Tuesday, April 1, 2003
We had Elder Kendall and Elder Irorita over for breakfast. They then worked with us on Tagalog for about 1 1/2 hours. We then went to San Jose shopping for a mirror, a chain for the gate, some clothes line wire, a toilet seat, a tape recorder, keys for the house and gas for the car. We came back for lunch and took a short nap. This afternoon we signed up for telephone service to our home. That will probably take a week to get a phone installed. We then went visiting several families. Some have nice homes, but most have a very modest home and your heart just aches for them. We visited Brother Grandes last. His circumstances really humbled me. His wife works in Hong Kong in domestic help.  She will come home on the 24th of this month. Brother Grandes works six days a week from 8 AM to 6 PM, then takes care of his family, does all the house work, cooking and shopping. Before leaving, I felt impressed to ask him if he would like a Priesthood Blessing. He did, so I was spokesman. We left the Elders at 8 PM and came home. We were beat by the time we got something to eat and got ready for bed.
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Elder Kendall and Elder Irorita came over at 7 AM to tutor us in Tagalog. They then went on a service assignment. This gave us time to catch up on some of the items we needed to do. We went over to the internet cafe, and found that none of our e-mails went through last night. Mae kept working on the internet, while I went back to the Elders apartment to get them. The pouch mail and letters from the mission home came today. We also received word that Becky had given birth to a baby girl, born Friday 28 March, they named her Jessica Joe Browning, and she weighted 8 LB 15 oz and is 19 1/2" long. She has lots of dark hair. Both Mother and baby are doing well and are home from the hospital. What great news and great blessings. We also got a letter from the Social Security stating that they have suspended my social security payments because we are living in a country that the U.S. don't have an agreement with. We tried to call Social Security office in Manila but it was closed for the day. We will have to try again tomorrow. We went with the Elders to visit an elderly couple age 68 that have a very nice home. He is a farmer that raises "palay" or rice. His farm is about 5 acres, but I guess that is a good size farm for here. I ask him quite a few questions about his farm. They also have a lovely family of nine children, 3 sons and 6 daughters, all of which are very educated. He and his wife were baptized three years ago but are about inactive now. I ask him when he was going to take his bride to the Manila Temple to be sealed together for ever. We encouraged them to have their children read the Book of Mormon. I felt impressed to read from the D & C where it states that were much is given, much is expected. I hope I wasn't to strong, but felt they needed to know that they have been given much. From there we went to a Sisters home, her husband was not home from work, but her 19 yr. old son was there. The Elders gave the 2nd discussion and that went well. We came home, ate dinner and soon went to bed.
Thursday, April 3, 2003
Elders Kendall and Irorita came over and worked with us on teaching us Tagalog. I feel so weak in this ability. Mae is doing so much better than I and yet is feeling the frustrations of not being able to communicate with these humble people. That frustration is heightened with me. I don't know what he Lord would have me do? We were able to reach the Administer of Social Security and found that another letter is on its way telling me to ignore the last letter. Benefits are ok, but they still need some information from us on our address. He will send us the forms. After lunch Elders Kendall and Irorita had us go with them to the city if Kimba where we did companion splits with the Elders in that area. Mae & I went with Elder Welsh to visit members to become acquainted. The Branch President of the one Branch was not at home. We drove to his home in the farm area. The humble constancies these people live here is just indescribable. Many of the homes in this area are just bamboo shells with thatched roofs and dirt floors. Water is pumped by hand from wells. Elder Welsh explained that the inactivity of this area is so great that they are not allowed to proselyte here but can only try to activate. While in that area we did visit one Sister and her Daughter. Although she could speak very little English, and Mae and I very little Tagalog, the visit was very delightful. Her husband is a police officer and is required to be at his job full time every other week. He is then home for a week and they can attend church together. They were baptized three months ago and are doing well. From there we went into town to the Church House. We met the two counselors in the Branch Presidency. Both are fairly young and neither is married. They cold speak broken English and we enjoyed meeting them. We next visited the home of a recently returned missionary, Brother Ramazaros. He was very delightful to visit with and will really be a great strength to the branch. At his home was a young man, Jereck, 16 years old, who was just visiting. After visiting there, the young man wanted us to visit his family. As we left, he ask if he could ride in our car. He introduced us to his mother, Facitas and two sisters, Julie and Jennalynn Dupitas. Again though we had the language beerier, we had a delightful visit. The family has just recently been baptized. The father was working while we were there, but as we were staring to leave in the car, returned home. The young man stopped us and wanted us to meet his father, Christao Dupitas. What a delightful experience. We then left the area with Elder Kendall and Elder Irorita to return back home. After dinner, I was so tired that I laid down for a nap. Mae stayed up to study. About 10:30 PM I woke, just as Mae was coming to bed. She said that she had tried to wake me, but couldn't. I said prayers with her, and then stayed up writing this journal entry. How to help this people is beyond me. They need leadership, but what am I to do to help, that is my concern. I can surly see the truth to the statement that President Kimball made several years ago, "With out the missionary system of the Church, the Church would fail." It is not the lack of converts that would be the problem, but the lack of leadership developed in the young men as they go through the training of being a missionary. As this people gets returning missionaries to take leadership the Church will become strong here. What to do until then, I do not know.
Friday, April 4, 2003
We got up and had our showers, scripture study, prayers and breakfast then went to District meeting. We are amazed as we watch these young Elders conduct and teach. This is surly the collage for future Church Leadership. After meeting we came home and worked on language, letters to mail to our family for as of yet we haven't been able to get through no e-mail. We sent a letter to Tina Linderman requesting information as to how to set up a library. We worked on teaching aids for Ward and Branch Leadership Training. Marlyn was here all day cleaning and cooking. She had me take down the drapery in the Great Room and she pressed them. I then rehung them. Time goes so fast and by the time we finished it was after 11 PM before we got to bed. I wish I know what the Lord would have us do and how far to go in teaching the Saints here in the Philippines. We will present these training materials to Elder Kendall and get advice from them.
Saturday, April 5, 2003
We had expected the Elders over this morning at 9 AM so when they hadn't come by 9:45 AM we drove over there. They had just returned from Sam Jose. We went back to our house and went over some the ideas Sister Browning and I had on Counsels, Meetings, Visiting Teaching and Home Teaching. We then went to the Stake Center in San Jose so Elder Kendall could use the computer to generate some reports. We met President Apoa and he invited Sister Browning and me to attend a Seminary Graduation. It was a very enjoyable experience. We stopped at the store and purchased some groceries before coming home. Mae and I worked on the computer until after 9:30 PM before going to bed.
Sunday, April 6, 2003
We were up early so we could attend the satellite broadcast of General Conference at the San Jose stake Center. We picked up Elder Kendall and Elder Irorita at 4:30AM as the broadcast started at 5 AM. It was great to see and hear the Conference. At 5 AM was the Saturday Afternoon session, at 9 AM was the Priesthood Session and from 11 AM was the Saturday Morning session. I took Mae home during the Priesthood session, and came back. There was a power outage half way through the Priesthood session, so we missed the last half of that session. We enjoyed visiting with many members before and after the sessions. We had the Elders over for dinner this afternoon. Mae cooked a nice beef roast with potatoes, gravy and vegetables. I later took a nap while Mae worked on a talk that Sister Brimhall had asked her to give next week at District Conference. When I got up, I did the dinner dishes and helped Mae with her talk. I then entered my journal entry for the day before we went to bed. Conference was wonderful and I have again realized the great need this wonderful people have to trust totally in our Lord and prove them self where in if the Lord will not pour out His blessings unto them. I just don't know how to put this over to the people. The noise piece of my glasses broke of this morning before we left the house. Mae used achieve tape to temporarily mend them. Sister Erma said she knows where to get them repaired.
