Mac OS X Maintenance Checklist

Maintenance is vital if you want to keep Mac OS X Snow Leopard in tip-top condition for as long as possible. Maintaining your Mac keeps it running fast and smooth. Basic housekeeping includes regular back-ups plus some other, less familiar, tasks. Check this table often, or print it and keep a copy near your desktop!

Mac Maintenance Task	Schedule
Check for updates with Software Update	Once a day (automatic setting)
Back up with Time Machine	Hourly (automatic setting)
Defragment (Micromat TechTool Pro/Prosoft Engineering Drive Genius 2)	Once a week
Repair Disk Permissions (Disk Utility)	Once a week
Delete Unnecessary User Accounts (System Preferences)	As necessary
Scan for viruses (Intego VirusBarrier X5)	Once a week (automatic setting)
Check all volumes (Disk Utility/ Micromat TechTool Pro)	Once a week
Check for the latest drivers for your hardware	Once a month (or after installing new hardware)
Delete temporary Internet cache files (Prosoft Engineering Drive Genius 2)	Once a month

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/mac-os-x-maintenance-checklist.html

Key Lime Cheesecake

Key limes are native to the Florida Keys (hence the name). Although it’s called Key lime cheesecake, you can make this cheesecake with regular green limes, with equally delicious results!

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 20 minutes under high pressure

Yield: 6 servings

Approx. 16 squares graham crackers

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened

2 eggs

2 Key or Persian limes

2 1/2 cups water

1. Lightly butter a 7-inch springform pan.

   
   



2. Cover the outside bottom and sides with a single sheet of aluminum foil.

   
   



3. Place the graham crackers in a plastic bag and crush them into crumbs.

   
   



4. Melt the butter in a small saucepan on the stove.

   
   

   You can also melt the butter in a bowl in the microwave, if you prefer.

   
   



5. Add 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs and 2 tablespoons sugar to the melted butter and combine.

   
   



6. Press the mixture into the bottom and 1 inch up the sides of the springform pan.

   
   



7. Zest the limes, then juice them.

   
   



8. In a large mixing bowl, mix the cream cheese and the remaining 1/2 cup sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy.

   
   



9. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed.

   
   



10. Add 3 tablespoons lime juice and 2 teaspoons lime zest and mix until well blended.

    
    



11. Pour over the crust.

    
    



12. Cover tightly with aluminum foil.

    
    



13. Place a metal trivet or rack in the pressure cooker.

    
    



14. Pour in the water.

    
    



15. Fold a 24-inch length of foil in half lengthwise.

    
    



16. Center the pan on the foil sling and carefully lower it into the pressure cooker, folding the ends of the sling down on top of the pan.

    
    



17. Cover the pressure cooker and bring to high pressure over high heat.

    
    



18. Lower the heat to stabilize the pressure.

    
    



19. Cook for 20 minutes.

    
    



20. Remove from the heat and let sit undisturbed for 10 minutes.

    
    



21. Release any remaining pressure with a quick-release method.

    
    



22. Unlock and remove the cover.

    
    



23. Remove the cheesecake from the pressure cooker by pulling up on the ends of the aluminum foil sling.

    
    

    Remove and discard all foil.

    
    



24. Cool to room temperature before refrigerating overnight.

    
    



25. Before serving, carefully remove the sides of the springform pan.

    
    

Per serving: Calories 469 (From fat 301); Fat 33g (Saturated 20g); Cholesterol 164mg; Sodium 336mg; Carbohydrate 35g (Dietary fiber 1g); Protein 9g.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/key-lime-cheesecake.html

How to Take Close-Up Photographs with a Canon EOS Rebel T1i/500D

Your Canon Digital Rebel can capture close-up (or macro) photography, the technique behind many of the most captivating nature photographs, as well as almost all product photography. Close-up shots don’t necessarily require fancy macro lenses — although it helps to have a quick photography tutorial to guide you through the best tips on close-ups.

• Check your owner’s manual to find out the minimum close-focusing distance of your lens. How “up close and personal” you can get to your subject depends on your lens, not the camera body itself.

  
  



• Take control over depth of field by setting the camera mode to Av (aperture-priority autoexposure) mode. Whether you want a shallow, medium, or extreme depth of field depends on the point of your photo. In classic nature photography, for example, the artistic tradition is a very shallow depth of field and requires an open aperture (low f-stop value). But if you want the viewer to be able to clearly see all details throughout the frame — for example, if you’re shooting a product shot for your company’s sales catalog — you need to go the other direction, stopping down the aperture as far as possible.

  
  

  Not ready for the advanced exposure modes yet? Try Close Up mode instead. (It’s the one marked with the little flower on your Mode dial.) In this mode, the camera automatically opens the aperture to achieve a short depth of field and bases focus on the center of the frame. As with all the other automatic exposure modes, though, the range of apertures available to the camera depends on the lighting conditions.

  
  



• Remember that zooming in and getting close to your subject both decrease depth of field. So back to that product shot: If you need depth of field beyond what you can achieve with the aperture setting, you may need to back away, zoom out, or both. (You can always crop your image to show just the parts of the subject that you want to feature.)

  
  



• When shooting flowers and other nature scenes outdoors, pay attention to shutter speed. Even a slight breeze may cause your subject to move, causing blurring at slow shutter speeds.

  
  



• Use fill flash for better outdoor lighting. A tiny bit of flash typically improves close-ups when the sun is your primary light source. You may need to reduce the flash output slightly, via the camera’s Flash Exposure Compensation control. Keep in mind that the maximum shutter speed possible when you use the built-in flash is 1/200 second, so in very bright light, you may need to use a high f-stop setting to avoid overexposing the picture. You also can lower the ISO speed setting, if it’s not already all the way down to ISO 100.

  
  



• When shooting indoors, try not to use flash as your primary light source. Because you’ll be shooting at close range, the light from your flash may be too harsh even at a low Flash Exposure Compensation setting. If flash is inevitable, turn on as many room lights as possible to reduce the flash power that’s needed — even a hardware-store shop light can do in a pinch as a lighting source. (Remember that if you have multiple light sources, though, you may need to tweak the white balance setting.)

  
  



• To really get close to your subject, invest in a macro lens or a set of diopters. A true macro lens, which enables you to get really, really close to your subjects, is an expensive proposition; expect to pay around $200 or more. But if you enjoy capturing the tiny details in life, it’s worth the investment. For a less expensive way to go, you can spend about $40 for a set of diopters, which are sort of like reading glasses that you screw onto your existing lens. The downfall of diopters, sadly, is that they typically produce images that are very soft around the edges — a problem that doesn’t occur with a good macro lens.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-take-closeup-photographs-with-a-canon-eos-r.html

Accessing Libraries of Materials in AutoCAD 2008

AutoCAD 2008 comes with a large number of predefined materials that are organized into libraries. You can also build your own material library from the materials that you create and use for your 3D models. AutoCAD comes with two different sets of material libraries: one that's installed by default with AutoCAD and one you choose to install.

You can find the material libraries from the Tool Palettes Window (choose Tools --> Palettes --> Tool Palettes) by right-clicking the title bar when the palette isn't docked or the double grip bar at the top when it is docked. Select either Materials or Materials Library from the contextual menu to display palettes that contain material tools.

The Materials tool palette group on the Tool Palettes Window contains some basic materials that you might use on your 3D models, whereas the Materials Library palette group contains a larger number of materials that you can attach to 3D objects in your 3D models. To attach a material, click one of the tools or click a tab to switch between the available tool palettes in the selected group to select a different material. The material is added to the drawing and you're prompted to select the object you want to attach the material to.

