vanderbilt East Park. Recreation centers located within one mile of this offender include Platte Park Senior Center at 1500 South Grant Street, Harvard Gulch Rec Center at 550 East Isliffe Avenue. Bus routes located within one mile of this offender include Routes 0 and 11 South Broadway and West Louisiana Avenue, Route 0 South Broadway and West Florida Avenue, South Broadway and West Iowa Avenue, South Broadway and West Mexico Avenue, South Broadway and West Colorado Avenue, Route 12 South Pearl Street and Florida Avenue, Florida Avenue.  He's currently on parole and registered with the Denver Police Department on October 25, 2023 to 1572 South Broadway Street number 10 in the Platte Park neighborhood of Denver.  Mitchell Wayne Bishop has been determined a sexually violent predator after meeting the following criteria. Criteria 1, age 18 or older on the date of the offense or under 18 and tried as an adult. The offender was age 49 at the time of the offense. Criteria 2, the crime must have been committed honor after July 1, 1997 and convicted honor after July 1, 1999.   Criteria 3, the relationship to the victim was one of the following. Victim was a stranger to the offender or the offender established or promoted a relationship with the victim primarily for the purpose of sexual victimization. The victim was a six-year-old female. The offender was known to the victim. Criteria 4, positive results or the passing of a risk assessment instrument administered by probation parole staff and a qualified treatment evaluator. Positive results include an assessment for the presence of a mental abnormality, a level of denial regarding the offense, treatment appropriateness and motivation, presence of sexual deviant interests. The offender was evaluated by the Denver District courts with positive results, determining him to be a sexually violent predator. Music