University Of Manchester First Aid Report Form: Fill & Download for Free

That depends on where you’re from. If you’re an overseas student like I was, there’s a fair bit of extra paperwork involved (to say the least). Essentially, you have to apply to the school and be accepted, but this is only beginning. In short, getting accepted into MMU was easy enough; the logistics of actually attending were far more arduous.Even the acceptance process, itself, has multiple steps. One, I had to initially apply to the school, which requires filling out the required forms, and supplying the school with my academic transcript and two letters of recommendation (overseas students require two, not one). Because I had yet to finish my BA, I had to promise that I’d be graduating on a specific date, to International Admissions. This required proof, hence more paperwork.Once accepted, the school sent me a conditional offer letter, the condition being that I finish my BA. First, I had to accept the offer by writing to them and stating that I did, indeed, accept their conditional offer. Then, I had to meet the condition, itself. I completed my final classes and sent my final academic transcript to Admissions, as well as photos of my diploma. Upon receiving it, they sent me an unconditional offer, which I also had to accept, via e-mail.Technically this is “getting into” MMU. Turns out, accepting the school’s unconditional offer is only the start to a very long, Byzantine process… [note: This portion is additional, and different for British students, but I wish to include it because it was frankly a giant pain-in-the-ass—something overseas applicants should keep in mind:]As an overseas student, attending MMU requires the acquisition of a student visa, funding and accommodations (a traveling grad student’s trifecta). I would need a Tier 4 Student Visa to stay in Manchester for the school year. However, to even apply for one, a CAS (or Confirmation of Acceptance of Studies) number is required. To receive a CAS, I had to fill out a CAS form.Before doing this, I needed to prove that I had the fiscal means to attend MMU (this includes living expenses/accommodations). To do this, I had to complete the steps listed in the PDF document available on MMU’s US Funding page. These involved completing a FAFSA form (an application for student aid). This generated a SAR (student aid report), which I needed to send to MMU’s US Financial Aid department. In turn, they eventually sent me an “Award Letter” outlining distribution of funds. Upon accepting it, I completed my CAS form.CAS in hand, I then had to apply for the visa, itself. This required a passport, but also paying hundreds of dollars in various paperwork costs (as well a NHS fee) and going to a visa application center. There, I had to gather bio-metric data (mainly fingerprints). I then had to mail out said data, along with my visa application and physical passport, to a visa processing facility. This required buying a special shipping label, attaching it to an envelope at a UPS store and mailing it out. Several weeks later, I received my temporary visa (the physical visa would be provided, after Pre-Enrollment) and got my passport back.Apart from my visa, I also had to apply for accommodation, which I couldn’t do without an “Award Letter” from MMU’s US Financial Aid Department. Once I’d received and accepted my Award Letter, I applied for accommodation through the school. The selection process took multiple steps, lasting over several weeks. Keep in mind, many of these applications—for my visa, financial aid, and accommodation—were occurring at roughly the same time (with mild assurances to the people involved that the required forms were in the mail). Eventually though, I had my loans, my accommodation, and my temporary visa.During all of this, I had to schedule my flight to arrive for Pre-Enrollment, before the semester began. Once I flew in from America, I arrived at my residence. A few days later, Pre-Enrollment occurred. There, I had to supply my visa, passport, credentials (and other germane support documents) to a member of MMU’s US Financial Aid department. Once Immigration knew I was actually in the UK, I was notified of when and where to go and pick up my actual, physical visa. Having it, and having completed Pre-Enrollment, I could then open a bank account, which my remaining loan money would be distributed to after a month(!). In the meantime, I could finally register for my classes.That’s right—after getting into the college, and having gone through the entire, labyrinthine process, registering for my classes was practically the last step!