You can create your own material tools on tool palettes if you want to reuse a material in other drawings. To reuse a material in another drawing, drag the preview swatch in the Materials palette to a tool palette on the Tool Palettes Window and drop the image when the black horizontal bar is displayed. For more information about customizing tool palettes, see the topic Tool Palettes in the AutoCAD help system. To locate the topic, display the Online Help system and click the Contents tab. On the Contents tab, choose User's Guide --> The User Interface.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/accessing-libraries-of-materials-in-autocad-2008.html

Music Theory For Dummies

If you're trying to learn how to play music, read music, or brush up on improvising and performing with other musicians, music theory is important. However, you don't need to know every last tidbit that the many theorists around the world have written down. You just need to become familiar with some of the basics. You need to know the names of the notes, and you must understand time signatures, intervals, and chord progressions.

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Note Names in the U.S. and U.K.

In the world of music, you may encounter different names for the many notes used. The U.S. and U.K. standard terms differ, but the U.S. names — which were originally translated from the German names for the notes because so many German composers immigrated to the United States in the 19th century — are more universally standard. The U.K. names are also used in medieval music and in some classical circles. The following table shows the common notes and their U.S. and U.K. names.

U.S. Note Name	Note	U.K. Note Name
Double whole		Breve
Whole		Semibreve
Half		Minim
Quarter		Crotchet
Eighth		Quaver
Sixteenth		Semiquaver
Thirty-second		Demisemiquaver

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Extending Notes with Dots and Ties

All notes have a certain value, indicated by the size and shape of the note, that determines how long a pitch should be held by the voice or an instrument. Sometimes, however, you want to add to the value of a note to create syncopation or other interest in your musical piece. You can extend a note's value in written music using dots and ties. Here's the lowdown on each:

• Augmentation dot: This dot indicates that a note's value is increased by one half of its original value. The most common use of the dotted note is when a half note is made to last three quarter-note beats instead of two, as shown in the figure. Less common is the dotted whole note. This dotted note means the whole note's value is increased from four beats to six beats.

  
  
  



• Tie: Ties connect notes of the same pitch to create one sustained note instead of two separate ones. When you see a tie, simply add the notes together. For example, a quarter note tied to another quarter note equals one note held for two beats, as shown in the figure.

  
  
  

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Understanding Simple and Compound Time Signatures

Written music always contains a time signature, which looks like a fraction and is found at the beginning of a piece of music. In the time signature, the upper number represents the number of beats per measure, and the lower one represents the time value of each beat. You'll encounter the two following main types of time signatures:

• Simple: With simple time signatures, the beat of a piece of music can be broken down into two-part rhythms. Simple time signatures are the easiest to count, because a one-two pulse in a piece of music feels the most natural to a listener and a performer. Common examples of simple time signatures are 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 3/8, and 2/2.

  
  



• Compound: In compound time signatures, the beat is broken down into three-part rhythms. The top number is evenly divisible by 3, with the exception of time signatures where the top number is 3. Also, each beat is divided into three components, creating a one-two-three pulse. Common examples of compound time signatures are 6/8, 12/8, and 9/4.

  
  

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Measuring the Distance between Pitches with Intervals

The distance between two musical pitches is called an interval. Intervals are important to music because they build scales and chords. In other words, music gets its richness from intervals. Composers and musicians use two types of intervals: harmonic and melodic intervals.

• You get a harmonic interval when you play two notes at the same time.

  
  



• You get a melodic interval when you play two notes separately in time, one after the other.

  
  

The identity of both harmonic and melodic intervals is determined by two things:

• Quantity: You determine an interval's quantity by simply adding the lines and spaces included in the interval on the music staff. Accidentals (sharps and flats), which raise or lower a pitch by a half step, don't matter when counting interval quantity. Interval quantity may be

  
  
  
  

  • Unison (or prime)

    
    
  
  

  • Second

    
    
  
  

  • Third

    
    
  
  

  • Fourth

    
    
  
  

  • Fifth

    
    
  
  

  • Sixth

    
    
  
  

  • Seventh

    
    
  
  

  • Octave

    
    
  
  
  
  



• Quality: Interval quality is based on the number of half steps from one note to another. Unlike in interval quantity, accidentals do matter in interval quality. The terms used to describe quality, and their abbreviations, are as follows:

  
  
  
  

  • Major (M): Contains two half steps between notes

    
    
  
  

  • Minor (m): Contains a half step less than a major interval, or one half step between notes

    
    
  
  

  • Perfect (P): Refers to the harmonic quality of primes, octaves, fourths, and fifths

    
    
  
  

  • Diminished (dim): Contains a half step less than a minor or perfect interval

    
    
  
  

  • Augmented (aug): Contains a half step more than a major or perfect interval

    
    
  
  
  
  

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Creating Music with Chord Progressions

A chord progression is a group of chords that you use to create music. Some chord progressions just sound better than others, so it pays to experiment. The following table, which shows commonly used major-key chords and the other chords they often lead to, can help you in deciding which chords will come next in your compositions.

Chord	Leads To
I	Can appear anywhere and lead anywhere
ii	I, V, or vii° chords
iii	I, IV, or vi chords
IV	I, ii, V, or vii° chords
V	I, vi chords
vi	I, ii, iii, IV, or V chords
vii°	I chord

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/music-theory-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.html

Singing in the Choir versus Going Solo

Depending on how you want to explore your own singing voice, singing with a choir may or may not be for you. The choral singer has different needs, so before you join a choir, you may want to explore the differences between training with a choir and going solo:

• 
  

  You may frequently be asked to sing without vibrato when singing with a choir; going solo, you often sing with vibrato. If you can make the change in the sound without pressure, singing without vibrato need not a problem. The sound without vibrato can be free and loose and supported.

  
  


• 
  

  You need to find a part that works for your voice and for the choir director; going solo, you can sing songs within your range. The notes may stay pretty high or low when you sing certain parts in the choir.

  
  

  If you’re a low female voice, you may even be asked to sing with the tenors. You can agree to sing tenor once in a while, but the part was designed for the male voice, not the female voice.

  
  

  Good musicians who sight read well may also be asked to sing a particular part to help the choir even though it may not be appropriate for their voice. If you feel tired after singing, you may want to ask whether you can switch to a different part or ask the director for advice on how to prevent fatigue.

  
  


• 
  

  You may be asked to sing quite loudly in the choir if few people are on your part. Use this opportunity to rely on your knowledge of resonance so that you don’t push too hard.

  
  

  If you find yourself tired after singing loudly, you need to take it easy for a while during the rehearsal so you can rest up a bit, or talk with the choir director about how your voice feels after rehearsal. Singing alone means that you can work at any volume, without worrying about having to lead others with your voice.

  
  


• 
  

  You may be asked to stand for long periods of time when singing in a choir; while rehearsing by yourself, you can rest whenever you need to and give your legs a break. Having to stand for a rehearsal can provide a good opportunity to practice standing with your weight evenly distributed on both legs. If you find this tiring, explore your options with the director.

  
  


• 
  

  You need to be aware of your facial expressions when moving back and forth from choir to soloist. Sometimes choir directors tell you to raise your eyebrows or smile to keep the pitch steady. You can do this as long as you know that, when you sing alone, you need to put your eyebrows back down.

  
  

  You can keep the pitch steady by keeping your breath consistent and by making sure that your vowels are precise. Keeping your breath moving at a steady rate and singing precise vowel sounds is easier than trying to move each pitch up or down. The smile can also be deadly to a soloist: Smiles don’t work for sad songs when you’re a soloist.

