Joacim Eriksson made 27 saves and the Utica penalty kill came up big again as the Comets hung on to defeat the Binghamton Senators 3-2 Wednesday in an American Hockey League game at Floyd L. Maines Veterans Memorial Arena.
It was the fourth consecutive victory for the Comets, 6-1-1-0 in the young season and in first place in the North Division.
Carter Bancks
Carter Bancks
and defensemen Peter Andersson
Peter Andersson
and Bobby Sanguinetti
Bobby Sanguinetti
scored for the Comets, with Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Chris Wideman getting the goals for the Senators, who dropped to 2-4-2-0.
Once again, the game came down to the Comets’ ability to kill penalties. They stopped all four Binghamton power plays, all after taking that 3-2 lead, including one in the last 97 seconds of the game, when Brandon DeFazio was called for high-sticking. Eriksson, with Wacey Hamilton, Bancks, Alex Biega and Andersson in front of him, had to hold up against a 6-on-4 over the last 58 seconds after Binghamton pulled goalie Andrew Hammond.
The Comets have killed 30 of 31 penalties this season, 97 percent and tops in the AHL.
Utica got off to a quick start on Bancks’ goal midway through the first period, but the Senators pulled even on Pageau’s score a little over a minute later. Andersson, who had scored three goals in 107 previous AHL games, then put the Comets ahead at 3:22 of the second period. Sanguinetti, set up by Cal O’Reilly, made it 3-1 at 7:42, but Wideman scored 39 seconds later, and it was a nailbiter the rest of the way.
Senators will visit the Utica Memorial Auditorium on Friday, and the Comets go to Glens Falls to play the Adirondack Flames on Saturday.
Leave it to Apple to stir the pot. Usually it’s because of an outrageously great technology, or for us in the supply chain business about how well they handle their own supply chain. This time it’s about a payment scheme that involves technology in their newest devices. OK, so maybe it really isn’t Apple making waves, but it’s still falling on the company as the trigger to the debacle.
The basis of this story is that Apple’s implementation of NFC (near field communication) in its iPhone6 line is gaining immediate traction where earlier attempts by Google and others have floundered. So the technology isn’t really something new, it’s just that Apple has the clout to get its army of fans enthused about its un-plastic credit card. This at a time when there is significant activity in the payment processing world to buck the established credit card industry. A consortium of retailers are just about to launch a new payment processing scheme that accepts payments from customers via mobile devices but without any ‘fancy’ chips… Oh, and also without any fancy credit card processing fees.
horizon sea unsettled
sun dives with mettle
fighting storm to hilt
Trying, failing, wailing
humanity’s shameful guilt
orange blood, despair, dismay
on a drowning, desperate day
This is a companion to all the Florida rail issues we write. Great to know about the streetcars of Florida too.
Overview
In the late 1800s, a new method to power streetcars ushered Florida’s First Coast cities into the modern era. Earlier travelers moved around town on hay burners, but after the very first electric-powered trolley cruised up Jacksonville’s Main Street in 1893, railways cropped up throughout the region. When the new railroad terminal opened in 1919, it handled millions of passengers, becoming the hub of the streetcar system and the largest railroad station in the South. With almost sixty miles of track, the Jacksonville Traction Company was the largest streetcar system in Florida. Award-winning author and historian Robert W. Mann chronicles the story behind Florida’s bygone streetcar epoch and the dramatic history of city builders, financiers, organized labor, civil rights, fire, fever, nabobs and railway men.
Robert Mann is a co-publisher of metrojacksonville.com, which is partnered with Jacksonville’s channel 4, and a semi-retired transportation consultant who grew up in Jacksonville’s historic Ortega neighborhood. He is co-author of “Reclaiming Jacksonville.” Bob owned his own small trucking business in Los Angeles and then launched his local transportation career at Jacksonville International Airport with Piedmont Airlines.Glorious is a well-known motivational speaker and former professor. Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in music education from Jacksonville University and has two master’s degrees, one from Nova University in school administration and supervision, and the other from Columbia University’s Teachers’ College in educational administration/organizational leadership. She works as a mental health therapist with her certification in psychology from Edward Waters College.
Miami-Dade and Brevard county commissioners are scheduled to vote this morning on policy changes that will help All Aboard Florida pursue a portion of the $1.75 billion in tax-exempt bonds it hopes will pay for the construction of its Miami to Orlando passenger rail service.
The change in Brevard County was still being negotiated late last week between county officials and the Florida Development Finance Corporation, according to emails included with the agenda item. Sticking points included how many years All Aboard Florida will pay for crossing maintenance and whether the corporation will share its fee for acting as the conduit issuer of the bonds.
