Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news. Parents can boost their back-to-school budget by claiming tax credits and refunds. You know what would be even nicer than an education tax credit? If college tuition were not like 10 times the price they should be due to government subsidies. I mean, a $2,000 tax credit, that sounds great. But hey, wait a second. The price of tuition went up from like $5,000 to $40,000. This $2,000 tax credit seems just like that stimulus payment followed by massive inflation. It's basically worthless or less than worthless. This benefit's costing me money. Wouldn't it be better to make schools compete on their own merits? Markets driving down prices just like with any other business rather than subsidizing them? Because the subsidies are clearly resulting in bloated, greedy, government-beholding monsters of schools. Some people think that because schools are not for profit organizations, that they don't care about profits.  I mean, that's like the myth of saying that communist countries don't care about profits. Does it make sense to say like China doesn't care about profits, not for profit organizations, don't care about profit?  Has everyone gone stupid? Okay, I got a little carried away. I got a little carried away there, Phil. Cut that last part out.  Cut that last part out, Phil. I mean it this time. This is my show, dang it, Phil. Cut that last part out.  In any case, first an attempt at a joke. Man, we really should have read between the lines with that Inflation Reduction Act. You need to read between the lines. Why? There's just white space there. It turns out the Inflation Reduction Act increases inflation. Who's ready to get sweaty? Have a seat, Robin. A seat, but that's the opposite of cardio.  That being the title of the big highly publicized bill. Yes, we have called you here under false pretenses. The increased inflation most likely resulting in increased cases of depression. Increased cases of depression most likely resulting in increased suicide. And some say their blood is on this bill's hands. What's that on your hands? Blood. Paint. Paint? I guess that blood was the red between the lines. And Americans being afraid of blood don't like looking between those lines. Well, it was. They back in business? How did they close down three years ago? It's been a really long time since we have. Oh jeez, it's been that long? I don't feel like Chinese tonight anyway.  Honestly, listening to this administration is like eating a spoonful of Drano. Like eating a spoonful of Drano. Sure, it'll clean you out. They'll leave your hollow inside. COVID tax tip 2022-134 August 31st, 2022. Summer is slipping away and another school year is starting. As kids head back to classrooms, parents are ticking items off the school supply list. Hey, how does the government know that I'm ticking stuff off my... Have they been spying on me again? I swear. Okay, any case. If they want to boost their back to school budgets, parents and guardians should make sure they aren't missing out on their 2021 refunds and tax credits. Many people don't get their tax refund because they don't file a federal tax return. Some people choose not to file a tax return because they don't earn enough money to be required to file. So this gets back to the question of, am I required to file? Being different from the question of, should I file or will it be beneficial for me to file? These days, even if you're not required to file, you probably want to at least check it out due to the fact that they have increased greatly. A lot of the benefits to the, especially the lower income side of things. So normally you would think, well, if your income is below a certain threshold, possibly like the standard deduction, for example, you might not be required to file because you wouldn't owe any taxes and the IRS you would expect wouldn't be coming after you. They're not going to throw you into jail for not filing when you don't owe taxes unless they're looking for something else like your personal information and so on and so forth, which they may be, but they're not going to come right out and say it at least at this point in time. In theory, they're just after your money, not after your personal information. They're not that bad. They're not like Facebook or something, but in case. So that means that you wouldn't have to file, but you might want to file because you still might have these refundable credits. They increase the refundable credits for the child tax credit. They increase the refundable credits for things like the earned income tax credit, the education credits and so on. And you have the capacity typically to get access to free software if your income is below a certain threshold to at least check it out. And so if you know anyone that hasn't filed, they don't think they need to file. If they're saying, hey, I didn't earn much money or I didn't have much withholdings. So it's not worth my time to file. Then you might want to say, yeah, it might be worth your time to file. And you might want to check check that out. And you also might want to be more vigilant for people that are thinking like that as well in terms of their personal information because these are the people that are often being targeted for identity theft. They're not people that are trying to steal their identity so they can file tax returns and try to get access to these types of credits and whatnot. So in any case, generally they won't receive a failure to file penalty if they owed a refund, but they won't receive their refund either. A refund isn't the end. Remember with a refund, this is another term that has become not quite correct. It's kind of a misnomer to call things a refund if you didn't know any tax. And the IRS gives you money. They're not refunding anything. That's a benefit type of program. But a lot of people that didn't earn a lot of money might still get money back through the tax code regulations, which they would call a refund. So a refund isn't the only money people might be missing out on when they don't file. If they're eligible for tax credits, like the child tax credit and the earned income tax credits, they're leaving that money on the table as well. And you don't want to leave stuff on the table because people might take it off the table, someone might take it from the table. It's like, that's my money on that table. If you leave it like in the table on your workplace, then that's not really a safe place to put your money. So the child tax credit. The child tax credit, there's a link to that here, helps families with qualifying children get a tax break. People may be able to claim the credit even if they don't normally file a tax return. Taxpayers qualifying for the full amount of the 2021 child tax credit for each qualifying child. If they meet all eligibility factors and their annual income isn't more than $150,000 if they're married filing joint, or if they're filing as qualified widow, widow were $112,500 if they're filing as head of household and $75,000 if they're a single filer or are married and file a separate return. Parents and guardians with higher income may be eligible to claim a partial credit. The interactive tax assistance can help people check if they qualify. So you might want to actually get the tax software, which you might have access to free tax software. If you go to free file software before the deadline of October 17th, if your income is below a certain threshold, and that's a great tool of course to kind of check out what you qualify for because they have usually question and answer type of format within it. So they earned income tax credit. This being one of the most complex credits to calculate, but it's aimed at the lower income threshold. Lower income tax returns are actually becoming more and more difficult because of these refundable credits and these changes to the earned income tax credit and so on. So the software quite useful. I wouldn't even really want to attempt this as even a tax professional without software. If I had all these credits that are mingled together and you get refundable components and so on and so forth and family dynamics with different dependence and whatnot. So check out the software to check this out. So the earned income tax credit helps low to moderate income workers and families get a tax break. If someone qualifies, they can use the credit to reduce the taxes they owe and maybe increase their refund. Low to moderate income workers with qualifying children may be eligible to claim the earned income tax credit if certain qualifying rules apply to them. People may qualify for the EITC, the earned income tax credit. Even if they don't claim children on their tax return, visit irs.gov, irs.gov, irs.gov. V for victory over tax quit to learn how to claim the EITC without a qualifying child. There's a link to that here. So there's a lot of components to the earned income tax credit. That's why it's confusing because the number of children are going to have an impact on it and your income is going to have another income impact on it. And you might be able to look at your income is going to have an impact. It's actually going to increase the credit up to a certain point and then go back down but have a different curve related to how many children you have. And then you might also be able to pick up income from a prior year if that resulted in a higher credit in this particular year because they're helping out that way to make things better. So you might be able to qualify for a larger credit even though it's totally confusing. But there it is. So people who qualify for the EITC may also qualify for other tax credits including the child tax credit and the credit for other dependents, child and dependent care credits, education credits, recovery rebate credits. There's links to all that stuff. You got more information here with links to it.  You got all of this reading material. This is really where your tax dollars go by the way just to make this great reading material because the government's really kind of like an audible type of thing or like Amazon books, right?  So there'll be links to all this stuff here. There'll be a link to this in the description.