  
  

  The smile also can cause tension inside your mouth when you try to open the back space (the space in the back of your mouth and throat). Find enjoyment in singing from the joy inside your body, and let it reflect on your face without the tension of a frozen smile.

  
  

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Enterprise Mobile Device Security: Personal Windows Device Protection

As an administrator managing mobility for an enterprise environment, you want to enforce certain policies for all personal devices being used at work, especially if your IT policy allows personal devices to access network resources. Here are some precautions you should advise users to take to prevent losing vital data on a Windows device if it's ever lost or stolen.

Microsoft’s Windows-based mobile operating system comes in two basic flavors. One is the older Windows Mobile operating system that runs on several phones from vendors such as HTC and Sony Ericsson; the other is the relatively newer Windows Phone 7. Both are vastly different operating systems with different sets of supported features.

Microsoft offers a service called My Phone for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 devices, with support for loss and theft protection features, as well as the ability to sync photos, music, and other data from the phone to a computer.

Microsoft’s My Phone service (myphone.microsoft.com) is available in two options. One is a free option with limited features, and the other is a premium option with fully supported features. If the user’s phone is lost or stolen, he can use the following My Phone features to protect the data:

• Locate the lost device by using GPS. After the user has signed up for Microsoft’s My Phone service, he can locate a lost or misplaced device by logging into the service using a web browser from any computer.

  
  

  Note that the free version of Microsoft’s My Phone service provides the location of a device when the last sync operation was performed. This clearly isn't the same as locating the actual device when it's lost or stolen. For example, if the user last performed a sync a month ago, it will show the location where the sync was performed, not the current location of the phone.

  
  



• Remotely lock or wipe the device, or set off an alarm. If the user is unable to locate the lost device using GPS, he should attempt to remotely lock the phone or even wipe its contents clean. The My Phone service provides these services for a fee.

  
  

  Remotely locking the device with My Phone involves using the web-based My Phone interface and setting a passcode to lock the device. The device owner can also use the My Phone web interface to issue a wipe command on the device if he’s fairly certain it has been lost or stolen.

  
  

Other solutions available commercially from other vendors include similar web-based interfaces to issue remote lock or wipe commands.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/enterprise-mobile-device-security-personal-windows.html

Body Measurements Help Determine Healthy Weight Status

A healthy weight is a range that relates statistically to good health. Being overweight or obese is statistically related to weight-related health problems, such as heart disease and hypertension.

Healthcare professionals use three key measurements to determine whether a person is at a healthy weight:

• Body Mass Index (BMI): A measure that correlates to how much fat is on your body.

  
  



• Waist size: A measure that helps to indicate whether the location of your body fat is a health hazard.

  
  



• Risk factors for developing weight-related health problems: For example, your cholesterol level, blood pressure, and family history.

  
  

What you should weigh for optimal health may be quite different from what someone else should weigh, even if that someone is your same height, gender, and age.

When you step onto your bathroom scale, the number shows you how much your total body weighs. This total includes fat, muscle, bone, and water. Even though a healthy weight depends on more than the number on the scale, that number is a general starting point that you can use to assess your weight.

After you know your weight, you can compare it to the healthy weight ranges of the quick estimate method or use it to calculate your BMI. But what if your weight falls above these ranges? For most people, that’s less healthy. The more that you weigh beyond and above the healthy weight range for your height, the greater your risk for weight-related health problems.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/body-measurements-help-determine-healthy-weight-st.html

Form 1041 Questions for a Trust or Estate

If you’re preparing Form 1041 for an estate or trust, you need to answer some questions at the bottom of page 2 of this form. Questions on Form 1041 ask about tax-exempt income, individual earnings, foreign accounts and sources, residential mortgages, elections to pay the beneficiaries’ income late, distributions of property in kind, the length of the estate’s existence, and skip beneficiaries.

• Place the total tax-exempt income we talked about in the “Interest” section on the line underneath Question 1.

  
  



• When the trust or estate reports earnings of any type that were earned by an individual, check the “Yes” box for Question 2.

  
  



• Question 3 asks about cash and securities held in foreign accounts. Refer to the list of assets you compiled for the estate or trust, and see if this estate or trust has any foreign accounts. If your trust or estate falls into this category, check the “Yes” box, and enter the name of the foreign country below question 3.

  
  

  If the trust or estate has no foreign accounts, but owns foreign securities in a U.S. based account, the answer to Question 3 is “no”.

  
  



• Along the same lines, Question 4 asks about distributions from foreign sources, or whether or not your estate or trust funded a foreign trust. If you answer “yes” and the combined total of all foreign accounts is greater than $10,000, you may have to file Form TD F 90-22.1, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts.

  
  



• Question 5 asks whether the estate or trust is the holder of a residential mortgage and receives interest payments on that loan. Look back over your list of assets, and make sure there’s no promissory note or mortgage still generating payments buried at the bottom of the list.

  
  



• If the trust or the estate elects, it may choose to pay the beneficiaries’ income earned in the tax year in question as late as 65 days into the next tax year. If you want to make this election, perhaps because you don’t know until after December 31 how much income you should pass out to the beneficiaries, check the box next to Question 6.

  
  



• If you are distributing property in kind (you actually passed the shares of stock out to the beneficiary, instead of selling them and giving him or her a check), you can elect to recognize the gain on that transaction at the trust or estate level. Check the box next to Question 7 to make this election (under Code Section 643(e)(3)).

  
  

  When you include this transaction on Schedule D to report the gain, and pay the tax, the beneficiary then receives the property with the higher, date-of-distribution basis.

  
  



• Question 8 assumes that most estates run their course within the first two years of the decedent’s date of death. If the estate you’re administering stretches out longer than that, the IRS wants a brief explanation. Check the box and attach a brief statement.

  
  



• Question 9 asks for information about skip beneficiaries so that the IRS can attempt to collect even more tax under the generation skipping transfer tax rules.

  
  

  Generally, a skip beneficiary is someone who is more than one generation below that of the transferor of the property. So, grandchildren may be skip beneficiaries of their grandparents’ estates. In the case of unrelated parties, a skip beneficiary is anyone who is more than 371/2 years younger than the transferor.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/form-1041-questions-for-a-trust-or-estate.html

Informational Interview Questions to Ask in Search of Your Dream Career

When you’re searching for your dream career, talking with people in a field you’re interested in is one of the best ways to gain a realistic and current picture of a potential new career — you want to do informational interviews. Make appointments with people in your potential new field then use the questions in the handy list following to help you plan your informational interviews:

• What is the outlook for this profession?

  
  



• What is your day like?

  
  



• What are your key responsibilities?

  
  



• What are the pros and cons of working in this industry right now?

  
  



• How does this job impact your life?

  
  



• How did you get into this field?

  
  



• Do you know anyone who entered this field with my background?

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/informational-interview-questions-to-ask-in-search.html

Employee Appraisals: Pros and Cons of the Critical-Incidents Approach

Critical incidents are a special category of employee behaviors that focus on two distinct areas: particularly outstanding behaviors and particularly questionable behaviors. The critical incidents method of performance appraisal is based on managers' spending time during the year observing and gathering behavioral data on their employees, while looking extra carefully for those critical incidents.

At the end of the year, the managers take out all their notes on these critical incidents and categorize them as either positive/satisfactory behaviors or negative/unsatisfactory behaviors. An employee’s rating is then heavily influenced or even determined by which pile of data is taller — the satisfactory or the unsatisfactory.