Ohhh this is a hard one. Most people will say in 1946 with the advent of ENIAC, but that could be seen as wrong basis the history of computing:Pre-20th centuryThe Ishango boneDevices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was probably a form of tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use counting rods is one example.The Chinese Suanpan (算盘) (the number represented on this abacus is 6,302,715,408)The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.The ancient Greek-designed Antikythera mechanism, dating between 150 and 100 BC, is the world's oldest analog computer.The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog "computer", according to Derek J. de Solla Price.It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC. Devices of a level of complexity comparable to that of the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until a thousand years later.Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in the early 11th century.The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd centuries BC and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A combination of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe incorporating a mechanical calendar computer and gearr-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan, Persia in 1235. Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe, an early fixed-wired knowledge processing machine with a gear train and gear-wheels, circa 1000 AD.The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry, multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots, was developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation.The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over it with a mechanical linkage.A slide ruleThe slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide rules with special scales are still used for quick performance of routine calculations, such as the E6B circular slide rule used for time and distance calculations on light aircraft.In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automata) that could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.The tide-predicting machine invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location.The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1876, Lord Kelvin had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.In a differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work. Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.First computing deviceA portion of Babbage's Difference engine.Charles Babbage, an English mechanical engineer and polymath, originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered the "father of the computer", he conceptualized and invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century. After working on his revolutionary difference engine, designed to aid in navigational calculations, in 1833 he realized that a much more general design, an Analytical Engine, was possible. The input of programs and data was to be provided to the machine via punched cards, a method being used at the time to direct mechanical looms such as the Jacquard loom. For output, the machine would have a printer, a curve plotter and a bell. The machine would also be able to punch numbers onto cards to be read in later. The Engine incorporated an arithmetic logic unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first design for a general-purpose computer that could be described in modern terms as Turing-complete.The machine was about a century ahead of its time. All the parts for his machine had to be made by hand – this was a major problem for a device with thousands of parts. Eventually, the project was dissolved with the decision of the British Government to cease funding. Babbage's failure to complete the analytical engine can be chiefly attributed to difficulties not only of politics and financing, but also to his desire to develop an increasingly sophisticated computer and to move ahead faster than anyone else could follow. Nevertheless, his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906.Analog computersSir William Thomson's third tide-predicting machine design, 1879–81During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine, invented by Sir William Thomson in 1872. The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration using wheel-and-disc mechanisms, was conceptualized in 1876 by James Thomson, the brother of the more famous Lord Kelvin.The art of mechanical analog computing reached its zenith with the differential analyzer, built by H. L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT starting in 1927. This built on the mechanical integrators of James Thomson and the torque amplifiers invented by H. W. Nieman. A dozen of these devices were built before their obsolescence became obvious. By the 1950s, the success of digital electronic computers had spelled the end for most analog computing machines, but analog computers remained in use during the 1950s in some specialized applications such as education (control systems) and aircraft (slide rule).Digital computersElectromechanicalBy 1938, the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine. This was the Torpedo Data Computer, which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo at a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well.Replica of Zuse's Z3, the first fully automatic, digital (electromechanical) computer.Early digital computers were electromechanical; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes. The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939, was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer. In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2000 relays, implementing a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz. Program code was supplied on punched film while data could be stored in 64 words of memory or supplied from the keyboard. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating point numbers. Rather than the harder-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design), using a binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The Z3 was Turing complete.Vacuum tubes and digital electronic circuitsPurely electronic circuit elements soon replaced their mechanical and electromechanical equivalents, at the same time that digital calculation replaced analog. The engineer Tommy Flowers, working at the Post Office Research Station in London in the 1930s, began to explore the possible use of electronics for the telephone exchange. Experimental equipment that he built in 1934 went into operation five years later, converting a portion of the telephone exchange network into an electronic data processing system, using thousands of vacuum tubes. In the US, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed and tested the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942, he first "automatic electronic digital computer". This design was also all-electronic and used about 300 vacuum tubes, with capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory.Colossus, the first electronic digital programmable computing device, was used to break German ciphers during World War II.During World War II, the British at Bletchley Park achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German encryption machine, Enigma, was first attacked with the help of the electro-mechanical bombes. To crack the more sophisticated German Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine, used for high-level Army communications, Max Newman and his colleagues commissioned Flowers to build the Colossus. He spent eleven months from early February 1943 designing and building the first Colossus. After a functional test in December 1943, Colossus was shipped to Bletchley Park, where it was delivered on 18 January 1944 and attacked its first message on 5 February. Colossus was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer. It used a large number of valves (vacuum tubes). It had paper-tape input and was capable of being configured to perform a variety of boolean logical operations on its data, but it was not Turing-complete. Nine Mk II Colossi were built (The Mk I was converted to a Mk II making ten machines in total). Colossus Mark I contained 1,500 thermionic valves (tubes), but Mark II with 2,400 valves, was both 5 times faster and simpler to operate than Mark I, greatly speeding the decoding process.ENIAC was the first electronic, Turing-complete device, and performed ballistics trajectory calculations for the United States Army.The U.S.-built ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first electronic programmable computer built in the US. Although the ENIAC was similar to the Colossus, it was much faster, more flexible, and it was Turing-complete. Like the Colossus, a "program" on the ENIAC was defined by the states of its patch cables and switches, a far cry from the stored program electronic machines that came later. Once a program was written, it had to be mechanically set into the machine with manual resetting of plugs and switches.It combined the high speed of electronics with the ability to be programmed for many complex problems. It could add or subtract 5000 times a second, a thousand times faster than any other machine. It also had modules to multiply, divide, and square root. High speed memory was limited to 20 words (about 80 bytes). Built under the direction of John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC's development and construction lasted from 1943 to full operation at the end of 1945. The machine was huge, weighing 30 tons, using 200 kilowatts of electric power and contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors.Modern computersConcept of modern computerThe principle of the modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his seminal 1936 paper, On Computable Numbers. Turing proposed a simple device that he called "Universal Computing machine" and that is now known as a universal Turing machine. He proved that such a machine is capable of computing anything that is computable by executing instructions (program) stored on tape, allowing the machine to be programmable. The fundamental concept of Turing's design is the stored program, where all the instructions for computing are stored in memory. Von Neumann acknowledged that the central concept of the modern computer was due to this paper.Turing machines are to this day a central object of study in theory of computation. Except for the limitations imposed by their finite memory stores, modern computers are said to be Turing-complete, which is to say, they have algorithm execution capability equivalent to a universal Turing machine.Stored programsA section of the Manchester Baby, the first electronic stored-program computerEarly computing machines had fixed programs. Changing its function required the re-wiring and re-structuring of the machine. With the proposal of the stored-program computer this changed. A stored-program computer includes by design an instruction set and can store in memory a set of instructions (a program) that details the computation. The theoretical basis for the stored-program computer was laid by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper. In 1945, Turing joined the National Physical Laboratory and began work on developing an electronic stored-program digital computer. His 1945 report "Proposed Electronic Calculator" was the first specification for such a device. John von Neumann at the University of Pennsylvania also circulated his First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC in 1945.The Manchester Baby was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948. It was designed as a testbed for the Williams tube, the first random-access digital storage device. lthough the computer was considered "small and primitive" by the standards of