DIY Woodworking Projects - How to Make Woodworking Fun and Easy

DIY woodworking projects are becoming a rave with more and people willing to make their own furniture. While there is no shortage of quality ready to assemble furniture in the market, making your own furniture from scratch can have its own unique charm. Woodworking is a very broad term and there are literally thousands of shapes that you can give to wood so that it is beautiful and useful. If you are interested in trying your hand at woodworking then there are a few things that you must know before you get started.

First and foremost you will need the tools. As a beginner you will only need a measuring tape, a good quality table saw a graph paper and a pencil. You need not spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on these, in fact when purchasing a saw it is recommended to buy one second hand as these are tried and tested models.

Next you will need a place where you can carry out your DIY woodworking projects with ease and without distractions. Having a place free from distractions is incredibly important for people into DIY Woodworking; too many accidents are caused because of these and accidents when dealing with sharp tools are seldom light. If you own a backyard or a garage then it is best to move your equipment and lumber there.

Finally you will also need a good set of plans so that you can have direction and focus. A lot of beginners spend too much time trying to learn things they could have much easily had they first tried to go through a set of organized plans first. Not only will plans will make the DIY woodworking project that you are working on much easier but also they will give you many more ideas as to what you can also try your hand on as most of these plans come with blueprints of thousands of projects.

Besides having a good set of woodworking plans all in one place is hardly an advantage that you can afford to ignore. Instead of scouring the local bookshop or the internet every time you want to make something all that you will have to do is refer to the index of your DIY woodworking plan compendium.

These should be enough to get you started. Remember to take things slow and easy when you are getting started; woodworking comes with a huge learning curve which must be mastered progressively and patiently. Lastly, keep things light; woodworking is real fun when you get the hang of it!

The Effects of Self Hypnosis

Self Hypnosis A Key to Relaxation And Better Productivity.

When I was a student I became aware of time constraints. For example I would commute from the Montreal suburb of Dorval to Loyola College. It was about a 20 minute train trip. I would occasionally scan a newspaper, if anyone left one on a seat, or I would study a bit. But, to be honest I would usually just gaze out the window let my mind wander. One day I came across a book in a store that featured Self Hypnosis. I was intrigued and I decided to buy the book. It was a memorable decision. Later in my dental career I attended a couple of medical level hypnosis courses.

Some might call it meditation instead of self hypnosis. I believe they are close in characteristics. Some have referred to hypnosis as altered concentration. The goal is to limit one's stimuli and focus on both identifiable and pleasant sensations. It can almost be called a clearing of the mind and allowing uncomplex ideas to set the pace and dictate one's thoughts.

I used my increasing skills in self hypnosis to learn how to take quick naps. In fact I think it helped my studies as I progressed through University. I could take a 30 minute nap and wake a bit sluggish but usually that would wear off quickly and I could begin studying.

The technique, I found practical for me, was to find a comfortable place to sit. I would close my eyes and visualize a situation where I had in fact sat down after a pleasant stroll. I would allow my mind to wander to my feet and visualize the comfortable feeling of relaxation, as if I had just taken off my shoes. I didn't always do that in fact, it was more of a imaginary act. I would feel the tingle start in my soles at the toe level and slowly move to my heels. Then up my legs to my calves. As the visualization of one area in relaxation moved up the body I would allow the previous areas to become comfortably numb, not a Pink Floyd song mind you, a physical numb...

As the relaxation spread up to my hips the scope of the relaxation enlarged to take in a larger region, circling the body from back to front and up the back to the chest area. I discovered that when I got to the rib cage a deep and slow inhalation followed by a deliberate relaxing exhalation gave me a satisfying feeling of 'sinking' into the chair which I was in. The neck was a welcome area, as by now my body was very restful. The face and head were the climax of the procedure, I would have the thoughts of relaxation spread around the face in small increments, the chin, cheeks, forehead and temples in sequence. By now I was either asleep in a restful state or very near that.