Here are the advantages of the critical incidents approach to performance appraisal:

• It’s based on direct observations. The greatest strength of this approach is that performance evaluations are based on actual performance that is observed firsthand by the employee’s manager.

  
  



• It’s time-tested. In this approach, managers gather data over a full year, so it’s less likely to be influenced by a mad last-minute scurry for data or the undue impact that can be associated with an employee’s most recent behaviors.

  
  



• It provides more face time. By definition, the critical incident approach encourages managers to spend time on the floors with their employees, which allows them to provide more coaching, guidance, and feedback, while also learning more about overall developments in the department.

  
  

On the other hand, the critical incidents approach has some drawbacks:

• It delays the giving of feedback. In order for feedback to be truly effective (whether the feedback is positive or negative), it should be linked as closely as possible to the behavior in question. With critical incidents, a greater emphasis may be placed on gathering data and tallying it than actually using it to inform, educate, and motivate employees.

  
  

  As the distance between behavior and feedback increases, the value of feedback decreases.

  
  



• All satisfactory and unsatisfactory behaviors are not equal. Throughout the year, a person may display many excellent behaviors but only one unsatisfactory behavior. In that case, her pile of satisfactory behaviors would be much greater than her pile of unsatisfactory behaviors. But weighing the number of satisfactory behaviors against the number of unsatisfactory ones can lead to an erroneous conclusion if the one unsatisfactory behavior cost the company its best client, or its computer system, or its line of credit.

  
  

  In order to increase the accuracy and utility of the critical incident method, managers who use it should attach a numerical value to each positive and negative behavior.

  
  



• Although managers should engage in managing by wandering around, the critical incident approach can cause managers to spend too much time on the floors. If the manager is constantly wandering around with his employees, the employees can start to feel as though the team is being micromanaged.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/employee-appraisals-pros-and-cons-of-the-criticali.navId-397646.html

Discovering the Baroque Masters: Caravaggio and His Followers

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, known more simply as Caravaggio (1571–1610), was the greatest and most influential painter of the Baroque style. He was also a quick-tempered Bohemian who was often jailed for brawling and was forced to flee from the law and his enemies, escaping to Naples, Malta, and Sicily at various times. His "travels" helped to spread his extraordinary style, which was soon imitated across Europe.

Caravaggio infused his work with more gritty naturalism than any previous artist, hiring common people as models for saints and apostles, which shocked many of his contemporaries. He dramatized his religious scenes by throwing a diagonal light across his subjects, highlighting some of their features (to emphasize certain emotions and actions) and leaving the rest in shadow.

Caravaggio's lighting technique is called tenebrism, from the Italian word tenebroso, which means "gloomy" or "murky." His paintings recount climactic moments while powerfully suggesting the events that precede and follow them.

Caravaggio created his dramatic lighting effects by letting natural light stream through a high window or with a highly placed lamp that threw a beam down onto his subjects. This technique, known as cellar lighting, yields dramatic effects if the artist positions his models well.

In Calling of Saint Matthew (1599–1600; created for the Contarelli Chapel), the cellar light slashes across the back wall and illuminates the faces of some of the men crowded around a wooden table where Matthew counts his money. Three of Matthew's companions regard Jesus, who has just entered and stands in the shadows. The cellar lighting streaming through the window almost traces the line of Jesus' index finger, which points at the tax collector Matthew, who's about to change jobs. But the future apostle resists, avoiding Jesus' eyes and staring stubbornly at the stack of coins on the table. The painting illustrates the tug-of-war going on inside Matthew. The tension between light and dark, between pointing fingers and gazing eyes staring in opposite directions, heightens the drama to the breaking point.

Notice that despite Matthew's reluctance to sign on, Jesus' feet are already turned toward the exit and the future. Caravaggio was the first to depict a single tense moment and let the tension stretch the moment backward and forward in time.

To help break the barrier between a painting and the viewer, Caravaggio and other Baroque painters placed highly illusionistic objects — a bed, a copper bowl, someone's foot — at the bottom edge of their paintings so that the objects appear to project into the viewer's space. You feel that you can touch these objects, so you become more involved in the painting.

Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi were two artists who were influenced by Caravaggio.

Orazio Gentileschi: Baroque's gentle side, more or less

Orazio Gentileschi (1563–1639) was the first of Caravaggio's many followers. Gentileschi emphasized realism like Caravaggio and placed his subjects close to the viewer in a stop-action moment as in his The Lute Player (1610). In this sensitively rendered painting, a female lute player, illuminated by Caravaggio's cellar lighting, gently strums her instrument. It's a fine work, but there's no tension and no stirring sensuality as in Caravaggio's The Musicians (1595–1596) and The Lute Player (1595–1596). The stop-action in the Gentileschi painting is truly stopped. The frozen moment doesn't pull us in multiple directions as in a Caravaggio painting. One of Gentileschi's most moving works is his Madonna with Child in the Gallery Borghese in Rome. The tender warmth in the mother's face as she gazes at her child is magnified by the lighting.

Shadow and light dramas: Artemisia Gentileschi

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c. 1652) wasn't the only female artist in the Baroque period, but she is one of the few to paint historical and religious paintings. Most other female artists were pigeonholed into portrait, still life, and devotional paintings.

Among Artemisia's greatest works are Susanna and the Elders (1610), Judith Slays Holofernes (1620), and Lucretia (1621). Like the heroines in Lucretia and Susanna and the Elders, Artemisia was raped. Her personal experience resonates in these works. Like her father Orazio and Caravaggio, Artemisia placed her figures intimately close to the viewer.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/discovering-the-baroque-masters-caravaggio-and-his.html

Puppy-Proofing Your Home

Take extra care to protect your puppy from accidents at home, where many household dangers exist in the form of poisons, indigestibles, and obstacles. Remember, none of the suggestions here should take the place of seeing your veterinarian immediately. Knowing what steps to take before you get your puppy to the animal hospital can save his life.

Puppies are insatiably curious creatures. Take a look at your house from your puppy’s point of view: “Plants, cords, and dropped items get a giant reaction from my parents if they’re within hearing distance. What fun!” As a result, you need to essentially baby-proof your home.

Hunting for household dangers

Walk (or better yet, crawl) around your house and look at it from your puppy’s perspective. What looks tempting? You can use duct tape to secure wires, and you can clean off coffee tables and clear bookshelves for the time being. Remember that puppies are like babies: They get into everything for the sheer fun of discovering something new.

Hanging there like a snake, an electrical cord or a telephone wire can be quite tempting to attack and chew. The damage can range from a sharp to lethal shock or a mild to third-degree burn. If you notice a severed cord, check your puppy’s mouth for burns.

Prevent lamp-cord electrocution! Tape all cords hanging 4 feet from the ground to the wall, and pin floor cords to the baseboard. Also, keep a bottle of Bitter Apple spray handy, and each time you see your puppy nosing a wire, spray it immediately.

Taking care of small indigestibles

Some puppies love to swallow what they chew — especially if you’re trying to take the object away from them forcefully. The problem is that not all items can pass through a puppy’s intestines.

Some objects can get stuck inside your puppy, initially causing vomiting, gagging, dry heaves, and coughing, which can go on for days. If that’s not cause enough for alarm, the puppy’s loss of appetite will be. If the intestine is blocked and nothing is done to remove the obstruction, the intestine ruptures, which can be fatal.

Treatment depends on how soon you get your puppy to the vet, because you often don’t know whether the object is sharp or could break (thereby rupturing the intestines), whether it’s small and likely to pass, or whether it’s large enough to block digestion.