A Friday memo from Brevard County Attorney Scott Knox says the corporation is willing to pay $100,000 to the county, and assume maintenance of the county’s crossings for seven years. Brevard was seeking a 10-year reprieve.
Today’s votes will pave the way for All Aboard Florida to move forward with its $2.5 billion project. Brevard must increase a $7.5 million cap it has on allowing the corporation to issue bonds for capital projects. The proposal would increase that to no more than $375 million. Miami-Dade must increase its cap to $325 million.
Brevard’s agreement also “removes any All Aboard Florida responsibility to pay for the costs of quiet zones if federal funding is not available.”
Controversial crossing agreements that All Aboard Florida has been pushing since late December could also be part of Brevard’s deal. The agreements would add All Aboard Florida as a third-party beneficiary to the agreements between municipalities and the Florida East Coast Railway.
All Aboard Florida is seeking funding through private activity bonds to supplement or replace the $1.6 billion Federal Railroad Administration loan it had previously applied for. The bonds issued in Brevard County will be used for rail infrastructure in that county, according to the corporation.
Bill Spivey, executive director of the Florida Development Finance Corporation, said Oct. 7 in an interview with the Palm Beach Post that Palm Beach County does not need to change its agreement with the corporation to issue the private activity bonds.
Miami-Dade County is the only other county that needs to increase its bond cap.
All Aboard Florida and its opponents have been trying to get people to today’s meeting to voice their support or concerns. All Aboard Florida sent a tweet out yesterday encouraging supporters to attend, while Florida Not All Aboard advertised the meeting on its websites and pleaded for Brevard officials to deny the company’s crossing agreement proposal.
“This is the most valuable bargaining chip Brevard County has in its negotiations over costs with All Aboard Florida,” the group wrote. “Until Brevard knows all costs that will be incurred as a result of AAF’s project, it would be irresponsible to concede this critical point of leverage.”
Earlier this month, All Aboard Florida President and Chief Development Officer Michael Reininger said the bonds will allow the railroad to begin construction on the second phase of the line between West Palm Beach and Orlando more quickly than if it waited for the approval of a $1.6 billion Federal Railroad Administration loan.
Reininger thought the U.S. Department of Transportation may approve the bonds by the end of this month.
Private activity bonds are designed to encourage companies to invest in projects that are beneficial to the public and local economies.
There has been $15 billion set aside at the federal level for private activity bonds. As of Sept. 17, the US Department of Transportation has issued $4.8 billion for 13 projects. Another $5.4 billion has been allocated for seven projects. None of the projects are in Florida.
If All Aboard Florida’s $1.75 billion request is approved, it would be the highest amount allocated in the program for a single project.
Brevard County, with its mostly coastal communities such as Palm Bay, Melbourne, Cocoa Beach and Titusville, has not had the same intense opposition to All Aboard Florida that Treasure Coast communities have.
But the relationship has been testy.
In July, County Attorney Scott Knox wrote a 12-page legal analysis of All Aboard Florida and Brevard’s crossing agreements with its parent company Florida East Coast Railroad. The summary includes the suggestion that some, or all, of the decades-old crossing agreements could be void and unenforceable under the Florida Constitution.
That spurred a July 31 letter from All Aboard Florida General Counsel Myles Tobin.
“I am concerned that you have received some uninformed factual and legal advice, which has caused you to develop an analysis fraught with misinformation and tenuous conclusions,” Tobin wrote.
“We had an awesome trade show,” the owner explained. “We didn’t reach our hard-and-fast dollar-amount goals, but that’s OK. All our neighbors were jealous of our attention. Our team was on point.”
The owner’s decision to celebrate a trade show in which his team didn’t meet its on-paper goals but still acquitted itself marvelously is consistent with the advice entrepreneur Frank Gruber provides in Startup Mixology, his recent book about turning ideas into action. In fact, Gruber, the co-founder of media company Tech Cocktail, devotes an entire chapter to the subject of proper celebration. One of his main points is that founders should use celebration as a “tool that can leverage big and small wins and keep you and your team focused and motivated during the not-so-good times.”
Here are seven more reasons it pays to celebrate:
Celebrations provide positive reinforcement. Just because you fall short of a goal doesn’t mean your employees didn’t work hard–and accomplish other feats in the process.
Celebrations allow leaders to emphasize work-life balance.
Celebrations lighten the arduous entrepreneurial journey.
Celebrations reveal your company as a fun place to work at–or volunteer for.