One negative, as I noted, was that I often woke from these sessions with a bit of a feeling of sluggishness, even feeling a bit down. I was in the medical library at McGill when I came across an article on hypnosis. They discussed this situation. Their advice was to include post hypnotic suggestions as one began o relax. Mine was to suggest that when I awoke I would feel alert and very positive. After a few trial sessions this began to work excellently. In fact I trained myself to go into a deep hypnotic state in under 3 or 4 minutes and 'sleep' for 30 minutes. It was a regular after supper routine when I was at McGill. I would have supper, make my way to the library, find a nice comfortable chair and go into my routine.

I guess I was less than inconspicuous. I was at a party that some friends had invited me to attend. A cute gal came up to me and said, "Hey I know you... you're the guy who sleeps in the library" As good fortune would have it my classmates were within ear shot and had a great laugh. In fact for some time I was known as the dental student who "slept around". All good fun, and to this day I can take a quick nap when the opportunity presents. I feel it is worthwhile learning how to relax this way. I have read that some high tech companies are encouraging staff to take quick afternoon naps and work a bit later. From an article I read the practice is popular and productive. I do not have scientific evidence on this but I know I can renew my energy after my 'self hypnosis' initiated naps.

http://www.drmichaelpilon.com

Dr Michael Pilon

Impact of Cloud Computing on Travel Industry

Introduction

The last decade has seen major changes in the travel distribution landscape. First, it was the Internet that started a revolution and forever changed how the travel industry operates. This online boom followed by subsequent economic slowdown has created new dynamics in travel distribution. The proliferation of smart phones and social media has resulted in further creating both chaos as well as new opportunities. While opening up new avenues for growth, these developments have also created new operational challenges.

Challenges faced by travel distribution industry

Dynamic Demand

One key nature of the travel industry is that the demand for travel is highly seasonal and cyclic. This creates a challenge for any operations manager in terms of capacity planning and right sizing of the IT support infrastructure. Planning for peak size can result in underutilization and lead to higher marginal cost. On the other hand, not planning for peak load runs the risk of lost transaction opportunities, unsatisfied customers and finally business losses. This is one of the primary reasons why most travel distribution players end up having higher IT infrastructure cost and lower operating margins.

Increased Search Volume

Increased number of travel portals along with a changing pattern of travel booking behavior of the travelers, has resulted in a huge surge in 'look to book' ratio. This increased number of availability request per booking now runs into thousands from a mere single digit number few years back, putting an enormous pressure on existing IT infrastructure. According to Pegasus Solutions, global processor of hotel transactions through the GDS and ADS channels, the look-to-book ratio soared to around +60% over 2009 levels and is expected to rise further. Today's common look-to-book ratio is almost at a 2,500 -3,000 to 1, -primarily due to growth of online reservation and the changing consumer behavior who is now looking 'value for money' deals. For this, travel shoppers use multiple avenues such as search engines, referral sites, websites, mobile applications, and social media.

Business Disruptions

Just prior to the recession, online travel booking soared to all time highs attracting further investments in IT infrastructure in demand anticipation. However, discretionary travel was one of the first spends that was cut down during the slowdown. This caused a severe strain on financials and travel companies had to rethink their models yet again.

Increase in number of sales channels

Popularity of smart phones has persuaded travel players to embrace mobility as a medium to manage bookings and provide other experiences to increase customer stickiness. At the same time, social media sites have also become very popular and travel portals are trying to utilize this trend by integrating different social media components with their sites. Of course, more number of channels also increases complexities in product management.

Cloud computing from a travel distribution perspective

The Cloud helps enterprises to have a dynamically scalable abstracted computing infrastructure that is available on-demand and on a pay-per-use basis. This model not only saves the IT teams from investing heavily on infrastructure, but also shields them from the intricacies involved in infrastructure setup and management. Presently, apart from providing the on-demand IT infrastructure, cloud service providers typically provide interfaces for other related IT management services. To understand the application of Cloud computing to the travel industry, availability searching or shopping is probably the best example; it is by and large the biggest resource consumer in a typical travel process. In today's circumstances, travel enterprises who run their entire travel application on a single infrastructure platform put unnecessary stress on operational budgets. One of the probable solutions to this problem is to decouple the availability search functionality from the traditional CRS system transfer it on an infrastructure that can support flexible demand. At the onset, it seems to be a complex and upheaval task, as it creates operational challenges such as latency. However, these challenges can be handled through a cloud based solution which offers higher scalability by using modern architecture patterns. On the other hand, mobility is witnessing an unprecedented growth in demand - this is another area where a cloud strategy can bring in competitive advantages for travel organizations. The key challenges that travel enterprises are facing today regarding mobile and social media channels are manifold, viz.,