Monday, April 7, 2003
We got up early so we could attend the Sunday Morning Session of General Conference at the San Jose Stake Center. We really enjoyed the messages from our Prophet and general authorities. After the session was over, Erma took us to an eye glass store and they repaired my glasses with supper glue. They did it with out charge. We stopped at the store and bought a few groceries before returning home. We worked on the computer getting a letter ready to e-mail to our family. Mae took a nap, while I was on the computer and then I took a nap while she was on the computer. I am so grateful that we bought this computer for it is sure a helpful tool. As we work and adjust to this assignment, we have many emotions. Mae was studding the language and I looked over and saw her crying. When I ask her what the matter was, she replied that the word for happy (maligaya) had made her think of little Kylan and how she missed him. This is certainly a complete change in life style. I can't think of one phase in our life's that hasn't had significant changes, the way we eat, bath, wash our hands, our food, speech, and even our prayers. You name it and it has changed, and this is hard. We again went to bed discouraged.
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Elder Kendall and Elder Irorita came this morning to work with us on the language. Mae's doing quite well, but I feel that I'm still floundering. We went over to the Dator's family in the 2nd Branch where their son, Ronald repairs electronic items and he repaired the flat iron that was in our apartment. Mae and I visited with his mother and married sister while he did the repairs. They were so pleasant and gave us some green mangos as we left. We took the Elders to the Elders home in San Jose so that they could inform one of the Elders that he was to be transferred this afternoon. We then took them to Erma's, then we came back home. We ate some lunch, took a nap, and then Mae gave me a haircut. This afternoon we went down to the internet cafe and checked to see if we had any e-mail. We didn't but there were no rejected messages on the last ones we sent. We then found the Umpig's home and visited with them for a while. They will try to set up a couple of appointments with less active members that they will go with us to visit. We came home and warmed some diner and I entered my journal before we retired. Sister Umipig told us of her experience in Saudi Arabia, as a head nurse in a medical university. The thing that most amazed me was that she left her family here in the Philippines for 16 years while at that job. They wanted her to stay for another 5 years, but she was diagnosed with cancer so came home to be with her family. She under went treatment there before returning home. The Umpig's have built a nice home and are a great help to this Branch.
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
We got up at 5:30 AM and drove over to the university where we went for a walk. It has beautiful landscaping with large trees and flowers. It was still cool, so very enjoyable. We came back for showers and breakfast, and then attended District Leader Training with the missionaries. As we have already experienced, they are great. We found the Municipal Building and got a map of the area from the Planning Engineer. It really covered more area than we had wanted, but he was so nice to us that we just thanked him and left. We came home and I had to redo the Branch Organization chart I have been working on. I did get a short nap. Later we met Elder Kendall and Elder Irorita and they copied some maps they had for us. We went visiting the Mario Gaznema family. Brother Gaznema is the Elders Quorum President, but he wasn't home. We visited with his two sister's in-laws and his wife. They have three children Colleen age 5, David Bruce age 3 and the baby Jared age 3 mo. We then stopped at Brother Rodolfo B. Bustos who we had visited last week. His wife Nellie is in Manila to see the Dr. about high blood pressure. From there we met with President Gajonera of the Munoz First Branch and went over some of their Branch Organization, Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching. Pres. Gajonera is 24 years, has a beautiful wife and a 3 month old baby. I hope we can help them with his great calling. We came back home and got something to eat, I entered my journal then we went to bed.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
We didn't sleep really well last night because of the mosquitoes that continued to bite us as we tried to sleep. I was awaken about midnight with mosquitoes all over my arm. I turned the cooler up, and then we pulled the sheet over our head to get some protection. We got up at 5:30 AM to start the day. Time went by so fast, then at 8 AM Elder Kendall and Irorita came for breakfast, and then spent time with us studding Tagalog. I am getting very discouraged over trying to learning the language. I am just not remembering it. I woke this morning with thoughts concerning the work here. I feel that if President Brimhall will approve, that Mae & I might act as President Gajorena's Executive Secretary on a temporary basis and get the Branch records up to date and the Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching going. Then when we have the 1st Branch working, we should help the next Branch. We can continue to work on the Library and the Jr. Sunday School in our spare time. We would use the Home Teaching form that I designed form memory of the first H. T. forms the Church used when the H. T. program was first introduced in the 60's. We would use our computer to enter all the church records by families. Then select all the known members out, having individual members try to locate those families that are not known. The full time missionaries would also help locate unknown families. At the same time we check out the membership, we could deliver an invitation with Branch information on it, to invite the family to attend the Branch meetings. Elder Kendall agreed with my ideas, with the approval of President Brimhall and caution that we do not do all the work for the Branches, but train others as we proceed. We then went with the Elders to visit a couple of Families. The one family wasn't home but we were able to see some of the farm land that is North of Munoz. We came back for lunch, a nap and did some studding. We again went with the Elders and split with Elder Irorita. We visited an investigator that is having problems believing in reincarnation. He was very polite but we couldn't get him past his feelings. He tried to pray, but couldn't so ask Sister Browning to pray. We then visited a brother that is on the District High Counsel. We enjoyed getting acquainted with his family although his wife wasn't home. We joined again with Elder Kendall and visited an investigator and a member family before we came on home. I feel badly that I can not commutate with better with these families. Mae stayed up and studied but I went to bed.
Friday, April 11, 2003
We attended District Leadership meeting this morning. We got home about 11:30 AM. Marlyn prepared a nice dinner for us. We ask her if she would be willing to work tomorrow to prepare dinner for President Brimhall, Sister Brimhall, Sister Clark and Elder Clark. We were going to go to San Jose to get some items we will need to buy before tomorrow, but just as we were about to leave, the phone co. came to install our telephone. It took them over an hour, so we didn't get to San Jose today. We left Munoz at 2:30 PM and went to Guimba where we met Elder Welch and Elder Bybee and went out visiting with them. We went to a man that is 83 years old. He was a scout for the U. S. Army during the 2nd World War. He was very interesting. He had a nice home with tile floors, smooth painted walls and nice furnishings. The next home was a young mother with a 3 year old son that was just darling and a 2 year old daughter that wasn't going to let go of her mother while we were there. I didn't understand the situation but the husband wasn't there. We had a delightful visit with the mother, her sister-in-law and a friend. The home was a two room home with dirt floors and built out of bamboo walls and a corrugated metal roof. The only furniture in the room we were in was plastic chairs and a hammock for the baby's bed. She was so pleasant, but so poor as to the things of the earth. At the next home, it belonged to a lady about 36 to 38, her 17 yr old son, her mother-in-law. She has a daughter that is13 who wasn't there. Again the husband wasn't there and the Elders didn't explain why. Shortly after we got there the lady left and we thought she had gone to get her daughter, but soon returned with Ice Cream Sunday's for the four of us. That was just heart breaking to have to tell her that we couldn't accept them. They cost her 40 Pecos for them and I know that she couldn't afford them. That was so hard to refuse, I just wanted to cry. These people are so loving and want to show us hospitality. Mae and I left the Elders and came home after that. Mae is doing very well with trying to use the language, bearing her testimony and saying prayers in Tagalog. Again it is quite an experience to drive in this area and especially after dark for you never know when there will be some kind of a vehicle or cart on the road with out lights or even reflectors, not to mention people and animals. After getting home we ate dinner prepared for us by Marlyn before she quit today. We feel very blessed to have her as our house maid.