Unless your veterinarian can induce your puppy to vomit up the object (which he may or may not be willing to do to guard your dog’s safety), an X-ray is needed to identify what he swallowed. To remove the foreign object, the doctor may order surgery.

Keeping poison control numbers on hand

Put all dangerous substances out of the reach of your pet, just as you’d put them out of the reach of children. You can call the 24-hour National Animal Poison Control Center if your puppy has swallowed something poisonous: (888) 426-4435. (You may be charged a fee. However, its immediate and professional assistance is worth a pot of gold when your puppy is in distress!)

Keep the label of the ingested matter on hand or describe what was swallowed; the operator is trained to talk you through the incident, translate symptoms, and tell you exactly how to handle each incident.

Keep your veterinarian’s number in speed dial and phone him immediately after an accident. Even if your dog seems okay, speak with your veterinarian to discuss the issue and possible preventive tips. Additionally, have a backup plan if your veterinarian is out of the office or on vacation. Ask him to recommend a respected clinic for emergencies.

Avoiding poisonous plants

Inside or out, plants can entertain your puppy for hours. However, not all plants are dog-friendly. In fact, some are deadly.

If your puppy is carrying a plant in his mouth, don’t race toward him. If you do, he perceives your actions as prize envy and may gulp the evidence. Approach calmly and stare at the floor, not into his eyes; then remove the plant from his mouth.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/puppyproofing-your-home0.html?cid=RSS_DUMMIES2_CONTENT

Exchange Traded Funds: Finding a Stock to Bond Split that Makes Sense for You

The balance between stocks and bonds — and the ETFs based on them — is usually expressed as “[% stocks]/[% bonds],” so a 60/40 portfolio means 60 percent stocks or stock ETFs and 40 percent bonds or bond ETFs. The optimal balance for any given person depends on many factors: age, size of portfolio, income stream, financial responsibilities, economic safety net, and emotional tolerance for risk.

In general, working investors should hold three to six months of living expenses in cash (money markets or Internet savings accounts) or near-cash (very short-term bond funds or short-term CDs). Non-working investors living largely off their portfolios should set aside much more, perhaps one to two years of living expenses.

Beyond that, most people’s portfolios, whether they’re working or not, should be allocated to stocks (including REITs), intermediate-term bonds, and perhaps a few alternative investments, such as market-neutral funds and commodities (including precious metals).

In determining an optimal split, pick a date when you think you may need to start withdrawing money from your nest egg. How much do you anticipate needing to withdraw? Maybe $30,000 a year? Or $40,000? If you haven’t given this question much thought, please do!

Start with your current job income. Subtract what you believe you’ll be getting in Social Security payments or other pension income. The difference is what you would need to pull from your portfolio to replicate your current income. But most retirees find they need 80 to 90 percent of their working-days income to live comfortably.

Take a minute, please. Come up with a rough number of how much you’re going to need to take from your nest egg each year.

Got it?

Whatever the number, multiply it by 10. That amount, ideally, is what you should have in your bond portfolio, at a minimum, on the day you retire. In other words, if you think you’ll need to pull $30,000 a year from your portfolio, you should have at least $30,000 in cash and about $300,000 ($30,000 × 10) in bonds. That’s regardless of how much you have in stocks.

So here’s the rough rule (keeping in mind, please, that all rough rules can get you into trouble sometimes): If you are still in your 20s or 30s and want to keep the vast lion’s share of your portfolio in stocks, fine.

But as you get older and start to think about quitting your day job, begin to increase your bond allocation with the aim of getting to your retirement date with at least ten times your anticipated post-retirement withdrawals in bonds. Most people (who aren’t rich) should have roughly one year’s income in cash and the rest in a 50/50 (stock/bond) portfolio on retirement day.

With at least one year’s living expenses in cash and ten years of living expenses in bonds, you can live off the non-stock side of your portfolio for a good amount of time if the stock market goes into a swoon. (You then hope that the stock market recovers.)

If this rule seems too complex, you can always go with an even rougher rule that has appeared in countless magazines. It says you should subtract your age from 110, and that’s what you should have, more or less, in stocks, with the rest in bonds.

So a 50-year-old should have (110 – 50) 60 percent in stocks and 40 percent in bonds. A 60-year-old would want a portfolio of about (110 – 60) 50 percent stocks and 50 percent bonds. And so on and so on. This rough rule may not be bad, assuming that you are of average wealth, are going to retire at the average age, will live the average life expectancy, and expect that the markets will see roughly average performance!

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/exchange-traded-funds-finding-a-stock-to-bond-spli.html

Working with Intuit in Cloud Computing

Intuit’s target market for cloud computing services is the small- and medium-sized businesses that use its popular QuickBooks application to run their day-to-day financial operations. Intuit has used this foundation combined with a series of acquisitions to create a Platform as a Service (PaaS) model. More than 80,000 developers and about four million customers are part of the company’s ecosystem.

Intuit’s new cloud-based Platform as a Service is called Federated Applications. In essence, the developers can write their application with any programming language, use any database or cloud computing resource, and then connect this code to the Intuit platform via XML-based interfaces and configuration files. These developers can then create cloud-based applications by leveraging the same development platform that Intuit created to build its own packaged applications.

After linking an application to the Intuit Workplace portal, a customer is essentially published into Intuit’s cloud marketplace. Therefore, a QuickBooks customer can go to the portal and buy an application designed to work with QuickBooks. The user interface, account management, security, and billing are the same. Integration with QuickBooks is automatic.

What are the components of Intuit’s Partner Platform? They are as follows:

• QuickBase: This Web infrastructure is for small business applications. The foundation of the QuickBase platform is a database that includes team workflow, communications, and task management. QuickBase provides partners with support for multi-tenancy. It is used as a collaboration platform by partners.

  
  



• Workplace: This is a portal environment for customers. It can either be used as a stand-alone environment or can be integrated with QuickBooks. Customers can use a QuickBase application within the workplace to control how the application will be presented to individual users. In addition, the Workplace also provides services that track subscriptions and revenue.

  
  



• Federated Applications model: With the federated application services, developers can integrate existing code through a configuration service. There are four integration methods:

  
  
  
  

  • Data integration: To integrate at the data level, the partner must program to a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that enable data synchronization. This allows developers to take advantage of the platform’s common cloud data schema (which defines the relationships between data elements).

    
    
  
  

  • Login integration: To integrate at login, the partner uses a Federated Identity Web API. After the developer has used this API, customers can use their Intuit Workplace login credentials to access the partner application that they bought.

    
    
  
  

  • User management and permissions integration: Intuit provides developers with a Web API so their application can handle processes such as adding more users.

    
    
  
  

  • Navigation-based integration: A developer who has built a Software as a Service–based application can use this tool to provide the Intuit Workplace toolbar. This allows the customer to have common integration.

    
    
  
  
  
  

Unlike many of the companies in the PaaS market, Intuit charges between 14 and 20 percent of revenue to partners who sell through Intuit’s Workplace. The exact percentage depends on the volume sold. If the vendor is offering a free application via the Workplace, there is a utility fee. While the customer buys the application directly from the vendor, the transaction is handled directly by Intuit. There are no fees for page views or data storage.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/working-with-intuit-in-cloud-computing.html

Broadcasting Your Destination Wedding by Webcam

Expenses can prevent many guests from going to your destination wedding, but you can help them attend "remotely" by using a Webcam. A Webcam enables the bridal couple to share their day with faraway friends and family. These "virtual" guests witness the event in real time — as it happens — as long as those folks have a computer and Web access.

