#∘₊✧────── leaf wozniak ; insight

[urdamage]

for akito & leaf: describe your favorite pair of socks.

akito noguchi has an extensive sock collection. there's no reason why the socks one wears should ever be boring, particularly not when only a sliver of them can typically be seen by others - if the wearer is also wearing trousers, which akito often does to protect his skin while skating and risking some brutal falls otherwise. because of the vast amount of socks that akito owns, it's hard to say what his favourite pair is. perhaps it's the pair of lavender coloured socks with little white daisies on them, or the colourful pair that looks like they've been dipped straight into the light of a rainbow, or even the pair that momoko gifted him for his sixteenth birthday, cream coloured socks with '秋' embroidered onto them in orange thread, '秋' reading aki, as in autumn, but also his name, of course.

leaf wozniak doesn't hate a lot of things, but wearing anything on his feet is one of them. 'barefoot hippies' have a bad reputation, but even so, and even while most of the commune do wear appropriate footwear ( as this is colorado , after all ) leaf can absolutely be described as a barefoot hippie. despite having nothing between him and the earth - or between him and the cold linoleum floor in the mall - for most of the year, he would surely lose a toe or two if he went without shoes in the winter; all of this is to say, he only wears socks begrudgingly. if he absolutely had to pick a favourite pair, however, it would be the thick, olive green, knitted socks handcrafted and gifted to him by a sibling to keep him warm throughout the winter, or else the simple white socks with three blue stripes up the top that he borrowed from florian some months ago.

∘ ₊✧────── get to know the residents of shrike heights !!

[gillespialfredoe01806ld]

6 Garages That Gave Birth to Billion-Dollar Companies

Shutterstock and realtor.com

If you’ve been meaning to clean out your garage since, like, forever, there’s no time like the present. And here’s some extra incentive to start clearing things out: Your garage could become the birthplace of a billion-dollar company. In fact, the likes of Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, and other beyond-famous entrepreneurs all got their start in this humblest of home offices.

Even if you aren’t the entrepreneurial type, you could profit in a big way from that unassuming space currently occupied by your Nissan Leaf (or your leaf blower). There’s no reason why you can’t just post an ad on Craigslist (which also started in a garage, by the way), offering up your reasonably priced “start-up facilities” for a modest rent … plus a percentage of the profits from anything created on your premises.

Hey, it sure beats housing a bunch of bikes your kids have outgrown and boxes of junk, right? For further inspiration, just check out these inspiring true-life tales about huge companies that got their start in tiny spaces.

Disney The wee Los Angeles garage where the Disney empire began

organizingla.com

In the summer of 1923, 22-year-old Walt Disney moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles, paying $5 per week to rent a room in his uncle Robert Disney‘s cottage—plus an extra $1 per week for a garage where he would realize his dream. The place had a pesky mouse that, according to legend, gave the younger Disney the idea for a little cartoon character he would eventually call Mickey. In that windowless space, located at 4406 Kingswell Ave., Disney cobbled together a crude camera stand and filmed a series of 30-second joke reels with stick figures.

Interior of the Disney garage, at the Stanley Ranch Museum

City of Garden Grove, California

The reels soon got sidelined once Disney was tapped by a film distributor to do a series of “Alice in Wonderland” skits. This required bigger offices, so Disney didn’t stick around in his uncle’s garage for long. Nonetheless, you can still visit this garage, which has since been transported to the Stanley Ranch Museum. Although the Disney Company doesn’t consider it Disney’s first “studio,” it does deign to call it his first “workshop.” That’s something!

Hewlett-Packard The Silicon Valley garage where Hewlett-Packard was born

The Museum of HP Calculators

In 1939, Stanford grads Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard moved into 367 Addison Ave. in Palo Alto, CA. They chose the two-story house for its 12-by-18-foot garage, where they’d set up shop. Flipping a coin to see whose name would come first, they founded Hewlett-Packard with an initial investment of $538, and started developing a line of electronics. Their first big break? They built an audio oscillator that they sold to none other than Disney to improve its sound system for the movie “Fantasia.” 

