People often share their goals and dreams with me as we work in coaching relationships or on business consulting projects. Instead of jumping to a discussion of how the person intends to achieve the goals, I ask them why they want this goal; why they see this dream; and most importantly, how do they feel when they are inside the dream or expect to feel when they reach the goal.

Many clients express fervent wishes to win awards, make lots of money, retire, be famous, publish books, be the boss, or just not feel out of control. At this point, I talk about taking back their power - the power of true desires. There is so much external pressure to create goals with material, quantifiable results. So we wish for bigger houses, cars, boats, vacations, jobs, businesses, etc.

In order to identify your true desires, you must understand how you expect to FEEL when you have achieved these desires. What are you hoping to accomplish for yourself; how do you feel about yourself inside this success? These feelings of satisfaction, pride, reward, honor, love, acceptance, worth, and contribution are the "context" of what you are truly seeking. These feelings can be achieved in many different and creative ways.

I have a dear friend who wanted to be an actress. She was a good actress but struggled with getting jobs and competing for limited opportunities. She supported herself as a gourmet chef and eventually decided to open her own restaurant, which has been successful for over ten years now. On opening night of the restaurant, she came over to me in a flurry of joy and excitement and said, "Oh my God, Laura, this is so much better than being an actress." She found the context of her true desires.

The context or feelings and satisfaction of your desires do not have to come directly from work. Work can be a supportive component of a life well-lived, not the central piece. I am reminded of this by the commercial for a pain reliever in which a middle-aged woman tells us that she loves to play badminton. And if you watch the commercial, she really does. How great for her?

Your deep desires to be fully alive and in the flow of LIFE can be expressed in every moment of your life because you allow it. Please take the time to become aware of being in the present moment and feel Life coursing through you - the power of it and the unlimited good of it. How would living in this feeling change your goals and dreams?

Laura Piening
http://www.creatingclaritynow.com

We ran printers until they said it was time to change the cartridge--and found that some left more than 40 percent of their ink unused.

Jeff Bertolucci, PC World

Sunday, November 02, 2008 08:00 PM PST

You've probably had this experience: Your printer tells you it's time to change the cartridge, but you dismiss the message and keep printing. Days or weeks later, you're still using the same cartridge and thinking to yourself that rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated.

Or perhaps your printer simply shuts down when it decides you've gone deep enough into its ink well, refusing to operate until you replace the cartridge, though you suspect there's plenty of ink left.

PC World decided to do some real lab testing on this issue; and the results confirm what you may have suspected: Many manufacturer-branded (OEM) and third-party (aftermarket) vendor cartridges leave a startling amount of ink unused when they read empty. In fact, some inkjet printers force users to replace black ink cartridges when the cartridge is nearly half full, PC World has found. Check out our video that accompanies this story.

Overview

We tested using multifunction printers from four major manufacturers: Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, and Kodak. (For the top-rated models, see our chart of top-rated multifunction printers.) PC World Test Center results show that models from Canon, Epson, and Kodak reported ink cartridges as being empty when in some cases the tanks had 40 percent of their black ink remaining.

The quantity of unused ink ranged from about 8 percent in an Epson-brand cartridge to a whopping 45 percent in an aftermarket cartridge for a Canon printer. After posting low-ink warnings, those printers wouldn't let us resume printing until we inserted a new cartridge.

Our test printers typically left more unused ink--in some cases significantly more--when using third-party or aftermarket print cartridges than when using the printer manufacturer's own cartridges.

When using ink their own manufacturer's cartridges, the printers displayed several low-ink warning messages before finally shutting down due to low ink. Our HP printer, the Photosmart C5280, was the only one that continued to print even after displaying several low-ink messages, and those messages appeared only when we used an HP print cartridge. When we paired the C5280 with an aftermarket cartridge from LD Products, the printer provided no low-ink warning at all.

It's important to note that our results show the performance of a clutch of single printers, each paired with just one cartridge. Since OEMs and their aftermarket competitors sell dozens of ink cartridges for a wide variety of printer models, you should consider our results as a kind of snapshot of the way each particular unit deals with "remaining ink."

Why So Much Leftover Ink?

There are valid reasons for not draining an ink cartridge completely, printing experts say. "Many inks, if they run dry, can cause significant damage to the printer," says Brian Hilton, a senior staff engineer at the Rochester Institute of Technology who holds 29 inkjet patents. "You always want to leave a buffer in the tank so that the printer never runs dry. There should always be a factor of safety included."