I've been trying to organize a hide-and-seek tournament. Okay. But good players are hard to find. Oh, boom. Ah, yeah. Zeichenfregen, Steuchenfrassen. Definitely cutting that part.  You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter for more juicy content. Thanks to Patreon followers too to come and subscribe and like button. And today, today, we got a video, this is Tallest Statue Size Comparison. So this goes like of all the statues in the world. And the reason we're active, there's a lot in India and it shows the size compared to everything else. So really we're doing a video on size comparison? Does size matter? In statues, yes. In statues, apparently it does. Well. And it depends on, we're talking about height or girth. I guess we'll find out. Okay. Here we go. Average man is five seven. That's probably true, I suppose, right? Not in America. Average height used to be five foot seven and also in the 1950s. It's now closer to six feet, it's like five 11. Is that your David? 30 feet. You'd think that'd be bigger. I really did think that would be bigger. China's gonna have a lot too. First India one, 111 feet in Tamil Nadu. Or is that that one in, no, that's not that. No, that's a different one, that's Christ the Redeemer is in Brazil. Another India one for, is that Krishna? Shiva, Shiva, sorry. There's Christ the Redeemer. Where's the ones of Robert E. Lee that we take down? Oh, I guess you could include Mount Rushmore if you're including that, I suppose. Wait. Oh, I didn't know they had both, they had one called Christ the Protector somewhere. Looks like Brazil. That's a big Buddha. That's giant. Wow. These to see in person would be crazy impressive. Another one, 216 feet, holy cow. That's ginormous. Why do I think like the biggest one's a bird in India? Maybe I'm thinking something else. Yeah, China's gonna have a lot too. It's got, look at that. I like the cars driving by to give you kind of a comparison. Yeah, it's cool of all these countries to allow them to put them all next to each other for this video. It must have been a really big logistical issue to move them all. Have you been to her? No, I've never been to New York. Oh, that's right. I forgot. I've never been to New York. It was supposed to go last year. It's very emotional. So is that the tallest, 305 feet? Unless they include Mount Rushmore, I suppose, right? I think, yeah, Rushmore's bigger. 420 feet. Wow. Who is that? Oh geez. My goodness. Is that really the tallest, 500, about 500 feet? I thought it was a bird. What am I thinking of? So India did get that almost 600 feet. That's incredible. Is that true? Why do I think there was a different one? 600 feet. And what was Statue of Liberty? It was, I think she's just around 380 something. Oh, 305. So basically, two Statue of Liberty's. Yeah, that's huge. Have you been to like the island? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been to the, I've been. I've got to look up and see how big it is. Yeah, I've gone up. That's what she said. I've gone to the crown and I've gone and stood at the base several times. And it's just, it's always wonderful to stand at the base and read the inscription and see how far our country has come in a not good way and the way we treat people who are immigrants. So yeah, it is the Statue of Unity in India. 597 feet or the 182 meters. That is just ginormous. Huge. What? That is just monstrous. India. Hold on, because I know there's like a bird. Maybe I'm just dumb. And so that is the world's tallest statue. Yeah, yeah, it says that one is. I just, I don't know why I'm thinking of Statue of Unity, Statue of Equality. Why aren't you showing me new pictures? Don't know why. It's not really finding it that difficult to find statues in India. I think you have a bird one. That's a large toe. Let me show the toe of the Statue of Unity. Maybe I'm just dumb. I was pretty sure a lot of the statues in Westeros and as well as Middle Earth were bigger. So it looks like there's a Buddha at, is that in India? No, no, that's. Yeah, there were a ton as you had said as I expected in China. Did they set out on the Statue of Unity to make, I'm guessing that, I don't know when it was built. But I'm guessing. I think it's a relatively new creation. Obviously, probably to honor. Yeah, yeah, but look at, this is a great, look at it, look at the Statue of Liberty and look at it. How big is Mount Rushmore? If you just include the things. For some reason, I don't think Rushmore is very tall actually. Okay, that's from the bottom. No, that's bottom to top, but the actual statue themselves. 60, sculpted roughly 60 feet high. Okay, so yeah, the granite faces I'm only looking for the granite faces. So yeah, I knew US wouldn't really have much and the only one we have is actually from another country. Yeah. We didn't even build that one. No, we build skyscrapers, we don't build statues. And well, we do, just of Confederate generals that should definitely be honored for sure. Of course. Who I'm probably related to, unfortunately. It's a sad fact. But yeah, really interesting. That was cool. Really cool to actually see that statue because it's probably like to just drive up on something. It'd probably be like in Lord of the Rings if you drove up on those two statues. Yeah. Going into whatever town they were going, or city they were going into. I forget what it was, but. It'd probably be like that from what I imagine. Yeah. Anyways, let us know the other informational videos that we can react to down below.


Sick religion is something that I would like to dive deeper into. I'm a little bit biased here. I do like sickies. Most of the taxi drivers in Australia back in the day used to be sickies. I had great talks with those people and we agree upon that there is one God. Their perception of one God is a bit different and I would like to claim, even though I'm pretty ignorant on the subject, that they seem to be a little bit more perennialist, if you will, because their claim is that the truth is found in different religions, of course, but the ultimate the fullness of the truth is found within sickism.


It is clear that the environmental crisis which is confronting the world will profoundly alter the future destiny of our planet. At the cusp of this transition, we emerge, envisioning a world of dignity for all. At the helm of this transition, we stand, determined to realize this united call. At the core of this transition, we wage, a struggle to transform our world, once and for all.


So what is the truth about investing in the stock market? Every single day, I'm hearing misconceptions out there from beginners, from people just starting out that the stock market is something that it's completely not. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about a couple of misconceptions that I think about the stock market investing in the stock market for the long term. So let's get into it. So one of the biggest misconceptions that I think are out there involving the stock market is that it's a get rich quick scheme. And guys, I can't tell you enough, we all know at this point how many ads there are out there in the community, and I know I'm guilty for it. I have a YouTube channel. I'm sure you guys see the ads before this video, during the video, maybe after it as well. But we see so many ads. Jason Bond, Tim Sykes, all these people that are throwing money at you saying, the stock market, you can take $10,000, you can turn that into $100,000. How many times have you seen that Tim Sykes app where he's, or the ad where he's like, $10,000? That's nonsense, right? I know you guys have seen that, but there's ads every single day that are showing you that and telling you and giving you misconceptions that the stock market is a get rich quick scheme, right? You're putting money in a thousand bucks and you can flip that into $100,000. And the truth is guys, the stock market is nothing like that when it comes to investing. Sure, if you're playing with penny stocks, you may get lucky, you may put $1,000 in and you may flip that into $10,000 if you get one of these low float penny stocks, maybe you're in one of those pump and dump situations where the stock flies up, you get out at the right time. Sure, you can make a 10X return on that, but you can also completely lose your money, you can completely go from a $1,000 investment to $0 investment, just like that, with those penny stocks, which is why I stay away from them. But overall guys, investing in the stock market, it is not a get rich quick scheme, it is not something you put a thousand bucks in and it spits out $10,000 a year later, it's a slow gradual process. And to get even deeper into that regarding the slow gradual process, what the stock market needs the most out of anything in terms of emotions is patience, guys.  You need to be able to control this and wait for the opportunities out there to buy the stock. Don't just buy at the top just because you're craving to buy a stock because that might not be the best time to get in, which is why when patience comes in, you wait for those opportunities and you capitalize on them when they come around because most of the time, guys, when a stock's at an all-time high, it's going to come back at one point, it's going to correct, and when it corrects, you can actually get in at a better price point, a better starting dividend yield if that stock pays a dividend and overall, your return is going to be much better, think about it, right? If you get in at a dip buy, your return over time, if your company does well over time, if you've picked a good company, your return's going to be better than if you got in at a higher price, right? So the whole thing about investing in stocks, guys, obviously is picking the right stocks, doing your research, understanding what industries, what sectors you're investing in, making sure you're diversified, all that stuff, but once you pick out your stocks, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to buy them right away, right at the prices they're at. Now comes the patience and the waiting game where you're going to wait until these stocks you've picked start to get at better prices and better valuations. And just to go off on a little side tangent very quickly, what I personally do when I track my stocks and ETFs is I create watchlists, guys, very simple here. This is the Thinkorswim platform you guys can see up here, personal, these are my watchlists, right? I have an active watchlist, banking stocks, Chinese stocks, dividend yields, ETFs, indexes and international ETFs, long-term growth dividend plays, long-term investments, market ETFs, REITs, tech stocks, wheat stocks, and this is simply where I keep stocks that I'm interested in investing in and I just take a look at them pretty much every single week, maybe a couple of times a month and when they're at lower prices, that's when I consider buying more into that position or starting a new position if I haven't already bought in. So that's what I do when it comes to creating watchlists on Thinkorswim and just tracking my potential stocks and current investments over time. So very quickly, let's take a look at this compound interest calculator so you guys can see how patience can help you so much in the span of decades here when it comes to investing in the stock market. So let's say you're starting out with $10,000, that's a nice whole number here. Let's say you start out with $10,000 and let's say every single year, you plan on adding $12,000 to that portfolio, we'll break that down to $1,000 monthly. So that's your goal. Let's say you wanna build a lot of wealth in the stock market. Let's say you wanna have dividends coming in monthly that will pay your expenses in the next couple of decades. This can be a goal for you to achieve based on adding $1,000 a month. So let's say $1,000 a month, years to grow, you have 40 years to grow this money. And let's say the interest rate is 8%, because if you take a look at the S&P 500 since 1957-ish up until 2018, the return has been about, I think like 7.96% to be exact, but we'll round that up to 8% and that'll see, you'll see it there as 8% here on the compound interest calculator. So let's see what the future value of this money is going to be. You're going to have half a million dollars by just adding in $1,000 every single month at an 8% return. And that's absolutely crazy, right? Very quickly, let's do an example. Let's say you started out with $100,000. Is that 100,000? Yes, it is. And let's say you're adding in $2,000 every single month. Let's say you have a job that pays you very well. Let's say you add $2,000 a month from let's say a $10,000 a month income, 40 years to grow at 8%, you guys can see that's going to be nearly $3 million. So that just goes to show how patience and compound interest and decades after decades of consistently investing will help you long term. So another misconception about the stock market that drives me absolutely crazy is that it is gambling, guys. Oh my God, the stock market is gambling, right?  That's probably better than investing in stocks, right? That's not true, guys, because when you're investing in a stock, you're investing in a company, right? And if you've picked out a company, you've done the research, you've picked a company that grows its revenues every year, that grows its profits, it has a good moat, right? The company's protected, it has a good brand, maybe a patent. These companies, they're going to continue to do well and the stock, as the company's earnings and profits increase, the stock is going to A, have more dividends. So if that stock is a dividend stock, you're going to be getting more dividends over time. And generally when the companies do good over time, the stock price also does well. So how is putting money into a company, into a strong company like Apple or let's say Google, Amazon, Microsoft, putting in money into these companies that generate money and growing money every single year, how is that gambling, right? You can turn a thousand bucks, if you put a thousand bucks into Amazon, as it was growing up to the beast that it is today, you would have done so well on your money and how is that gambling, right? So that is one of the misconceptions that gets me fired up, it gets me kind of mad as you guys can see, but it happens, right?  Another misconception about investing in the stock market is that you need to be Bill Gates, you need to be Warren Buffett, you need to have millions of dollars, you need to have a PhD in finance, you need to have a master's in finance, you need to have gone to college 15 times for finance. That's not true guys, anybody out there that has a hundred bucks, 50 bucks, 500 bucks, a thousand bucks, can invest in the stock market and with today's new platforms like Robinhood, M1 Finance, link down below, shameless plug, you can literally start investing with a hundred bucks, 50 bucks, 200 bucks because you can buy partial shares with M1 Finance and you don't have to pay commission when you buy and sell stocks with Robinhood or M1 Finance. So there's literally no excuse for anybody out there with a small amount of money to start investing and don't let all these people just make you believe that you need all this money to invest. You can literally start with a small amount of money, you can pick an ETF, a couple of stocks, usually index funds for people that don't wanna be too into it, right? And you can just slowly add more money and dollar cost average into these positions over time and you'll have a massive nest egg built in the next couple of years, just by simply getting over that rich, you have to be rich to start out, you can start out with a small amount of money and just grow it over time and you'll thank yourself. So those are just a couple of misconceptions about the stock market and the truth behind investing in the stock market that it's a slow, long process that can build you a huge amount of wealth over time. So if you enjoyed this video, guys, feel free to go down below and hit that like button. It really supports me and supports the channel in general. Consider subscribing if you wanna see more content for me. Hit that notification bell so you're notified every single time that I do make a video and drop a comment down below. Let me know what you guys thought about this one and let me know if you want me to make another stock market misconceptions video. So I'll catch you all in the next video. Thanks again for watching. I appreciate all you guys from the bottom of my heart. Peace out.