With the advancements of mobile devices such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Symbian, and Blackberry, travel enterprises need to invest in leveraging these to further their distribution and fulfillment channels. Mobility, being a rapidly evolving technology, is difficult to predict in terms of short term as well as long term demand. Due to this, travel enterprises are facing a challenge in scoping the required infrastructure for supporting mobility channel. Travel enterprises need to create a business model to measure increase in revenue and profit against the costs incurred on mobility & social media investments.

Cloud based flexible and on-demand infrastructure enables a travel enterprise to offer mobility and social media channels without incurring any fixed cost. Using a cloud infrastructure, a travel enterprise can start in a small way and grow into these evolving markets with a lower risk and financial strain.

Key concerns in adopting cloud based system

Availability of a Service

Organizations worry about whether utility computing services will have adequate availability, and this makes them wary of Cloud Computing. But in reality, cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Google have much lower outage compared to any internal IT system.

Data lock-in

The primary way to access the cloud platforms is through proprietary APIs. Thus, enterprises feel that they cannot easily extract their data and programs from one site to run on another. But in reality, all major service providers have an obligation in their contract to return the data to the enterprise. These service providers also have data access APIs that can be used to extract data in standard formats.

Data Confidentiality and Statutory Requirements

Many enterprises believe that their data will not be secure in the cloud, since current cloud offerings are essentially public networks. However in reality most of these cloud service providers have better data protection and security mechanism than most IT organizations. They achieve this through the usage of audit trail, encrypted storage, and network middle-boxes. Service providers also comply with various statutory and audit requirements related to enterprise and personal data security and usage.

Integration with external systems

Since travel distribution systems interact with multiple external applications, travel enterprises always have a concern about integrating the cloud based system with other external systems. However, all major cloud service providers have web service interfaces that can be utilized to integrate the cloud based system with other external systems.

Solution for the 'long tail'

As we know, the travel industry comprises of many small to mid-sized companies. A large majority of which are very entrepreneurial and niche in terms of the products and services they offer. Companies in this 'long tail' have little or limited IT knowledge or support and rely on numerous third parties for IT. Such companies always find it difficult to balance their IT spending between IT upgrades and innovating on their solutions, and this tends to become a barrier for business growth. Even today, many small time travel enterprises do not even have an IT system, because they cannot afford to setup an IT operation in-house. Economics of Cloud environment can change this basic premise and make it both affordable and beneficial for travel enterprises of any size who can use this service to derive a competitive advantage. Such an environment brings tremendous advantages to such companies because it also helps them to manage their cash flow better. At the other end of the horizon, start-ups are finding it easier to build and offer products like CRSs, tour operating systems, distribution systems or basic inventory systems on a SaaS model, which is a stronger value proposition and provides a competitive edge to their offerings.

Business outcomes of using cloud based systems

From the above discussion we can conclude that travel enterprise can achieve business growth by leveraging the power of cloud computing:

A cloud-based solution reduces the total cost of IT ownership for the travel enterprises and offers performance, reliability, security, and flexible scalability advantages Travel enterprises are able to increase customer base due to higher availability, low congestion, and additional sales channels Competitive advantage to the small and mid-sized enterprise in the form of lower fixed or upfront capital cost Improved operational efficiency due to low marginal cost Ability to manage risks better by reducing fixed investment on any new initiative

One Section at a Time: Writing Your Resume

Your resume can be an awesome success.

It takes time and effort, though, if it is to win the approval of hiring managers (who ask you for a face to face meeting). Common sense would tell any person in the job-search process that writing an excellent resume is essential. But not everyone is willing to make the effort. There are several reasons for this, but for the purpose of this article, the focus is going to be on people who have never written a resume before.

Perhaps this is you:

Sometimes, it seems as though the task is simply too daunting. With no experience writing a resume before, you are fearful that the process will be very involved and time-consuming. Is it possible you simply don't feel up to the task?