Saturday, April 12, 2003
We slept in a little this morning, and then went to San Jose shopping for a table, chairs and some groceries. While looking at chairs and trying to decide on the style to get, the sales person took us over to their warehouse in a trike. That was a first and we didn't have far to go so it was kind of fun. We were able to find every thing we went for. We quickly put things away when we got home for we didn't have much time to get to District Conference. There weren't very many members there at the first leadership meeting but it went forward with a good Spirit. The following meeting had a better attendance. After the Conference we had President Brimhall, Sister Brimhall, Elder Clark and Sister Clark come to dinner at our home. Marlyn prepared dinner for us as the rest of us visited. President Brimhall asked if I would accept a calling to be an Executive Secretary over Home Teaching, to the newly called District President. President Mercado will be presented and sustained in tomorrows Conference Sessions. He wants me to help organize the Home Teaching in the Branches, starting with Guimba 1st Branch. I showed President Brimhall my form and ask if it would be proper to use my computer. He said I had his full approval and was excited with my plans. It was exciting to know that the thoughts I have had were in correlation with President Brimhall's. After they left, we helped Marlyn do up the dishes, then took her home. We were sure grateful for Marlyn's help and food preparation. The meal was very delicious and enjoyed by everyone. We have tried to call home, but can't get the call to go through. It was close to 10 PM when we went to bed.
Sunday, April 13, 2003
We attended a meeting for new members prior to District Conference. President Brimhall conducted the meeting and gave a wonderful talk. The Spirit was there and very enjoyable. We then attended the General District Conference. It was quite well attended. President Brimhall took Care of the main business of releasing President Pasardan and sustaining President Mercado. When President Mercado bore his testimony he said that he and his wife were seriously planning on moving to Manila when this call came.  His second Counselor also told that they had planned to move to Manila before this calling and now is not sure what they will do, but he told me that he couldn't refuse the call. I am impressed with the faith of these people. If we can just get that Faith to spread. In the reading in of the Stake Officers, I was sustained as an Assistant Stake Executive Secretary. We were quite a while after the conference concluded before we went home as there were a lot of people to be set apart and I wanted to visit with President Mercado before leaving. Elder and Sister Clark brought Mae home to settle up on some of our bills. I stopped and got the Elders to have them eat dinner with us. We visited a while with the Elders after dinner. Mae and I took a nap, and then Mae wrote a letter to our family, that we will try to send tomorrow. I made this journal entry; we studied a while before going to bed.
Monday, April 14, 2003
We got up and had breakfast. Elder Kendall brought two other Elders and we went down to the Internet Shop to check on our messages. We were delighted to find a return E-mail from Mike, Sandi, Mark, Sandy Peterson and Billie Ririe. Mike also sent two pictures with his E-Mail. We then took the three Elders with us and we went to Cabanatuan to check on our drivers licenses (which they still won't let us have with out ACR report) then to the mall to do a little shopping. Mae and I purchased a few groceries, a phone line splitter and a line to connect our computer to the land line, some shoes and some office supplies. We returned to San Jose were the Elders left us. We bought a gas range and a few groceries there. Marlyn had some diner ready for us to warm up when we got home. After dinner I brought up the pictures that Mike sent and they are great.  Mae then wanted to see some of our family pictures. That really made me home sick. This is great but it also is also the hardest experience we have gone through.
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
We got up and went waking at the collage then came back, ate breakfast and prepared for the Elders who came over and helped us with Tagalog. We went over to the Dator's and ask Ronald if he would install an electrical outlet for the range. He came over at 3 PM and installed the electrical outlet. I was able to help him and we got it done quickly. Mae and I then met Elder Kendall and Irorita at the home of an investigator and were with them to give the 3rd discussion. We went out to another investigator but they were not at home. We visited a member and then stopped at the previous District President's home and visited with them. It was after 9:30 PM when we got home, then fixed something for dinner. Elder Clark called and had me talk to Elder Pearson who is trying to check on what record information we can get electronically. We were after 11 PM getting to bed. We did get a letter from Shellie today. It was great to hear from her. She wrote the letter on the 24th of March. We also got a letter from the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security Administration in Manila asking for information as to our address and telephone number here in the Philippines.
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
We were a little later getting up, but went walking at the collage anyway. We returned home and took showers before Marlyn came. The Elders had a service project so didn't come over this morning. I worked on Home Teaching forms and other forms we feel will be useful in our assignment. David called about 10:45AM. We only talked for a few minutes as it was costing him $10 per minute. After he called we had to have a little cry. Mae talked just a minute with Tyler and Emily. The real tear jerker was when Emily said "Come Back". That about tore us up. At about 11:15 AM Mike called. Mike had a question for us about the money I sent back to him for him to deposit. Both said they are all doing well. Again we had to have another cry and thank our Heavenly Father for our beautiful Family. Boy was it good to hear from them. We took a short nap after eating lunch. Marlyn fed us a very good meal as usual. We went to San Jose and paid for the water cooler, then stopped at the store to get a few groceries. We went to Guimba and worked with Elder Welch and Elder ______. We particularly looked up the Branch Presidents for Branch 1 and Branch 3, to get their help in filling out Branch Organizational charts and ask for the C.M.I.S. listing. We took a few pictures of some of the homes in the area. We did visit one investigator, Gil M Batang, they were very pleasant and willing to have us share a scripture with them. She gave us crackers, pop and bananas until we were stuffed. It was a very good visit, but I don't think they are very interested in changing their lives. We left the Elders and came on home. Mae made dinner while I worked on the computer. We were tired so went to bed about 9:30 PM.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
We were going to go walking this morning but we thought District Meeting had been changed to today, so Mae wanted to make cookies to take to the meeting for the Elders. She got up and made the cookies while I slept in a little longer. I was preparing breakfast when Elder Kendall called to see if they were to come this morning for Tagalog tutoring. Next week District Meeting will be held on Thursday, not this week. Elder Kendall and Irorita ate the majority of the cookies while tutoring us. We then went down to try to get our phone service straightened out and pay our power bill, except all of the businesses are closed this week for Holy Week. We will have to wait until Monday. We visited a family, anyway a mother, who she had most of her children and grandchildren home for vacation. She said that all her family was active, then she went away to work and while she was away, her children grew up, married and left the church. We shared a scripture and visited with her about her testimony. Her one daughter came in and stayed while we were there, but the rest of her family would not come in. These people are so poor and work so hard for so little that your heart hurts for them. We then took the elders to San Jose where they worked with a couple of other Elders. We did a little shopping; then came home for lunch and a nap. We again went out with the Elders from 4 Pm until after 9 PM. We visited and became acquainted with three families. I felt very depressed as we came home. If I felt that I was making any headway with the language, then it is so hard to know how to help this people. I hope our time spent here will be of worth.
Friday, April 18, 2003
We were too tired to get up early and go walking. We attended the Mission District Meeting this morning. It is still amazing to watch these young Elders conduct and teach lessons. I am continuously reminded of the leadership abilities they will take back to their home areas. President Pasardan was at the church when we got there as his son was interviewed by President Mercado to be released from his mission. We enjoyed visiting with him for a few minutes. After meeting we went by Brother and Sister Umibig's and visited just for a few minutes. On the way there we saw that the internet shop was closed because of Holy Week. We came on home and I took a short nap before lunch. After lunch I worked on papers for the District Presidency meeting in the morning. Mae lay down and slept for over an hour. Elder Irorita called and ask if we could go out with them this afternoon. We visited three families, Roger and Heidi Silvia with two children Karen Nicole and Darin Ralph, then Jason ______, his wife and two children, then a newly married couple, she is a member and he is investigating. It was a good evening and we got home at 8:30 PM. We just heated some soup for super and went to bed.