Celebrations connect your company’s story to the outside world
Egypt hopes it will reap a financial windfall when the new Suez Canal, being built alongside the existing 145-year-old waterway, opens for business in August 2015. In fact, that nation foresees the new shipping canal will bring in upwards of $13.5 billion annually by 2023.
Plans also include an international and logistics hub designed to attract more shipping traffic. The Suez Canal is the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia. Six firms, two from the Netherlands, two from Belgium and one each from the UAE and the United States, recently signed contracts to dredge the new canal.
Suez Canal
Meanwhile, the biggest expansion of the Suez Canal since it opened in 1869 will boost syndicated bank loans in Egypt, according to the Commercial International Bank (CIB) Egypt SAE, Egypt’s largest publicly traded bank.
Two juveniles arrested for parkour on top of Walmart in Utica, NY
Utica Police say the 16 year old and 17 year old teenagers were practicing Parkour – a type of extreme running with obstacles – that’s becoming a popular sport.
Except that these two were doing it illegally… on the roof of a Walmart store, at 1am this morning.
The two teens have been charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass.
Parkour is a holistic training discipline using movement that developed from military obstacle course training. Practitioners aim to get from A to B in the most efficient way possible. This is done using only the human body and the surroundings for propulsion, with a focus on maintaining as much momentum as possible while still remaining safe. Parkour can include obstacle courses, running, climbing, swinging, vaulting, jumping, rolling, quadrupedal movement, and the like, depending on what movement is deemed most suitable…
Citizens Against Rail Expansion, a group opposed to the All Aboard Florida project, is held a press conference where first responders discusse what they believe are negative impacts of the passenger rail service.
The press conference was held at the Jupiter Medical Center
Speakers included John Couris, president and CEO of Jupiter Medical Center, Michael Collins, medical director of emergency services, and Tequesta Police Chief Christopher Elg. Tequesta Mayor Abby Brennan has said she is concerned about emergency vehicles being delayed by the increase of 32 trains per day on the Florida East Coast Railway tracks. All Aboard Florida is expected to begin service between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2016, with an Orlando leg opening in 2017.
“Because of the way we are surrounded by water, one train can block all three of our crossings,” Brennan said earlier this year. “Our assisted living facilities are all on the east side and we are worried that with all these extra trains ambulances may get stuck waiting.”
In other news:In less than two years, train horns will no longer be blaring along the coastal tracks that parallel U.S. 1 from Miami to West Palm Beach.
But after being turned down for a federal grant, the region won’t be getting hoped-for maximum safety upgrades – above and beyond what’s required to silence the horns – at many of the crossings on the Florida East Coast Railway.
All Aboard Florida plans to relocate or replace warning devices at every crossing, as it begins to build the first phase of its passenger rail service slated to start running in late 2016.
WHAT IS FAIRPROMISE?
Fairpromise is the next generation social network based on the people’s social commitment, aiming to become a top 3 social network and a complement for Facebook and Twitter. Fairpromise is an action engine which transforms promises (ideas, dreams, concepts) into actions. Fairpromise reduces the gap between people’s expectancies and reality and offers them a platform for accomplishments and achievements of realistic goals providing innovative project and risk management tools made extremely simple to improve their daily activities (users from 5 to 100 years old targeted differently according to their age, location).
Fairpromise is a free site promoting in a playful way justice, responsibility, fair play and educational values. Fairpromise is a personal, professional, political and social barometer.
China is really big. Of course that’s no surprise, but in the context of the supply chain it makes a lot of difference to competitors, customers and suppliers across the globe. What’s either interesting or alarming based on your perspective, is just how much more growth China expects to experience in comparison with everyone else.
Gartner’s report from Beijing shed some light on just what CIOs are looking forward to in 2014. Of course it’s still to early in the year to check whether the predictions are holding but here are a couple of points to consider:
The average growth rate of IT budgets around the world averages. 0.2 percent for the year while CIOs in China expect a 13 percent increase.
Fairpromise is the next generation social network based on the people’s social commitment, aiming to become a top 3 social network and a complement for Facebook and Twitter. Fairpromise is an action engine which transforms promises (ideas, dreams, concepts) into actions. Fairpromise reduces the gap between people’s expectancies and reality and offers them a platform for accomplishments and achievements of realistic goals providing innovative project and risk management tools made extremely simple to improve their daily activities (users from 5 to 100 years old targeted differently according to their age, location).
Fairpromise is a free site promoting in a playful way justice, responsibility, fair play and educational values. Fairpromise is a personal, professional, political and social barometer.
Ancien Hippie 