Other observers point out that the quantity of leftover ink is often only a few milliliters. "Printers have generally become more efficient over the years," says Andy Lippman, a printing analyst with Lyra Research. "In the past, you might have seen 40 milliliters of ink in the black cartridge. Today you're going to get the same amount of pages out of 7 or 8 milliliters."

Other people, however--both journalists and independent researchers--have reported very different experiences with ink cartridges. Judging from these findings, printer owners are probably throwing away a lot of usable ink. And that's a problem, when you consider how expensive the precious fluid is. An average black-ink cartridge contains 8 milliliters of ink and costs about $10 which translates into a cost of $1.25 per milliliter (or more horrifyingly, $1250 per liter).

Liquid Gold?

If you bought a gallon of the stuff over the life of your printer, you'd have paid about $4731 for a liquid that one aftermarket vendor told us was "cheap" to make. For some perspective, gasoline costs about $3 per gallon (at the moment), while a gallon of Beluga caviar (imagined as a liquid) costs about $18,000--surprisingly, only about four times as expensive as good old printer ink.

"I personally think that consumers are getting ripped off," says Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit educational and research institute in Washington, D.C. Pociask recently coauthored a 50-page study on the ink jet printer and cartridge market. "In some cases, we found that [the price of] the printer could be 1/8 of the total cost of printing," says Pociask. "Over the life of the printer--and by that I mean three years--you can easily spend $800 for the printer and ink."

How We Tested

We researched both online and brick-and-mortar tech outlets to find printers that are being used now by high numbers of consumers. We didn't test color inks because that would have introduced too many variables that might skew the results. For instance, some printers use separate cartridges for each ink, while others use single, tricolor cartridges. A standardized test might not drain the colors evenly, which might give one printer an unfair advantage.

Tony Leung, Senior Data Analyst in the PC World Test Center, weighed each black ink cartridge (to an accuracy of 0.001 gram) to determine the cartridge's initial weight. We then printed pages until the printer, in response to the low level of ink in the cartridge, prevented us from continuing.

When each printer stopped printing, we removed and weighed its black ink cartridge to determine the cartridge's out-of-ink weight. Then we removed all of the remaining ink from the cartridge (including the small sponges found in some cartridges), put the cartridge on the scale again, and measured it's true-empty weight.

This method allowed us to identify the weight of the ink when the cartridge was full, when the printer announced that it was empty, and when it truly was empty.

Using this method, here's what we found...

Canon

We tested Canon's Pixma MP610 multifunction printer with black ink cartridges from Canon and from G&G, an aftermarket brand owned by Ninestar Image. The differences in performance between the OEM ink and the aftermarket ink were striking. With the Canon cartridge installed, the printer stopped printing when 24 percent of the ink remained in the tank. Specifically, the full tank of ink weighed 27.333 grams, and the unused ink in the tank at nominal empty weighed 6.459 grams.

Canon didn't dispute our results, but the company pointed out that its printers do allow users to print after the initial low-ink warning. "There are typically a series of warnings before the ink is out, alerting users to ink status," spokesperson Kevin McCarthy wrote in an e-mail message. (We calculated the remaining ink weight at the point when the printer actually shut down, which was after the preliminary warnings appeared.)

When equipped with the aftermarket G&G cartridge, the Canon printer shut down with nearly 45 percent of the ink left. The full tank of ink weighed 27.320 grams, and its remaining ink weighed 12.277 grams.

G&G responded by running its own tests with a different Canon printer, the Pixma iX4000. (The vendor says the model that the PC World Test Center used wasn't available in its workshop at the time of testing.)

G&G told us that it tested three of its color cartridges--magenta, blue, and yellow--and found that the amount of residual ink ranged from 5.5 percent (for yellow) to 17 percent (for magenta). (Again, PC World limited its testing to black ink cartridges only.) Canon declined to comment on our test findings with the G&G print cartridge.

Epson

With an Epson black-ink cartridge installed, the Epson RX680 printer shut down with just over 8 percent of its ink remaining. The weight of the ink in the full cartridge was 11.700 grams; the weight of the residual ink at printer shutdown was 0.969 gram. In an e-mail response to PC World, an Epson spokesperson wrote: "Eight percent remaining ink measured in your testing is a normal amount. This reserve assures print quality and printer reliability."

But the story was quite different when we printed pages on the RX680 using an aftermarket cartridge from LD Products. This time the printer shut down with a whopping 41 percent of the ink still in the tank. The full quantity of ink weighed 12.293 grams; the unused ink weighed 5.0005 grams.