Saturday, April 19, 2003
We got up and went walking over at the collage. We walked a new area to us and it was very beautiful and interesting. I went to District Presidency meeting at 9 AM, but it didn't get started until 10 AM. While waiting President Nikkei and I played a game of chess. President Nikkei won. Mae stayed home and spent much of her time studying. Before lunch I took a nap. I worked on forms for the Branches and District this afternoon. We went over to San Jose to attend a Baptism, but it had to be rescheduled. We stopped at the store for some groceries before coming home. I spent most of the evening transferring pictures from our camera to the computer.
Sunday, April 20, 2003
I don't think I have entered this thought into my journal yet so I will add it here. I don't think my hands have ever been as clean in my life as they are here. Every time we touch something, we wash our hands with soap, rinse them, and then spray them with alcohol. They are so clean that the skin is even coming off, at least all my calluses.
We did sleep in until 6 AM before getting up to get going. We attended Munoz Branch 2 this morning and stayed until the end of the block. President Pasardan's son gave his Home Coming report in Sacrament meeting this morning. We invited Elder Kendall and Irorita to have lunch with us. We went back for Sacrament Meeting of the Munoz Branch 1, and then we went Home Teaching with Brother Roger Silvia. Brother Silvia is on the District High Counsel. We stopped and got Brother _______ to go with us and we visited two families. The 1st are getting quite old, but enjoyed us coming. The 2nd also older but they really enjoyed us coming. They have gotten lost when the Branches were reorganized a couple of years ago and did not know where to attend. They said they would now start attending. I think that if we can get the Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching going, we will find more like that. Mae worked on writing a letter to our family. I worked on some charts for the Branches and entered my journal before going to bed.
Monday, April 21, 2003
We got up and went walking at CLSU. It was a very nice morning and we enjoyed the exercise. We had quite a list of things we wanted to get done today, check on our phone, pay the power bill, cash a check at the bank, check on our e-male, mail some letters, get a little gift for Pres. Gajorena's baby, assemble a Flannel Board, wash the car, get a light for above the sink and visit the Bustos to se how Sister Bustos is doing. We got done the e-mail, mailed the letters, got a gift for the baby and visited the Gajorena's this evening just long enough to see how he was feeling, got the flannel board assembled and let the Elders borrow it and we visited Brother Bustos and found that his wife is doing ok and should be back home this Thursday. We had problems with the rest of the items. Oh well! They will get done another day. Elder Kendall warned us to keep our gate and doors locked as the Elders in Guimba had their apartment broken into and about $500.00 worth of items taken, on Sunday. We got e-mails from Mike, David, Scott and Jeff: it was great to hear from them. Mae also got an E-mail from Billie. We sent e-mails of to all of our family, extended families and friends also today. I started a letter to our family, but had to quite for now because it is past bed time. Good night!
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Wow! It has been quite the day. We are late getting home so with Mae's help, we will make this entry tomorrow.
We started by having the Elders over for breakfast of fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, muffins, juice and fruit. They don't have frozen hash brown potatoes, so we bought frozen French fries and cut them up. That works pretty well. We then studied Tagalog. We tried to get an account opened so we can write out checks from our bank in the U.S. We need $500.00 to start it up, so just exchanged $150.00 for now and will get a check cashed when we go to Angeles. We went to the phone company to get long distance added to our line, but they were again closed. We found out that they will be closed until May 5th. We got Microsoft Word 2000 put on to our computer. This afternoon Mae and I met Elder Malapitan and Elder Wilkinson in Guimba and went visiting with them. We found out that yesterday some one broke into the Elders home in Guimba and took about $500.00 worth if items. They took Elder Malapitan's journal and he felt very bad over that as that has his life story in it. He just hopes that they might read his history and be converted from it. The first Sister we were to visit was sick, so we didn't go in. We next visited an inactive Brother and invited him to come out. Elder Wilkinson had a Sister Liberty Delacruz and daughter to interview, so we went to the home where the Branch Mission Leader lived and they had Liberty and her daughter come there. The daughter, who is only 9, was unsure about having an interview. I told Elder Wilkinson that he did not have to have a privet interview with children, but could have someone else in with them. That worked out ok. Mae and I had a very enjoyable time visiting with other family members and friends, while Elder Wilkinson had the interviews. We then walked quite a ways out in a field and visited a couple where he is a member and she is an investigator.  They lived in a two room home, with dirt floors, walls made out of bamboo and any thing else that could be tied to gather to make walls and a thatched roof. They used 4 home made oil lamps for lighting. She sweeps in the Palanki (an out door market) all day and he takes care of the fields. She wasn't feeling well when we came because of arthritis. However they found chairs and invited us to stay. She is 54 and he is 48. It was the humblest of home that we have been in yet. Elder Wilkinson told me that the information about the murder had been sent in but they hadn't heard any thing in return. I told him I would check on it. Before coming home the Elders gave us a Branch 2's listing of membership to start working on. How blessed we felt as we said prayers before going to bed tonight.
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
We got up and went walking this morning before breakfast. We started working on the Home Teaching records for Guimba 2nd Branch. We had Elder Kendall & Elder Irorita come for lunch. Marlyn prepared it and it was very good. Elder Kendall tried to set up a file on Microsoft but became frustrated over it and finally had to quite. They had an appointment at 3 PM that they were late for. We net and went with the Elders at 4:15 PM to visit Brother Merchano and Sister Susan Corpuz and their daughter Joy this afternoon. They also have 3 older boys. We were able to share a scripture with them and our Testimonies. We then went to Brother &Sister _______ where we held Family Home Evening with them. They were very special. It was their daughters 8th Birthday so Elder Kendall took ice cream for a treat. Mae taught the children a song. Mae & I gave a flannel board story on the resurrection. It went over very well with Elder Irorita interpreting for us. Elder Irorita taught them a game. We also took some pictures when we first got there. They really enjoyed that. Many of the neighbors and extended Family came to join in with us. Who knows, maybe we will get some contacts from it. We came home about 8 PM, ate dinner, filled out my journal and went to bed.
Thursday, April 24, 2003
We attended Missionary District meeting this morning. The date was changed from Friday to Thursday as there is a special training meeting that Elder Kendall, Elder Irorita, Mae and I are to attend tomorrow. Mae had made a fruit cake desert that we took with us. Just before the meeting was over, I went over to the store and bought Ice Cream, bowls and spoons and at the end of the meeting Mae and I served the Elders desert. We stopped at the Internet cafe and got our E-mail. There was a short one from Shauna, sending a picture from Tyler, one from Jeff and one from Sandi. Those were sure welcomed. Sandy Peterson also sent Mae an E-mail as did another one of Mae's co-workers. That part of the day went well. This afternoon didn't go as well. I got frustrated trying to figure out the Microsoft program. Mae got after me because I was wasting time and should be studding Tagalog and let the program wait until Elder Pearson in the mission home can help me. I took a nap to try to settle down. That didn't help much and I still felt unsettled when I got up. We took the car over and got it washed. It cost me P80 but they sure do a good job of it. We went into San Jose to get an Internet card and also got a few groceries. As we drove, Mae told me that I came on too strong during District Meeting about Bishops and Branch Presidents not doing their jobs right. I worked on the computer a while, but that seemed to upset Mae for she felt that I should be studying the language, which I know that she is right. This is really frustrating for me as I don't seem to know how to study. I am not learning the language. I can't communicate with these people. I don't know how to get people to do their jobs. I don't know how to run my computer. When Mae prays I don't understand even 1/2 of what she says. I can't remember enough Tagalog words to pray. The next door couple evidently was having a fight this evening and though I could hear them, I couldn't understand a word they said. I feel so inadequate and don't understand why the Lord called me here. Everyone tries to give me advice, but that just seems to upset me more. I really don't know what to do.