its time, it was the first working machine to contain all of the elements essential to a modern electronic computer. As soon as the Baby had demonstrated the feasibility of its design, a project was initiated at the university to develop it into a more usable computer, the Manchester Mark 1.The Mark 1 in turn quickly became the prototype for the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. Built by Ferranti, it was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951. At least seven of these later machines were delivered between 1953 and 1957, one of them to Shell labs in Amsterdam.In October 1947, the directors of British catering company J. Lyons & Company decided to take an active role in promoting the commercial development of computers. The LEO I computer became operational in April 1951 nd ran the world's first regular routine office computer job.TransistorsA bipolar junction transistorThe bipolar transistor was invented in 1947. From 1955 onwards transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs, giving rise to the "second generation" of computers. Compared to vacuum tubes, transistors have many advantages: they are smaller, and require less power than vacuum tubes, so give off less heat. Silicon junction transistors were much more reliable than vacuum tubes and had longer, indefinite, service life. Transistorized computers could contain tens of thousands of binary logic circuits in a relatively compact space.At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead of valves.Their first transistorised computer and the first in the world, was operational by 1953, and a second version was completed there in April 1955. However, the machine did make use of valves to generate its 125 kHz clock waveforms and in the circuitry to read and write on its magnetic drum memory, so it was not the first completely transistorized computer. That distinction goes to the Harwell CADET of 1955, built by the electronics division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.Integrated circuitsThe next great advance in computing power came with the advent of the integrated circuit. The idea of the integrated circuit was first conceived by a radar scientist working for the Royal Radar Establishment of the Ministry of Defence, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer. Dummer presented the first public description of an integrated circuit at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington, D.C. on 7 May 1952. The first practical ICs were invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor. Kilby recorded his initial ideas concerning the integrated circuit in July 1958, successfully demonstrating the first working integrated example on 12 September 1958. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as "a body of semiconductor material ... wherein all the components of the electronic circuit are completely integrated". Noyce also came up with his own idea of an integrated circuit half a year later than Kilby. His chip solved many practical problems that Kilby's had not. Produced at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of germanium. This new development heralded an explosion in the commercial and personal use of computers and led to the invention of the microprocessor. While the subject of exactly which device was the first microprocessor is contentious, partly due to lack of agreement on the exact definition of the term "microprocessor", it is largely undisputed that the first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004, designed and realized by Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, and Stanley Mazor at Intel.Mobile computersWith the continued miniaturization of computing resources, and advancements in portable battery life, portable computers grew in popularity in the 2000s. The same developments that spurred the growth of laptop computers and other portable computers allowed manufacturers to integrate computing resources into cellular phones. These so-called smartphones and tablets run on a variety of operating systems and have become the dominant computing device on the market, with manufacturers reporting having shipped an estimated 237 million devices in 2Q 2013.So now you tell me… what do you consider the first computer? And what year was it invented?

I just remembered that I never answered this, although God knows I've spilled enough of my life story (and my guts) all over this site that of the people interested enough to read this, most will already know a lot of it.I was born in Baltimore, Maryland to American-born Greek-American parents. My mother's people were from Sparta and my father's people from the islands. Three of my grandparents were born in Greece; my mother's mother was born in Pittsburgh to a Greek-born father and a Polish-born mother.[There's a legend in my family (I hope it's true) that my mother's mother's mother left Poland as a teenager because she was running away from anarranged marriage to a coal miner twice her age. Whatever happened, shemade her way to Reading, Pennsylvania, where she got a job in a Greekrestaurant and met my great-grandfather, who was an itinerant puppeteer and looked like Cary Grant (seriously). They got married and embarked on a lifestyle that involved her staying at home for weeks or months while he went out on the road, touring from one Greek coffeehouse to another with hismarionettes. He would return home long enough to knock her up and thengo out on the road again.]My mother died in January 2013, just a few weeks before her 83rd birthday. Here she is on her 82nd birthday.My dad is 90. If Mom had survived another few months they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in June 2013.My dad is a retired electrician who owned a small appliance store when I was a little girl, then foresaw the dominance of the big box stores (realizing he could not compete with a local store called Luskin's) and got