Why the huge gap between OEM and aftermarket? "Epson cartridges have an ink-level sensor to more accurately report ink levels, and to reduce the amount of ink in the safety reserve," the company spokesperson wrote. Third-party products don't have these sensors, according to Epson, and the printer manufacturer "cannot guarantee the performance, quality or longevity of these cartridges."

LD Products has a different theory. "The ink itself is cheap, so we refill to more than the original level," says Ben Chafetz, vice president of marketing for LD Products. The Epson printer bases its low-ink message on the printing capacity of the OEM cartridge, but since the LD cartridge contains considerably more ink than the OEM version, it is bound to have more ink remaining when the printer shuts down, according to Chafetz. In other words, if Epson supplies enough ink in its cartridge for 120 pages plus a margin of error, say, while LD adds enough ink to print 200 pages, and if the Epson printer shuts off at 120 pages anyway, the percentage of leftover ink in the LD cartridge will be considerably higher than in the Epson cartridge.

Chafetz points out that regardless of the percentage of unused (and unusable) ink in the nominally empty cartridges, the page yields of the LD Products cartridges and the high-capacity Epson cartridges should be the same. (Note: PC World didn't test page yields in this study.)

Hewlett-Packard

Testing the HP printer was difficult because HP takes an unusual approach toward diminishing ink supplies in its cartridges: The HP Photosmart C5280 multifunction printer we tested didn't shut down as ink levels approached exhaustion. With an OEM cartridge installed, the printer displayed warning messages as the ink level dropped, but it never forced us to replace the cartridge.

As a result, we continued printing until the pages began showing telltale signs of low ink, such as banded text. The HP printer will continue to print until the cartridge is completely dry--but since the print heads are part of the cartridge in HP's design, running out of ink does not damage other parts of the printer.

When using an aftermarket cartridge from LD Products, the C5280 failed to post any low-ink warnings--either on our test computer or on the printer console. Does that mean HP's warning system works only with house-brand cartridges? Not necessarily, but HP suggests that you are better off with its OEM cartridges. "Most aftermarket cartridges do not signal 'low-on-ink' alerts, giving customers no advance warning that ink is running low," wrote HP spokesperson Katie Neal in an e-mail message.

LD Products' Chafetz disagrees. He says that LD's Photosmart C5280-compatible products are actually refurbished and refilled HP cartridges. One possible explanation for the lack of a low-ink warning is that the printer wasn't reading the refurbished cartridge's chip code correctly, he says.

Chafetz says that the results from PC World's tests mark the first time that LD Products' technicians have heard of their cartridges' not posting a low-ink warning.

Kodak

The Kodak EasyShare 5300 was the only printer that lasted longer with an aftermarket cartridge than it did with the manufacturer's cartridge. Equipped with a Kodak cartridge, this printer shut down with 43 percent of the ink remaining. Its full quantity of ink weighed 16.857 grams, and its unused ink after shutdown weighed 7.272 grams.

Kodak doesn't dispute our findings, but the company argues that our results don't tell the whole story. Roderick Eslinger, Kodak technical marketing manager, says that Kodak's in-house tests in 2007 indicated that 65 percent of its cartridge ink was used for consumer printing, while 35 percent was used to "protect/maintain optimal Kodak printer performance and document quality." Eslinger says that the remaining ink is "already factored into our industry advertising claims for consumers, and that Kodak cartridges offer "low costs and high quality yields as compared to competitors."

With a G&G cartridge, the Kodak printer shut down with 36 percent of the ink remaining in the tank. The leftover ink weighed 5.360 grams. Kodak chose not to comment on the aftermarket results.

Watch the Page Yield

Some vendors and analysts advise consumers to make sure that they get the correct page yield (the total number of pages produced with a single cartridge), rather than focusing on the amount of ink left unused in a cartridge that must be discarded. "This is the most reliable way to understand the life of a cartridge, rather than the amount of ink, or what might be left over," says Lippman.

But vendor page-yield estimates don't always match reality, as we discovered when testing printers for another PC World article, "Cheap Ink: Will It Cost You?" Using a different set of OEM cartridges and printers, we found that one HP black cartridge exceed its projected page yield (810 printed vs. 660 projected), while page yields from Epson and Kodak cartridges fell short of expectations. Specifically, Epson printed just 209 pages, far less than the 335 pages the company estimated it would produce; and Kodak generated 480 pages versus a projected page count of 540. (For a slide show comparing the quality of prints made with the two kinds of ink, see "Head-to-Head: Printer Manufacturers' Ink vs. Cheap Third-Party Ink.")