Today, that garage in Palo Alto is known as the birthplace of the entire Silicon Valley tech industry. Although Hewlett-Packard legally ceased to exist in 2015 and split into two companies, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the garage still exists, and has become a tourist attraction.

Amazon Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage.

BusinessPundit.com

Long before he launched Amazon, Jeff Bezos was busy in his parents’ garage.

“As a young boy, I’d been a garage inventor,” Bezos said in an interview with CNBC. “I’d invented an automatic gate closer out of cement-filled tires, a solar cooker that didn’t work very well out of an umbrella and tinfoil, baking-pan alarms to entrap my siblings. I’d always wanted to be an inventor.”

Bezos eventually went to work on Wall Street, but left at the age of 30 and moved to Bellevue, WA. With $40,000 of his own money and holed up in his garage at 10704 NE 28th St., he started selling—you guessed it—books on the internet. At the time, he drove his shipments to the post office in his 1987 Chevy Blazer.

“I thought maybe one day we would be able to afford a forklift,” Bezos told Charlie Rose in 2016. Yeah, they can afford a few forklifts these days.

Apple The Los Altos, CA, garage where the first Apple seeds were planted

Google Maps

Apple, now worth more than $750 billion, was started in 1976 by three guys: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. And, famously, the magic started in the garage of Jobs’ parents’ home.

The garage at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, CA, is where these budding tech titans put together their first computer and sold it to a local store for $500. They went on to hand-build 50 computers in 30 days in that garage, and those were the seeds for the Apple and Macintosh lines of products that have since evolved into i-everythings.

Google

In 1998, Susan Wojcicki rented out her garage at 232 Santa Margarita Ave. in Menlo Park, CA, to a couple of Stanford grads named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. And she’s probably so glad she did, because that’s where Page and Brin developed Google, the world’s largest search engine, which became one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

Microsoft Paul Allen and Bill Gates in 1975, before they were billionaires

Blog Spot

In 1975, Harvard dropout Bill Gates moved in with his buddy Paul Allen, who was living at 115 California St. NE in Albuquerque, NM. Allen was working at a tech company at the time, but soon got wrapped up with Gates in his garage to start their own enterprise: Microsoft (a name made by merging the words “microcomputer” and “software,” by the way).

In 1976, revenue from their little garage-based company totaled all of $16,005. Soon after that, an $80,000 contract with IBM helped launch the $500 billion behemoth of today.

A plaque on a rock now sits in front of the home where Gates and Allen got their start, although it’s been stolen repeatedly. Perhaps Microsoft could afford to, um, make that plaque a bit bigger and heavier so people can’t cart it off.

The post 6 Garages That Gave Birth to Billion-Dollar Companies appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2wIYwlH

[urdamage]

for the muse(s) of your choice: what does your muse consider their comfort zone, ie. safest place?

akito noguchi struggles to find somewhere where he feels completely comfortable, which has always been the case. typically it's wherever he can be where he knows momoko is safe and well.

bo turner would say his beloved basement apartment, where he is most comfortable in the company of ian vogt. though in all honesty, his comfort zone and safest place has always been wherever ian is.

carietta flowers has never had just one safe place, as it's wherever she can find herself behind her camera, with the lense pointed at something really incredible, something extremely beautiful.

conrad collins probably would never share this thought, though his safe place has always been in a classroom environment - a good one, with a supportive teacher, friends surrounding him and the chance to improve himself.

desi calderon would say shrike heights, as odd as that might seem during the current time. while he's not a shrike resident born and raised, this town has always been where he finds himself being most at home, and home is what makes him feel safe.

duckie ho is still working on finding that place, though currently the closest thing he has to a comfort zone or safe space would be in his apartment with his roommate and best friend winnie.

eilonwy finch made a conscious effort to make her apartment a safe space for herself, and it is there without a doubt. being able to lock herself in the room surrounded by pretty things and all of her favourite books makes her feel comforted and safe.

ernie goodarzi doesn't think he has a safe place, or anywhere where he feels especially comfortable. the closest he can get to that is wherever he can find himself as high as possible and as far away from others as possible.

