The Character of Elizabeth Gruber in The River Warren :: River Warren Essays

The Character of Elizabeth Gruber in The River Warren    After reading The River Warren by Kent Myers, I felt a kinship with Elizabeth Gruber. Her loss had been an enormous one. Her return to reality and the world around her took great inner strength. The numbness and the void she was experiencing is very real and can be all consuming if not put in check, not just for women but all humans. We as humans are all different and the grief process is different for all of us. Elizabeth, upon being aroused from her pit of grief, realizes that her strength and connection with her husband, Leo, is the only thing that is going to bring him back form his deep, dark, prison of regret, grief, and guilt. I felt her pain in both the loss of her child and the painful silence that her marriage had become. As Elizabeth drives to the field and assaults the tractor with a rock, I remember times when I would have loved to do the same thing. Only I was not brave enough to attack the iron mistress that takes away the farmer's spare time.    Many farmers I know respond to grief, stress and anxiety the same way Leo Gruber does. They bury themselves in their work. There they can think, and they have control. Many times, with all of us, the intense feelings of guilt and sorrow make us feel as if we have lost control of our world. So we retreat to a place where we can have control. For Leo it was his work, and his tractor. Liz Beth brought him back to the real world. Cowboys, farmers and men of the west learned to shut themselves off, and they weren't allowed to feel or show emotion. To these men showing real feeling and emotion was a sign of weakness, and the weak don't survive in the west, at least that is the way they were trained to think for many generations.    My father is a fourth generation South Dakotan. For many years as I was growing up I wandered if he had ice in his veins, just as Jeff had wondered about his father.

Responses to Three Employment Law Encounters Essay

Fast Serve Inc. is a 25 million company, which employs more than 350 people involved in the direct marketing of branded sports apparel. The company decided to open two online marketing and 10% of the workplace was moved to manage the online distribution. After several months, the company noted that they were being affected by this last measure and was going to have to take steps to ensure that the Company is not affected. I am the senior manager in human resources department and was given the task of having to choose three of six employees for layoffs. As responsible leaders and managers have the task and responsibility to evaluate them in a fair and equitable way for all parties. The Company had a record of the human resources department as these six employees had performed their work for the past two years. Be evaluated on performance, Productivity, Special achievements, educational qualification, skills and job responsibility and absenteeism. Firing people is not an easy matter but we have to understand that companies go through changes and you need to change strategies so our companies succeed in, but we have to keep in mind is that we do it in the best way for both parties. After doing an extensive analysis and consultation with legal counsel and others from the company arrives to terms of whom would be the three selected  for layoff. The first was Carl Haimes, though his performance and Productivity was average had some things that made me think it was not so important for the company, evaluating his special achievements he had nothing significant in the past two years and this was an area that was assessed with greater weight and do not want to leave people with high recognition off the company. The performance and other things I realized that Haimes was not essential to the company, but the lawyer told me that it would not be a good time to lay off Because he could argue discrimination based on sexual orientation. The 1964 civil rights acts protects you from any act of discrimination and this could be detrimental to the company if Haimes says there is a kind of discrimination by the company. After several analyses it was decided to continue with the decision to layoff Haimes although this remains to be seen in court since Haimes joined an association to protect the gay community and will go against us for discrimination by sexual orientation. Sarah Boyd is a lady who has a lot in the company but its overall performance is average and does not have any special achievement, though it is painful for many years working in the company this is the second selected  for layoff. We were initially concerned that his age and the Age Discrimination Act could affect our company, but we had doubts that it would go against the company to which he had so much respect and for which he had worked for so many years. After evaluating and analyzing deeply Mrs. Boyd’s situation it was decided to talk with her and her supervisor and explain them that layoffs in dispatch are inevitable and work out to make a severance package that is fair and acceptable to Mrs.  Boyd and to the company. Jenny Mills is the third selected to layoff; her work is average and has no special achievement. Although his work is satisfactory overall their performance skills are not critical. In spite of that I and the lawyer and other people felt it was the best decision we were afraid there was something that could affect the company, she is pregnant and we as leaders and managers need to know that there are laws that protect pregnant women. Pregnancy Discrimination Act which says that any employee can’t force women to leave their jobs because of their status and if this is done it would be violating and discriminating against women. But after analyzing the situation was stipulated to continue his layoff because she has skills that are non critical and therefore would be giving his layoff with a more compelling reason. We have to be very careful about making decisions in companies, we have to advise us well and be very aware of all the laws that protect the company and employees.