a job as a troubleshooter at the big Bethlehem Steel plant in Sparrows Point, Maryland. He retired in 1984. My mom was the office manager at an insurance agency until I was born, then stayed home for about ten years, then took a part-time job, but basically dedicated herself to my brother and me.My brother is four years younger than I am. I despised him when he was born but for many years he has been very dear to me, and his 13 year old daughter Christina is one of the joys of my life. Unfortunately I live in Oregon and pretty much my whole family live in Maryland, so I don't see them more than three or four times a year, which can be hard sometimes. This is my brother and me, taken by Christina, on his birthday a few years ago. (She and I made the cake.)I'm very happily married to a guy I went to college with, Mike Radway. We were together as a committed couple for 26 years before we got married, and knew each other as friends for six years before that. During the time before we got married we got asked a lot of questions about how long we'd been together and I always used to enjoy responding, "Since the Carter Administration, although we met during the Nixon Administration."Stephanie V's answer to Do long-distance relationships work?Here is our wedding photo. We were married at the Multnomah County Courthouse. I'm glad no one ever called my mother's attention that I wore black (she's seen the photos of course, but in her relief that I was finally married she didn't pay much attention to the details).Not only did I manage to find an excellent life partner, he has a great family who have always welcomed me warmly into whatever events or activities I happened to be doing with them. I know many people can't say the same about their own in-laws and I feel very fortunate.When I was an adolescent I always assumed that I'd never get married, partly because I couldn't imagine ever wanting to marry anyone, and partly because I didn't feel like wife material. I am a slob and an terrible housekeeper. I'm not much of a cook (although I'm improving). I knew I didn't want to have children. I knew I would never want to change my name. Etc. However, the one time I tried to discuss these feelings with my mother I only succeeded in freaking her out because when I spoke the words, "I'm just not the kind of girl boys marry," she ran with that in a whole different direction. I figured it out later.Because I am a firstborn my mother had no idea I was a little weirdo when I started reading at about age 2.5. She just assumed this was how it went. We didn't have public kindergarten, so when she took me (just turned 6) to sign up for first grade they told her I had to take a reading readiness test. When she told them I'd been reading for years they didn't believe her until I started reading all the forms they had printed out for the parents, at which point I got to meet the principal, got sent for testing to the Baltimore County Board of Education, and got skipped into the second grade. So I was always a year younger than my classmates, all through school.I was never much good at sports but I was really good at pretty much everything in school, and I especially loved math, at least until I ran into second year algebra (the only D I ever got) and got scared off. I took five years of French and a lot of English and social studies classes instead. I got involved in student government, became the VP of my junior class and then the president of the student council. I was most likely to succeed and all that. My mother wanted me to stay in Baltimore and go to Goucher College (which was all female in those days). I wanted to go away, and I knew that if I was going to get my parents to accept it I needed to get into a major brand name school. I got into Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Goucher, and two other schools. Most first generation Greek-American fathers in 1973 would never have supported the idea of a daughter going to Yale. I had some financial aid and a bursary job but my parents came through with the money for me to go.Yale was a transformative experience for me.Stephanie V's answer to How has higher education changed your life?Stephanie V's answer to What does it feel like to attend a world-renowned university?For my senior essay in American Studies I decided to write about the Black Sox scandal. I called up the most notorious baseball fan on the Yale faculty, A. Bartlett Giamatti, and asked him to advise it. He agreed. A few months later he was elected President of Yale, but he insisted on keeping his commitment. Working on it with him was a great experience.After Yale I managed to land my dream job as an executive trainee with MLB (business).Stephanie V's answer to Is it really possible to make your own luck?While I worked as Manager of Waivers and Player Records for the American League, I went to law school in the evenings at Fordham. I graduated from Fordham in 1985 and lucked into something great. There was a new Commissioner, Peter Ueberroth. Peter didn't like lawyers but he did like professional women, and he created a new Assistant General Counsel position for me in the Commissioner's Office, so I could stay on. This was a huge break for me, and I'll always be grateful to him for it.In 1988-89 when it started to seem that moving on from MLB might be a good idea, Bart (who by then was National League President and would soon be Commissioner) introduced me to his Yale classmate Donald Dell. Donald was a former US Davis Cup captain and had started the first sports agency specializing in representing tennis players, ProServ. His first two clients were Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith. By the late 80s ProServ had branched out into other sports and represented hundreds of athletes including Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Greg LeMond, Boomer Esiason, James Worthy, Dominique Wilkins, and tennis players like