Page yields aside, we have yet to hear a satisfactory and persuasive explanation from a vendor as to why so many printer cartridges leave so much ink behind. Even if the waste amount is only a few milliliters, that unused liquid could have printed a lot of pages.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/152953/how_much_ink_is_left_in_that_dead_cartridge.html

With the completion a long winter refit after a circumnavigation of the globe that quite naturally took its toll on both the boat and the skipper, the maxi-trimaran Sodeb'O will be tackling a brand new record campaign across the Atlantic in 2009.

“A round the world is a heck of an experience! Today we’re keen to validate the choices and improvements we’ve made during this 3 month refit” explains Thomas. “Since the record hunt intensified three or four years ago, the reference times have become increasingly difficult to beat. Records are a sporting discipline in their own right and the demand in terms of performance constantly goes up a notch. We also have the Route du Rhum in our sights for 2010, where there will be stiff competition. Sodeb'O is a good boat and, like any good boat, she must constantly move forward.”

In 2009, the programme is once again an ambitious one for Thomas Coville, who will attempt to beat two records on his 32 metre maxi-trimaran. On the menu, two single-handed transatlantic courses: the Discovery Route (attempt between May and June) and the North Atlantic (attempt between the end of June and mid August).

These two courses and their corresponding sailing conditions are something the skipper knows all too well. In 2005, he set a record time between Cadiz (Spain) and San Salvador (Bahamas), a time since beaten by Francis Joyon.
As for the North Atlantic, the skipper of Sodeb'O is the fastest solo sailor to date (in 5 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes and 20 seconds) between New York (USA) and Lizard Point (England). This summer, there will be three or four multihulls on standby in New York, some single-handed, others in crewed configuration.

The maxi Sodeb'O will be on site from around 25th June

http://bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=53855

USA. EPIRB and PLB owners urged to check registration after Lady Mary sinking

Friday, 24 April 2009

 

Cobham Life Support, ACR Products, the world¹s leader in safety and survival technologies, is urging all EPIRB and PLB owners to double check their 15-character identification code registration. According to a recent Marine Board of Investigation inquiry, which is looking into the sinking of the scallop boat Lady Mary on March 24th, there was a discrepancy in the EPIRB¹s identification number, marked on a decal that the boat¹s owner had received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration after he registered the EPIRB.

In the case of the Lady Mary, the emergency signal initially received by authorities was regarded as unregistered which may have led to delays in response time while emergency center controllers waited for additional satellite passes to fix a location.  Had the controllers been able to pull the Lady Mary¹s registration data, they could have contacted emergency contacts to confirm the status of the boat and its general location prior to a satellite fix.

³Because this situation came to light, we are urging all beacon owners to compare their 15-character identification code printed on the beacon with the registration sticker they receive from NOAA just to ensure they both match,² said Chris Wahler, Marketing Manager for Cobham Life Support, ACR Products. ³If there is a discrepancy, we urge the owner to contact NOAA immediately to correct the information.²

An EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) or PLB (Personal Locator Beacon) is a satellite-signaling device of last resort, for use when all other means of self-rescue have been exhausted and where the situation is deemed to be grave and imminent, and the loss of life, limb, eyesight or valuable property will occur without assistance. All US beacons must be registered with NOAA following purchase. Registration, including the beacon¹s unique 15-character identification code, often is made online.

Despite the requirement to register all EPIRBs and PLBs, some reports show that up to 40 percent of EPIRB activations are from unregistered beacons, a possible deadly mistake when minutes can make the difference between life and death.

In an emergency, the EPIRBs and PLBs transmit on 406 MHz via the Cospas-Sarsat satellite system with the sender¹s unique, registered, digitally coded distress signal. The code allows emergency officials monitoring the system to tell who is sending the signal (thanks to the coding and registration data).  Once the emergency is confirmed and location data is received from the satellites, a search can be authorized.

Wahler said proper registration is vital in the early minutes of an emergency so rescue center officials can obtain critical data about a boat¹s owner, home port, emergency contacts and other information to begin a search even before a satellite gets a fix on a beacon¹s location.

http://bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=53827

The oil companies are looking to raise prices again. And gullible media are letting them get away with it

By Ed Wallace

When Jon Stewart took CNBC's Jim Cramer to task in March over numerous bad calls on the state of the economy and certain unfortunate stock picks, that wasn't the first time I had heard Cramer's type of apology and answer. No, that came in an NPR interview with Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace. The radio host was asked how the business media had gotten so many things wrong about what has happened to America's financial system and why the best on the beat had missed so many obvious warning signs. Ryssdal replied: "We've got to do a better job connecting the dots."