The Webcam (a digital camera that streams live video over the Internet) is one of the biggest boons to hit destination weddings, reducing any residual guilt a couple may have over getting married far away. From a facility that has a Webcam, your friends and family (and perhaps an ex who just happens to stumble across it) can watch your ceremony on the Internet.

Places that host many destination weddings every year — ranging from the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip to Princess Cruises's Golden Princess at sea to Frenchman's Reef & Morning Star Marriott Beach Resort in the Caribbean — have Webcams built into their chapels that couples can employ to transmit pictures of their weddings in real time anywhere in the world.

When you decide where you'll marry, ask the wedding coordinator whether a Webcam is available. If the answer is yes, sometimes there will be a fee; other times it is part of a wedding package. Typically, a wedding Webcast is hosted on the facility's Web site for at least a month. You may be able to arrange for the facility to e-mail the broadcast to you as a RealPlayer or QuickTime file or burn it onto a CD or DVD so that you have a permanent copy.

To help guide people how to watch your wedding on a Webcam, you need to e-mail them a link to the Web page that hosts the images and tell them what time to click on the link to watch your wedding live. Be sure to take time differences into account!

If your destination wedding location doesn't have a Webcam, you can take advantage of the technology by contracting with an outside company to provide this service. Ask a local planner for a recommendation. Prices start at about $400 for the Webcast, plus 30 days of access to view your wedding on a company's site.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/broadcasting-your-destination-wedding-by-webcam.html

How to Trade on Candlestick Price Bars Alone

To do a good job interpreting candlestick price bars and trading based on that information, you need to understand the dynamic and complex relationships of many patterns all at once, like juggling six oranges rather than three.

If you’re a swing trader, candlesticks are going to be of more interest to you than if you’re a position trader with a very long holding period (weeks and months). The predictive power of a particular bar or pattern of bars may be limited to the next day or next few days.

Like all technical indicators, candlesticks work only some of the time to deliver the expected outcome. Evaluating candlesticks alone, without confirmation from other indicators, is a daunting task.

Tom Bulkowski took on the task of measuring the predictive value of candlesticks. Carefully defining each candlestick and set of candlestick patterns for a total of 103, Bulkowski tested them and found that

• 69 percent of the candles delivered the outcome expected, such as continuing higher closes following “three white soldiers.”

  
  



• Only 100 candles or patterns out of 412 combinations got the expected outcome, or 24 percent.

  
  



• Refining the criteria further to a 66 percent success rate, meaning that the candle works as advertised in two out of three trades, only 6 percent of candles (or 13 candles total) are what Bulkowski calls “investment grade.”

  
  

Bulkowski’s findings don’t mean that you can’t find a specific candlestick that works (say) most of the time in your security. A higher incidence of success in candle-reading may be due to other traders in the same security seeing the same candlestick pattern and believing it will work — and so it does.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-trade-on-candlestick-price-bars-alone.html

Examining Executive Compensation in Nonprofits

Issues of executive compensation and governance are closely intertwined thanks to the influence of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The IRS is always concerned as to whether governing boards of nonprofit organizations exercise a sufficient degree of due diligence in setting the compensation for leaders of their organizations. The media seems to delight in reporting on executives of both private foundations and public charities who are receiving what many consider to be unreasonably large compensation packages.

When talking compensation, the IRS believes that exempt organizations should focus on five key governance areas:

• Creating legal structures: Every board should strive to set compensation in advance by disinterested board members on the basis of appropriate comparability data.

• Reporting all the benefits: This means timely reporting of all economic benefits to officers, directors, and key employees on IRS Form 990.

• Being timely: Organizations should take care to report the benefits in the time period that they're paid.

• Staying accountable: Boards that delegate compensation issues to committees still have the ultimate responsibility over the compensation decision.

• Avoiding payments to private individuals: The Internal Revenue Code says that the assets of an organization can't be diverted for the benefit of private individuals. If an organization pays or distributes assets to insiders in excess of the fair market value of the services rendered, it's running afoul of this rule, and the organization can lose its tax-exempt status.

Exempt organizations are generally safe if they develop and follow procedures for setting compensation and if they make honest, responsible efforts in line with their size and revenues to determine what the appropriate level of compensation is.

Neither a public charity nor a private foundation can pay more than reasonable compensation without running afoul of IRS issues. And reasonable compensation is determined by weighing all facts and circumstances, considering the market value of the services performed. Generally, reasonable compensation is measured with reference to the amount that would ordinarily be paid for comparable services by comparable enterprises under comparable circumstances.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/examining-executive-compensation-in-nonprofits.html

Five Ways to Ensure an Effective Business Plan

No matter whether you’re a new or existing business, effective business planning is essential. Not only do you need to put time into the planning process, but you need to involve the right people as well. Effective business planning combines common sense and a few basic strategies:

• Set aside enough time for business planning. The time you spend will save you far more time once it’s up and running.

  
  



• Involve everyone who will ultimately help make your plan happen in the planning process. Good plans should guide and inspire.

  
  



• Set clear goals and objectives with measurable outcomes and feet-to-the-fire timelines.

  
  



• Gather all the information you need. An effective plan depends on a complete and accurate understanding of your market, your customers, your financial situation, and your business environment.

  
  



• Write a plan that people will read. A business plan only works if people use it, so you need to create a plan that is concise, complete, and readable.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/five-ways-to-ensure-an-effective-business-plan.navId-397646.html

How to Pay Employees with QuickBooks 2011

With the Basic Payroll option QuickBooks offers, you do most of the work yourself, and you don't pay very much for your payroll processing. After you've set up the QuickBooks payroll processing capability, paying employees — thank goodness — is pretty easy.

To pay employees, follow these steps:

1. Choose Employees→Pay Employees→Scheduled Payroll.

   
   

   QuickBooks displays the Employees Center window.

   
   



2. Start the Scheduled Payroll you want to run.

   
   

   To start the scheduled payroll run, click the scheduled payroll shown in the list box that appears at the top of the Employee Center window. Then choose the Start Scheduled Payroll button.

   
   



3. Use the Check Date box to supply the date that you want to appear on payroll checks.

   
   

   Identify the date on which the payroll period ends in the Pay Period Ends box.

   
   



4. Use the Bank Account drop-down list to identify the bank account on which you want to write checks.

   
   



5. Verify the employees whom you want to pay.

   
   

   QuickBooks lists the active employees included in the scheduled payroll. You want to make sure that the list of selected employees is right. You can click listed employees to select and unselect them.

   
   



6. Click Continue.

   
   

   QuickBooks calculates the payroll checks and payroll deduction amounts for each of the employees selected. To accept the previewed paychecks described or shown in the dialog box, click its Create Paychecks button.

   
   



7. Click the Print Paychecks or Print Pay Stubs button.

   
   

   After you click the Create Paychecks button, QuickBooks displays a dialog box that lets you either print paychecks, or pay stubs for direct deposit. Click the appropriate button and follow the on-screen instructions. When you click either button, QuickBooks displays the Select Paychecks/Pay Stubs to Print dialog box. You should confirm the bank account from which you want to write the checks. If you're printing checks, you should also use the First Check Number box to supply the preprinted form number shown on the first payroll check that you'll print. You should also confirm that the employee paychecks listed in the dialog box are those that you want to print. After you confirm that the paycheck printing information is correct, click OK. QuickBooks displays the Print Checks dialog box (the same one you use to print any check). You then print checks in the usual fashion.

   
   

   If you want to deselect a paycheck for printing, click the check column to remove the check mark.