That is very understandable. There are ways to overcome your concerns, though. Think through each section of the resume and work on each one individually. Try not to think of the whole piece of paper. Just worry about one section at a time.

Writing a resume, like most things, seems more complicated than it is. Once you get into the rhythm of writing and reviewing your past accomplishments, it becomes a much easier task. There isn't a steep learning curve involved such as in statistics, physics or writing a best-selling novel. It is simply a matter of taking it one step at a time.

Yes, of course you could hire someone to write your resume for you, but guess what? You still have to take the same amount of time to think through all of your past employers, your educational background, your objective and so on. You spend money and still have to do a huge amount of the thinking.

People who work for resume writing services are not in the habit of reading minds.

You would still need to write down all of the information that would have to be in your resume anyway. The only time you save is in deciding what goes where and which keywords best emphasize your abilities and achievements.

There are several sections to each resume. Take some time to learn what goes in each section and you will already be well on your way. Here is a list of the resume sections:

Heading/Contact Information Objective Education Work Experience Honors/Activities/Achievements/Publications Other Sections You can find more information about each section by clicking on this link: The Resume Outline. There is a page devoted to each section. The descriptions provide clear and concise explanations of each area and what each one entails.

The best person to write your resume is YOU! Take the time to write it yourself and you will be better off in several ways.

First, it will be just one more thing you have conquered in your life (and don't ever discount the importance of such victories).

Second, you will have something that you can build on from this point on. You will not need to hire someone every time you want to make changes.

Third, and most important, you will be much better prepared when it comes time to interview. By taking the time to go through this process yourself, you will have the confidence it takes to answer the questions interviewers ask - because you will know the topic inside and out.

Go show 'em what you've got!

Carla Vaughan, Owner/Webmaster

When you are finished creating your resume, follow this link: Resume Do's and Don'ts. You can compare your resume to this list to make sure you have everything right.

Advantages of Internal Audit to a Wholesale Business

Internal auditing is an independent consulting activity basically aimed at improving and adding value to a company's operations. It can be of great assistance for wholesalers as it helps them better assess their businesses. There are simply innumerable benefits and advantages for wholesale business as it works as catalyst for improving the effectiveness of business. With the help of internal auditing, the wholesalers can achieve their ultimate objectives by bringing a disciplined and systematic approach to improve and evaluate the effectiveness of risk management, governance processes and other controls.

Generally, many wholesale companies have no proper accounting system and they rely on their old clerks and so-called accountants. However, as their business grows, the accounts and other management get weaker and this is mostly because of the unqualified employees. In these circumstances the wholesale suppliers should definitely get the services of a professional auditor who is a professionally qualified Chartered Accountant. The auditing officer introduces the proper accounting system in the company and keeps financial record of each and every transaction. The auditor, after proper workout, can point out weak areas of management and thus suggests other options which can yield better results.

One of the biggest benefits of internal auditing is that it eliminates the chances of frauds in wholesale business. Without making sure that, the chances of frauds by clerks or accountants is dramatically increased as they have complete knowledge of whole business and know its weak points from where they can cut their share. The wholesaler himself cannot track the profit drains and frauds, as he has to do many other things other than accounting. With internal auditing officer, the wholesaler will be updated with the true and clear picture of his business with all frauds and profit drains clearly visible. The duty of internal officer is to check all accounts including amounts receivable and payable with all overhead expenditures.

The other advantage of internal auditing officer is that it saves huge amount of money served on external auditor. Generally, many companies are in the business of offering professional expertise of external auditing officers, which are very expensive to hire. So having an internal auditing officer is the best option to save extra money served on external auditing. Without an auditor, it is very difficult to compare the current performance of company with its previous year's performance. It is only possible if an internal auditing officer keeps proper record of wholesale company's operations.

Many companies adopt different tax evasion techniques by falsifying the profits and other income stats. With unqualified employees, they are caught by government tax collecting organizations and ultimately have to pay heavy fines. On other hand if at all they succeed to get away without paying taxes but they themselves loose the actual figures of their companies' profits. With internal auditing officer, they can easily adopt tax evasion techniques while also keeping track of their actual records. Nowadays internal auditing has become the most demanded and highly paid job as wholesale distributors know that the success of their wholesale business purely relies on internal auditor.