Friday, April 25, 2003
We went to Tarlac, about 2 hours away, for a special training seminar which was broadcast world wide by Satellite Transmission to 336 missions from Salt Lake City. Those invited were Mission Presidents, Assistants to Presidents, Zone Leaders and Senior Couple Missionaries. It was great, and covered the "Teaching by the Spirit" program, now in effect through all missions in the world. The one sad thing for us is that Elder Kendall got transferred to be an assistant to the President. We will sure miss him, for he has become so special to us. Elder Jex came back with us as Elder Kendall's replacement. I am sure we will love him also. He has been an assistant to the President. After we got home we went over the special instructions that President Brimhall gave to Elder and Sister Clark and us after the training seminar.  Fellowshipping of New Converts, Reactivation of selected families with emphasis on current or potential Melchizedek Priesthood holders, and Leadership training in Priesthood and auxiliary functions. That will keep us busy. He reported that the world wide percentage of Sacrament meeting attendance is 45%, in the Philippines it is 10%, and in Africa it is 85%. The Philippines has a lot of work to do.
Saturday, April 26, 2003
We slept in, and then while Mae prepared breakfast I prepared an Agenda for District Presidency meeting. The District President had told me that he would call me with the agenda information but he never called. I did what I could and went to the meeting. I went early to try to find President Michol of the Munoz 1 Branch that I wouldn't be able to help because of the District meeting. How ever I wasn't able to locate him. I got to the Chapel at 9:45 AM and waited until 10:30 AM, but no one showed up, so I came home. I tried to call President Mercado but couldn't get through to him on his phone. I calling the Mission office to get other phone numbers, but they don't have the new presidents yet. I was quite upset about it. Mae got after me two or three times because of my attitude. I guess that it just upsets me when leaders don't carry their load. Maybe I miss understood about the meeting time or it had to be canceled for some reason, but! After lunch we took a nap. Mae completed cutting out and organizing the flannel board stories. I finished a letter to our family, and then we went to the Internet Cafe and sent it. We went to San Jose and attended a Fireside for new members. Before the meeting started Mae & I walked to the market place where we found a new fan for Mae. Mae had left her fan in the training room at Tarlac yesterday. The Fireside was a very spiritual and made an enjoyable evening. Mae & I were asked to give our Testimony at the conclusion of the meeting.
Sunday, April 27, 2003
This morning I was still concerned about the meeting yesterday and was thinking about that when Mae reminded me that I hadn't done my exercises. It upset me that she reminded me, and I spoke cross, which of course upset her. I then had to apologize to her. Why I don't think sometimes before I open my mouth, I don't know. We attended the Sacrament meet at Munoz 1 this morning then came home for some lunch and a nap. We went back and attended the block at Munoz 2. I am having trouble trying to remember people and their positions. It is sure hard not being able to communicate better with the people. I talked with President Nuque about yesterday and found that they changed the time because of the service project and they went out to Guimba to reorganize the 2nd Branch, and so met out there. President Mercado caught me after meetings and apologized for not letting me know of the change in plans. Had I found the work project, every thing would have been corrected then. They could have also used my help, for not very many showed up. This evening we invited Elder Jex and Elder Irorita to have dinner with us. Mae cooked a nice roast with potatoes and gravy for dinner. Elder Jex really enjoyed the meal. We visited and showed some pictures. I took them home just after 9 PM. Mae straightened up while I made this journal entry, and then we went to bed.
Monday, April 28, 2003
We got up early and got Elder Irorita and Elder Jex at 6 AM. We drove to the mission home in Angeles, getting there at 8:45 AM. Elder & Sister Clark took us over to the bank to get a check cashed. The bank wasn't able to cash it until 10:30 AM, so we left the check and planned on getting back later. Elder Pearson went with us get our driver's license and that was a long drawn out affair but we did succeed this time. We stopped to see about getting a cell phone but had to wait on that. It was 4:30 PM before we got back to Clark, so we didn't get our money. Elder Clark then helped me set up a data file for Branch Membership records and a home teaching report form. We worked on that until after 7 PM. I let Elder Jex drive back home, thinking I could sleep, but that didn't work as I couldn't relax with his driving. We didn't get home until after 9:30 PM, so was late getting to bed. Although we got a couple of things accomplished that needed to be done, I felt frustrated that we didn't get more done.
Elder Kenneth H Browning’s Testimony
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
At the request of Matt Price, from the Country Creek Ward, Layton Utah Holmes Creek Stake, I am writing this Testimony.
I bear my Testimony that I know that God lives, that He is the Eternal Father in Heaven, the literal Father of our Spirits and that He loves each one of his children. I know that He has an Eternal plan, that when followed, will allow each of his children, that will be faithful to those eternal laws, the privilege of returning home to where he dwells. I know that Jesus Christ is God’s Eldest Son in the preexistent world and is His only begotten Son upon this earth. He was chosen to be the central figure in the eternal plan of Our Heavenly Father, to come in the Meridian of time to this earth, to be born of an earthly Mother, “Mary”. To grow day by day learning much the way each of us do, the experiences of earth life. I know that He lived a perfect life, not making even one mistake. I am sure that because of His Father that He was often tutored by Heavenly Angles. I know that when he reached the age that allowed him to begin His ministry, that He organized His Church in its fullness here on earth. I know that He set for us a perfect example of how we are to try to live. He lived in perfect harmony and obedience to His Heavenly Fathers Eternal laws and ordinances. I know that because Our Heavenly Father and Jesus love for each of us, that Jesus was allowed to suffer the most unjust trial and then was crucified on the cross. Jesus is the Christ foretold by all the Prophets of God from the beginning of time. Through His selfless sacrifice He became the First to be resurrected and made it possible for everyone that has been or that will be born to be resurrected from the death of the body. Also that because of His love for us, He was willing to suffer and paid the Eternal price for all the sins of those that are willing to take upon then self His Name and be obedient to His commandments. Through this Atonement for our sins, we will be able to be cleans from our sins and return to live with Our Heavenly Father and receive Eternal Exaltation.
I know that there was a falling away into total Apostasy from Christ True Church after His death and the Death of His chosen Apostles. The authority from God for man to act in His name was taken. Although many men tried to find the truth and many brought about great forces of change, it wasn’t until April 6, 1830 that The Church of Jesus Christ was restored through Joseph Smith Jr. and subsequently followed by the restoration of all the ancient authority and gifts that God had given to the Prophets of old until there was a fullness of the Gospel as given by Christ Himself. I know and bear Testimony that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is that Church and we have been and am today lead by A Prophet of God, even until the present, with that Prophet being Gordon B. Hinckley.
I pray with all the desires of my hart that I may always bear this testimony and be obedience all of my life. I bear this testimony in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
We slept in this morning and it seemed good. We stayed home working on the records for the Guimba 2nd Branch for most of today. We also worked on some ideas for doing the three tasks that President Brimhall assigned us: 1 - Effective Fellowshipping of New Convert
2 - Reactivation of selected Families w/emphasis on current or potential Melchizedek Priesthood Holders
3 - Leadership training in Priesthood and Auxiliary Functions
We are excited about this assignment but also realize that is a big job. Mike called us this about 9:30 AM and it kind of took us by surprise, but a very enjoyable surprise. They are all well. Today is Mike's Birthday, as we are a day ahead of them. He said he couldn't stand going to bed not having his parents sing "Happy Birthday" to him, so we did. It was sure good to hear from him. Scott sent us an e-mail the other day asking us to send a written Testimony to the Ward for Brother Matt Price to but in the Ward History, so we took about two hours typing those up. We went to the internet cafe and sent them, also got an E-mail from Roy, one from Mike, but we couldn't bring up the attachments he added to it. Scott sent a letter, which we brought up and two pictures again. We didn't have enough disk space so we didn't try to pull those up yet. I don't know what we are doing wrong on the attachments.