John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Stefan Edberg, and Gabriela Sabatini. I worked for Donald for eight years. A major highlight of that time was in 1990 when ProServ was hired to represent the merchandising rights to Nelson Mandela's first US visit, after his release from Robben Island. (When Mandela was released from prison, Arthur Ashe was the first person he asked to meet, and Arthur helped us get a meeting to pitch the business.) A colleague and I ran the merchandising program. It was thrilling.The licensee in the Bay Area was Winterland Productions. I flew out to San Francisco and appeared on local TV with the head of artist licensing at Winterland to urge people to buy only the officially licensed t-shirts, etc.In 1995 I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Sports Lawyers Association, and still serve as a director, and now as a member of the Executive Committee.I was recruited to Nike (company) in 1997 and worked there for almost 14 years. I was originally recruited to do sports marketing deals but lucked into an opportunity to start building Nike's global product safety team and infrastructure in a serious way in about 1999, and ran with it.In that job I built a global multidisciplinary virtual team that only saw each other perhaps twice a year, but which met weekly to deal with existing issues and plan out the mechanisms by which we hoped to prevent future issues. We traveled to Asia and Europe to give and receive trainings. We visited the European Parliament and the Chinese product safety authorities in Shanghai. We managed the occasional product recall and worked with product designers and developers to avoid future recalls. I served on the ethics committee of the Nike Sport Research Lab and my team and I worked with the NSRL and the product engines to decide how much we were willing to promise by way of product performance claims based on their work. I worked with amazingly smart people -- chemists, materials scientists, manufacturing gurus, social compliance experts, ESH specialists. My team and I sat through days of toxicology lectures to elevate our understanding of consumer allergies, sensitivities, and other chemical safety issues. I took a special two-week training course called "PS72 Shoe School" in 2000 and learned how to brief, design, spec/develop, cost out, and build an athletic shoe. Those two weeks (one in Oregon, one in Korea and China) will always be a highlight of my life. I can't ever remember learning so much in such a short time.Between 1997 and 2009, in partnership with the staff on the business side, I also papered and negotiated literally billions of dollars in sports marketing deals. My principal sports of concentration were tennis, golf, baseball, and some Olympic sports. I worked on every piece of Nike sports marketing business related to Lance Armstrong for 12 years, including setting up the "LiveStrong" wristband promotion and getting it legally qualified in the 20 states that regulate that kind of fundraising. Last I heard more than 70 million yellow wristbands had been sold. I'm sure it's closer to 100 million now. I worked on Nike's product supply and sponsorship agreements with Ohio State, University of Washington, University of North Carolina System, and other schools. I worked on Nike's deals with scores of athletes. I've been called a bitch by at least two agents representing athletes you've heard of. I also have had very warm relationships with people who represented athletes under contract to Nike.http://www.quora.com/Stephanie-Vardavas/My-Posts/I-just-learned-that-my-friend-Keven-Davis-died-on-Friday-nightIn 2009 Nike had major layoffs after which I was repurposed as a trademark lawyer, a specialty I had last practiced 20 years earlier, at MLB (although at MLB we did licensing and at Nike we did clearance and prosecution [registration] of trademarks). After a few more departmental reorgs I found myself involuntarily retired. I won't say I had no idea about what to do next. Rather, I had too many ideas about what to do next. I started working on a couple of patents, which I'm still working on, but I thought I wanted to get a new job. At first I thought I'd try to get a job in the technology field, which has fascinated me since the first time my friend Jim HendlerWho is James Hendler?first showed me the World Wide Web in 1995.Stephanie V's answer to What was the first website you built, and in what year did you build it?I applied for jobs at [tech startup A], [tech startup B], [tech pioneer], and [tech survivor], got a couple of phone interviews, and that was it. I realized as I scanned the various job listings that nobody wanted to hire a lawyer with my amount of experience. So I knew I was going to have to take charge of my own path from then on. I remembered that ten years earlier I had thought about becoming a mediator after I retired. Now was my chance.I took almost 100 hours of training as a mediator and embarked on a new career. I've also done some consulting in product safety, the work I loved most when I worked for Nike. But none of it felt exactly right. Finally the light bulb went on for me when I hit a million miles on United Airlines and realized I had never owned a carry-on bag that I really liked. I connected with a former Nike colleague who is an expert in materials and a new company, row99.com, was born.In 2011 the Governor of Oregon appointed me to the Oregon Commission for Women, and I was elected Chair in 2012. My service on the Commission has been a great experience so far. My fellow Commissioners are really smart, capable women, and the work we do is important.I'm politically activeStephanie V's answer to What is it like to host a political fundraising dinner at your house?Stephanie V's answer to What is it like to be a delegate at an American presidential nominating convention?and cut my teeth in local politics as a library advocate, with six years on the