Ways Your Non-Profit Organization Can Show Its Appreciation to Its Donors

Managing your corporate sponsorships

Too many not-for-profit organisations complain that few businesses will donate or sponsor their events. What these organisations have failed to understand is the lack of love shown to donors for their money or inkind support.

Donors want the public to know about the donation

The reality of most donations is that the donor wants the public to know what good community citizens they are. This means you need to work with the donor to help promote their sponsorship within the local community news media.

Here are some ways you can help pass the good news.

Arrange for a press release by contacting the local media Have suitable news release material ready to hand over Take photographs of the donation handover Use social media to tell everyone of the good news

Tell your members and they will tell the world

Make full use of all your internal communication methods to let people know what the donor has done and that you appreciate their support. This is simple to do and only takes a few minutes of your time to organise.

Include the donation and organisation in your organisations newsletter to member Send all committee members and board of management an email outlining their great support from the donor Put up the news on your message boards for all staff to see Give public thanks at the Annual general meeting

Good old fashioned ways of appreciating donors

Every individual donation of more than $10 should get a personal letter from the chairman or CEO thanking them for their donation.

Corporate or larger donations should receive a letter but also get a personal phone call from a senior member to thank them. I also consider including a certificate of appreciation designed professionally so they can hang in their office to show their own staff. In some cases, you can consider including a list of donors in the local paper on a full page spread outling all the help given by these donors.

Welcome them to a celebration

Once you have completed the project or made some really good progress, invite your donors to come and meet your staff to see the good work you have done with their donation. This is a great way to build community engagement but also to show them what a difference the donor has made in people's lives. Having people personally thank them for their sponsorship or donation goes a long way. Plus this gives even more chances of getting the donation and not-for-profit message into the media to build even more help.

3 Reasons Why We Must Involve Grandparents in the Family Activities

There are a lot of reasons why It is very important to include grandparents in the family activities.

First, for us. Usually when we grow up and leave the home, the relationship with our parents became less dense. All the more so we became parents too. We don't have a time at all, and when we do, we prefer to spend it on something else rather than on our parents. Family activities can bring us and our parents into closer relationship. When we do things together and participate in the same experiences, we get closer.

Second, for the grandparents. Usually our parents are already on pension or close to it. In the both cases, they, us an our kids ( their grandchildren) belong to different generations. The gap between the generations sometimes makes it very difficulty for the grandparents to communicate with us and our kids. Family home activities are a great way for them to overcome those obstacles and the get a better feeling about themselves.

Third, for our kids. Our kids have a lot what to learn from their grandparents. Our kids grow up in the world where personal qualities are based on "the world spins around me", when our parents personal qualities are based on "the society". The meeting between those two worlds can contribute a lot to our kids, and make them better persons.

Imagine that all the family gathers together and starts to play an "old" game, which the grandparents are good in it, like chess. The fact that they master that game will rise their self esteem and they will be admired by their grandchildren ( your kids). That's exactly what we want to do. We want to overcome the huge gap generations. The gap between the hi-tech generation (our kids) and the world war two generation (our grandparents).

Uses for Secured Loans

There are so many reasons why you might want to use a secured loan. Secured loans are loans from lending institutions that use some of your assets or equity as collateral. That means that you can offer the bank your house or your car or your stock certificates in exchange for money. Obviously, the bank doesn't use your house or your car your stock certificates -- they're still yours -- but you basically tell the bank that if you do not pay your loan back, they can have that instead. Lending institutions like secured loans because, unlike unsecured loans, they know that there are assets they can claim to back them up if you default on the loan. And they know that you are more likely to pay back your loan than to give up your house! In many cases a secured loan will get you a lower rate of interest and perhaps a longer-term to pay it back than an unsecured loan.

So what might you use a secured loan for? There are many good reasons to use one. One excellent way to use a secured loan is for debt consolidation. That is, to pull together a number of higher interest debts and pay them off with one single lower interest loan.