Welcome to the World Summit on the Information Society 2016. Since 2003, Geneva has been a leading player in this key conference on information and communication technology and development. Coordinated by the International Telecommunication Union and co-organized with UNDP, UNCTAD and UNESCO, it's one of the largest annual gatherings of its kind. It brings together experts from all over the world, experts who are committed to creating an information society for all. The ICT for Development Community is out in force. More than 1,800 delegates have come to Geneva to share best practice, exchange ideas and build partnerships. The big focus this year is how to harness the power of information and communication technology to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But we consider that the ICT is a enabler for all these 17 goals. I firmly believe without development of ICT technology and services, I think that 17 goals might not be achieved easily. The goals are ambitious to end poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change. And the clock is now running if the goals are to be achieved by the 2030 deadline. First with respect to what we have in front of ourselves, last year we established huge ambitions for what the world needs to deliver in the next 15 years. From now on it's all about the delivery. We have to move away from the actions or the descriptions of the ambitions, the aspirations to concrete actions. The WISIS Forum brings together the stakeholders from the private and public sector who can turn these goals and targets into action. One of the big issues is how to provide equitable and affordable access to ICTs to achieve a truly inclusive digital economy. And that includes women. In our work we see the power that trade has to empower women economically. Women who can now obtain better prices for selling internationally online. Women who can thrive in ICT and in providing digital services. Women who can now be financially included through electronic payment solutions. That's why in ICT we devote particular attention to women, micro, small and medium enterprises. At a national level countries are taking innovative approaches to promoting sustainable growth and development. The United Arab Emirates, the principal WISIS Forum 2016 sponsor has the ambition to become a global knowledge and innovation hub. The Abu Dhabi 2030 plan and Dubai Smart City emphasise heavily on the vital role of ICT in encouraging local and national development. As a new paradigm for modern cities, Dubai Smart City offers an innovative ICT driven approach to addressing challenges of modern organisation. ICTs are growing in importance in national development strategies. To reflect this, the WISIS community awarded prizes to 18 winners who found innovative and sustainable solutions to a more inclusive society. Today we heard a resounding commitment to put information and communication technology at the heart of global development. Ministers, heads of UN agencies, regulators, experts from academia, industry and civil society are all committed to harnessing the power of technology to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals. Tomorrow we'll look more specifically at how ICTs can accelerate some of these goals which aim to bridge the digital divide and promote inclusive and peaceful societies.


Okay, we're recording. Welcome to the banner bunch. This will actually be our last banner bunch of the year. We found that in July and August, not a lot of people come to this because not a lot of people on campus. So the next one will be next fall, in September probably in service around that time. This will be the last book this year. We've got a pretty cool topic this time. So standard format will be introductions of our team and then we'll be talking about banner 9 today. I'll try to give you guys as much information as I can right now and let you know where we're going with that. And then if we have any time, we'll have a open forum at the end. I may go a little bit longer than we have this time or we may do a lot of questions. So we have a new addition to the banner bunch. Dwayne Janks is our new programmer. Dwayne's a LBCC grad. He's got two degrees from here, which is a common threat on this team. And we got him from Polycom. So this is his fourth day here, so be kind to him. Don't make me cry. We also have Mark, Tyler, Teresa, Laurie, Carl. We still have Lena for two more days. She's going to Oregon Coast Community College next week. Katherine Williams, myself, I'm Gabriel, and Michael Coyner. So banner 9. Who here knows everything they need to know about banner 9? And that is what's going to be so much better. Who here has even seen it or you've just maybe just heard about it from us. Right now we're on banner 8, and we're up to speed with banner 8. We've actually caught up with all the updates. We're keeping ourselves up to date. We haven't heard on anything with banner 9, partly because not everything was available to us in the past, partly because it wasn't ready on the infrastructure and the things. But we're getting there. Banner 9 has been in development for a long time from the ocean. In fact, I think back when the sun guard is when they started making moves to banner 9 or making plans or starting development, it's been like six or seven years and it's gone through a bit of a history. In fact, they rebranded it at one time. They called it banner XB for a while. Now they've gone back to calling it banner 9, and hopefully it stays there. But the features have come a long way, and they've got a good vision for this. The big things that it delivers is a modern interface. Banner 8 has gotten stale while we've been building this. In fact, it was probably stale when it first came out. This interface will look nice. This interface can be used in any browser. It's not dependent on Java or Oracle Forms. It works on a computer or a tablet or a phone. It resizes the way that we expect technology to do nowadays. They've changed some of the navigation in IMB, but they haven't changed a whole lot more than the look and feel. And then in self-service, they've had a ton of functionality. So I'm going to go through IMB and then WebRider and show screenshots. You have to give me a grain of salt on the banner 9 screenshots. I got them from like sales materials, and I borrowed them from Alucian. Not all of them are perfect. Not a home of display on here, real nice. But I'll walk us through the core features I want you to see. Then at the very end of this, I'll give you a lot of information where you can learn anything and everything you want to know about Banner 9 on your own. So IMB, the administrative pages of Banner, that's where we do most of our work. It's the flip side of WebRider. It's the ugly screens that we've fought with issues with Java going away and having to get working with Firefox again and that sort of thing. They're going to start calling them administrative pages because they're going to start with what I thought I'd run into then. Alucian's delivered all the transformations, what they call a transformation, so they've taken all the banner forms. And without changing the functionality, they've built the user interface. They've built it into a web browser. So when you're used to going to Spade and Insign, it's gassed as far as all those still exist. All the functionality still works. You'll still do the same processes, but it will look different. The analogy I like to use is it's a lot like when Microsoft Office went from 2003 to 2007. If everyone remembers that, some of us are too young. We went from the top right or top left and then we built the ribbon. And when all of us started using that functionality, it was a bit shocking. It was a bit of a change. But after you used it for about a week or so, there's no way you'd go back. It was a change of the bound purpose and it was done well. That's how I like to think in Banner 9. So let's look at some of these. And I'm going to start with probably the most shocking change of all, our homepage when you log in. So right now, this is Banner 8. This is actually our product screen from last night. You've got the go-to menu where you type in Spade or P-Pade or Safari or whatnot. You've got some menus down below that I don't know if people use a whole lot, but they're available to navigate through all the different forms. That's most of the functionality that's on here. It will change to something that looks more like this. Obviously, we'll brand this a little bit differently. We'll have Limben Community College, maybe a nice picture of our game or something like that. But the big thing that's changed here is they've modeled it to look a little bit like Google, right? That big search bar right in the middle is your go-to button where you type in Spade or P-Pade. It still navigates the same way, but it works a whole lot differently. If you do use those menus, there's a menu button in the top left of the screen. It's a little hard to see on this screen because it's a little cramped, but you would click on that and it would expand out your menu options and you could navigate that way. For those of us that like to go to files, go to the forms we've been to in the past, that's the third little icon up there. It looks like a little folder with a number up there. Those are all the forms that I've been to. Then our user information's up in the upper right for sign-in. It actually behaves pretty much the same way. It just works a whole lot differently. It's got a little bit extra functionality that I really like in that the search bar actually acts like a search bar you'd expect on the internet nowadays. As you start typing, it's pretty much predicted text will start populating options below it. As you start typing in Spade and you hit S, a bunch of S forms will show up below it. As you continue typing, it will narrow down that list to what you're looking for. What's even more exciting about that is that pollution is moving away from speaking banner. Spade and it's far-edged and all of the acronyms we know and love that still exist, but you can also type in person and all the person points will show up. I think people that are coming new to banner will never even use the acronyms. They'll just know that. I want to go look up registrations. I'll start typing registration and what I'm looking for will show up in my results. Another thing to see here is it's really hard to see on this screen is the keyboard shortcuts in the bottom right. You can click on that and see all your shortcuts, the hotkeys, for those of us that use hotkeys. Most of them will stay the same, but a couple will change because now we're inside a web browser and F5 and an F in a browser moves refresh and they're not going to be able to rewrite that sort of functionality. So a couple of them will change with most of them the same, all of them are available right there. So a pretty big change on this screen. Here's P-Paidon. P-Paidon is very similar to P-Paidon or I think F-P-I-A-D.  