What does that mean, exactly? It was never a question of connecting dots; it was always a question of finding out which business stories were true and which were not.

In contrast, the response to that same question by BusinessWeek Economics Editor Peter Coy, also on NPR, was clearly much more factual. Coy stated that many media outlets, including BusinessWeek, did carry the accurate stories on these troubling financial issues and did so early—but by and large the mainstream business media didn't pick up the ball and run with it.

Instead, it appeared they bought into the hype.

What is troubling in today's uncertain business climate is how many in the media are still doing it. You need not look far for proof: The price of oil and gas and the potential for future pricing are as badly hyped today as they were over the past four years.

Still No Gas Shortage

Doubt that? Let's start off with a few facts. Since January of this year, we have gone from 325,419,000 barrels of oil in our inventories to 366,743,000 barrels. We've now set a record for the most oil in inventories since late 1990. The same holds true for Europe, and recently it was announced that China has finished filling its reserve inventory system—although China did import slightly more oil this March than last.

Most have already forgotten the extreme contango ("contango" is an oil industry term used to describe when spot oil prices are less than the contracted price on the date of delivery) in the oil market that started off 2009. That situation forced oil traders to lease large numbers of supertankers to store oil offshore, hoping that the spot price for crude would rise so they could recoup losses on their contracted prices. Last week our refineries ran at barely over 80% of capacity, yet today we have 1 million more barrels of gasoline on hand than we did at this time last year (216,505,000 vs. 215,751,000). There are now discussions about shutting down refineries for good because gasoline demand has been falling for the last 18 months.

So as my columns last year stated, once again there is no gasoline shortage. Yet the Energy Information Administration claims that gasoline prices will go up to $2.23 this summer. Why? There's nothing to justify that position based on supply and demand. As analyst Steven Schork said, "You can't swing a cat without hitting a barrel of oil in the U.S."

The media still maintain that OPEC's production cuts are legitimately raising the price of oil. Yet OPEC has again slashed its projections for oil demand for 2009, now totaling a drop of 1.4 million barrels per day, called a "devastating contraction." Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency slashed estimates for oil demand down to 83.4 million barrels per day.

Stretch your memory a bit more: When Asia had its financial crisis in 1997, it dropped the price of oil to around $10 a barrel at the bottom. But today the financial crisis is bigger and worldwide, and yet oil has gone from $33 a barrel in mid-February to at one point more than $53.

Another fun fact: So much less is being shipped in this slowdown that, according to an article in Newsweek, if you hooked up every idled railcar in America, the resulting train would stretch from New York past Salt Lake City. Then we find that new rail loadings were down by a further 20% in the first week of April. Airline travel continues to plummet; and even with our refineries running at 80.3% we're still stockpiling gasoline that nobody's buying at retail. All three are major factors in the oil/fuel use/cost equation, and not one of these figures suggests a turnaround is near. Yet we've watched the price of gasoline rise from 84¢ a gallon on the futures market to $1.41 as of this writing.

Sounds All Too Familiar

Of course, there have been numerous stories reporting that gasoline demand is picking up, hence the price increases. But, though a slight uptick in gasoline demand from early January to March is normal, the overall year-on-year demand figures don't support the 75% increase in wholesale gasoline prices.

Last year when I reported on the hype behind the oil and gas prices, there was tremendous debate on whether it was speculators or supply and demand causing the catastrophic rise in prices. On Sept. 10, 2008, months after my columns ran, the International Energy Agency published its figures for North American gasoline use; they showed that gasoline demand destruction caused by pricing started in September 2007 and fell off a cliff starting in May 2008. That's right, gasoline demand was falling in North America for nearly a year, and while that was happening gasoline prices jumped to the highest level on record. But many in the business media couldn't quote enough analysts who claimed the exact opposite was happening.

More troubling is the new movement afoot to rewrite last year's history of oil. Yes, vested groups are trying to suggest that there really was a serious oil shortage in 2008.

What Fact Isn't Clear?

So far this year, foreclosures in America are up 24%; forecast dockings at the Port of Los Angeles as compared with last April will be down 25.1%; as stated, rail loading fell by 20% in the first week of April; 5.1 million Americans have lost their jobs in this downturn, and more than 6 million are receiving unemployment, while many more have had their wages cut; the second-largest mall operator in America has gone bankrupt, and numerous stories nationwide report a massive wave of closed retail stores in strip malls. Jet-fuel demand fell 14.35% in the first 60 days of this year; housing starts continue to disappoint; car sales are down 38%; and the only good news is that we might be close to the bottom. Or at least we hope that is the case.