   
   



8. Distribute the paychecks or pay stubs.

   
   

   Obviously, after you print the checks, you sign and then distribute them.

   
   

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-pay-employees-with-quickbooks-2011.html

Wedding Attire: Black Tie, Formal, or Informal?

4 of 8 in Series:
The Essentials of Organizing a Wedding Party

Different types of wedding ceremonies and receptions have different levels of formality; black tie, formal, semiformal and informal are the terms used to dictate the level of formality in guests’ attire.

What you, your spouse-to-be and your wedding party wear also hinges on your wedding’s overall level of formality, which should be indicated in your invitation. If you and your partner are usually on the casual side, having a black tie wedding may not be comfortable or fitting for you. On the flip side, this is one time in your life when you may want to splurge and crank up the formality a bit. Be sure to select elements of your wedding within the same level of formality so that your entire day will flow with ease and style.

Black tie

Traditionally, black tie attire marks a very formal event — one that takes place in a house of worship or an upscale hotel, has an elaborate sit-down dinner at the reception and features at least 200 guests and a large wedding party. Black tie weddings don’t have to be in the evening. Your wedding can begin in the late afternoon ad still be very formal.

Brides and bridesmaids wear elegant, full-length gowns (with train and veil for the bride), and grooms and groomsmen wear black tailcoats and pants, white stiff shirts and white ascot ties and black socks and shoes.

Formal

A formal wedding is typically held in a house of worship or hotel, starts in the afternoon or evening, has a sit-down dinner or buffet at the reception and features at least 100 guests. The bride and groom each traditionally have between three and six attendants.

The bride at a formal wedding wears a full-length gown with a sweep or chapel train, and a fingertip veil. Grooms and groomsmen wear tuxedos: black coats, black pants, white shirts, black vests and black ties. Bridesmaids match in full-length dresses.

Semiformal

A semiformal wedding can be held in a house of worship, but you can also have one in a home, an outdoor location or another spot. It traditionally starts in the afternoon, has a simple meal or refreshments at the reception and features fewer than 100 guests. The bride and groom each have between one and three attendants.

The bride wears a full- or cocktail-length gown with a short train or no train at all and a fingertip veil. The groom and groomsmen wear matching tuxedos or dark suits, and bridesmaids wear matching full- or cocktail-length gowns.

Informal

An informal wedding is usually held during the day in a home or another spot that isn’t a house of worship. It has a simple meal or refreshments at the reception and features fewer than 50 guests. The bride and groom typically have only one attendant.

Informal brides may wear a knee- or cocktail-length wedding dress with no veil or anything from a pantsuit to a linen sundress. The men might wear suits and ties or shorts and flip-flops, depending on the occasion.

For informal weddings, you don’t need to add any notation to the invitation. Only black tie and formal weddings need to be indicated.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/black-tie-formal-or-informal-deciding-on-wedding-a.html

Understanding How Stress Can Make You Sick

Researchers estimate that 75 to 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for complaints and conditions that are, in some way, stress-related. Every week, 112 million people take some form of medication for stress-related symptoms. This statistic is not surprising, given the wide-ranging physiological changes that accompany a stress response. Stress affects just about every bodily system or body part. Stress can play a role in exacerbating the symptoms of a wide variety of other disorders and illnesses as well.

"Not tonight, dear, I have a (stress) headache"

A headache is just one of the many ways stress can interfere with your sex life. Stress can affect sexual performance and rob you of your libido. When you are feeling stress, feeling sexy may not be at the top of your to-do list. Disturbed sexual performance may appear in the form of premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, and other forms of difficulty in reaching orgasm. The irony is sex can be a way of relieving stress. In fact, for some people, sexual activity increases when they feel stressed.

How stress can be a pain in the neck (and other places)

Your muscles are a prime target for stress. When you are under stress, your muscles contract and they become tense. This muscle tension can affect your nerves, blood vessels, organs, skin, and bones. Chronically tense muscles can result in a variety of conditions and disorders, including muscle spasms, cramping, facial or jaw pain, bruxism (grinding your teeth), tremors, and shakiness. Many forms of headache, chest pain, and back pain are among the more common conditions that result from stress-induced muscle tension.

Taking stress to heart

Stress can play a role in circulatory diseases such as coronary heart disease, sudden cardiac death, and strokes. This fact is not surprising because stress can increase your blood pressure, constrict your blood vessels, raise your cholesterol level, trigger arrhythmias, and speed up the rate at which your blood clots. Stress is now considered a major risk factor in heart disease, right up there with smoking, being overweight, and not exercising. All of this becomes very important when you consider that heart disease kills more men over the age of 50 and more women over the age of 65 than any other disease.

Hitting below the belt

Ever notice how your stress seems to finds its way to your stomach? Your gastrointestinal system can be a ready target for much of the stress in your life. Stress can affect the secretion of acid in your stomach and can speed up or slow down the process of peristalsis (the rhythmic contraction of the muscles in your intestines). Constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, and weight loss all can be stress-related. Stress can contribute to gastroesophageal reflux disease and can also play a role in exacerbating irritable bowel syndrome and colitis.

Stress can affect your immune system

In the past decade or so, growing evidence has supported the theory that stress affects your immune system. In fact, researchers have even coined a name for this new field of study. They call it psychoneuroimmunology. Quite a mouthful! Scientists who choose to go into this field study the relationships between moods, emotional states, hormonal levels, and changes in the nervous system and the immune system. Without drowning you in detail, stress — particularly chronic stress — can compromise your immune system, rendering it less effective in resisting bacteria and viruses. Research has shown that stress may play a role in exacerbating a variety of immune system disorders such as HIV, AIDS, herpes, cancer metastasis, viral infection, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain allergies, as well as other auto-immune conditions. Some recent studies appear to confirm this.

The cold facts: Stress can make you sniffle

In that wonderfulmusical comedy Guys and Dolls, a lovelorn Adelaide laments that when your life is filled with stress, "a person can develop a cold." It looks like she just may be right. Recent research conducted by Dr. Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, has concluded that stress really does lower your resistance to colds. Cohen and his associates found that the higher a person's stress score, the more likely he was to come down with a cold when exposed to a cold virus. Chronic stress, lasting a month or more, was the most likely to result in catching a cold. Experiencing severe stress for more than a month but less than six months doubled a person's risk of coming down with a cold, compared with those who were experiencing only shorter-term stress. Stress lasting more than two years nearly quadrupled the risk. The study also found that being unemployed or underemployed, or having interpersonal difficulties with family or friends, had the greatest effect. The exact mechanism whereby stress weakens immune functioning is still unclear. Tissues anyone?

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-how-stress-can-make-you-sick.html

How to Measure Your Current Quality Control Process

Careful measurement is key to managing your quality control processes. Use the following steps to ensure that you measure the right quality-control factors in the right way.

1. Determine what to measure (the items or processes you decide to measure are called metrics).

   
   



2. Determine your measurement process by selecting the best process for your needs.

   
   



3. Define exactly how you’ll use the selected measurement process.

   
   



4. Train your employees on the proper measurement process.

   
   



5. Perform gauge repeatability and reproducibility (R&R) tests to determine measurement variation.

   
   



6. Perform the measurements and compare to customer specifications.

   
   



7. Confirm the quality of your data with compare-and-review checks and the help of a computer.

   
   



8. Make sense of your data with coding and different data charts.

   
   

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-measure-your-current-quality-control-proces.html

Games versus Worlds: How Some Massively Multiplayer Games Differ from Others

At first glance, this may seem like a strange topic. After all, MMGs are all games, right? Well, yes and no.