These screens have been changed so that all that functionality still exists, but it looks different. It looks a lot cleaner. It'll display nicely in a web browser and as you shrink and expand or use a different sort of tablet, some of these features will react to that accordingly. You still put in your ID at the top. You still come down. All the tabs exist. There's a little bit more functionality along the blocks. There are things that you might expect intuitively with the web, these carrots by the names, like the little down arrows. If you click on it, this will expand and contract. You can also, all the icons across the top are gone. Those have been moved. Options are in this, this is a list of related forms so you'll be able to see that still, but most of them are underneath these settings or tools. A lot of those features we don't use a lot, or they do move to here, but pop these down and then it opens up and you have all your options available. For those of us that roll back a lot, there's now a start over button. That's the roll back for F10 or the save button. It's now down the bottom right. Let's look at a few other features. Here's a form of MBA P-Bud. Similar, you've got key block information at the top and then you've got your tabs and information. This one might be a little harder to see, but your key block is still at the top. Put all your information in and come into the form and then you have your tabs. You have your box information. I wanted to show that this one was actually resized a little bit so some of the words have appeared now next to the top right, so you can actually see what those are. I'm guessing the previous screenshot was off of a tablet and this one's off of a screen. There's also four forms that have lots of repeating information. Down on the bottom left, you can actually next block over to the next records. You can see how many records there are. You can skip to the end. Sort of things that we actually expect from a web page nowadays, but are new to banner. This one I think is probably the most exciting one of the changes to them, what you can feel. This is the registration history form so far. This form can get on wheeling really quick. You've got a lot of information on people that have been here a long time and you've got to scroll up and down and it's hard to keep track of things. What this will change to is something that looks more like a spreadsheet and I've actually had to expand this off the screen just to be able to show it so you can see it in the back, but it'll look and act like a spreadsheet does nowadays. You can reorder the columns all you want. You can sort it. You can filter in that tools menu in the top right. There'll be the ability to export Excel or CSV. It makes it a lot more usable. You've got a lot of information on the form. I've kind of gone through a few examples and I'd like to take a minute and I can go back or we can ask questions about solicits. I'd like to pause for a minute. I don't think I've hit on everything that's coming to banner, but what I really want you to take away from this is that it looks different, but the functionality that we're familiar with is still there. Everything that you know right now still applies and so picking this up real should be really quick. What's going to be really cool is getting familiar with some of the newer features like the ability to resource or export or how it really doesn't work. Does anybody have any questions on some of those before I dive into WebRunner? Can you tell them what you're expecting there tonight? Oh, we'll get into that. I'm sure that's one thing everyone's thinking. Can you actually fill out one of the forms for us and show us how to? I cannot yet. These are just screenshots from Ellucian documentation. Okay. Yeah, but we'll get into that. So someday he will show us how to move around in these forms. Absolutely. So WebRunner, I get the sense that they just rebuild the whole thing from around a self-service banner and as they're doing that, they're adding a lot of cool functionality. Things that we would expect that people will be able to view for themselves online. These are most of the areas that they're adding. They're adding profile pages where they take a whole lot of information that's spread out across WebRunner or even banner, condensing it into one page that makes a lot of sense. For advisors, the student profile's going to be huge because you'll be able to see pretty much any glance at everything about a student. You'll be able to add notes and that sort of thing. Registration's gotten completely overhauled and we'll look at that in a minute. Attendance tracking is a new feature that I think could be used if we use it on campus. The way grade entry is done is change direct deposit. I'm really thrilled on it. We actually have built our own direct deposit system. What they have built does everything ours does and more. So that's our baseline plan for that option. We're just going to move in and get it put in. We're going to roll over to banner nine and obviously our own home growth system. There's an employee profile and then a few other things that I don't have a whole lot of information on but I know that they're new functionality. There's a new purchasing thing for finance that allows you to request purchases through WebRunner. And then there's event management which may or may not make sense to compete with the MS on our campus. Probably one of the biggest things that I think we can take advantage of is communication management tool here. Banner eight had comp plans and you could write letters or do mail mortgages or send anything else but they're all pretty clunky and kind of used and they never look great. Communication management really levels up the ability to send out information from Banner automatically and directly to students. It's pretty slick. So I don't have one-to-one pictures of these because it doesn't even make sense anymore to show like the registration screen from our current WebRunner but this is the new registration screens. And you notice there's a lot of information on the screen but it's a lot more user friendly than the old one. The old one had just put in there's like five or six blocks putting your CRN figure it out. This one you can actually search for your classes in several ways. You'll notice that there's actually a button for plans. This will connect directly to degree works.  Down to the bottom right you can see the status of everything. Whether you're registered or wait listed you have options on what sort of actions you can do. You can get out and look at your tuition fees directly. And then on the bottom left is a more visual representation. We actually pay for a third party right now college schedulers to do that functionality around this. This may absolutely be for that third party to all say it's money. This is our class roster. So we went from class information and grading a home run systems of the faculty self-service about a year and a half ago. This is going to bring back some of the functionality that people lost when we did that and primarily the ability to export your roster out to a spreadsheet. That was one of the key features I heard from the class information and grading that people missed when we moved to the baseline. The ability to export this whole list to a CSV has come back. This is now the baseline functionality. Even though this is hard to read one of the things that thrills me in this screenshot is everybody can see that orange button right there. That means that person's confidential. It stands out. You can immediately see that person's confidential and that you want to be careful how we communicate with them. You can reorder your columns. You can re-sort things. You can email people more easily. I think that this is going to be a lot of walking around with current processors. This is a screenshot of your faculty grading screens. What I like in here is that you can actually see in the top all the classes that you have rather than having to go back and forth and then you just click within this and get to your other classes and put in more grids. In the top left of this it's kind of difficult. You can see in this screenshot, but these are progress bars. I can see how far I'm done grading this course. If I'm only grading a couple people that far this far, I'll only have a little bit of information in it. Once I'm done, it will fill out the degree. Again, you can re-sort. You can filter on this. On the right-hand side, you have information about that course that you can collapse down so we have more real estate for the grading. In the top right is the most exciting feature that I like. You can import grades from Excel. So if you've done all of your grading in Excel, as long as the Excel spreadsheet is formatted right, you just import that and it will all go right with banner. One of the key features they've built into this that you format it correctly is you can export your grade roster or grade sheet and then fill in all the grades and then import it back in. So it gives a lot more flexibility on how faculty would be grading. This is the attendance tracking screen. I think this is pretty user-friendly. I'd love to see this on a phone in front of a class and just give everybody a cheer. You can also see a little bit more functionality. You can have pictures for students. That's something we're interested in, having pictures of everybody, your ID pictures that we all have somewhere on a server. I'd love to get those in the banner and have this connected with your accounts. Other things that are in the attendance tracking screen, you can see more analytics like the attendance rates for people. If you're using the attendance tracking and you're on top of it, you can see if somebody's been missing half the classes right at a glance. There's also the ability to track the amount of time that we attended if you want to know that level of detail. I know we have some of those requirements around grants and that sort of thing. You can track this person who's here for 15 minutes and it'll store that information in the banner so we can go later. This one, I know the text is really small, but this is the direct deposit screen. I wanted to just show that you can add multiple accounts. You can divide up your deposits however you want, by monetary amounts, by percentages, by whatever's left over. You can have as many accounts as you want. It's almost identical what we've built here. Yeah. This is what we could use. I mean right now we use tutor tracking in the classrooms that students can scan and as we transition from check-in stations we're going to tutor track he asks. They could use that. They could use Moodle as attendance tracking in it. This is going to be the webrunner attendance tracking. So we've actually got several different ways to do attendance tracking at campus. I don't know if there's a best way yet. They're all pretty new. And then here's one of those profile pages. This is the employee profile. This takes pretty much everything in employee self-service and puts it on one page. That's pretty easy to use. Right at a glance I can see my vacation leave, my sick leave, right at the top there. I can see my pay information, my paystubs, my benefits, my taxes. It's all on one page now. Rather than having to go back and forth the menus and figure out where I'm at. This is pretty exciting. Another thing in the bottom right is something that we'll hopefully eventually get to where you can enter your time sheets in webrunner. Web time entry is something we definitely love to have. And there's probably things that may or may not make sense here because this is the standard, the illusian delivery for pretty much everybody. But the student profile looks similar to this. You have a picture. You have all the information selected in the workplace. And you can look at it and point out so you can get a lot more out of webrunner than you currently do. All right. Any questions back there on all of that functionality? You can go back and look at those screens or poke at them a little bit. Again, just screenshots. But I'm happy to answer any questions on that. I think there's a lot of functionality that we're going to get that's new. And in theory, it's all pretty intuitive. There's a lot less training in the self-service end. You know there's a lot new. All right. So I grabbed this slide directly out of illusian documentation as well. In their theory, this is how you roll out Banner-9 on a campus. I've deleted the dates that they put on this. It's completely unrealistic. We're actually about a third of the way through this right now. So at the very beginning of this is getting our infrastructure in place. Mark's been working really hard on ESM and single sign-on for Banner. We've been working very hard on removing a lot of modifications. Things will become roadblocks farther down this line. And then on our end, we've become a little bit more familiar with Banner-9. So where we're getting to is now into that blue-middle area where we need to stand up a sandbox but people can start poking at it. Start taking through how we're going to roll this out because we don't have to roll it all out once. We can do one piece at a time and have Banner-9 and Banner-8 sent inside my site. There's a lot of planning that's going to happen over the summer. So that is our current goal right now is just to get ESM, DIS wrapped up, get Banner-9 stood up in a sandbox and then plan out how we're going to roll this out for real. The big date that's actually real on this that's a hard deadline is the end time. We have to be on Banner-9 by December of 2018 which I think is pretty conservative right now. We've got about a year and a half. The reason for that is Ellucian's going to stop supporting Banner-8 the end of next year. Not just because they want to but because a lot of technologies are just disappearing. Oracle Forms are going to be de-supported. Java is already out of all browsers. It's going to become more and more difficult as time goes on to keep Banner-8 up and running alive. So getting to Banner-9 before then is a hard deadline. I think we're going to be on that before then. My goal is over the next year is to start rolling out either all of them together or piece by piece. We want to figure that out over the summer. One thing I can say is that if we do do it piece by piece the areas that have worked hardest on removing modifications and that new stuff from Banner are going to have the easiest transition. It'll be a long lines of when you want to go. Areas that still have a lot of modifications or that new stuff we're going to have to rebuild all that stuff from scratch. So moving those are going to take a lot longer. All right. So there's a ton of information out there that everybody has at their fingertips right now on Banner-9. And I'm starting to give the push for all of us to start and go out and learn, make a little bit of time and figure out what Banner-9 looks like and start developing questions on what is this going to mean to me. Out there on the Illusian Hub we encourage all of you to go out to e-communities and all of that. On the Illusian Hub there's a Banner-9 guide that you can request. And when you go into that you show you what it looks like. It's really cool. Let's see here. So everybody's familiar with the Illusian Hub? Does this need anybody? I love the Illusian Hub. It is awesome. Out there if you don't have this Banner-9 guide you can request it from the apps. And in the Banner-9 guide I've already got it up. It will tell you some of it's a little more technical on how to get there. Check out your modifications turn on single sign-on and get ready to go. What you're going to want to know is all this information. You can go look at all these available areas of functionality that call maps and start getting information on webinars, watching videos of how this is used at other schools, watch the presentations from Illusian Live this year at the conference that was in Orlando. Read the documentation. Everything we know about Banner-9 is in here. And I encourage you guys to explore it as well. To mention the webinars that are out there they record all their webinars. So if you miss a webinar you can always go back and watch it. We're going to start collaborating with a lot of our information that we learned onto the Band-Ox so it's going to be available there as well. But again the Illusian Hub is really where we're getting all that information from. And most importantly ask us. If you're curious about Banner-9 shoot us an email or catch us in the hallway come to Banner-Bunches. We're more than happy to share information and we're going to try to communicate as much as possible as these start coming. Especially when we start having deadlines on this is when student screens are going to change or this is when web runners are going to change we're going to have to communicate with everybody. I'm starting brains from different ideas on the ways we can do that. That'll start coming as someone moves on. Questions? I got to do that pretty quick. Is there any sorry, this isn't the voice is there anything that you need from end users I think probably the where we'll leave from you is when we actually get a sandbox up and running and you get your hands on it we'll need your feedback. We'll want to know what is easy what is difficult is we'll have to assess what do we need to invest more in training on or what is just intuitive and you might want to we'll learn that as we go. One thing I've heard from other schools that have actually started making a loop pattern nine is that there's almost no training support costs just disappear because it is so intuitive it's so easy to do this that you just get in there and start running. Students tend to love this and in fact once the students get their hands on the web runner and it's changed they'll start commanding things be changed. They'll start expecting why is it still under over here when it's pretty over here. That's true. That's that's the feedback we've heard from schools that have moved to better nine and have done the transition slowly to say pretty soon they can't move past you. Another question. And excuse me I'm sorry I didn't answer but thank you on such a long but with the new web runner is that new interface going to happen only after everyone's off of 89 when all of them are changed or disappointed to work independently with those students? We have the ability to be kind of granular how we move it out but we're going to have to figure out over the summer how how will we do that. Ellucian built the functionality to be able to move that granular because they didn't have everything built efforts but now that everything's been built they're starting to encourage people to just make the leap and do the whole change at once. It kind of depends we're going to plan that out over the summer and especially once we have our hands on it we have an instance we can stand up and see what it looks like side by side or see what it's if it's difficult to maintain both of them side by side but it may it may guide us a little bit. Some of that might be you guys as well maybe feedback give us feedback that you know I love Banner 9 here but now that I've got to go back to Banner 8 I'd rather you just pull off the banner even make it all at once. Just dive in. Other questions. It doesn't have to be about Banner 9 that's as good as it's time. What are the intentions of NWEUG? I'd love to mention NWEUG. Does everybody know what that is or has anybody heard of it? NWEUG the acronym it stands for Northwest Delucius User Screw. So in the Banner world there's conferences throughout the year and big ones, delucian lives that's East Coast, West Coast it's a global conference. There's 9,000 people who go to that. I encourage you to go to that but it's expensive. NWEUG is a regional version of that it's much smaller only a couple hundred people show up to those. The registration is a hundred bucks. We, the Inven Community College are hosting it this year. So what is the dates? August. August 7th and 8th. August 7th and 8th. They will be here on this campus. Currently we're requesting proposals to fill in session but there's already about four or 50 of them. We're trying to get as many people to register for that as possible. I know a lot of people are coming from Oregon State and from Washington and Idaho. It's going to be really neat. Last year it was up at Pacific and we really enjoyed it. So we're looking forward to it on this campus. I highly recommend everybody go to that. I'll be presenting on the baseline project. HR will be presenting on the Partnip faculty system that they've built and that we're going to transition into Banner line. Well, Ellucian will be there. Ellucian will be there and they're presenting about. Ellucian has about 13 sessions that they're presenting. They'll be presenting as well. And they'll have a ton of people here including their senior vice president in charge of technology. Right, John Kofke will be here. A lot of their mentors will be here as well. A hug booth. Lori's going to have a hug booth. Hello, hugs. I am. It's a revenue generator. Do we pay Lori for a hug? In addition to Ellucian, a lot of their vendors, their partners in here as well. So we're working on a runner technology here and e-visions and cash and act. And all the other companies, the third party companies that work with Ellucian, they'll have a presence as well. Questions? Making a assumption that with Banner 9, what screens you can get in. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. What I'm bought for eyes, to work in and see will be the same. Your access will stay the same. And with Banner 9, delete the Banner Q form. A new employee, is it still going to be the same Banner Q form that was sent to Lori? The access form? Yeah, that'll stay the same. So the form's not going to take place? Not yet. Probably, we'll move that to laser vision at some point. So that'll all stay the same. The access will stay the same. Some of the features might highlight fine-grained access a little bit more. I think there's one screenshot back here. We go way back. Let's see. I think on this one, you can notice that some of these fields are dark and then some of them are grayed out a little bit, but you can still see the information in them. That's because you have access to change these ones, but these ones you just have query access to. So there's some granularity of control that we currently have, but it's much more better displayed in Banner 9. Other questions? Everyone's excited about Banner 9? Is the feedback good? Thumbs up, thumbs down. It looks good. Like we've done on a couple of projects now, we're going to try to manage changes as much as possible. That's my level of focus, is making sure that nothing is a surprise. We don't pull the rug out from anybody, and everybody, if they need training, gets the training they need, we're going to have to communicate a little bit more broadly than the folks in the history of this time. We're going to have to communicate with faculty a lot more on this change. We're going to have to communicate with our students at a level that we haven't done in the past. So it's going to be a bigger challenge for us, communication-wise, but I'm very confident we can hit that, especially since we've been mindful of it ahead of time. We're also watching other institutions in the neighborhood because every Banner institution in the world is making its leap right now. Oregon State is making it. I think Lane Community College is a little ahead of us. Chemectos, Longside of us, COCC is doing the same thing. There's 2,400 Banner schools in the world doing this right now. So there's a lot of support out there in the community as well. Do you have any of the Banner 9 screenshots for creating courses instead of SSA, SCT, and Banner 8? I don't know if I have a very specific shot of that. I can look for one or I can request one. Can you move this in? That would be cool. But it's still going to be Sausect. Yeah. Of course, of course you depend on where you're doing your work and it's still going to be the same information close to the same layout, but it's going to have that same kind of... The nicer look to it and the ability to class and filter. And that's right. There is like, I mean, I'm really excited about Banner 9. And Dave did say you won't need much training, but there will be some questions. And you buy a new car, you already know how to drive, but you still want to know where's the spare tire and how do I adjust the seat and where's the hood release? Because they might be in different places and that's going to be exactly the same thing. So we're going to have to sit with you and say, so looking at this, do you think you can do everything you want to do? And if not, then let's figure out how that will now work. I want to have a really good answer for everyone as I come out of the top of the screen. How do I do... If I press this button in Banner 8, where do I do that Banner 8? Right. That's one of my few goals. We can show that that's... If a hockey has changed, what does it change to? And they're sure it'll be your cover. Right. But your job and the knowledge you have and how to do it will change. You still know how to drive. It's just maybe how to adjust the gears. Yep. That's a great analogy. My thank you. Also under the hood, it's a lot like going from a fast... Banner 8 is the old diesel engine. And Banner 9 is the Tesla, the new hottest electric engine, and less than 100 group of cars. And in a very, very much... Quick. I think we should go with his full analogy. Yeah. Of course. I like it. I like it. I like it. I like it. I like it. I like it. Yeah. If you're probably updating Java or your computer, so you can write Oracle Forms, that goes well. Yeah. Yeah. Because Oracle Forms is very good. Oracle is going to be support with Oracle Forms sometimes in the next 12 years. Yeah. So we want to use it. Which is why they're pushing us to go with Banner 9. Banner 9 is not reliant on the Java runtime environment anymore. It's actually going to be running in your web browser. Like it used to be. But it's not a plug-in. It's actually using the web technologies built into your web browser to give you already information. Right. So on the backside, it's written in Java. Whereas Oracle Forms right now are written in PLSGL. So Oracle Forms is going away. Now everything's going to be in the web browser. It's not going to be. And you can use Chrome to use Firefox. Edge. Edge is a big one. Edge is a great one. I like it. Internet Explorer if you are so good. Internet Explorer is going to have less and less of a reason to use it around on this campus. Yeah. Never get it wrong. Okay. That's key to having it here. So I just heard. Does that still exist? I don't think so. It belongs on our board with the rotary phone. Oh, that's the other one. I think you probably told me that years ago. And there's a ton of work that we're doing on the back of our users and everything I see connected with others. If you notice anything, it's just a few barriers in terms of your... Mark's doing a ton of work and has been for more than a year. Long and rare case. I don't even think about it. A lot of that has to come with the fact we're actually building an entirely new system from scratch and consists of seven different servers. And we're about, well, out of the 80 extracts we're on step 51. So we're about two-thirds of the way through it. Three, four of the machines are actually built and done very well. Yeah. So if we're doing our job right, you won't notice a thing on all that work. Yeah. And we're doing that concurrently with starting up a test single sign-on system, which I was actually able to turn on just yesterday. Yeah. We're going to have to have a session on that. On single sign-on, we'll have to finish about how that's going to change things. Does everybody know what single sign-on means? Yeah. Then you sign it in once and then everything else just works. Just switch to that. I find things go up. That was really nice. That was huge. We have a requirement on the banner end for single sign-on. So it'll work within the banner world at a minimum, but we'd love to start connecting up to the rule or Gmail or other systems that we have on campus so that we have less and less credentials to keep track of. Yeah. I think as of April, 2016, all new machines were basically just a dose of everything that's cloud-based or server-based. Yeah. They were really just using a screen interface. Where was that at? At Larimer family in Colorado. Oh, yeah. Virtualizing everything. Yeah. It felt a little weird in the courts, you know, for the new users, they were just kind of afraid to go out and just go find their copy or whatever it was and just spend that year to go. So young technology-based education, they were just ready to go. It felt a little awkward for them. I think that's going to be a common thread through this, that all of us have to go through the change, but the new people coming to our system, the training of banishing a lot less. You're not going to have to memorize what the so far rigs means. You're just going to know, I go to the registration screen and I do registration stuff. It's going to be a lot more intuitive. Other questions, comments? All right, guys. Well, thank you for joining us. We'll keep in touch over the summer and next fall, we'll just start seeing a lot of us. Not me. I don't work in the other area. I don't work in the other area.


On July 17, 2009, Nickelodeon organized an event on their cable channel, known as the Ultimate SpongeBob SpongeBash Marathon. The marathon was conducted approximately 10 years after the airing of the first SpongeBob episode, as it was meant to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the series. At the time, there were 14 brand new episodes, along with 20 reruns that ran for around two days. Not only that, but even during Nickette Night Hours, episodes of SpongeBob would continue to air until July 19, when the final premiere was shown. However, at the time this marathon had begun, witnesses began to notice various bugs and screen issues with the channel. Viewers, from kids and adults alike, would rewind and record certain bugs that occurred, such as the paper, suddenly switching to the next episode halfway through its screen time, and help wanted suddenly skipping two minutes forward, after the scene introducing SpongeBob himself was shown. These were assumed to be technical glitches, as one of the occurrences resulted in an on-screen graphic being placed on the screen. The graphic read, Something has gone wrong, and we are trying to fix it. We will be back to normal as soon as we can. Sorry. These bugs would only last three hours after the marathon started. They would suddenly stop after the third hour, and quality would resume back to normal for the next 21 hours. The next day came. Nickette Night's programming would switch to Nickelodeon for the day, leaving one more day for the marathon to be finished. Over time, viewers would make out very strange, almost frightening occurrences during the second day. These occurrences would come by every three to four episodes, as if it were a specific pattern set up by someone before they had aired. The first instance of this happening was cited during the episode, to square pants or not to square pants. On a specific frame showing SpongeBob's face, the screen would freeze, and complete silence could be heard for at least 11 seconds. After that time was over, the frame would immediately cut to a heavily edited version. The outcome was disturbing. SpongeBob's facial expression was swapped to a threateningly angry, out-of-character grin for him. His pupils were constricted, replaced with small dots completely devoid of iris color. His mouth was naturally wide, and his teeth were tightly clenched. Lastly, his eyes were pinkened and inflamed, with black bags forming around his lower eyelids. A distorted rumbling noise could be heard as the edited image was shown. These edited images would be shown, only for one and a half seconds before resuming back to the episode. These happenings continued at least six more times. Examples of SpongeBob would turn to social media or online fan forums after seeing them, with most of them talking about contacting Nickelodeon somehow, and explaining what exactly was happening with Proof. Most of the people who investigated did this via email, while others went out of their way to contact corporate. As mentioned before, six of these incidents would occur, and during the final episode airing, the same incident would occur one more time. So this time, instead of switching back to the episode that was currently showing, the screen cut to a plain white background. After a short moment, a transparent image of the Doodlebot from the show's logo faded in at the bottom of the screen. In a slideshow type format, text would appear on screen, showcasing insulting and degrading messages that were seemingly unproofread, theorized to be targeting the Nickelodeon staff. The transcript read as follows. You are also goddamn negative all the time, day after day, hour after hour, you're always upset, expecting better.  I'm ashamed to even be in the same room, no. The same planet as you are.   Thuck all of you. Thuck it all.  I'm done.   Recounts of the incident told that the sounds consisted of a middle-aged man grunting and groaning, with glass shattering and assorted objects being smashed near the microphone. This would last for around 20 seconds, before cutting to the same on-screen graphic mentioned previously.  It was speculated that he planned to quit working for Nick, but wanted to show the viewers how he felt. Ramsey was restrained in the Nickelodeon corporate office, and arrested on July 19, 2009. He was soon charged with computer tampering, sentenced to four years of probation, and fined $2,000 for the signal intrusions.


To talk story with John Wahee, as we continue our discussion of the times that we live in, which is obviously all of us trying to get past this coronavirus situation, and so today we have a chance to continue that. Where are we at this part, at this time of the pandemic? And we are very fortunate this afternoon to have the mayor of the city and county with us to talk to us a little bit about what's happening here in Hawaii and elsewhere regarding the response to the coronavirus. And as we know, his hands have been full for the past month or so dealing with these issues on a daily basis. So I'd like to welcome at this time the mayor of the city and county of Honolulu, Kurt Codwell. Kurt, thank you so much for agreeing to be with us. And by the way, great Palakka mask. Thank you, Governor. I'm taking it off now. I'm practicing good social distancing. I'm here with just one other person in the room, but I want to say mahalo for all you do on Think Tech and doing this broadcast. I thought you were using that, you were using that Palakka mask just to make me jealous. Well, that's part of you know what I'm saying, by the way, shaka for the Palakka, right? When I see it, we shaka, yeah. That's right. Well, the best Palakka shirts anyone I know. Well, Mr. Mayor, you know, how goes it? I mean, what's your, well, you know, I think a lot of people out there hear you making announcements and doing what is necessary to protect all of us. And we appreciate it, by the way. And I want to start off by saying that we appreciate what you're doing. We appreciate all the work that the people that are with you on the front lines are doing to make us all safe, you know. And so I thought I just, what's happening? Where are we at the moment? Well, when I want to shout out to everyone on the island of Oahu and particularly and even the state of Hawaii for all that they've done, you know, the governor and the mayors have issued orders, you know, we shut down restaurants, bars and nightclubs first, very early in this. And then we did the state home, work at home order. Others implemented their own orders. And I think all of us working together have made a difference. As you see today, today for the first time, Oahu had zero new cases. Well, that doesn't mean the virus is an out there, but that's a good sign. That's a good sign. Is it? I mean, it is. And the credit goes to the people of Oahu who have followed these different orders, practiced good social distancing. I was just out for a little bit this afternoon and I saw masks on almost everybody. That's the kind of new normal we're going to be living with governor for a long time to come because the virus is still among us. It just means maybe it's not spreading as quickly. So we flattened the curve. Remember, we saw this curve coming up, right? We pounded it down and it's, you know, on Oahu, it's four, five, six, seven cases, four cases, three cases, four cases, three cases, two now zero. Doesn't mean tomorrow we won't have some additional ones. But it does say that we're flattening that curve through all of our hard practice, but if we're not careful, give you hope, though, doesn't it? I mean, that's good news. And I'm glad the people who are hearing it today, you know, can take some comfort in the fact that the sacrifices that you and people of Oahu have made are starting to pay off. You know, you think about the sacrifices that have been made. I mean, you got the social distancing challenges, but the impact on people's lives and on the economy is something like we haven't seen in 100 years, probably, since the Great Depression. And, you know, I think of everyone out there, what they've done in the sacrifices that they made to get to this point. And I hate to see it go the other way. So we've got to keep practicing this good social distancing. We have to continue to make sure that that, you know, we don't let this virus come back. And so it's really critical that we keep practicing the orders that we put in place. Well, it seems that you have your hands full with the county. Now, what's the, what's it like interfacing with the state? I mean, what's the what's the order of collaboration? I mean, you work with the health department, the governor's office. How does all of this fit together? You know, we talk to everybody today. I've talked to the governor twice, once before noon and once, maybe around one o'clock. So I'm talking to the governor on a regular basis on various issues. The conversation this afternoon was about how do we open up? You know, what is the science? What are the triggers to doing this? What are the triggers? One, I think we've got to make sure that as we go forward, we make that there's enough ICU rooms, there's enough ventilators, there's enough health care personnel out there to handle the virus at any given level. And also seeing that the numbers remain low for a period of time. You know, a good number would be 14, 15 days. It stays low or maybe even zero. You know, the island of Coyt now is saying, I think they're going into their fifth day of zero cases. Seeing it stay low or staying at zero is a way to say we can start to open up, but very carefully. So as we start to open up, you need to have the science behind it. How do you measure where the virus is? And you can't see it. So you've got to go out and test this. Is that our way of sending out scouts? Where is this virus hiding? You can't see it. You got to find where it is. And then you got to measure it. And so very aggressive testing, as you saw the University of Hawaii this weekend, an issue to report saying exactly that.  But going out and testing people. Mr. Mayor, do we have enough test kits and do we have enough equipment to do what's necessary? I think we're getting more. I think we're getting to the point where you can acquire more test kits. They may not be all FDA approved gold staff. They could be approved under their emergency authorization or they could be following the FDA guidelines, which other jurisdictions are using. And this jurisdiction is in fact using the other parties, not just the testing, you need the PPE. And so we are what the PPD. What's what PPE, personal protection equipment, PPE. You got the triple P, private partnership. You got the PPE. That's the that's the John Henry Felix favorite. He goes all around now telling everybody for public, private partnership, private partnership. Yeah. But this is the, you know, it's the surgical mask. It's the the the visor. It's the the the garb garment that you wear is the gloves that you have. So those, if you go up to Queens Hospital, you see everyone wearing PPE. Our first responders, particularly EMS, when they get called to go and take care of someone who they think may have COVID-19, they put on the PPE firefighters. When they go at the EMS, do the same. And of course, police officers, if they're dealing with someone who they think could be a suspect for COVID-19, they would put on PPE. We need sufficient quantities of that to do the testing. And so the city of County of Honolulu is looking to acquire that PPE and looking to acquire tests so it could more actively and aggressively go out and test folks. And when you find positives, we immediately put them into a place where they can be protected and kept safe. Some use the word isolation. I don't like that term. I think of somewhere where they can be cocooned and taken care of. And then we do contact tracing. We asked that person, who else did you come into contact with? Where do you work? Where do you live? And we go and talk to those people and say, how did you interact with this person? And if they're showing signs, they get tested too. And this is how you keep that curve lower as we open up. Is there any hope you think that we might have a universal testing where anyone who wants it can just go in and get a test? Just if nothing else to feel secure about their health? No, long term, that would be something I'd like to see. Right now, as you mentioned, the number of test kits are limited and so you don't want to right now open it up to everyone, whether you have symptoms or not. But let's say, you know, a month from now, as more and more supplies come on hand, more and more companies are creating these kits that perhaps you would test everyone just to give them a peace of mind or more importantly, testing every single first responder, whether they showed symptoms or not. And when I say first responder, it's not just police, fire and EMS. It's those who are in the hospitals in the healthcare system, those taking care of our seniors and even our park folks. You know, there are park first people who are in cleaning restrooms that are all open now for a homeless population, but they're concerned about contacting the virus as they go into unsanitary situations. So they could be tested too. But yes, if we have enough supplies and we're not taking it away from those who really need to be tested, I think testing everyone is something that would be helpful to know where the virus is and where it isn't. And even if it comes back, you test because you may not yet have the symptoms. You could even retest. This is the swab we're talking about.  And so as we get more of those RNA tests, these are like the Abbott laboratory test, which is not offered to many yet will be. That's another way to test for the antibody to find out did you have it and are you now no longer carrying the symptoms of symptoms of it?  And that's why we get the vaccine to put the antibodies into us. You know, Mr. Mayor, I can't help but think that if there's such a need, I get called every so often from people who are saying, you know, we got these, we got tests and we got masks and we got this and we got any. Is there like a central place where people who think that they can provide any of this could go and call and, you know, find out whether what they have is actually something that is needed.  And the country, you know, from China, from South Korea, from East Coast, West Coast, from Europe. And we do have someone designated the sitting counting for Lulu, who takes those calls of an offer of assistance and they funnel and look through it to make sure that if they're if we're buying PPE that is appropriate and approved by the FDA and that is prices reasonable. You know, some people say we've got great, great things for you and they actually are pretty good. But the cost is three times what you can acquire at anywhere else. And why do human beings do that? Why do they? Well, maybe these people aren't doing that. But why do people always seem to gorge when there is making money?  And so people are always looking to make money. And unfortunately, someone to make more money than others. And so we want to be careful with everybody out of, you know, I don't think that anybody should. Well, I don't know. Maybe there is somebody out there who's willing to to give it to the people of Honolulu. I hope I hope so.  