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
We got up and went walking this morning at the collage. We spent most of the day working on the entering of Guimba 2nd Branch membership records. We got 119 out of 712 entered, so that is a good start. We took time to visit Sister Mercado and ask her to ask President Mercado to get us a The General Handbook of Instructions. We need that so as to know what we should be teaching Priesthood Leaders. We also got the car washed and got some e-mails at the Inter-net cafe. Mike sent us our bank statement and some pictures of Jessica, we loved them. I balanced our bank statement this evening.


---
title: "Gridcoin - Step 4: Earn Gridcoin"
description: "Step 4 of the solo crunching guide; Instructing users how they can begin earning Gridcoin in five steps."
redirect_from:
- "/Guides/earn-grc.htm"
---
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Steps to Earn GRC via DPOR
1) Check Your Projects
a) Make sure any projects you crunch are on the whitelist. If it isn't on it, you will not be rewarded for it
b) Check that each project crunched is on team Gridcoin. You will not get rewarded if they are not on the team
c) Check that the CPIDs (cross project identifier) are the same across your projects. You can check on each project or check using boincstats


Airstrikes kill 5 in northwest rebel-held Syrian village
BEIRUT (AP) - Syrian opposition activists say airstrikes on a rebel-held village in the country’s northwest killed five people.
The Syrian Civil Defense and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three women were among the victims.
Sunday’s airstrike hit the village of Mallaja in Idlib province, the last major rebel stronghold in Syria.
TOP STORIES
Accused thieves, child-porn suspects, suspected murderers among DACA recipients: Report
Democratic clerk charged with altering nearly 200 midterm elections ballots
Sudden expansion of 2020 Democratic presidential field reveals unease with Biden, Warren, Sanders
Last week, Syrian President Bashar Assad said his forces will soon retake Idlib.
Assad said in an interview that they are now giving civilians some time to leave the area, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants.
Syrian troops launched a four-month offensive on the province earlier this year, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes.
A fragile cease-fire stopped the government offensive on Idlib at the end of August.
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---
layout: post
authors: ["Anelda van der Walt"]
title: "October 5 - 18, 2015: Jonah Duckles, Instructor/Helper Retreat Still Growing, Peer Reviewed Lessons, Data Management, and AMY 1.0 Released."
date: 2015-10-18
time: "11:00:00"
tags: ["Community"]
---
Highlights
-
Meet our new executive director,
Jonah Duckles.
-
14 sites worldwide have registered for the first ever
Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry
instructor and helper retreat
on 14 November. If you care about training, join a site near you or dial in via Google Hangouts.
Lessons
-
The obvious next step for the Software Carpentry lessons:
Peer review
Contribute
-
Rayna Harris suggested we look at how Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry
can play a role in teaching or disseminating information about
data management plans.
Please let us know if you are aware of good resources or would like to
discuss how we can contribute as community?
-
AMY 1.0 was released.
Django web programmers are welcome to join the development team.
Details
-
Summarised feedback from instructor
debriefing sessions on Python lessons
is now available and will be used when we redesign the lessons.
Please take a moment to look through the suggestions if you'd like to incorporate some in upcoming workshops.
-
We're busy
improving the post-workshop survey.
Read more about suggestions received from a consultant at University of Texas.
-
Belinda Weaver provided feedback on their
workhshop in Brisbane.
Using the Australian Research Cloud for running the workshop really seemed to work well.
-
Greg Wilson argues that not having the skills which Software Carpentry ultimately aims to teach,
is putting a tax on scientific discovery.
Read more in his post about scarcity.
-
In October we ran the
5th Software Carpentry workshop in South Africa
in 11 months.
Adrianna Piñska was organiser and lead-instructor. The workshop was small, but well received.
-
Round 18 of instructor debriefing
revisits installation issues and suggests the use of cheat sheets to give
participants quick access to references. See what else is discussed in the blog post.
-
The Software Sustainability Institute recently ran a
Jupyter Notebook workshop
using some of the Software Carpentry materials.
-
European ELIXIR nodes are boosting their instructor numbers.
Learn more about past and upcoming
instructor training opportunities for researchers associated with ELIXIR.
-
Tatiana Tomich and Shelley Littin wrote about
a series of Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry workshops
offered by the University of Arizona's BIO5 Institute and iPlant Collaborative.
-
8 workshops were run over the last two weeks.
For full details on previous workshops please visit
our website.
-
Several workshops have been confirmed for the next few months.
Upcoming workshops can be viewed on our website.
Newly added workshops are indicated with "*".
-
October:
University of Alberta,
Acadia University,
University of Michigan,
University of Hawaii at Manoa,
Jackson Laboratory,
University of Washington - Seattle,
University of Manitoba*,
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine,
Duke University*,
Calcul Quebec, Universite Laval,
University of Leeds
-
November:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory*,
NeSI - Northshore Region Workshop,
European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL),
University of Nebraska - Lincoln*,
North-West University*,
University of Notre Dame,
Culham Centre for Fusion Energy*,
Northwestern University*,
NYU Medical Center*,
CoDiMa - University of Manchester*,
Iowa State University*,
European Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience*,
University of Miami*,
Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Australia,
University of Helsinki*,
University of Edinburgh*,
NeSI - Lincoln Region Workshop*
| Project | Issues | Pull Requests |
| Opened | Closed | Comments | Opened | Closed | Comments |
| shell-novice | | | 4 | | 1 | 5 |
| git-novice | 1 | | 2 | | | |
| hg-novice | | | | | | |
| sql-novice-survey | | | 1 | | 1 | |
| python-novice-inflammation | | | 1 | | | |
| r-novice-inflammation | | 1 | 2 | | 1 | |
| matlab-novice-inflammation | | 1 | | | | |
| slideshows | | | | | | |
| instructor-training | | | | | | |
| amy | 6 | 2 | 48 | 6 | 6 | 9 |
| site | 1 | 1 | 12 | 6 | 4 | 7 |


Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997), raised as Scott "Scottie" Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. After a decade as a session guitarist in Los Angeles, Buckley amassed a following in the early 1990s by playing cover songs at venues in Manhattan's East Village, such as Sin-é, gradually focusing more on his own material. After rebuffing much interest from record labels and his father Tim Buckley's manager Herb Cohen, he signed with Columbia, recruited a band, and recorded what would be his only studio album, Grace, in 1994. In 2004, Rolling Stone listed him at number 39 on their list of greatest singers of all time. Over the following two years, the band toured widely to promote the album, including concerts in the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia. In 1996, they stopped touring and made sporadic attempts to record Buckley's second album in New York City with Tom Verlaine as producer. In 1997, Buckley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to resume work on the album, to be titled My Sweetheart the Drunk, recording many four-track demos while also playing weekly solo shows at a local venue. On May 29, 1997, while awaiting the arrival of his band from New York, he drowned during a spontaneous evening swim, fully clothed, in the Mississippi River when he was caught in the wake of a passing boat; his body was found on June 4. Since his death, there have been many posthumous releases of his material, including a collection of four-track demos and studio recordings for his unfinished second album My Sweetheart the Drunk, expansions of Grace, and the Live at Sin-é EP. Chart success also came posthumously: with his cover of Leonard Cohen's song "Hallelujah" he attained his first number one on Billboard's Hot Digital Songs in March 2008 and reached number 2 in the UK Singles Chart that December. Buckley and his work remain popular and are regularly featured in "greatest" lists in the music press.


{# Load the tag library #} {% load bootstrap4 %} {# Load webpack library #} {% load render_bundle from webpack_loader %}


Getting Started¶
Installation¶
ISAMBARD can be installed straight from PYPI using pip:
ISAMBARD has a few Python package requirements, just install them through pip if it asks for them. We recommend using the [Anaconda Python 3 distribution](https://www.continuum.io/downloads), it contains most of the dependencies.