Many MMGs are designed as purely games for gaming's sake. World of Warcraft is an excellent example of this; you are cast as a fantasy hero who solves hundreds of quests and becomes, over time, very powerful, capable of slaying fiery elementals and huge dragons. This is very much like a regular computer game, except for the fact that you're playing with thousands of other people.

Other MMGs, though, have a different aim. They give you the tools to "live" within a virtual world. You have more tools to make your own mark on the world, such as building your own home, turning it into a storefront to sell the goods that you make to other players, or simply spending time talking to friends. Although virtual worlds have many of the same elements as "game" MMGs, such as fighting monsters, these elements generally aren't the main focus of the game. Star Wars Galaxies is an excellent example of a virtual world; in this game, there are very few nonplayer characters (computer-controlled characters) and almost every piece of equipment that players use in the game has been created by another player.

Another important feature of virtual worlds is a style of game play known as player vs. player (sometimes shortened to PvP or PK) or realm vs. realm (RvR). Games with a PvP component allow players to attack one another. In some games, such as Dark Age of Camelot or Shadowbane, the entire game is built around the battles between players. Other games, such as EverQuest, have almost no PvP combat at all.

What does this have to do with the games versus worlds discussion? Well, worlds tend to have more open player vs. player combat, simply because the freedom of characters to kill one another is often seen as part of the freedom to live in a virtual world in general. Ultima Online, the first virtual world MMG, allowed PvP combat with almost no restrictions whatsoever after players left the starting cities. The plan of the game designers was for players to create their own rules, so that a civilization of sorts would develop. The "civilization" that developed was, well, survival of the fittest, which was great fun for the fittest and not much fun for everyone else. Games that came later tended to have stricter controls on who could do what to whom. Still, a hallmark of a virtual world is the characters' ability to do ill to one another; after all, it's difficult to play a villain if the game forces you to be nice all the time. If you are leery of the ability of other players to harm your character (whether through a bad experience in an earlier game, or simply from a realistic appraisal of human nature), this is something you should definitely find out about before getting very far into the game.

In general, every MMG is both a game and a virtual world, and the nature of any game is determined by what percentage of each the MMG has. Games with very little virtual world content are almost entirely dependent on the game's developers to add things to do. This can be a vicious cycle, because millions of players will churn through the game's attractions far faster than any game company can hope to create them. Most MMGs release an expansion once a year (or sometimes more often than that) that adds more content — literally, adds more game — for the players to explore. Virtual worlds, however, have a leg up on the competition in that the players themselves are partners in creating the game's content. If the game gives players tools to create empires and battle one another for dominance, the players themselves become the storytellers, instead of the game designers. Some people aren't terribly attracted to this idea ("I'm paying other people to entertain me, not to do the job myself!"), but for others, this is the aspect of the game that keeps them playing years after the game has been released.

Really, the only person who can determine the proper balance is you. If you're more into playing a game with other people, and being entertained and having adventures, look for a "game" MMG. If you are more attracted to freedom of action and the ability to make your own mark on the world that you can't find in other games, then look for a "virtual world" MMG.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/games-versus-worlds-how-some-massively-multiplayer.html

Document Libraries and SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 document libraries let you store and share files securely, and they also add features that help you manage things like document workflow (the processes that let people edit, comment on, and approve documents) and version histories (what happened to a file, and who did what).

And although file shares give you one path through folders to your document, SharePoint document libraries give you other paths to expose content. You can access documents directly through the browser, you can bubble them up in Web Parts, and you can sort and filter them with their metadata and content types. And with document libraries, you can expose files by their title, not just their filename.

Document libraries give you multiple choices about how the documents get into them, too. You can save a document with the document library’s URL, but you can also e-mail documents to document libraries or drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer. And you can create documents directly in their document libraries.

If you do a search on a file share, you potentially retrieve hits on documents that you don’t have the permissions to open; SharePoint, on the other hand, allows results to be security trimmed so that if you can’t access it, you can’t even see it in your search results.

Everything in SharePoint is a list. A document library is just a special kind of list. Although most other SharePoint lists are organized around things that are defined primarily by their metadata, document libraries are organized around files that exist separately and are described by their metadata.

A document library doesn’t just have to contain Microsoft Word files. Document libraries can contain many file types, including Excel, PDF, and Visio files. Even web pages are stored in document libraries.

Document libraries add the ability to find your documents. Unlike a file share, which treats files as separate objects, document libraries treat documents as content and let you associate certain information (metadata) with the sets of documents in them. This means that documents can be found based on the similarities described by metadata, and not just by the search options you have on a file share.

You might wonder why leaving your documents on a shared network drive isn’t easier than using a document library in SharePoint 2010. The most compelling reason why is that SharePoint offers many ways to organize your documents, such as

• Document libraries provide a unique web address for accessing a group of documents. Document libraries make it possible to apply security to groups of related documents, and through security trimming, they prevent unauthorized users from seeing them in search results.

  
  



• Document properties make it possible to create many views of the same documents.

  
  



• Folders make it possible to group a subset of documents based on permission requirements.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/document-libraries-and-sharepoint-2010.html

The Evolution of Day Trading

With the advent of the telegraph, stocktraders could receive daily price quotes. Many cities had bucket shops — storefront businesses where traders could bet on changes in stock and commodity prices. They weren't buying the security itself, but were instead placing bets against others. These schemes were highly prone to manipulation and fraud, and they were wiped out after the stock market crash of 1929.

After the 1929 crash, small investors could trade off the ticker tape, which was a printout of price changes sent by telegraph, or wire. They would normally do this by going down to their brokerage firm, sitting in a conference room, and placing orders based on the changes they saw on the tape. Really serious traders could get a wire installed in their own offices, but the costs were prohibitive for most individual investors. In any event, traders still had to place their orders through a broker rather than having direct access to the market, so they couldn't count on timely execution.

Another reason there was so little day trading back then is that all brokerage firms charged the same commissions until 1975. That year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled that this amounted to price fixing. Brokers could then compete on their commissions. Some brokerage firms began allowing customers to trade stock at discount commission rates, which made active trading more profitable. (Some brokerage firms don't even charge commissions anymore — they get money from you in other ways, though.)

The system of trading off the ticker tape more or less persisted until the stock market crash of 1987. Flooded with orders, brokerage firms took care of their biggest customers first and pushed the smallest trades to the bottom of the pile. After the crash, the exchanges and the SEC made several changes that would reduce the chances of another crash and improve execution if one were to happen. One of those changes was the Small Order Entry System, often known as SOES, which gave orders of 1,000 shares or less priority over larger orders.

Then, in the 1990s, Internet access became widely available, and several networks started giving small traders direct access to price quotes and trading activities. This meant that traders could place orders on the same footing as the brokers they once had to work through. In fact, thanks to the SOES, the small traders had an advantage: They could place orders and then sell the stock to the larger firms, locking in a nice profit. Day trading looked like a pretty good way to make a living.

Your library and bookstore might have older books talking about how day traders can make easy money by exploiting SOES. That loophole is long gone, so stick to newer guides.

In 2000, the Small Order Execution System (SOES) was changed to eliminate the small traders' advantage, but few of them cared right away. More and more discount brokerage firms offered Internet trading while Internet stocks became wildly popular. No one needed SOES to make profits when Amazon.com and Webvan were going up in price every day. But then reality caught up with the technology industry, and the market for those stocks cratered in 2000.

We're now in a new era, with new trading practices and new regulation.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-evolution-of-day-trading.html