And it's they're acquiring masks, millions of them, and they're giving them for free. They're not purchasing, they're paying for them. And they're good quality masks. They're they're face coverings. They're not surgical masks. They're not in 95 masks that we leave for our first responders. But there's an example of people who stepped up, particularly the millennials in this case, his sons and with a couple of others, Nicole Velasco, Zach Noyles, and they've come together and put together and they're acquiring these masks and flying them in and then handing them out for free all over the island. Well, thanks. Thanks for the shout out because I think people like that we ought to do something. I mean, we ought to radically acknowledge maybe having them acknowledged by your office or the governor's office for contributing. When we get back and we need to take a one minute break, when we get back, is there would be possible to get the number of the person name and number of the person that someone who thinks that they can help should be calling in your office? Yes. All right, we'll be right back. Aloha, I'm Kisha King, host of Crossroads and Learning on Think Tech, Hawaii. On Crossroads and Learning, our guests and I discuss all aspects of education here in Hawaii and throughout the country. You can join us for stimulating conversations to enrich and liven and educate. We are streamed live on Think Tech biweekly at four p.m. on Mondays. Thanks so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. Aloha. Welcome back to think talk story with John White here on Think Tech, Hawaii and our guest this afternoon is none other than the mayor of the city and county of Honolulu, Kurt Conwell. And Kurt, we were just ending the conversation and you actually was were doing a shout out to the Carisos, the Duane and his sons who have been stepped up and I'm and providing mask free to anybody that wants them. And and also I'm sure there are other people like that in the in the city and county of Honolulu and some day we ought to acknowledge these heroes in a public way, you know, just I couldn't think about that while we were on break. It would be really nice. There's a lot of people when we get through this, there's a whole bunch of people we need to acknowledge, you know, these unsung heroes who stepped up in ways we'll not know, unless we honor them. And I do think at some point, Governor, that should occur to tell these stories about who we are as a people. And there's some very heroic stories out there. You know, the idea of community of not letting any of this actually divide us but bring us together. I think, you know, Hawaii is very fortunate that we have a sense of community to start with. And we at least to me doesn't seem like we are letting this particular challenge tear that apart. And I think, Mr. Mayor, you ought to be very proud of your city in that regard. But I'm proud of the Oahu and I'm proud of the people of Hawaii. I mean, we really have stepped up together. There's some little bit, you know, Pelikia here and there, but we're humans. But for the most part, I think as a state, as a people, as an island community, we've really come together and helped each other out. And, you know, there's a lot of sadness here, but there's some great pride to see the kind of things that people have done. And, you know, you as the former governor of the state, I know you must feel great pride. I do. And especially when I see all of our government workers, you know, people who we we take for granted and and seeing them just continuing to do what's necessary so that the rest of us can be safe. I mean, look at the governor. I wanted to you talked about the mask. I didn't want to offer two things. If you go to the website, www. Every one number one and E Hawaii.com. So W W W dot every one, the number one and E Hawaii.com. And you can order a mask if you have if you if you have a way to get on to the internet. If you have mass that you want to to offer for free, even if it's one box, or if you have people who you think are going to provide cell masks, I think the best way to do it is call 768 city. It's our hotline number. We have people there all the time. So if you call, you'll get a call. You'll get someone picking up. It won't be a recording. And then we'll ask someone over there when they get the calls for your your your this broadcast will make sure they get in touch with the person over at EMS who handles this, but we don't want to flood their phone, their personal phone with all kinds of calls. Again, the number is the number is 768 city 768 city 768 city. That's your hotline, your normal hotline. Call your normal hotline. And we can do some of that.  Unfortunately, doing this crisis. Yes, wearing mask, which I think is a good thing. You know, I guess we hope that they they're seeing that.  But you know, and then we earlier talked about the fact that if people have things to donate, things to sell, they think that can be used. You actually have a number that they can call. Would it be the same number? City should call 768 city and say we have something to sell or offer for free. And then we'll get them in touch with the person at the city who's handling that. But we don't want to give their person their number because they're not there to answer every call that comes in. They kind of analyze and look at what's needed. They know what the supply and demand is for PPE for our first responders and others. But they'll help screen it. And if it looks good, they'll follow up with a call. That's fantastic.  So jealous, you know, it's like, why does he I said good. But anyway, you know what's happening in the country right now, though, as Hawaii seems to be moving along pretty well, doing this this crisis, the rest of the country are parts of the country are talking about, you know, live saving people's lives are not as important as restarting the economy and the like. So they are actually trying to accelerate the return back to something less than what we have now. What any thoughts about? Well, first of all, any thoughts, any reaction to what they're doing. And then your own thoughts about how we should structure possibly our return to some degree of normalcy. So one thing is very, very, very disappointing and and downright disturbing that we see these kind of protests in front of, you know, state capitals, including ours yesterday, by people who are the one very ones were trying to protect, you know, their folks sometimes. And, you know, this is about all of us. And we need to act responsibly, responsibly everybody. And so you have this small minority who now want to accelerate and opening up. And if this occurs, if we rip the mandate off, and we go back to where we were before, we will see a spike like we saw in New York, or New Jersey, or Italy, or France, or Spain, and then people are going to die. And they're going to be in the hospital. There won't be enough ventilators they'll be put in the hallway and doctors will be determining who lives and who dies.  At this point, let's start to open up but in a methodical way based on science, one step at a time. Go out there, open up a little bit, test aggressively, contact trace, isolate, see what happens if the cases remain low, open up a little bit more. Do the same thing again. You know, test aggressively, contact trace and isolate. If there's a spike stop, maybe retreat a bit, get things under control, then move forward. This way we'll be opened up in the long run to have more healthy condition again. Then these folks who say let's just go all out today and see another spike and then we have to roll back to day one from the beginning. What's amazing is that it's being funded by these billionaire types or very rich, right wing people who actually are not at risk themselves except their ability to make money. You know, like in I think that's true. I heard in Michigan, it was the voice family who actually started things like like Emily that are, which is a good line of products. But Emily, which are now sponsoring some of this protest. And I think one of the family members is in the Trump administration, in fact. Wow. So unfortunately, it's a divorce. But they are underscoring and I obviously you and I both don't agree with these actions at all. But they are underscoring the fact that when we get back to some idea of normalcy, when we have protect our people's health to the point where we can start thinking about, you know, going back to work, so to speak, that there's going to be a need to restart our economy, especially our travel economy. And I was just and this may not be a fair question at the moment, but knowing you, I know that you are already thinking about how we may be able to do that, you know, what needs to what we might be able to do to do that in an orderly way. And if you don't mind and can't share with us some of these thoughts, I think we'd appreciate it. We know if you if you look at the rankings of Hawaii compared to other state in the nation, we rank at the very bottom now in terms of the number of cases per capita, the number of deaths per capita. And so we are considered one of the most healthy states in terms of COVID-19 with the fewest number of cases. And a lot of that is because of our of our geography. We talk about physical distancing, you can't throw that better than in Hawaii, not any removal from the rest of the continental United States, but also the islands are separate from each other. And so that's really helped along with all the different practicing that our residents have shown under our state home and work at home orders. So we have a very good result. The nation is noticing it. And I think as people want to start traveling, they're going to say, I want to go to somewhere where it's safe and healthy and healthy. And they got it under control. And that is Hawaii. So we want to come. So in one way, we have an advantage when travel starts again now that the thing we got to address is people start to come when people travel, the virus travels. And so we have to make sure that as people start to come back to Hawaii, that they're not bringing the virus here. And I think there is hope on the horizon. And that is the antibody test, the RNA test, that could you it's a rapid test. You get it back in 15 minutes. And perhaps you could require people before they come to Hawaii, before they get on the plane. They take the test. And if they are clean, they can come. If they're not, they can't come. In fact, I think the federal government should get a card that says whether someone has the antibodies or not. And you can travel based on that. It's kind of like having a passport. It's like a health port in a way that they say you're OK. You can travel. So that was one thing that we've discussed. Well, I think you just made the slogan for the tourism industry. You say, come to the healthiest state in the nation. Come to where you can freely do everything that you want to do on a vacation. That's a great thought. And pre-testing people coming over might be a really good idea. Now, there's another one. If you saw on the Honolulu Star advertiser last week, Thursday, they have a section on Japan every week. And a picture in it was a half a page picture of Norita Airport. You'll recognize it as you come down the escalators and you go through customs. And there's all these Japanese folks sleeping on beds, cardboard kind of beds with a blanket. And what they do is everyone coming through Norita has to be tested. Now, this is a PRC test. So it's the swab test. They get it back in 48 hours. So everyone quarantines in this area until the test comes back. And if it tests negative, they're allowed to enter Japan and go to other cities. If it tests positive, then they're quarantined and taken care of. So that's another way. Now, this is the existing technique. The science of swab is pretty good. And you can get the results back quicker and quicker. But that's another way. So people could come to Hawaii, but they'd have to agree to quarantine until their results are shown. And then they can go about and travel throughout Hawaii. Now that's a little more ornerous because you've got to quarantine for some period of time. But once they clear that quarantine, they're free to go into the rest of the islands. So that's another way to look at it and try to open up for tourism. We want to thank you, Mr. Mayor, for joining us this afternoon and taking time out of your very busy schedule. And I personally want to join a lot of people in thanking you for all that you do doing this time and just in general. And to acknowledge once again the Duane Carisos of the world and others who are giving of their resources to help us all through this. And Mr. Mayor, who knows? You might have come up with the idea to rescue our travel industry. Well, join us folks. It's not my ideas. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. Thank you, Governor. We'll talk again. Mahalo. Thanks for all you do. Mahalo.


Protecting nuclear material from terrorists and criminal groups is on the global agenda this week, with over 130 countries coming together to strengthen their nuclear security commitments. We live in a world where nuclear activities are growing in a very sustained way. This is also a magnet for groups with malicious intentions that see in this material a possibility to create panic. The International Atomic Energy Agency is hosting the conference on nuclear security called ICONS for countries to discuss the best ways to secure nuclear and radioactive materials. Nuclear science has benefits in medicine, energy, the environment and more, but to unlock these benefits nuclear and other radioactive material needs to be protected. Topics at the conference include illicit trafficking, nuclear forensics, insider threats and cyber security among others. Nuclear security is a national responsibility but the IAEA provides a global platform for international cooperation. The agency also offers a range of direct support to countries on request. The IAEA is the best platform to share experiences and knowledge for the member states and to help to build international cooperation.