When Joe Sample started posting photos of his takeout food stops in the days after Iowa restaurants were ordered shut down to dine-in service in March, he didn’t think much of it. He just wanted to get some good food while supporting restaurants.

“I have a lot of friends in the food business. My wife worked at Elevate Salon and Emil’s Deli, so she’s not working right now,” he said. “I felt it was a great way to support local businesses.”

But then a new Facebook group dedicated to promoting curbside, delivery and takeout food options in Cedar Rapids sprung up — this week, it had more than 15,000 members — and Sample started sharing photos there. The 46-year-old Cedar Rapids resident quickly found himself having a new experience — going viral.

In a pandemic, that phrase could have negative connotations, but this was the positive kind of viral spread. The kind where hundreds of people liked his photos and commented on them. Then a Cedar Rapids T-shirt maker, Ivory Pearl Designs, started selling “Be Like Joe” T-shirts and other people started showing up to order takeout in the shirts. Soon, restaurants were asking if he would come take a photo at their restaurant.

“I just started it to have fun and posted a few fun pictures, and then I started having restaurants reach out to me,” Sample said.

He decided to dedicate his stimulus check from the federal government to the effort. Sometimes, he said he hits up more than one restaurant a day.

“I’ve hit close to 60 restaurants,” he said.

He’s leaned into the enthusiasm and found ways to play up the efforts. One day he dressed as Oscar the Grouch while visiting’ Oscar’s Restaurant in Hiawatha. On another day, he and one of his daughters bought plastic pig noses to wear on a stop at the Blind Pig in Cedar Rapids. He wears a Superman costume to some stops.

“I was totally surprised at how viral it went,” he said. “Now I’m just trying to keep it exciting.”

In his day job, Sample is a salesman for American Building Components in Mount Pleasant. He normally spends a lot of time on the road, selling metal roofing, siding and steel frame structures around the Midwest. These days, he’s working from home, making sales over the phone instead. He said going out to get carryout is a chance to see other people and get out of the house.

“It brings some normalcy to my life,” he said.

He has two daughters at home, age 9 and 15, and one son, 22. When he’s not eating out, he likes to spend time outdoors with his family, fishing, camping, hunting and coaching soccer. He admits his last name is a bit on-the-nose for his newest hobby.

“A lot of people ask, ‘Is that really even your real name?’” he said with a laugh.

Sample was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, which fuels his desire to support his town.

“My dad had Sample Pharmacies when I was growing up. People helped support us, so I figured it was the least I could do, to support other local businesses,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is, we want to keep them here. There are so many great restaurants in Cedar Rapids, and we don’t want to lose half of them. I’m going to try to keep going with this until they open the places back up, as much as I can.”

He also has helped do deliveries of donated meals to area hospitals and long-term care facilities. That effort started when his younger daughter’s Girl Scout troop had dozens of boxes of unsold cookies and few options to sell them once the pandemic hit. Sample’s family purchased them and sent them to staff at Mercy Medical Center. Since then he’s dropped off boxes of pita, hummus and gyro meat from Pita’z Mediterranean and American Cuisine, trays of cinnamon rolls from Oscar’s and other places.

“People seem to be very supportive in Cedar Rapids,” he said.

He gave a lot of credit to the Cedar Rapids Facebook group, which was started by Lindsay Leahy, Brooke Murphy-Fitzgerald and Shannon Hanson. Others like it have sprung up in Marion, North Liberty and Iowa City.

“I think this has opened a lot of people’s eyes; it has given people an opportunity to try new things,” Sample said. “I’ve seen more restaurants on here than I’d ever tried before.”

He’s also started to promote nonprofits like the Freedom Festival. He is helping sell the $5 commemorative buttons — even though the 2020 festival was canceled, the buttons will help support the organization’s operations. And he helped with a Big Brothers Big Sisters fundraiser, an effort which inspired him so much he signed up as a volunteer.

He said he hopes his efforts, and others like it inspire others to support the community.

“Keep supporting local, do your best to stay healthy, and when restaurants open back up, keep going to them,” he said. “They’re going to need our help for a long time to come.”

Comments: (319) 398-8339; alison.gowans@thegazette.com

CEDAR RAPIDS — A Dubuque woman who helped her boyfriend and another person buy heroin that later led to a fatal overdose was convicted Thursday in federal court.

Jacqueline M. Birch, 23, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of aiding and abetting the distribution of a controlled substance.