junior viana carneiro will always consider his safe place to be his bedroom, a space where he lets no other people in ( unless they've gained his entire trust, which is not at all easy to do ). sitting in bed listening to his records will always make him feel best.

hen wen szeto is still working on finding a place like that again. it used to be wherever her brother was, or the home they lived in together, but she's been searching for some time since his death trying to find somewhere again.

leaf wozniak would consider the commune his safe space, but would quickly realise it's actually anywhere, as long as he's in his beloved van, the space feeling best when he's in the company of someone like orwell or ian or river.

leon barker deals with years of religious trauma, enough to make him feel uncomfortable anywhere, making him feel like he's being watched, being judged, and that something bad while come of it in the future. he doesn't have a safe space.

stevie dickinson has always and will always consider the shed out the back of his house to be his safest space. all of his best memories took place there, with his brother gabe and all of their friends. he will always cherish the space.

valentine ortiz would have once said that wherever his husband was is where he is safest and most comfortable. he assumed his place would be with his family after the loss of his husband, but after figuring that wasn't the case, he's still trying to find it.

∘ ₊✧────── get to know the residents of shrike heights !!

[urdamage]

when was the last time your muse(s) cried?

akito noguchi has been crying frequently, more often than not, of course mostly because of momoko's attack on halloween. he cries himself to sleep most nights, scared and exhausted and upset, and that was probably the most recent time he cried.

bo turner still wakes often throughout the night, pulled from his slumber as his nightmares leave him in such distress that he can no longer even sleep through them. he often cries when he wakes, so that was probably the most recent time he cried.

carietta flowers can often redirect her emotions and save herself from crying when she's upset, though the recent attacks bring up a lot from inside her and they fill her with fear. the last time she cried was over the attack on halloween, when she found out the morning after.

conrad collins cries when he's experiencing any heightened emotion, and the last time he happened to cry was after a particularly exhausting shift at work. since the attack at shrike grocers ( and the loss of two co-workers ) he's been made to work more frequently, and oftentimes after his shifts - especially if it's late and he's tired - he'll cry just a little on his walk home.

desi calderon tells people that he doesn't cry, that he's never shed a tear, but of course that's not true. similarly to conrad, the last time desi cried was after a recent shift working. he was exhausted, overtired, stressed out to the max and perhaps he had one too many to drink at julio's before he made it home.

duckie ho is another shrike resident who pretends he's never cried - though he does, quite often, and sometimes for the worst reasons. the last time he cried was when he was caught shoplifting a week or so ago. he pretended it had slipped his mind because he was in such distress over the latest attack, and not only did they buy it, but they sent him on his way with the stolen goods free of charge.

eilonwy finch is probably crying right now. she's struggled to stop since she was so brutally attacked, no matter what she's doing or where she is. she frequents the storage room out the back of donna's to cry in, and often finds herself in the sections of a new chapter that rarely gets customers looking through them so she can cry without eyes on her.

ernie goodarzi couldn't tell you the last time he cried, as it doesn't happen often. perhaps it was in high school when he was seventeen and riddled with guilt over the fact that he was hurting his girlfriend by dating her despite knowing he was gay and that he was lying to her directly.

junior viana carneiro made a real fool of himself the last time he cried recently, despite the outcome of it being quite brilliant ( it being when he and silvio officially became boyfriends ). he cried over something silvio said, cried because he thought silvio would never feel the same way he felt for him, but really he had misread the situation completely.

hen wen szeto last cried on halloween - on her birthday. she hadn't expected anything from anyone, but has struggled considerably with her loneliness since her brother passed. chai was the only person to even acknowledge wen's birthday this year, and later that night wen cried over the kind gesture and the olive branch extended. she didn't deserve it, and was embarrassed to find how much it meant to her.

leaf wozniak tried to be the strong one, tried to provide comfort and help to his best friend ian after he worked himself beyond exhaustion taking care of bo after the second attack in shrike mall, but as soon as he had dropped ian back home leaf cried for hours over it all, and that was the last time he cried.