Windows 7 vs. Windows 8

Topic: Contrasting differences, resemblance and evaluation of two computer operating systems, Windows 7 and Windows 8. The release of Windows 8 has divided the online community in two contradictory groups. Some users appear to enjoy the new features and performance of the newest Windows operating system, while others recommend choosing its well-received predecessor Windows 7 (Mikoluk, 2013). The purpose of this essay is to examine some of the primary characteristics of these operating systems.These comprise of: user interface, essential built-in software components, system requirements and finally, performance of two systems based on various computer test results. This essay has been organised in the following way, firstly it looks at vital characteristics of operating system user interface, it continues by analysing essential built-in software components, then proceeds by highlighting system requirements and finally, it will outline the performance of two systems based on various co mputer test results.User interface is an outer layer and one of the key components of the operating ystem, which can be characterized and described by numerous aspects such as design strategy, start menu layout and touch screen functionality. Windows 7 keeps basic principles of conventional Windows interface building on â€Å"Aero† visual style features, such as subtle animations and translucent glass windows enabling a wide range of desktop personalisation possibilities (Bott et al. 2011). Incorporation of the Metro design language for Windows 8 introduces a completely new tile-based design strategy, which is radically different from traditional Windows representation ocusing on only what is needed † reducing to the essence and celebrating content. ‘ (Clayton, 2013). Windows 7 start menu keeps the familiar two-column layout with the Start button located in the left corner of the taskbar (Coward and Knittel, 2010).Whereas in Windows 8, the start menu is replaced w ith a Start screen, where well-known desktop icons have been substituted with large tiles and â€Å"Live† tiles displaying real-time information and is missing the Start button (Boyce and Tidrow, 2013). Moving to touch-screen characteristics, Windows 7 software operates with imited amount of touch gestures and its targets originally designed for a miniature arrow cursor are too small (Pogue, 2013).In contrast, Windows 8 is built with focus on touch input, featuring all the latest touch screen technology innovations and introducing an expanded number of available gestures as well as a touch-friendly interface with large targets (Cirque, 2012). and security applications. Internet Explorer 8 comes as a preinstalled attribute of Windows 7 exclusively for US customers featuring the familiar â€Å"Aero† visual style user interface with add-on browser extensions as well as integrated Web Search box and abbed browsing (Stanek, 2010).Windows 8, on the other hand, comes with lat est Internet Explorer 10 browser promoting the minimalistic Metro user interface, moving away from add-ons; counting on site developers to enrich the browsing experience for users by enabling feature detection technology (Boyce and Tidrow, 2013). Internet Explorer 10 Start screen includes web search box combined with address bar and also offers multitasking with tabs (Microsoft, 2013).Moving to Security Management, Windows 7 features include built-in Firewall network security system and Windows Defender spyware protection; however for the better defence it s advisable to additionally install Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus software (Bott et al. , 2011). In Windows 8, security is also maintained by Firewall and extended confguration of Windows Defender, which replaces Microsoft Security Essentials (Microsoft, 2013).When considering similarities, both operating systems have identical minimal hardware requirements, which enable the two to run on wide range of machines (Microsof t, 2013). At he Microsoft Worldwide conference 2011 in California Tami Reller underlined: In both of our Windows 8 previews, we talked about continuing on ith the important trend that we started with Windows 7, keeping system requirements either flat or reducing them over time.Windows 7 and Windows 8 software is compatible with computers consisting of: not less than 1 gigahertz processor or faster, at least 1 gigabyte of free RAM for 32-bit versions or minimum 2 gigabytes for 64-bit versions, a free hard disc space of 16 gigabytes for 32-bit systems or 20 gigabytes for 64-bit systems as well as Microsoft DirectX9 graphics card with WDDM driver (Egan, 2012). Turning to the criteria of performance, there are significant differences in the timings hat operating systems require for essential operations such as: booting up, shutting down, waking up from sleep mode and 3D graphics implementation.As stated by Walton (2012), Windows 8 continues to expand on the effectiveness of Windows 7, w hich has proven to be a fast and productive operating system, by showing a number of improvements compared to its precursor. Muchmore's test results (2012) revealed that the booting time for Windows 8 is significantly reduced by almost a half compared to Windows 7; 17 and 38 seconds correspondingly. He also reported that he shut down time showed similar improvements; the latest version of Windows took 10 seconds, while the older operating system was 2 seconds slower.According to Muhammad (2013), Windows 8 is also faster waking up from sleep mode with only 10 seconds required for this operation which is 3 seconds ahead of Windows 7. However, Windows 7 3D graphic performance was moderately faster, although both operating systems showed very similar results (Walton, 2012). differences in both operating systems. Firstly, the most obvious difference is that Windows 7 represents traditional Windows interface, while the most recent operating ystem promotes innovative Metro design strategy with large tiles instead of familiar icons.