board of directors and two years as President of the Friends of Multnomah County Library. I was also one of the founding board members of EMERGE Oregon (a 501c4 that trains Democratic women to run for office). I spent Election Day 2008 as a voter protection volunteer at a polling place in Albuquerque. I have absolutely zero ambition to hold elective office myself, and happily neither does Mike. We don't want that kind of life. (That's us with the late Elizabeth Edwards. We spent a day driving her around in June 2007 when she came to Portland to campaign for her husband. I'll always be grateful for the time we spent with her, but if I'd known what a dick he was I would never have supported him, so I guess I'm glad I didn't know, or I would never have met her.)And here we are with Congressman John Lewis, a real honest-to-God hero.Like seemingly 95% of Quorans, I have an idea for a startup. I don't have the technical skills to execute on it but the service would have immediate value to some very big ecommerce companies so I keep telling myself I need to figure out how to find someone to work on it with me and make it happen; I'll be really sad if someone else gets to it before I do. I've been researching prior art at the USPTO to decide whether I should try to get a business process patent to give me some protection while I try to implement it. I'm not a natural born entrepreneur but I've been in the business world for more than 30 years and learned a few things along the way.Random miscellaneous crap about me:I love Jane Austen (author), Star Wars, Leonard Cohen, Elton John, The Beatles (band), and lots of other music, including Baroque Music and Opera. I love Musicals. I am both an Anglophile and a Francophile, although some believe those two things to be mutually exclusive. I love Star Wars (creative franchise). My favorite animal is the Sheep, but I was born in the Year of the Monkey. I love Monty Python and I know I should love Firesign Theatre, but I never got into it.Going to law school at night broke my TV habit. Today I watch very little television, and the only thing I watch live is sports and awards shows like the Oscars, or other kinds of breaking news. On Tivo I watch all three US major network news shows, The Big Bang Theory (TV series), The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. On DVD I recently finished a 19 hour Downton Abbey (TV series) marathon and have dived into the Q&A here.I love Architecture and would have considered becoming an architect if it weren't for all the math. %^>I love the Baltimore Orioles, and have since I was a very little girl. I care about the Yale Bulldogs and have learned to love the Baltimore Ravens almost as much as my father and brother do. In the National League I've always liked the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants.The National Basketball Association (NBA) has never interested me all that much but I do love college hoops (I was raised a fan of the Maryland Terrapins; one of the biggest thrills I had working for ProServ was the opportunity to spend a little time with John Lucas, whom I really loved as a player, who later had terrible drug problems, and who got clean and is now very successful).I have no artistic talent to speak of, but I can take pretty good photos, and I used to be good at sewing. I could make professional looking coats and suits. My sewing skills are now long atrophied. I bought a fancy new electronic sewing machine six years ago and have never used it. I can still hem things by hand and sew on buttons, and I enjoy doing that kind of thing for my husband; it helps me delude myself into feeling domestic.I read widely, often nonfiction, especially Biographies and Memoirs. I do reread Austen (luckily she only wrote six books) at least once every couple of years. I recently did deep dives into Henry James (author) and Edith Wharton, who unaccountably has no Quora topic of her own. I'm reading Anna Karenina (1877 book) now for the first time (shocking, I know, but better late than never).I've been to Christmas luncheon at Manchester United. It felt as if I had stepped into outtakes from Love Actually (2003 movie)In 1975 I borrowed Brooks Robinson's uniform for Halloween. That's a whole other story.There's a chapter about me in the book Baseball Lives, by Mike Bryan, and the part relating to Brooks' uniform was excerpted in Sports Illustrated in April 1989 (the issue that had Tony Mandarich on the cover, I forget the date). George Vecsey also wrote a column about the uniform story the weekend Brooks was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.I've stood 50 meters from the finish line of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysées and cried like a baby when they played the Star Spangled Banner for Lance Armstrong as he mounted the podium.In 1990 I went on morning TV in New York City along with Arthur Ashe to talk about the Mandela merchandising program. It was a huge thrill for me.Stephanie V's answer to What are some of the unique (likely hasn’t been done by another Quora member) experiences of Quora community members?I've sat in the Commissioner's box at the World Series, in the owner's (singular) box at Yankee Stadium, in the owners' (plural) box at Fenway Park, and in the Directors' box at Old Trafford. I sat in front of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and one seat over from Harry Belafonte in the House gallery when Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress in 1990.In October 2011 I traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, where I attended in the same week both the World Championships of the International Gay Rodeo Association and the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. I am quite certain I am the only person in the world who did this.I've also got three unfinished novels in my hard drive. Perhaps I will finish one of them someday. I hope I'll pick a good one.