leon barker last cried when he found out about the latest attack, as similarly to carietta the attacks bring up a lot of conflicting and difficult feelings from inside of him. he wouldn't ever tell anyone just how frightened the killers make him feel, however, no matter how many times that fear makes him burst into tears.

stevie dickinson cried only a few nights ago while watching stand by me. it's a horrible habit he has, putting on the film that hits so close to home, but in times of great stress he finds it's easier for him to let his emotions out if he prompts them with the film. it's terribly sad, but still a favourite film of his.

valentine ortiz cried - despite his best efforts not to - most recently when he was having dinner cooked for him by jude. they bonded that night in ways they never had before, talking about their personal lives, and valentine couldn't help but shed a few tears over his late husband.

∘ ₊✧────── get to know the residents of shrike heights !!

[urdamage]

which of your characters are leaders and which are followers?

the leaders are akito, carietta, desi, hen wen, duckie, leaf.

those somewhere in between are bo, eilonwy, ernie, junior, leon.

the followers are conrad, stevie, valentine.

∘ ₊✧────── get to know the residents of shrike heights !!

[urdamage]

muses of your choice: how are they feeling at this very moment?

akito noguchi has never felt worse. he’s terrified, upset, in pain ( both physically and emotionally ) and overall a complete wreck. he’s mostly worried for his sister, mostly focused on keeping her safe, but he’s not sure if he’s capable of that anymore.

bo turner is honestly feeling kind of … good. he’s still terrified and a lot less socially inclined, but he’s feeling lucky for what he has and what he has gained amongst all of the pain and terror. he’s trying to move on.

carietta flowers has felt a lot worse, and might be near the best she’s ever felt. she’s on edge and frightened about all that’s happening, but she’s lucky to have not been affected so personally by the attacks. 

conrad collins is terrified. he doesn’t do well with conflict or confrontation, and while he’s trying to maintain normality with the help of distractions, he’s feeling antsy and paranoid nonetheless. 

desi calderon is exhausted, afraid, upset and stressed - that’s all he’s able to feel currently as he’s working too hard and being too busy to recharge or recover. 

duckie ho is only slightly more concerned and worried than he is usually, though he seems unchanged and indifferent as he usually is. 

eilonwy finch is feeling the worst she’s ever felt in her life. she’s in pain, terrified, upset, concerned and paranoid. she feels vulnerable, alone, weak and clueless. 

ernie goodarzi feels quite ordinary, only diverting from being regularly calm and composed when he spends any extended amount of time sober - that leaving him with elevated levels of stress and fear. 

junior viana carneiro feels so many overwhelming feelings and emotions. he feels pain, fear, regret and terror from his attack, yet somehow at the same time he feels luck, disbelief, excitement and love for all he’s gained even despite the horrors.  

hen wen szeto is incredibly angry. she’s feeling quite lonely, quite lost, quite betrayed. she doesn’t know what to do anymore, and has surpassed fear, caution and concern to go straight to red hot rage. she feels as though only bad things happen to her.

leaf wozniak is pretending like he’s much stronger than he is, though in actuality he’s feeling incredibly drained, stressed, scared, upset and vulnerable. he feels as though he’s never been less prepared to deal with something before, he feels useless, upset and unwell overall - though he’s trying to keep positive.

stevie dickinson is anxious. so incredibly anxious. he’s not feeling good with the subject and the threat of death being so apparent, and while he’s trying to busy himself or keep his mind off of the thoughts, how could anyone possibly ignore the attacks?

valentine ortiz is still terrified, and still dealing with physical discomfort and pain from his attack. he’s feeling especially sensitive right now, especially vulnerable and in need of help, protection and guidance.

∘ ₊✧────── get to know the residents of shrike heights !!

[urdamage]

which of your characters like cold weather and which of them like warm weather?

those who like cold weather are conrad, desi, eilonwy, duckie, stevie.

those who like both perhaps an equal amount are bo, ernie, junior, leon.

those who like warm weather are akito, carietta, hen wen, leaf, valentine.

∘ ₊✧────── get to know the residents of shrike heights !!