Windows People - You’ll need to download Visual Studio with the Visual C++ tools, if you want to use ISAMBARD. This is because we use a package called Cython to make the code run fast, and it needs a C compiler. You can also use MinGW, but it’s more complicated to set up with Cython.
External Programs¶
To get the most out of ISAMBARD, a couple of external programs are recommended:
- SCWRL4 - Used to pack sidechains, it’s fast and accurate. Free for non-commercial use.
- DSSP - Used to find secondary structure in models. Free to download.
When you first import ISAMBARD you’ll be asked to give paths to the executables for the dependencies. These are not required to use ISAMBARD, if you don’t want to use any of them, just leave the path blank. Once you’ve finished setting your paths and some other options, a wee file called .isambard_settings will be made in your home directory, which contains your settings. If you ever want to rerun the configure script that runs when you first import, you can run the following command:
import isambard
isambard.settings.configure()
Chat with us on Gitter if you get stuck (link above), or raise an issue!


Welcome to ZotDetector
Start monitoring your mental health by creating an account in below
First Name:
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Password:
{% if error %}
Error:
{{ error }} {% endif %}


Before this class and this assignment, I had no idea what machine learning actually was. Turns out
it's not that bad. In this blog post I'll walk through what I did for this assignment, my conclusions
about the data I analyzed in this assignment, and some of my
take-aways about the state of machine learning in general, written for the perspective of someone
like my pre-assignment self who knows some statistics and has done some programming but doesn't really know what the
whole data science / machine learning craze is actually about.
Long story short, with tools as powerful and well documented as scikit-learn (what I used in this assignment)
with a background like mine it doesn't take very long to jump in and start drawing real insights from data.
What an amazing world we live in!
My goal for this assignment was to find out if a machine learning binary classifier could successfully identify whether a tweet was happy or sad based on the words that appear in the tweet. The feature space I was using to try to classify the tweets was all possible words that appeared in any tweet — each tweet is represented as a vector with length equal to the total number of words that appeared in any of the training tweets. In my training set I found 130,159 distinct words appearing in tweets. I also experimented with a few different methods of tokenization which collapsed some of these words into each other thusly reducing the size of the feature space.
My training data set consisted of 80,000 tweets which were labeled by hand as happy or sad. After training my models on this data I then tested the efficacy of the models by trying to classify an additional 359 test tweets (which were also labeled by hand). My best result was a model which was able to correctly classify about 82% of the test tweets... I was impressed.
The original data came from a csv, where each line contained the text of one tweet, a 1 or 0 polarity label, and some other data (username, when) which I didn't use. I parsed this data into python and then used scikit-learn to train classifiers on this data and visualize metrics about the classifiers' performance.
I didn't generate the above images — the images are from the scikit-learn documentation — but to me they artistically communicate the main thing I learned from this assignment. Each of the four images displays how a different model for classification categorizes some data. It doesn't really matter what the data is, and this is a very simple classification problem in that it only has 2 dimensions (2 features), but the image shows us how there are a lot of different ways you could try to draw lines separating the data and there is no clear winner. With the current state of machine learning tools, to get the best results you need to experiment with different models, and different ways of tuning your models to figure out which model best captures the structures implicit in your data source such that you can infer it will perform the best when you move beyond your training data and into classifying whatever relevant population you are looking at at large.
I experimented with three different scikit-learn classifiers: Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, and Support Vector Machine.
To figure out how well your models are doing you need to test them — it's pretty much a miniature science experiment on your data. Scikit-learn makes it easy to use the classifiers, but it is also clearly important to setup a workflow such that you can iteratively get meaningful feedback on how you're classifiers are doing in an easy to understand format and in a timely manner.
The metrics I used to evaluate my classifiers were the following:
Below is a bar graph of the 10-fold cross-validation accuracy, training accuracy and test accuracy of all three classifiers I experimented with. Purple is Naive Bayes. Blue is Logistic Regression. Turquoise is Support Vector Machine. The first three bars are the kcross validation scores, the second three bars are the training accuracy scores, the last three bars are the test accuracy scores.
Logistic Regression did the best on kcross validation which I believe is the most important metric. But simple little Naieve Bayes
managed to take home the win on the very small 369 test samples. Support Vector Machine clearly has an attachment problem,
grossly overfitting the training data with no regard for all of the possible diversity in the rest of the world.
Below are the full reports of all metrics I calculated for the three different types of classifiers I tested.
training mean accuracy: 0.8287125
10 fold cross validation accuracy: 0.761 (+/- 0.006)
test mean accuracy: 0.791086350975
CONFUSION MATRIX:
correct sad recognitions: 139
correct happy recognitions: 145
recognized happy as sad: 38
recognized sad as happy: 37
CLASSIFICATION REPORT:
precision recall f1-score support
sad tweet: 0.79 0.79 0.79 177
happy tweet: 0.79 0.80 0.79 182
avg / total: 0.79 0.79 0.79 359
INFORMATIVELY SAD WORDS
-28.0112 farrah
-20.0000 itchi
-17.9856 fawcett
-17.5747 cancel
-16.5837 sad
-16.1031 throat
-16.0000 postpon
-16.0000 sob
-14.9925 447
-14.9925 homesick
INFORMATIVELY HAPPY WORDS
14.6667 vip
12.1154 welcom
12.0000 howdi
12.0000 zac
11.8571 congratul
11.5000 poem
11.2500 followfridai
11.0000 fascin
11.0000 gem
11.0000 liber
training mean accuracy: 0.8574875
10 fold cross validation accuracy: 0.776 (+/- 0.009)
test mean accuracy: 0.788300835655
CONFUSION MATRIX
correct sad recognitions: 132
correct happy recognitions: 151
recognized happy as sad: 45
recognized sad as happy: 31
CLASSIFICATION REPORT
precision recall f1-score support
sad tweet: 0.81 0.75 0.78 177
happy tweet: 0.77 0.83 0.80 182
avg / total: 0.79 0.79 0.79 359
INFORMATIVELY SAD WORDS
-3.0612 sad
-2.9437 cancel
-2.5743 bummer
-2.5115 lone
-2.4582 depress
-2.2835 disappoint
-2.2194 fml
-2.2054 upset
-2.1793 stink
-2.1786 miss
INFORMATIVELY HAPPY WORDS
2.1641 proud
2.1528 yayi
2.0422 smile
1.9904 welcom
1.9431 vision
1.9298 ull
1.7921 highlight
1.7624 dope
1.7618 heheh
1.7501 ahaha
training mean accuracy: 0.9043125
10 fold cross validation accuracy: 0.757 (+/- 0.009)
test mean accuracy: 0.757660167131
CONFUSION MATRIX
correct sad recognitions: 124
correct happy recognitions: 148
recognized happy as sad: 53
recognized sad as happy: 34
CLASSIFICATION REPORT
precision recall f1-score support
sad tweet 0.78 0.70 0.74 177
happy tweet 0.74 0.81 0.77 182
avg / total 0.76 0.76 0.76 359
INFORMATIVELY SAD WORDS
-2.1682 sauna
-1.9887 ploblem
-1.9477 robb
-1.9406 aof
-1.9360 fiuhh
-1.9022 98
-1.8902 shawneda
-1.8878 morningwish
-1.8300 gaultier
-1.7860 distress
INFORMATIVELY HAPPY WORDS
2.8007 ooff
2.5854 petunia
2.3370 bubblewrap
2.2838 sleepingi
2.2659 daz
2.1859 brutu
2.1575 hartsfield
2.0950 meryl
2.0868 4000
2.0632 contrari
Below are the ROC curve plots for Naive Bayes and Logistic Regression classifiers.