Which one of those scenarios suggests to you that an oil boom is just around the corner and justifies the actions of the market? Exactly: none.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that oil at $50 is unfair, or for that matter even $2-a-gallon gasoline. Oil-producing countries need money for their economies just as desperately as we do for our oil-consuming one. Likewise, taking more than a one-year view of things, oil companies have to make supersize profits to reinvest so that we have a constant supply of oil in the future. To me, the best news this year from the oil patch was ExxonMobil's (XOM) commitment to continued future exploration by not cutting those expensive budgets. As CEO Rex Tillerson said, "We're still hiring."

A Well-Oiled Machine

So why is it that so many in the national business media are still covering a fairly simple industry, oil, by repeating the same tired old rhetoric—OPEC's oil cuts, weak dollar, gasoline demand is up, rising prices are justified because of the belief that a turnaround in the economy is coming soon, and so on? Not one of the easy-to-find facts justifies any of that.

However, a few journalists got the oil-price issue right by claiming it's rising in sympathy with the equities market. That's true, but it also makes a mockery of the concept that "the market" is there to determine the fair price of commodities based on supply and demand. Translated into English: The market is there to pour unwarranted money into commodities because then prices rise and big profits are made—even if the "market" price does not represent real-world usage.

Last week I read a BusinessWeek article from April 2000, "Wall Street's Hype Machine." It was published long after the bank and S&L failures of the late 1980s and after the Internet bust, but before Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and other financial disasters (including our current troubles), and certainly prior to the oil hype in 2006-08. It should also be noted that one of the first articles BusinessWeek published discussed the same issues on Wall Street—just before the Great Crash of '29.

Nine years after publication of the "Hype Machine" article and 80 years after BusinessWeek's first warning, it is disappointingly obvious that, despite the warnings of some, nothing has changed. And to quote that 2000 article, "The bull market has caused a revolution in the role of the analyst, who is fast becoming less of a researcher than a celebrity pitchman."

Guess what? They're not just back; they never went away.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/lifestyle/content/apr2009/bw20090421_862314.htm

  Summer Classes for Men at
 THE VILLAGES LEARNING CENTER

REGISTRATION MUST BE COMPLETED
By Friday, June 29th 2009

NOTE: DUE TO THE COMPLEXITY AND DIFFICULTY LEVEL
OF THEIR CONTENTS, CLASS SIZES WILL BE LIMITED TO 8 PARTICIPANTS MAXIMUM


Class 1
How To Fill Up The Ice Cube Trays--Step by Step, with Slide Presentation.
Meets 4 weeks, Monday and Wednesday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.

Class 2
The Toilet Paper Roll--Does It Change Itself?
Round Table Discussion.
Meets 2 weeks, Saturday 12:00 for 2 hours.
 

Class 3
Is It Possible To Urinate Using The Technique Of Lifting The Seat and Avoiding The Floor, Walls, and Nearby Bathtub?--Group Practice.
Meets 4 weeks, Saturday 10:00 PM for 2 hours.
 

Class 4
Fundamental Differences Between The Laundry Hamper and The Floor--Pictures and Explanatory Graphics.
Meets Saturdays at 2:00 PM for 3 weeks.
 

Class 5
Dinner Dishes--Can They Levitate and Fly Into The Kitchen Sink?
Examples on Video.
Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM
 

Class 6
Loss Of Identity--Losing The Remote To Your Significant Other.
Help Line Support and Support Groups.
Meets 4 Weeks, Friday and Sunday 7:00 PM
 

 Class 7
Learning How To Find Things--Starting With Looking In The Right Places And Not Turning The House Upside Down While Screaming.
Open Forum
Monday at 8:00 PM, 2 hours.
 

Class 8
Health Watch--Bringing Her Flowers Is Not Harmful To Your Health.
Graphics and Audio Tapes.
Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.
 

Class 9
Real Men Ask For Directions When Lost--Real Life Testimonials.
Tuesdays at 6:00 PM Location to be determined
 

Class 10
Is It Genetically Impossible To Sit Quietly While She Parallel Parks?
Driving Simulations.
4 weeks, Saturday's noon, 2 hours.

Class 11
Learning to Live--Basic Differences Between Mother and Wife.
Online Classes and role-playing
Tuesdays at 7:00 PM, location to be determined

Class 12
How to be the Ideal Shopping Companion
Relaxation Exercises, Meditation, and Breathing Techniques.
Meets 4 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours beginning at 7:00 PM.
 