During the plea hearing, Birch admitted she knew that another person was going to illegally distribute a drug last May, and she aided in that distribution.

Evidence at a previous hearing showed that Birch drove her boyfriend, Mateusz Syryjczyk, 29, of Rockford, Ill., and another person, not identified in court documents, to a residence in Dubuque on May 27. Birch and the other person went into the residence and bought heroin from a dealer. The three drove to a hotel in Dubuque and all used the heroin.

The other person began to overdose in the room, but Birch and Syryjczyk didn’t immediately call 911, according to evidence. Over many hours, Birch occasionally would perform CPR on the person to restore some breathing function, though the person never regained consciousness.

Eventually, Birch and Syryjczyk decided to call 911, and Syryjczyk took the remaining drug paraphernalia from the room to prevent law enforcement from finding it, according to court documents. Birch and Syryjczyk also made false statements to police about the cause of the person’s condition.

Court documents showed the overdose victim died at the scene. An autopsy later determined the cause of death was use of heroin, fentanyl and valeryl fentanyl.

Syryjczyk previously pleaded to misprision of a felony and remains free on bond pending sentencing.

Birch faces up to 20 years in federal prison, a $1 million fine and supervised release for life following her prison term.

Sentencing will be set after a presentencing report is prepared.

The case was investigated by the Dubuque Drug Task Force and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Chatham.

Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com

If you weren’t working on a remote team before, well, chances are that you probably are now! I know that I love working from home, but when you first start working remotely, it can start as a bit of a challenge. Of course, it has its pros and cons, but it’s just a learning curve. […]

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Listening without judgement is one of the best things you can do for someone with PTSD.

Support two entities with the price of one.

Listening without judgement is one of the best things you can do for someone with PTSD.

Support two entities with the price of one.

It may seem a bit curious that more than a few app websites are only given a cursory inspection by app owners. It is given before being largely ignored because visitors have gone elsewhere. The reason for a given website may be completely valid in that it addresses a well-established need. It has a poor […]

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WordPress is an ideal platform for building your own portfolio, blog, or eCommerce site. It’s packed with all the basic tools you need to build a professional-looking site. Plus, it has tools that can take your web-building skills to an even higher level. Get even more impressive results or add features to a website that […]

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By The EPA The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today launched a new online portal that will provide local leaders in the nation’s 40,000 communities with information and tools to increase resilience to climate change. Using a self-guided format, the … Continue reading →

Some of the problems we work on as UX researchers are simple and are easily solved by getting users in front of our product. But other problems can be complex and it's hard to know how to start solving them. In situations like that, a simple 2x2 diagram can cut through the 'what ifs', the 'how abouts' and the edge cases and provide a simple way of looking at the problem. Here are 10 examples of 2x2 diagrams to simplify UX research discussions.

TBI? PTSD? Both? No matter your diagnosis, Adam says that taking the first steps to get help is what will matter most for a successful recovery.

If extra time on a test or memory aids can make life easier during college, why not use them? Adam talks about moving past the "stigma" of using disability services and getting the help you need to succeed in college.

Listening without judgement is one of the best things you can do for someone with PTSD.

Support two entities with the price of one.

By David Suzuki with contributions from Senior Editor Ian Hanington David Suzuki Foundation By 2002, drivers in London, England, were spending as much as half their commuting time stalled in traffic, contributing to much of the city centre’s dangerous particulate … Continue reading →

In encoder-decoder neural models, multiple encoders are in general used to represent the contextual information in addition to the individual sentence. In this paper, we investigate multi-encoder approaches in documentlevel neural machine translation (NMT). Surprisingly, we find that the context encoder does not only encode the surrounding sentences but also behaves as a noise generator. This makes us rethink the real benefits of multi-encoder in context-aware translation - some of the improvements come from robust training. We compare several methods that introduce noise and/or well-tuned dropout setup into the training of these encoders. Experimental results show that noisy training plays an important role in multi-encoder-based NMT, especially when the training data is small. Also, we establish a new state-of-the-art on IWSLT Fr-En task by careful use of noise generation and dropout methods.

Bilateral occipital nerve release surgery was the first, significant step to relieving Scurry's debilitating post-concussive headaches.

Retired soccer star Briana Scurry talks about finally finding hope and help after almost three years of being told she wouldn't get any better.

In this article, we'll explore 10 quick and easy ways to improve your site's accessibility.

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A coalition of immigrant-focused organizations has created the Spokane Relief Fund for Undocumented Immigrants, in order to help families who are unable to access federal aid during the coronavirus shutdowns. The partners sponsoring the work include the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition (SIRC), the Hispanic Business and Professional Association, Latinos en Spokane, Mujeres in Action and Raiz.…

A user interface help dialog for a computer system is provided in which the computer system has a plurality of system parameters and the user interface includes a plurality of command options that may be enabled or disabled. A cursor for indicating one of the command options is also provided. To generate the help dialog the identity of a disabled command option to which the cursor indicates is first identified. The status of a subset of the system parameters is then evaluated, the system parameters subset being determined in dependence on the identified command option. A help dialog to be displayed to the user is then generated, the content of which is dependent on the status of the evaluated system parameters.

Vaporizable material is supported within a vessel to promote contact of an introduced gas with the vaporizable material, and produce a product gas including vaporized material. A heating element supplies heat to a wall of the vessel to heat vaporizable material disposed therein. The vessel may comprise an ampoule having a removable top. Multiple containers defining multiple material support surfaces may be stacked disposed within a vessel in thermal communication with the vessel. A tube may be disposed within the vessel and coupled to a gas inlet. Filters, flow meters, and level sensors may be further provided. Product gas resulting from contact of introduced gas with vaporized material may be delivered to atomic layer deposition (ALD) or similar process equipment. At least a portion of source material including a solid may be dissolved in a solvent, followed by removal of solvent to yield source material (e.g., a metal complex) disposed within the vaporizer.

Bandcamp is waiving their fees, so we're going to spotlight and promote you, our community members.

The post Operation: Help DJTT Artists – submit your Bandcamp project and we’ll promote you. appeared first on DJ TechTools.

It is interesting that the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, summons the very real fact his nation invented democracy to bolster his government’s argument for a favourable solution to the debt crisis wracking its citizens.

'Tax-Free Childcare' is a confusing and inaccurately named scheme that launched in April 2017. It can be worth thousands of pounds, but only 250,000 of the 1.5 million eligible families are collecting it.

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MASTERCHEF winner Shelina Permalloo has launched a crowdfunding appeal to ensure her Southampton restaurant can reopen following its coronavirus closure.

Thanks to Michael Greene of Boone, NC - a virtual dinner concert series, online, was organized as a way to help raise money for local restaurants, servers, and musicians in the Boone area that have been unable to work due to the mandatory closures of businesses because of the Coronavirus. This includes a Go Fund Me page set up to donate a little extra in the case someone can. Maybe this virtual idea spreads all over as a way to say thank you to someone for serving and entertaining all of us in the past. You can find them on Facebook @BooneRelief Posted by Host and Producer of The Friday Feature Interview of the Week, Paul Foster- WNCW Senior Producer, News Director, and Morning Edition Regional Host

Guests of this Friday Feature Interview of the Week were Megan Robinson, Executive Director of the Western NC American Red Cross and United Way of Greenville County, SC Executive Director Megan Barp. Both agencies are important, year-round organizations, with staff/volunteers that want to offer support and services, especially during the coronavirus crisis. However, these groups could use additional volunteers and donors to achieve full capacity. This conversation first aired on April 3, 2020. Posted by Host and Producer of The Friday Feature- Paul Foster, WNCW Senior Producer, News Director, and Morning Edition Regional Host

This is part of a series looking at pressing coronavirus questions of the week. We'd like to hear what you're curious about. Email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." More than 76,000 people in the U.S. have died because of COVID-19, and there have been 1.27 million confirmed cases across the country — and nearly 4 million worldwide. Though the virus continues to spread and sicken people, some states and countries are starting to reopen businesses and lift stay-at-home requirements. This week, we look at some of your questions as summer nears and restrictions are eased. Is it safe to swim in pools or lakes? Does the virus spread through the water? People are asking whether they should be concerned about being exposed to the coronavirus while swimming. Experts say water needn't be a cause for concern. The CDC says there is no evidence the virus that causes COVID-19 can be spread to people through the water in pools, hot tubs, spas or water

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

Updated at 9:44 a.m. ET As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends. "We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said. "It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?" Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C. She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960. She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked. "I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said. "But I just felt I just had to get out." At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children. They decided seven was enough. By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to

The Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority is getting a boost in funding from the federal government to help cover operational costs during the coronavirus pandemic. We get the details from WEMU’s Taylor Pinson.