While both graphs have about the same area underneath the curve (LOG=0.8767, NB=0.8841), you can see that they have slightly different shapes. Logistic Regression's ROC curve makes more upward progress before it starts veering right, visually corresponding with the fact that at LOG's ideal sensitivity (the sensitivity which optimizes the ratio of true positives to false positives), LOG performs better than NB does at its ideal sensitivity — LOG performs better than NB.
From just looking at the most informative words of the three classifiers (appears in the full reports included above), it is immediately clear that the informatively sad words of logistic regression sound the saddest, and the informatively happy words of logistic regression sound the happiest. I think our intuitive response to the features that a model most values is a great proxy towards how well the model will do overall.
While not greatly outperforming the other classifiers logistic regression definitely performed the best, its k-cross-validation score being definitely better than the others beyond reasonable doubt of standard deviation.
The SVM classifier clearly overfit the training data — scoring the highest accuracy on the training data, and the lowest accuracy on the test data.
The Naive Bayes classifier actually scored the best accuracy on the test data, but given how much larger the training data is compared to the test data, I think the k-cross validation data is a much better estimate of how good the classifier is — my theory is that Naive Bayes just got lucky on the 369 test tweets.
Among tweets correctly classified by Logistic Regression, below are the 10 tweets with highest predicted probability.
Among tweets incorrectly classified by Logistic Regression, here are the 10 tweets with highest predicted probability.
Reading through both the correctly labeled tweets and the incorrectly labeled tweets it is intuitively very clear why they were labelled the way they were. All of the these tweets with high probability have individual words which are strongly connotated, many of them have many of these words. As all of the classifiers are use a bag-of-words model, this is the best we can hope for from them.
Many of the high probability incorrectly labeled tweets are very sarcastic — such that they use a lot of words, where the tweeter clearly doesn't actually mean what they say. The only way we know the tweeter doesn't mean what the words conventionally mean individually is from the meaning of the tweets as a whole, so a bag of words model really has no chance at classifying these tweets correctly.
Clearly there are many different layers and scales at which you can optimize a machine learning model, from the statistical model you choose to classify a feature space, to feature extraction, to the features you choose to start with.
I wonder how the human brain identifies features as complex and hard to recognize as the tone of a sentence...
My main point of experimenting was to try different ways of tokenizing tweets. The idea is that by combining different words with equivalent meanings into the same feature, the algorithms ought to be able to better recognize patterns. For instance, if excited and excitedddd appear in two different tweets, they probably both mean kind of the same thing, and so anything the algorithm has 'learned' about a tweet containing the word excited should also apply to a tweet containing the word excitedddd.
It took me a while to figure out what metric was the best for evaluating the effectiveness of the tokenizer. I was thrown off at first because the test mean accuracy was actually lower for most of my feature extraction techniques. I eventually realized that the test data set was much smaller than the training data set, and that the 10 fold cross validation accuracy measured on the training set was actually a much better metric of how my classifiers were performing — and indeed with improved (rational) feature extraction the 10 fold cross validation accuracy improved!
From the reports below you will also notice that every time the test mean accuracy score is higher than the k-validation score. If there was an even distribution of types of tweets between the training and the test data theoretically these numbers should be about the same. However, for this particular data, there is a higher percentage of happy tweets in the test data than in the training data and all of the models are better at identifying happy tweets than sad tweets (they have higher f1-scores for happy tweets than sad tweets) — this results in a higher average accuracy for the test data than for the k-cross validation score on the training data (the training data accuracy is still higher due to overfitting).
This experiment was great practice in classifier analysis and gave me a good sense for how to make use of classifier metrics — my main take away from this assignment is that figuring out how to use classifier metrics to help you select the best model (or tuning or feature extraction) to use is the main skill in the 'art' of machine learning.
Below are the training mean scores, test mean scores, and kcross validation scores for different methods of tokenization I implemented with the three different classifiers.


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Unions sign compliance agreement for building the National Children's Hospital
by Jack QuannA number of unions have signed an agreement with the building contractor of the National Children's Hospital.
It commits to ensure compliance with the Sectoral Employment Order (SEO) for the construction industry at the St James's Hospital site in Dublin.
The protocol agreement was signed Thursday in central Dublin.
It commits BAM Building, as the main contractor on the hospital, to ensuring that all sub-contractors and agencies operating on the site comply with the construction SEO that sets "minimum standards of pay and conditions for workers."
The five unions involved are SIPTU, OPATSI, Connect, BATU and Unite.
This protocol is the first of its kind in 40 years.
SIPTU sector organiser John Regan explained: "The agreement stipulates that union organisers will have access to the site and direct contact with workers in order to ensure they are receiving their legal minimum entitlements for the full duration of the building of the National Children's Hospital.
"The agreement also provides for meetings every two months between union organisers and BAM senior management."
It also contains a commitment to direct PAYE employment for all workers on the site.
SIPTU said this will ensure workers are "not forced into bogus self-employment" which it says is "a major problem" in the construction industry.
Mr Regan added: "SIPTU is calling on the Construction Industry Federation to adopt this protocol agreement as a template for its member companies on how to co-operate with unions on all public and private building projects.
"SIPTU representatives are looking forward to making sure that the thousands of workers on the National Children's Hospital site will receive their minimum legal entitlements and are not subjected to any form of exploitation."
The hospital is currently due to open in April 2023.
The estimated cost of the project has risen by €450m to €1.7bn since it was first announced by the Government.


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My name is Samar Anand, and I'm a self-taught web developer and a final year CSE student at JIS College of Engineering based in Kolkata.
I'm always a life-long learner and highly motivated to learn & explore technical and life hacks. Most of the time, I'm totally involved in JavaScript stuff. I make random things using JavaScript, NodeJS and HTML & Bootstrap.
Apart from this, I'm a Competitive Coder who participates in different live contests on regular basis on the platform like Codeforces, Codechef, AtCoder etc. I love to solve logical problems and sometimes to get stuck on them.
I am open to join a Competitive technical environemnt where I can push myself to the limits in the terms of learning & execution where I can apply my knowledge and creative skills to make this world a better place.
In free time, I mean, when I don't code, I watch movies, read blogs and Yes, of course, I watch cricket ! VK17 is champ !!


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Early bids for pedia vaccines
CONCERNED stakeholders have urged the Department of Health (DOH) to make the bidding for pediatric vaccines competitive and not just limit it to one bidder.
The stakeholders stressed that an open and competitive bidding can save millions of pesos that can be used for other life-saving health initiatives by the DOH.
This developed as the DOH conducted an early competitive bidding on vaccines for children two months earlier than it has done for the last three years.
The early competitive bidding is DOH’s response to the urgent need to address vaccine-preventable diseases and the current outbreaks happening across the country.
In relation to this, some P4.9 billion was devoted to a vaccine for pneumococcal diseases, the biggest vaccine-preventable cause of death in children under five.
However, unlike the other pediatric vaccines, the DOH has reportedly excluded other possible competitors from the bidding for the pneumococcal vaccine.
In a position paper published in February 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the inclusion of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV) in childhood immunization programs worldwide.
According to the position paper, both PCVs currently available in the market have been shown to be safe and effective and to have both direct and indirect effects against pneumococcal disease.
The position paper also states that there is at present insufficient evidence of a difference in the net impact of both PCVs on overall disease burden.
In other words, both PCVs have comparable effectiveness in protecting children from overall pneumococcal disease.
Pneumococcal infections can lead to serious invasive diseases such as meningitis, septicaemia and pneumonia, as well as milder but more common illnesses such as sinusitis and otitis media.
Of the estimated 5.83 million deaths among children five years of age globally in 2015, 294 000 were estimated to have been caused by pneumococcal infections.