Class 13
How to Fight Cerebral Atrophy--Remembering Birthdays, Anniversaries and Other Important Dates, and Calling When You're Going To Be Late.
Cerebral Shock Therapy Sessions and Full Lobotomies Offered.
Three nights; Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 PM for 2 hours.
 

Class 14
The Stove/Oven-- What It Is and How It Is Used.
Live Demonstration..
Tuesdays at 6:00 PM, location to be determined.  

 Upon completion of any of the above courses, diplomas will be issued to the survivors.

 

  What do the new green building incentives mean for you?

By Stacy and Andrew Hunt

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the average annual utility bill in the United States is currently $1,767, and energy costs are expected to continue to rise over the next few years. But the financial burden of high monthly utility bills is only one part of the challenge of energy production in America. Energy independence is rapidly becoming a priority since it offers great opportunities in the areas of job creation, manufacturing and environmental preservation.

The DOE has determined that energy conservation is the cheapest, cleanest and fastest way to reduce the environmental impact of energy production and improve national energy security.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was signed into law in February of 2009 and is an economic stimulus package meant to create jobs and jump-start the American economy. As well as providing funding across a number of industries -- including health care, agriculture, and education -- the ARRA has allocated a significant amount of money for energy conservation and renewable energy production. To help get the nation working towards serious conservation, the bill allocates more than $40 billion to energy-related issues. Some of this funding will specifically address the new and existing housing industry by providing tax credits, rebates, and incentives to home buyers, homeowners and builders.

Builders, remodelers, home owners and home buyers can all take advantage of sizable financial rewards by investing in energy efficiency, but only if they understand how the incentives work and how to access them.

Understanding the expanded tax credits, how to utilize rebates and utilize loan programs, and how to keep abreast of changes at the state and local level -- which may add new incentives as the ARRA is implemented in the upcoming months -- will all help greatly with making informed purchasing decisions.

There are three basic categories of opportunity related to energy-conservation improvements and renewable energy systems in new and existing homes. Those are:
There are three basic categories of opportunity related to energy-conservation improvements and renewable energy systems in new and existing homes. Those are:

Tax credits

Rebates

Loans

Following is a brief overview of each.

Tax credits: A tax credit is a sum of money subtracted directly from the tax liability at the end of the year. For consumers, tax credits can be very attractive because the amount of the credit directly reduces the taxes owed to the Federal or state government.

Credits are often confused with tax deductions but there is a significant difference.

A deduction is a sum of money subtracted from the total taxable income. For instance if someone has an annual income of $60 thousand, and qualifies for a $2,000 tax deduction, their taxable income would be reduced to $58 thousand.

A credit on the other hand, is subtracted directly from the tax burden. So for someone earns $60 thousand and is at 10 percent tax rate, their tax burden would be $6,000. A $2,000 tax credit would reduce that amount to $4000. Tax credits reduce the amount owned on taxes dollar-for-dollar and not just by a percentage.

In 2005 and 2008, tax credits for some energy efficient improvements were allowed with a limit of $500. The 2009 ARRA has increased the amount to $1,500 and has extended that deadline through 2010 for existing homes and 2016 for new homes. These credits include installing approved Energy Star rated windows, skylights, and doors, insulation, heating and cooling equipment and certain "cool" roofing materials.

Another major change for home owners is the tax credits available for onsite renewable and low-impact energy systems, such as solar panels, small wind turbines, and geo-thermal heat pumps. These systems now have tax credits of 30 percent with no limit on the amount of credit available. This means that builders have an excellent incentive to encourage potential buyers to invest in onsite power generation and existing home owners can save almost a third of the costs on installing these systems. For remodelers, a 30 percent tax credit on equipment can enable home owners to expand projects without expanding their budget.

Home builders are also eligible for a $2,000 tax credit simply by building home that achieve 50 percent energy savings for heating and cooling over the 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). At least 20 percent of these energy savings must come from improvements to the building envelope – the external shell of the building that seals out the weather and seals in a comfortable, efficient and healthy living space. The Energy Star web site provides the required forms for this tax credit as well as more information about funds available to builders of manufactured homes.

Rebates: Rebates are funds paid directly to builders and home owners when purchasing equipment or undertaking building improvements.