Another excellent use for a secured loan is to purchase an item for which you might normally pay higher interest over a long-term, like a car for example. If you purchase a car for $20,000, over time the principal plus interest payments you make on that car will be much more than $20,000. However, if you want to take advantage of spreading your payments over time but don't want to pay the high interest associated with financing a car, you may be able to use the value of the car or the value of your house to get a secured loan to pay for the car.

Another excellent use for a secured loan is as a bridge loan in an emergency. While you could take a few days to get the money, getting some emergency cash at a lower interest rate that you can pay back over time is an excellent way for you to deal with a costly unexpected crisis.

There are three reasons why you might want to use a secure loan. Secured loans are an excellent way to get cash when you need it and to take advantage of lower interest rates and a possible longer term of payment than other forms of loans.

Is DSL The Right Choice For Your Video Conferencing Backbone?

When implementing video conferencing capabilty many businesses are more focused on the make-up of the video suite itself.....and assume that DSL bandwidth is sufficient for their network backbone. Whether this be an existing network or intended new install.....assuming that DSL is sufficient to support your requirements may be shortsighted. Beware, there's more out there to consider.

Before "jumping to conclusions" it's important to consider all of your options....and how each may best (or not) support your video conferencing needs.

xDSL technologies are usually deployed as "over subscribed" packet switched networks. By oversubscribed I mean that during those brief periods when the two end points are not transmitting the bandwidth to carry data from other users. In these networks the bandwidth used by connections between two ends points has the characteristics of variable bandwidth and variable delay. The resulting jitter can be very problematic for video circuits. However, xDSL technologies are usually much less expensive than ISDN/T carriers.

The "A" in ADSL stands for "asymmetrical". SDSL, and usually VHSDL and HDSL, are symmetrical.

If your videoconferencing is two-way, you need symmetry, or the performance will be horrible on the low-speed side. A caveat: if your video codec gives sufficiently good compression that the low-speed side gives enough bandwidth, you may be all right.

You also have to check the service guarantee on DSL, Frame Relay, and even Metro Ethernet. Do they give you either constant bit rate (CBR) or near-real-time Variable Bit Rate (nr6VBR), which are generally considered necessary for full-motion video quality? Note that CBR and nrtVBR are possible through IP connections that guarantee quality of service, which usually will mean contracting for a VPN.

You really want symmetry with your video conferencing. The cheap consumer class aDSL products are great when the downstream bandwidth is significantly greater then upstream, but in video/teleconferencing, the needs are both up and downstream.

If video conferencing is something you would use regularly, and count on for your business, then go for a real SDSL line or a T1 (or a DS3 for larger businesses with frequent usage.....especially with large numbers of participants, participating locations, or excessive distant). There are vendors that can offer these at competitive costs and give business class service and support.

Many businesses are abandoning DSL in favor of Sprint's EVDO rev A implementation of CDMA. You'll find some carrier agnostic info at EVDOForum.com which cites rev A speeds as EVDO Rev A 450Kbps-800Kbps Download, bursts to 3.0Mbps, and 300Kbps-400Kbps Upload Speed, bursts to 1.8Mbps. Sprint is now confident that these are very conservative numbers. While your own mileage may vary.... some routinely get faster speeds than this. Sprint expects to have more than 190 Million EVDO Rev A POPs by the end of April (we'll see though).

If your business is small, the underlying technology for video should be IPTV with any of the web-conferencing agents. The video streams would be routed via DSL service. If you're served by cable TV, you may prefer cable internet to DSL-based internet, but cable carriers often do not serve industrial areas. Thus as a business cable may not be available to you.

If your business has a full Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system for your telephones, you probably already get ISDN service from your phone company. ISDN permits "dynamic allocation" of channels which dedicates throughput to video when it is needed and makes the same capacity available for other applications, such as voice or data, when it is needed there. There are lots of vendors who support/supply ISDN-based video conferencing equipment.

(Please note, this Primary Rate Interface (PRI) flavor of ISDN is alive and well, unlike the Basic Rate Interface (BRI) flavor of ISDN that small businesses and residential customers have either ignored or run away from.)

If your company is really large (e.g., dedicated internet access of T-3/DS3 or higher), then use IP-based solutions again.

With the limitations of DSL spelled out above....and at least the basics on options for other solutions described....you are now armed with enough information to make an informed decision. Do more research as needed......and choose wisely.