Pets

Fish As Pets – A Colorful Experience

If you want something new for your house, think about fish and aquariums… big aquariums, because they go with these times’ fashion.

The little golden fish wondering alone around his bowl seems to be long forgotten.

Instead of the little bowl, there are now huge aquariums, mounted on the walls or even enclosed in them, containing lots of colored fish, sand, lights, little stones and aquatic vegetation. Optionally you can choose a little castle of house to make the dcor unique and fantasy-lie.

This idea has been adopted from restaurants, clubs or other public locations, but now it applies to homes of animal lovers, fish lovers especially.

You have decided to adopt fish because you like them or because you heard they bring prosperity and well-living to your life. Either way, you have to know how to take care of them because they are not just a decorative object; they are living beings that can’t take care of themselves.

They are going to need your full attention and care, they will totally depend on you. Here is some general advice, general because each species act differently and has different needs:

What do we need?

We need an aquarium, a thermometer, a heating system, a water filter, and plants to oxygenate the water, sand and little stones, and a source of light for the plants.

How do we actually do it?

Before placing the fish in the aquarium, the water needs to be left alone 24 hours and its temperature has to be of a minimum of 22-23 Celsius (it can differ for some species). The water is not changed all at the same time, it needs to be changes in several stages, 20% on each stage.

How do we feed fish?

Twice a day, we give them the dried food, the life food or the frozen one, depending on the species.

How do we treat sick fish?

The most common illness encountered amongst fish has as an exterior effect the apparition of some white pits on the flippers of the fish. In such situations, treatments are administrated in the aquarium to prevent the illness from spreading to the other fish too. For the right treatment, you have to go to a fish heath shop.

Another rule in fish illnesses of any type is to just raise the temperature of the water in the aquarium and to dissolve some salt in it.

Career

Making a Career Out of Artifacts

You spend your childhood entranced by dinosaur bones and everything that was prehistoric and died several million years ago. You gazed longingly at the collections of dinosaur bones in your favorite museum and begged your parents for your very own ancient arrow head when you visited ancient Native American burial grounds.

Now that you are grown up, it is easy to understand your chosen career path when you think of your childhood days. You went to school for many years and now you are an archeologist who spends his days digging up ancient artifacts and bones in some of the most remote locations of the world.

To sum it up, you help the world piece the history together. There are so many things we have learned from archeology expeditions that help us shape what we believe the world was millions of years ago. All thanks to the work of dedicated professionals who devote their lives to studying the past. Their study of the past helps us create a better future.

Man would not have known about dinosaurs had it not been for archeologists who dug up the artifacts of that period including the bones to show what they looked like millions of years ago. Also, if it was not for archeologists on their constant quests for artifacts, we never would have learned about the lives of the Ancient Egyptians and the people who died in Pompeii.

Archeologists are vital to the future of our world, but do not receive the proper amount of credit. They have been instrumental in the formation of the United States as well. They helped piece together the history of the Native Americans and helped find Native American artifacts like weaponry that help explain where some of our current weapons originated from.

Just imagine what we would not know if archeologists did not spend their time researching and creating our history. We would be a world who thinks it started after Christopher Columbus sailed to America. Well, maybe not. But out world history view would definitely be limited.

So, you may not know an actual archeologist personally, but than them each time you visit a museum, watch a historical documentary or learn something about the history of the United States. They were the ones who helped do the research and find out the truth behind the mysteries in life.

If you are interested in pursuing a career in artifact searching, find a college that offers a good program in archeology. There are several across the country that will help you learn about the past and learn the tools to becoming one yourself. These programs can be quite demanding and you must be able to handle the dangers and challenges that come along with this sort of career to be successful.

Imagine walking across the desert and finding ancient scribes that were written millions of years ago. That dream could definitely be a reality if you pursue a career in artifact finding and archeology.

Real Estate

Getting Your House Ready to Sell

How can you get a buyer interested in purchasing your house? Impression is the keyword. You just need to get your house ready to sell by doing some preparation. Get it inspected by a professional if you want to pay a little effort for maximum results, or if you don’t want to spend much money by paying a professional you can do it by yourself.

So how do you make a buyer impressed with your house? These are the steps for getting your house ready to sell to a buyer.

Beautify your exterior
The goal is to make your exterior look pretty and fresh to impress your buyer. Obviously, the exterior becomes the first impression to anyone coming to view your house. There are two sensory organs of a buyer you must impress. Those are the eyes and the nose. Do this by smartening up your house exterior, making it looked pretty and freshening it up.
The steps you can do are:

– Get the grass, trees, flowers, and plants tidy and fresh by mowing and watering it.

– Clean up the curb and entering path and put the potted flower in the sides.

– Freshen up the smells by using scented potpourri, but make sure that the smells are not overwhelming.

– Clean up all windows and entering doors.

– Get rid of equipment – put it out of sights.

– Paint the walls if necessary.

Make the Interior Cosy
After buyer has got an impression from your house exterior, do some simple things to get the cosiness in your house interior. The aim is to make a buyer feel at home when entering your house.
These are the steps:

– Clean up the tile floors; scrub it if there are some bad spots.

– Get rid of spider webs from your ceilings and walls.

– Wash the carpets with a fragrant soap.

– Get your furniture placed tidily and remove unnecessary pieces.

– Brush the closets.

– Clean the garage, basement, and attic.

– Get the windows opened and clean, it will bring freshness to your house inside.

– If you have pets, bath them.

– Put some fresh fragrance in air conditioner.

Repairing and Replacing
Some repair and replacement may be necessary too, if there is some broken furniture, equipment, or appliances.
Just check out:

– broken or missing door

– cabinet handles

– ceilings

– ventilation filters

– broken tiles in bathroom and kitchen

– faucet

– wallpaper

– some furniture

Get your friends’ opinion
Ask some friends to pretend they are a buyer, and get some advice and suggestion to make your house more ready to sell. And the most important thing is for your friends to feel your home is like their own home.

Health and Fitness

Water And Exercise

The human body is made up of over 75% of water, and as we all know, we cannot live without water. The fact is, we can only survive for a total of 3 days without water. Water has however, been replaced in most diets by soft drinks and other sugar sweetened refreshments. Keep in mind that water is a healthier and necessary for leading yourself towards a better health and longevity.

Your own personal need for water can vary greatly due to exercise, weight, and temperature. Research has proven that over 2/3 of adults don’t get the water they need on a daily basis. By drinking water on a regular basis you can replenish your body and keep it well hydrated and functioning as it should be.

A majority of us wait until we are thirsty before we drink water. Keep in mind, this way isn’t a reliable gauge of the water needs for the body. By the time you are thirsty you have already lost two of more cups of the body’s water supply. Therefore, drinking water regularly is much better than simply waiting until you are thirsty.

It is very important that you don’t substitute beverages with alcohol and caffeine for water. The reason behind this is that those types of beverages act as a diuretic and can cause you to lose more weight through increased urination. You may think and feel as if you are getting more water through these beverages, although the fact is that you are letting it go almost as fast as you consume it.

Anytime you exercise, you need more water. Due to perspiration, your body will lose quite a bit of water. For each pound lost due to exercise, you need to drink 2 cups of water. Even when you lay down to sleep, your body loses water. By drinking a glass or more of water before you go to sleep, you can wake up with your body functioning as it should be.

It should become more obvious that when you are sick you’ll need more water than any other tine. When you get a cold or the flu, your body can become dehydrated quite quickly. You can help to prevent this by drinking more water at times when you become sick.

There are several mixed opinions as to whether purified water will actually provide benefit. This is a subject you should explore yourself as you determine the best type of water for yourself.

Always make it a habit to drink water on a daily basis. You should keep a bottle of water with you at all times and drink it throughout the day. You should also teach yourself to drink water instead of other beverages that don’t replenish the nutrients your body needs.

Family

Handling Conflict about Rules Enforcement at Home

Some parents may worry that setting strict rules may distance them from their children. But this simply isn’t the case. Though they may gripe and complain and get upset when you become the enforcer, they realize deep down that this shows you care. These parameters you set forth and enforce make your child feel loved, safe, and secure.

It’s never easy developing and introducing rules. Parents may tend to avoid setting rules because they fear confrontation and unpleasantness. But the uncomfortable stuff isn’t necessarily a reflection on your relationship with your child, it’s just the nature of adolescence – breaking rules and pushing limits is a part of growing up. We tend to want to be our child’s friend sometimes, and when we’re laying down the law that just isn’t possible. Our primary role is to protect, nurture and provide for our children.

When kids break rules, parents often overreact with harsh, disproportionate and unenforceable punishment, which undermines the effectiveness of setting rules. Instead, when you first tell your child about a new rule, discuss the consequences of breaking that rule – what the punishment will be and how it will be carried out. Consequences must go hand in hand with limits so that your child knows what the cost of breaking the rules will be. The punishments you set should be reasonable and related to the violation. For example, if you catch your son and his friends smoking, you might “ground” him by restricting his social activities for two weeks.

Punishments should only involve penalties you discussed before the rule was broken. Also, never issue empty threats. It’s understandable that you’ll be angry when house rules are broken, and sharing your feelings of anger, disappointment, or sadness can have a powerfully motivating effect on your child. Since we’re all more inclined to say things we don’t mean when we’re upset, it’s sometimes best to give ourselves a time-out period to cool off before we say something we don’t mean.

Make the ground rules crystal clear to your child. It’s imperative that you are consistent and follow through with a defined disciplinary action after each infraction, and that your child understands the reasons why.

Beauty

Dry Skin Care

With too many roles for woman to juggle in today’s fast paced, high pressured lifestyle, there is very little time for her to pamper herself.

With tension, worries, anxiety and age, the skin become less active leaving it drier, fragile, prone to wrinkle, lines near the eyes and mouth and losing the youthful colour and glow.

Failure of oil glands failing to release enough oils to moisturize and protect the skin results in dry skin. Environmental causes like dry air, harsh wind, hormonal imbalance, usage of aggressive chemicals, cosmetics or excessive bathing with harsh soaps saps the moisture from the skin making it dryer, flakier and chapped during winter.

Caring for Dry Skin

– Cleanse and Moisturize: The dry skin should be cleansed with a cold cream and alcohol-free skin fresheners to remove the cream. After cleansing, the skin needs a lubricating emollient or a moisturizer when the face is damp after the wash.

– Splash your face with cold water or gently wipe the skin with rose water to tone the skin nicely.

– Avoid using highly alkaline soaps and detergents like washing sodas and powders.

– Avoid the sun, harsh winds and hot baths. Use oil-based creams and make-up products only. Use soft towels or wash cloth to avoid irritation to the skin while wiping it.

– Smoking deprives the skin of oxygen and nutrients it needs for good health making the skin dry and leathery.

– Chapped or cracked skin – increase consumption of water. Keep chapped areas well lubricated and protected from the elements using a good nourishing cream or moisturizer.

– Use creamy, mild, pH-balanced products such moisture based cream gels, lotions, etc for dry skin care.

A well balanced diet of vegetables, fruits, grains, seeds and nuts provides the body with all the necessary vitamins and minerals needed for healthy skin. Drinking water and reducing solar exposure to a minimum is also beneficial. Garlic, onions, eggs and asparagus help to keep the skin smooth and youthful. Carrots, apricots, rich in vitamins A, C keep the skin supple. Increase intake of foods like leafy raw green veggies, dairy products like yoghurt, milk. Lessen fried foods, soft drinks, sugar, chocolates, junk foods, alcohol, caffeine and other foods that have diuretic effecting causing the body and skin to loose fluids, vitamins and essential minerals.

Weight and Diet

Changing How You Eat

As you may know, not fueling up with the right nutrients can affect how well your body performs and your overall fitness benefits. Even though healthy eating is important, there are myths that hinder your performance if you listen to them.

Below, you’ll find some myth busters on healthy eating.

1. Working out on an empty stomach
If you hear a rumbling noise in your stomach, the rumbling is trying to tell you something. Without listening to them, you are forcing your body to run without any fuel. Before you exercise or do any physical activity, always eat a light snack such as an apple.

2. Relying on energy bars and drinks
Although they are fine every once in a while, they don’t deliver the antioxidants you need to prevent cancer. Fruits and vegetables are your best bets, as they are loaded in vitamins, minerals, fluid, and fiber.

3. Skipping breakfast
Skipping breakfast is never a good idea, as breakfast starts the day. Your body needs fuel as soon as possible, and without it, you’ll be hungry throughout the day.

4. Low carb diets
Your body needs carbohydrates for your muscles and the storing of energy.

5. Eating what you want
Eating healthy and exercising doesn’t give you an all access pass to eat anything you want. Everyone needs the same nutrients whether they exercise or not, as well as fruits and vegetables.

6. Not enough calories
Although losing weight involves calories, losing it too quickly is never safe. What you should do, is aim for 1 – 2 pounds a week. Always make sure that you are getting enough calories to keep your body operating smoothly. If you start dropping weight too fast, eat a bit more food.

7. Skip soda and alcohol
Water, milk, and juice is the best to drink for active people. You should drink often, and not require on thirst to be an indicator. By the time you get thirsty, your body is already running a bit too low.

Changing how you eat is always a great step towards healthy eating and it will affect how your body performs. The healthier you eat, you better ou’ll feel. No matter how old you may be, healthy eating is something you should strive for. Once you give it a chance, you’ll see in no time at all just how much it can change your life – for the better.

Home and Garden

Maintaining a Compost Heap

Many people who maintain gardens have a large amount of organic waste, from grass clippings to leaves and dead plants. Unfortunately, many waste money and time having these wastes transported to a landfill. It isn’t just a waste of good compost; it’s a waste of everything that goes into the process of transporting it (the garbage man’s time, the money you pay for the removal, etc). It is truly a travesty.

All this garbage that people are trying to get rid of can be a better supplement for your garden than any fertilizer or chemical. If you properly facilitate the decomposition of all of the garbage, it will alter chemically until it is in such a state that it can be nothing but beneficial nutrition for other plants. Therefore you can turn all the stuff you would have thrown away into top grade fertilizer for your garden.

Usually compost is maintained in a pile somewhere in your backyard. Usually the thought of a compost heap brings disturbing images to ones mind; heaps of rotten garbage emitting a horrid odor. However, if you maintain it correctly you’ll be able to produce great compost without producing an offensive odor. When I first began my compost pile in an effort to improve environmental health, I made several major errors. These included preventing the pile from the oxygen it truly needed, and keeping it to dry. It ended up decomposing in a very non-beneficial way, and producing an odor so foul that I had government agents knocking at my door.

When you are choosing your spot where you will be putting all of these materials, you should aim for a higher square footage. Having a really deep pile of compost is not a good idea, because generally the deeper sections won’t be exposed to anything that is required for the process to work. It is better to spread it all out over a large area. If you have a shed or a tool shack of some sort, it is a possibility to spread it over the roof (with boards to keep it from falling off, of course). I have seen this done several times, and it helps keep the pile out of the way while still maintaining a large square footage.

A compost heap can consist of any organic garbage from your yard, garden or kitchen. This includes leaves, grass, any leftover food that won’t be eaten, or newspaper (no more than a fifth of your pile should consist of newspaper, due to it having a harder time composting with the rest of the materials). Usually if you have a barrel devoted to storing all of these things, it will fill up within several weeks. It is quite easy to obtain compost, but the hard part truly comes in getting it to compost.

After you have begun to get a large assortment of materials in your compost heap, you should moisten the whole pile. This encourages the process of composting. Also chop every element of the pile into the smallest pieces possible. As the materials start to compress and meld together as they decompose, frequently head outside and aerate the pile. You can use a shovel to mix it all up, or an aeration tool to poke dozens of tiny holes into it. Doing this will increase the oxygen flow to each part of the pile, and oxygen is required for any decomposition to take place.

If maintaining a compost pile sounds like something that would interest you, start considering the different placement options. The hardest part about maintaining a pile is choosing a spot that provides enough square footage without intruding on the rest of your yard or garden. While usually you can prevent the horrible odors that most people associate with compost heaps, it’s still not a pleasant thing to have to look at whenever you go for a walk in your garden.

Self Improvement

Build Your Self Esteem, A Starter Guide To Self Improvement

So how do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or another. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you. So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned. Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you – “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change’. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

Technology

Essentials Of CDR

The simple rule of thumb is that whatever you have stored as a file on any other storage medium can also be stored as a file on a CD-ROM. To the recorder, a file is a file, and an ISO doesn’t care whether or not the file contains pictures, text, or even audio sound.

There are a few special cases, as to where you would want to record a file to a CD in a special type of format. The most obvious here is CD-DA audio. If you wanted to record an audio file to a CD so that you could play it back on your home stereo, you would need to write a CD-DA (or Digital Audio) disk.

When you copy data to a CD, you need to ensure that your data doesn’t exceed the capacity of the CD that you will be recording to. Due to the audio requirements of CDs, the amount of information a CD can hold is measured in minutes/seconds/sectors.

Each second can contain 75 sectors, each of which are capable of holding 2,048 bytes of Mode 1 user data. By using the CD Size command in the edit menu, you can set the capacity of the set you wish to produce, which will help you to prevent exceeding it. The status bar will show you how much space you have used, how much remains free, and the percentage of each one.

Even though this may sound a bit confusing at first, keep in mind that it may take some time if you are new to computers. Even though copying a CD is quite easy, knowing the limits and how things work is a bit more complex. Give it some time, and you’ll be copying files to CD like the pros do it.