Unlike tax credits, rebates are generally paid "in cash" after purchase. Rebates are an effective way to stretch home remodeling and new construction dollars because simply by choosing energy efficient products, home owners, builders, and remodelers can save money. Whether it is purchasing a high efficiency laundry set that uses less energy and water, or a programmable thermostat, rebate programs can help offset the costs of normal purchases. There are two primary sources of rebates – manufacturers and utility companies.

Many of Energy Star's product partners provide significant rebates to encourage customers to buy energy efficient products. Rebates are intended to encourage energy conservation, but also to help accelerate adoption of new products in the market. To find out about manufacturer and some utility rebates, visit the The Energy Star web site.

Utility companies often provide rebates on installation of energy saving improvements like insulation, weatherization, and appliances. For example, Austin Energy offers a program designed to help home owners purchase improvements like heat pumps, air conditioners, home weatherization, duct sealing, and insulation.

To find out about utility and other rebate programs in your area, including state, local, utility and federal incentives that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, visit the Database for State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE) web site.

Loans: In this economy, many people simply can't afford to front the cash for energy improvements or renewable energy systems. Loan programs with favorable interest rates and terms, including home equity loans and increases in mortgage amounts, provide an option for those interested in investing in improvements, but lacking the upfront funding. It may not make sense, the idea of taking out a loan in such trying times, to perform energy conservation measures, but combined with the tax credit situation, and rebates, the scenario is much more attractive.

Take this example: you want to install a geo-thermal or ground-source heat pump system in your new home to have ultra-low heating and cooling bills. The cost of $30,000 for the system is scary. But, if you roll that $30,000 into your 5-percent, 30-year fixed mortgage, it costs you an extra $160 per month and saves you a little less than that in monthly utility bills. But, because of the significant tax credits available today, you'll get an extra $9,000 tax credit come next April -- in cash. Plus, as energy costs rise, that $160 a month cost could be a whole lot more attractive than what your utility bills would have been had you not installed the system.

For builders and remodelers, making cases like this for the homeowner is critical. Often consumers don't understand what incentives are available. By helping them understand and claim these benefits, builders and remodelers can provide practical energy-saving solutions. These solutions helps upsell customers, helps the home owner save money and helps the country by putting the ARRA funds to work.

The bottom line is that the combination of tax credits, rebates and favorable loan programs provides a significant incentive for people wishing to improve the energy performance of their homes, or invest in renewable energy systems. These investments have the potential to increase green jobs -- the people manufacturing, installing, and maintaining these systems -- and to radically improve our environment, energy and economic security.

That's why the government is so interested in using some of this ARRA money for energy conservation, and why you should be, too.

 

RELATED ARTICLES:   What States Are Doing to Encourage Green Building   Rebates for Energy-Efficiency in Building and Product Choices   Loan Help for Building Green   Moving Beyond Green

 

It’s not just Earth Day at Ocean Conservancy -- it’s Earth WEEK! To celebrate, we have two great items to share with you. First, sit back, relax and watch last night’s NBC Nightly News Earth Week special aptly entitled “Sea Change,” spotlighting efforts to end overfishing (and featuring our own fishery expert, Chris Dorsett). It’s informative and inspiring!  Second, once you’ve watched the NBC clip, you’ll want to do something about overfishing and we’ve got a great way for you to start. Take a look at our “fishery to fork” program that engages fishermen, buyers, retailers and seafood fans in doing their part for the future of U.S. fishing and the health of our ocean. Something needs to change, and you can be the catalyst. Photo: Rachel's Network For a sea change, Vikki N. Spruill President and CEO Ocean Conservancy

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were Driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space
Right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and  Missed the other car by just inches!

The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us.

My taxi driver just smiled and waved
At the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly.

So I asked, 'Why did you just do hat? This guy almost caused an accident and sent us to the hospital!'

This is when my taxi driver taught me what I Now call, 'The Law of the Garbage Truck.' He explained that many people are Like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, full of disappointment and rage. As their garbage piles up,
They need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you.

Don't Take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on.

Don't pick up their garbage and spread it to other people in your life, whether at work, at home, or to people that you don't even know on the streets.
Always remember that good people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so.....
Love the people who treat you right and don't dwell on the ones who don't.

We all have some degree of preconceived ideas and judgment, to some degree we might be victims of such preconceived judgment.  What would have been your initial reaction?  We can all be  Susan Boyle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Are you tired of telemarketers who call you even though you are on the Do Not Call List, or those form companies you are doing business with but who do not deem appropriate to introduce themselves like the law stipulates?
I am, and like the old advertisement used to say, "don't get mad..... fight back", let's put a stop to it and report them to the FCC.

Here is the link to the online complaint form

http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm