EigenGraphs

Once upon a time there was a young man who felt called to become
a Pastor. He went to a Christian college where they taught him
many wonderful things…how to love people and teach the Bible
and win people to Jesus. But when he entered his first church he
realized there was a big difference between what he was taught
and the skills needed to run a dynamic congregation. So he read
books and attended conferences and sought advice from
consultants, and sure enough, his church began to grow. New
people were coming to Christ like never before. They needed more
worship space and parking so they ran a capital campaign. More
people were baptized, their offerings grew and they added new
staff. A few years later people took note of the growth of his
church and he found himself in the interesting position of being
looked to for advice. But the pressure of leading a growing
church began to take its toll. Endless staff meetings. Long
nights. Weekly anxiety over whether or not they would meet
budget. Management issues. Architects. Piles of phone calls and
emails to return. Systems. Planning. Paperwork. Requests for
counseling. Inability to go anywhere in his community without
being recognized.

Deep down he wondered if this was all worth it. But he
persisted. He shoved any disapproving voices in his soul farther
and farther away. “I’m doing this for the kingdom,” he reminded
himself. “Besides, I’ve gotten them too far in debt now to
leave.”

Years later his church had grown beyond anything he ever
imagined. He had book deals and endless speaking requests.
People lauded him as someone to model their ministry after. In
other pastor’s eyes he had achieved it all. But personally his
soul was smaller now than it had ever been before. Late one
evening after a discouraging meeting with his Finance manager
over sagging contributions, he walked into the staff office
bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, and slowly slapped water
on his face. He starred at the person he was forced to become to
maintain such growth. With every new building built, and with
every new staff member added, and with every capital campaign
administered he felt like a little bit of his soul shriveled up
and died. He felt numb. He mumbled something almost inaudibly at
first. Then he repeated it again. “Is this what I signed up for
when God called me into the ministry?”

One of my favorite rock bands, Coldplay, released a song a while
back called “Clocks” that immediately hit the top of the charts.
Buried in the middle of that song is a little question that
flies by so fast you almost miss it unless you are listening
closely.

The song asks, “Am I a part of the cure, or am I part of the
disease?”

As of late I can’t get that question out of my head.

Four years ago my wife, kids and I moved to the suburbs of
Philly to launch a new church for a heavily unchurched area. In
just four short years we’re popping over 800 and getting ready
to break ground for a multi-million dollar complex.

People would say things are going great.

But the larger this thing gets, the more unhappy I become.

Why?

It’s that question.

I keep wondering if this thing we’ve just created, this entity,
this land consuming, staff adding, money raising, people
churning, numerically and financially growing conglomeration of
people…I’m wondering if it’s part of the cure or part of the
disease.

By now you can probably tell where I’m leaning, so let me
explain…

I don’t like what I’ve become

A while ago I asked a nationally recognized Pastor and author to
give me some direction. To be honest, I was pretty surprised
that he was willing to come and consult with a scrub like me,
but he graciously did. I had a long list of questions that I
needed help answering, but top on my list was the question, “How
can I sustain this for the long haul?” When his plane landed we
spent two days together driving around our area talking and
praying. Do you want to know what his first words to me were?
“Brian, it takes a pretty unstable person to lead a church from
0 to 500 in 3 years.” I said, “Ummm, thanks, I think.”

I don’t like what I’ve had to become to lead, manage, catalyze
and propel this ever-growing mass forward. In his book,
Organizing Genius, Warren Bennis says that “Great groups are
full of indefatigable people who are struggling to turn a vision
into a machine and whose lawns and goldfish have died of
neglect.” My problem is that I want out of the machine building
business. In fact, I never wanted to be in the machine building
business in the first place.

The sheer weight of the burden on my shoulders never leaves.
Money. Meetings. Planning. One friend of mine in a similar
situation calls himself “the weeping prophet,” not because of
his passion for the lost, but because of the misery of running
the machine. In fact, almost every mega-church pastor I have
ever talked to, and I mean almost every one, has whispered
behind the scenes, “This is hell. I wouldn’t wish this on my
worst enemy.” To lead a growing church you have to become a
workhorse (and lead a team of exhausted workhorses). The problem
is when I do this I become a hypocrite. There is a disconnect
between the life I’m leading and what I’m teaching our people.
Rest, peace, freedom from anxiety, and contentment…are words
that cannot cross my lips with any amount of authenticity when
I’m running the machine.

My question is “Why isn’t anyone warning upcoming pastors about
this?” If we are a fellowship of churches with endless numbers
of congregations looking at the 1,000 mark in their rear-view
mirrors, does anyone else see a problem? How can this be a part
of the cure when the people leading these entities are
miserable?

I don’t like what my calling has become

In the 1920’s a team of archaeologists excavating a section of a
city called Dura-Europas in western Syria uncovered a
spectacular find-the first known dedicated church building.
Dated to roughly 231 a.d., it was a house converted into worship
space, including a tub for baptisms. Over this tub they found a
beautiful mural of a young beardless shepherd carrying a lamb on
his shoulders.

While I am jazzed by the nature of this archeological discovery,
I am also saddened. Unlike me, for the first 100 years of its
existence, kingdom leaders were focused on people–reaching
them, baptizing them, teaching them, and starting new
fellowships for them. That was their calling. And this is what I
thought I signed up for. They didn’t see building buildings as
part of their mission. The only collections that they had were
for the poor. There were no budgets. No Capital Campaigns.
Church leaders didn’t worry about things that consume our time
like programs and systems and mission statements and strategic
planning. There was a small group of people that met in a home.
That’s it. New Testament scholars all agree these small
fellowships were no more than 25 to 50 in size, and the Apostle
Paul seemed quite content with that.

I feel at times like the leader of a spiritual
institution…like a regional manager for a Wal-Mart or YMCA. Of
course I am passionate about reaching people for Jesus, but I
also constantly need money to keep this thing going. People are
needed, not so much to become disciples but to lead and
administer and fill up programs. People in the hallway are
immediately sized up in my head, “Potential leader…contact.
Whiner…avoid. Sharp couple with great giving
potential…connect.” I despise this. I can’t imagine this is
the vision Jesus had for his new community.

So What’s The Answer?

This past summer I had a chance to visit a booming mega-church
in the west. It had just completed its billionth capital
campaign and had it all: new state of the art buildings, acres
and acres of land, surplus parking, a spacious bookstore, snappy
graphics and lots of happy, carb-counting worship leaders. It
even had the coolest coffee bar I’d ever seen in a church lobby.
Walking into the worship center with my wife, I stopped
mid-stride, threw up my arms and said, “I don’t want to do THIS
anymore.”

She said, “What?”

I said, “THIS. All of this. Every last bit of it. Giving my life
to THIS is shrinking my soul a little bit everyday. If I keep it
up nothing will be left.”

I guess what I allowed myself to articulate for the very first
time was that I wanted out of the machine building business.

Machine building is part of the disease.

I want to be a part of the cure.

I don’t want to be 55 years old, looking in the mirror and
mumbling to myself, “Is this what I signed up for when God
called me into the ministry?”

The only problem is I don’t know what the cure looks like.

Blu-Ray technology is the next generation of optical disc format developed by the Blu-Ray Disc Association(BDA) and major developers of consumer electronics, computers, and media manufacturers around the globe. The technology will enable consumers to store large amount of data (5 to 6 times more than DVD), record/rewrite digital content, and watch high definition videos via Blu-Ray devices. The Blu-Ray disc comes in two types: Single layer disc which will be introduced first in the market and dual layer disc which will follow near future. The single layer can hold up to 25 GB of data which equates to about 2 hours of recording/playing time of digital content on HDTV and 13 hours of non-digital content from a regular television. The dual layer disc will hold data up to 50 GB and it will be mainly utilized for gaming (PS3) and entertainment purpose.

Red Vs Blue

The current optical disc technology such as DVD utilizes red laser to read and write data however, the Blu-Ray technology uses blue- violate laser to read and write and thus the name “Blu-Ray” was born. The difference between the red laser and blue laser is quite distinctive: First, the wavelength of a blue-violate laser is shorter (405nm) than the red laser (650nm). Second, the numerical aperture has been improved to 0.85. The shorter length of a blue-violate laser leads to focus of a laser spot with tremendous accuracy which makes it possible to pack more data into a disc size of DVD and CD. Moreover, the numerical aperture represents a unit-less measure of the ability of a lens to gather and focus light and the higher number closer to 1, the greater the focusing power and the smaller the laser spot. The current optical disc DVD’s numerical aperture ranges from .50 to .65 compared to the Blu-Ray’s numerical aperture of .85 making it a huge improvement over the existing optical disc technology.

Blu-Ray: Next Standard?

Lately, the technology industry has seen an explosive demand for the HDTV and consumer’s desire to record high definition content from HDTV is also rising fast. Furthermore, U.S government is also looking into standardization and convergence of digital television and eventually replacing non-digital television due to many benefits. The Blu-Ray technology was created out of necessity to meet the new demand and to set a new standard in the field of optical disc. This technology supports direct recording of the MPEG-2 TS (Transport Stream) which is used by many digital broadcasters globally. In other words, digital content from HDTV can be recorded directly to the disc without compromising quality and extraneous processing power. Also, the Blu-Ray uses ultra fast 36 Mbps data transfer rate to complement the large amount of data required for high definition content. This fast rate is more than sufficient to record and playback HDTV while maintaining the original picture quality. It is very possible to watch playback video and record HD video at the same time through the use of random access feature the Blu-Ray technology offers.

Time will tell

Many heated debate ensued over whether the Blu-Ray technology will replace DVD and prevail in the battle against arch nemesis HD-DVD. However, with the strong support of numerous industry leaders and positive outlooks from industry analysts, the Blu-Ray seem to be the next standard for delivering digital content to consumers around the world. In fact, Sony is going to debut the Blu-Ray technology on PS3 when it launches in the spring of 2006. Some stated that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD capability but Microsoft has yet to confirm the speculation. The fierce battle will continue and when the dust settles consumer can decide which of the two will replace DVD and VHS and move onto HDTV era. Only time will tell.

Daniel is an author and webmaster of http://www.ps3vault.com
The website has comprehesive coverage on all PS3 (Playstation 3) related news and information.

In 1996, I divorced my wife and with that divorce came the
normal dividing of property and assets. There also was the
discussion regarding our credit card debt. We were married for 5
years and used the credit cards as a couple, but the credit
cards were in my name only. Sadly, it became my responsibility
to pay for the huge debt that we had created together.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, you are not
alone. Experts say there has been a 20 percent rise in
bankruptcy filings, and it is estimated that a large part of
this is due to divorce. But don’t worry, if you find yourself in
this situation, you will have several options. One thing you
could do is file for bankruptcy. Statistics show that many
people are doing just that. But you should know that if you
choose this option, a bad mark will stay on your credit report
for ten years. Another option would be to simply make the
payments. But for many people, after going though a divorce,
they find that living on one income is a difficult adjustment,
and are forced to only make the minimum payments. That can take
what seems like a lifetime, to pay off your debts. For example,
if you have a debt of $25,000 and are paying an average interest
rate of 18%, it would be thirty-two years before you paid off
that debt! You could be paying for those purchases well up into
your 60’s or 70’s!

Another option is to seek out professional help. There are
several non-profit organizations that specialize in debt relief,
and many people seek this type of help after a divorce. Here’s
how it works. For a small fee of around $14.00 per month debt
relief companies will analyze your credit card debt, living
expenses and income in order to determine what type of repayment
structure would best work for you. They will then contact your
creditors and work with them regarding interest rates, late
fees, and payment amounts. Because credit card companies
understand that divorce is one of the leading causes for
bankruptcy, they usually won’t have a problem working with the
credit repair company. After all, they do want their money!

Non-profit agencies do not report credit counseling to credit
bureaus, but most credit card companies do. You may see this as
a negative thing, but many people don’t. Credit counseling can
be explained a lot more easily than bankruptcy. And bankruptcy
is often a deal stopper for someone trying to buy a home, or
even purchase a car.

While you are in credit counseling you will not be allowed to
retain or apply for a credit card, but for most people who find
themselves in this situation, that can be a relief. Think about
that as you are cutting them up into little peices. I know I
did. And with each chunk of plastic that fell in the trash, it
was a chipping away of the old and a birth of the new. There’s a
feeling of relief that comes over you when you know you don’t
have to worry about those mounting credit card bills. And when
you are going through a divorce, the more relief you can get,
the better.

Menopause is an irreversible process and inseparable of the aging in a woman’s reproductive system, after which she can no longer menstruate. Climacteric is the general term for the time from the period of this transition to the early postmenopausal phase of a woman’s reproductive life cycle.

Perimenopause refers to the time before menopause when vasomotor symptoms and irregular menses often commence. Menopause, by definition, begins 12 months after the final menses and is characterized by a continuation of vasomotor symptoms and by urogenital symptoms such as vaginal dryness and dyspareunia.

Symptoms

The symptoms can be attributed by the facts that some women just stop having periods. Others go through several years of symptoms. The most common symptom of menopause is hot flashes. Other physical symptoms might be aching joints and muscles, fatigue, weight gain or skin changes. Blood tests can confirm menopausal status.

Most of the common symptoms that occur during menopause can be illustrated as follows:

•Hot Flashes: A hot flash is a feeling of severe heat in the upper part or all of the body. The face and neck may become flushed, with red blotches appearing on the chest, back, and arms. This is often followed by teeming sweating and then cold shivering as body temperature readjusts. A hot flash can last a few moments or 30 minutes or longer.

•Genitals: Problems with dryness, itching, pain during sexual intercourse, or irritation of the tissues in and around the vagina;

•Urinary System: Problems with abrupt or frequent urinating;

•Mental Health: The menopausal woman shifting from raging, angry moods into depressive, doleful slumps with no apparent reason or warning.

•Blood Vessels: Quick body temperature changes (hot flashes) and waking during the night

•Brain/Nerves: Moods that change frequently or a tendency towards sadness or anger.

•Bone: A higher risk of weaker bones, osteoporosis, and bone breaks;

•Heart: Acceleration of risk factors associated with heart attacks and other heart problems

•Skin: Problems with thinner skin, wrinkling, and blemishes as estrogen levels drop.

Lifestyle & preventions

Although menopause is a natural occurring thing of life that cannot be prevented, there are simple steps you can take to help make this an easier experience.

1.Quit Smoking. Smoking increases the chances of heart diseases, cancer and osteoporosis.

2.Regular Exercise. Exercise helps keeping heart healthy, bones and muscles strong, and energy level and metabolism high.

3.Healthy diet. A healthy diet impacts every aspect of your health - from heart health to cancer risk to bone health.

4.Stay cool during hot flashes. Avoid things that can cause or increase the intensity of hot flashes, such as hot drinks, alcohol, spicy foods, hot weather or hot rooms.

5.Ease vaginal dryness. Use of over-the-counter water-based lubricants can be used to ease the discomfort of intercourse due to vaginal dryness.

6.Improve bladder control. You can improve bladder control with exercises. Anyone can do these and at any time.

7.Talk about it. Menopause is a normal, natural part of life. Talk to your doctor about what you are experiencing. Share with your partner know how you are feeling.

8.Relax and de-stress. Stress and a hectic lifestyle can certainly increase and intensify any symptoms you may experience. Relaxing will give you an over-all sense of well-being.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) is a
medication-based system of replacing the estrogen and possible progestin lost during menopause. Estrogen Replacement Therapy (ERT) contains estrogen only and is usually prescribed for women who have had surgically-induced menopause. Traditional Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) contains both estrogen and progestin and is usually prescribed for women experiencing natural menopause.

Benefits of HRT

HRT is beneficial in both protecting a woman against the long term effects of menopause as well as treating the immediate symptoms. By replacing the estrogen lost, HRT helps to prevent osteoporosis and may protect against heart disease. In addition, HRT relieves the hot flashes and vaginal dryness that many women experience.

Risks of HRT

In recent studies, women who have undergone HRT have experienced higher incidences of breast and endometrial cancers. For this reason, doctors are being encouraged to prescribe HRT for the shortest amount of time possible, and to encourage women to take other measures to protect against heart disease and osteoporosis.

To prevent bone loss:

Maintain a healthy diet and exercise. Other treatments for preventing bone loss and osteoporosis (severe loss of bone) include calcium tablets and Vitamin D. These can be taken separately or combined in a pill.

To prevent heart disease:

A healthy diet and regular exercise can help to keep your heart healthy as you age. If your cholesterol is high, however, you may need cholesterol-lowering drugs. These drugs are called the “statin” drugs, such as lovostatin, simvastatin, and pravastatin.

Thus, Physical changes do occur with menopause and with aging. But the changes that happen during this period can be minimized by healthy living and a sense of purpose in life. So start exercising and lead a happy and healthy life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Hilton is the contributing editor to www.affordable-prescriptions.md, Please send feedback at john.hilton001@gmail.com

Business knowledge and skills are not the only keys to success. To be successful, you also need to master the psychological skills that will help you to be satisfied and fulfilled, and thus more effective in your work. Knowing how to manage your mind, and understanding how to deal with lack of confidence, stress, anxiety, and depression, is as important as knowing how to handle the strategic and organizational challenges of your business.

Success isn’t about money. It’s not a position or power. It’s being happy, satisfied, and productive. But to achieve success in today’s highly competitive and constantly changing world you have to learn to build up your confidence and be assertive. You have to be able to put things in perspective so that you can counter stress, depression, and anxiety. And most importantly, you have to manage yourself so that you can manage your time.

Self-confidence is perhaps the most important, yet overlooked skill that you must have for success in your personal and business life. If you lack self-confidence, you will be apprehensive, frustrated, resentful, and demoralized. In your behavior, you will be passive, avoid taking initiatives, and constantly seek reassurance. Lack of self-confidence can hamper your professional career and your personal relationships.

Many people believe self-confidence is a virtue that others have and they never will. This is wrong. Self-confidence is not an all-or-nothing personality trait that you either have or you don’t. A person may be very self-confident in one area or situation and much less so in another. Self-Confidence is a skill that can be acquired.

Here are six suggestion to help build your self-confidence:

1. Behave “as if you’ve already done it.” At a moment when you lack confidence (for example, if you are about to make a presentation to your boss), ask yourself, “How would I behave if I were really confident?” or Ask yourself, “How would a confident person you know handle this?’ Just by adopting the behavior of self-confidence, the posture, thoughts, and actions, you will begin to feel more confident.

2. Don’t be afraid of being flexible. People lacking self-confidence feel that they must follow a careful, well-planned route to be safe. Don’t be afraid to leave the road. You’ll find that the pitfalls you imagined waiting to trap you were mostly imaginary.

3. Make the most of your mistakes and then leave them behind. Only those who do nothing, do nothing wrong. If you make a mistake, learn a lesson from it, then move on.

4. Operate with a statute of limitations. Don’t keep kicking yourself for past mistakes. Instead give yourself a pep talk for the future.

5. Be kind to yourself. This is an important, yet underutilized strategy for building self-confidence. Too often we punish ourselves for failures, but never reward ourselves for success. Reward yourself with a treat, anything from a mid-morning break to a restaurant meal. And forget about self-punishment.

6. Practice self-confidence on a daily basis. Don’t practice building your self-confidence only when you are particularly vulnerable. Practice it when you are feeling good also. Self-confidence must become a habit that you can call on whenever you need it.

Success means being fair to yourself and to others. You must learn to be assertive but fair. Assertiveness is based on the idea that your needs, wants, and feelings are neither more nor less important than those of other people. You have the right to make claims for yourself clearly and honestly, as long as those claims don’t impinge on the rights of others.

An assertive person knows how to balance aggression and passivity. If you are too passive in making claims for yourself, you will not get what you want and deserve. If you are too aggressive, on the other hand, you will be unfair to others.

To be assertive, you must also know how to strike a balance between reflecting and reacting. You must know how to think before you act, but don’t avoid taking action. For example, if someone borrows something precious from you and damages it, you have the right to be angry. But don’t explode into a tirade of expletives and general insults. That’s overreacting. On the other hand, don’t prevent yourself from saying something because you don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. That’s being too reflective. Assertive people are able to express their anger clearly and appropriately, focusing that anger on the behavior, not the person.

To be assertive, you have to have the right attitude and the right skills. To acquire the right attitude you must build up your confidence and self-esteem. If you are not self-confident or if you have low self-esteem, you will not be able to stand up for yourself when you need to. Being assertive means thinking highly of yourself and others as well.

An assertive person knows exactly what he or she wants. If you are self-confident but don’t know what you want, then you will be as ineffectual as someone who is passive. You have to believe without any doubt that you have the same rights as anyone else. You have the right to get what you want in life, as long as it doesn’t impinge unfairly on others.

The psychology of success means that you have to keep things in perspective. Successful people never allow negative thoughts to hurt them. Negative thoughts affect your feelings and negative feelings affect your thoughts in a vicious, unending circle. For example, if you feel miserable, you will think about the things that have gone wrong in your life. If you feel apprehensive, you will think that you are going to fail. As your thoughts and feelings reinforce each other, your anxiety, depression, or stress becomes deeper.

Because of the connection between thoughts and feelings, you will be able to feel differently, less stressed, less anxious, if you can make yourself think differently. You may believe at times that there is only one way to view a situation, but this is just an illusion. There is always more than one way of thinking about things.

To break out of the negative thought/feeling cycle, identify the specific thoughts that cause you to feel negatively. Then look for another perspective on those thoughts. One way of doing this is to keep a “thought record.” During the day, write down your negative thoughts as they occur and what you are doing at the time you are having them. Then for every thought, ask yourself if there is an alternate, more positive spin you can put on those negative thoughts. For example, if you say “I should be able to cope better than this,” ask yourself: “Would anyone else cope better?”

Forcing yourself to look at a situation or event from another point of view is easier said than done. But, if you take the time to step back and ask certain questions you will be able to gain a different perspective. Here are some questions that can help:

* Questions about your thoughts. What other points of view are there? How would someone else think about this? How would I think about this if I were feeling better?

* Questions about the reality. What are the facts of this situation? How can I find out which way of thinking fits the facts best?

* Questions about how to cope. What is the worst that could happen? How bad is this going to get? What should I do if the worst happens?

Forcing yourself to step back and attempt to think differently about situations and events is a major step in battling anxiety, depression, and stress, three all-too-common psychological enemies to happiness and success.

In part two of “The Psychology of Success” we will look more closely at how to defeat depression, anxiety, and control stress.

Copyright© 2005 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.

Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com

Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com

The world of business is a very competitive one with each
executive competing with the other to get the best of sales,
profits and customers for their business. This means that all
businesses interested in becoming successful have to concentrate
in developing their corporate image and identity to improve in
their business. Corporate identity is actually the image or
identity by which the business wants to be perceived by their
customers or the physical manifestation of the brand.

Corporate identity is very much achieved by the brand
building and marketing strategies of the company. So how
actually is a brand built? It is done through the help of
branding tools like logo designs, business cards and brochures.
Brochures and advertisements are the most powerful communication
branding tools as you get to distribute them to anyone around
your locality. you can make brochures describing your company,
it’s specialties and services to the public, thus making them
aware of your presence! Once more people get to know about your
services and facilities, more people come to you to try them
out, thus making your company a better success!

It should be made sure that all marketing
communication material has the corporate logo on it, thus
enhancing your credibility as a professional enterprise. The
reason for the need of all marketing communication having a
corporate logo is that this is the thing that will be handed
over to the public as an advertisement. You hand out business
cards for potential clients for them to remember you and your
company, there will be incidents wherein you have to send
letters to different companies. If you send these letters
through letters using letterheads with your company logo, the
recipient company will remember you better for future
correspondence and dealings. Therefore, it can be seen that to
enhance the corporate identity, the brand has to be enhanced or
built. We do this through marketing strategies, thus
incorporating that corporate identity is a very powerful
communication-branding tool.

When getting the corporate logo done, it is best to have it done
by a professional, as logos made by amateurs may ruin the
credibility of the business in no time, while a logo done by a
professional logo designer helps to add value to the business. A
professional logo designer is not only a graphic designer, he is
one who has idea about your branding and positioning of
business. He is one who creates a logo for you based on your
requirements to exude the nature of your business and to meet
all modes of your usage of the logo, on web, print, TV
commercials or in a mixture of all of this. It should be
remembered that logos and marketing materials are very important
parts of a company’s brand building strategy. Logo designs are
such an important communication tool for the corporate as it can
make people perceive your company to be a large corporate house,
when in fact; only one man runs it!

Most people have heard of gout, but I suspect many don’t know what it really is. Simply put, gout is a disease caused by excessive levels of uric acid in the blood-stream (hyperuricemia). Not everyone who has high levels of this acid their blood develops gout disease, but it does seem most do. Specifically, gout occurs when uric-acid crystals form around body joints like knees, fingers, elbows and especially big toes - in fact, for the vast majority of gout sufferers, the first sign of the disease is big toe pain! After salt-like crystals form, inflammation, tenderness, and even a reddish rash may occur around affected joints.

The disease has been noted and documented since the time of Hippocrates. Traditionally, it’s been associated with exuberant living - eating and drinking well. And there is some indirect evidence to support this. For example, a long-term study noted that heavy consumers of meat and sea food were much more likely to develop gout. Additionally, significant alcohol consumption, especially in the form of beer, is also known to increase the risk of gout development.

Below are simple home remedies that may help to relieve pain and other symptoms linked to this sometimes debilitating disease. It’s unlikely they will all work for or apply to you, so it may be worth experimenting with different remedies to find the ones that personally help alleviate your symptoms.

* An old study supported by a recent one and significant amount of anecdotal stories suggest drinking cherry juice may help alleviate pain caused by uric-acid crystal formation.

* Soaking the affected joint or joints in warm water, or having a warm bath, may also help.

* Drinking plenty of water may help eliminate uric acid from the body.

* Cutting back on alcohol and meat (especially red) consumption should reduce the level of digestive purines from which uric acid is formed.

* If you’re overweight, slowly losing weight may also help.

* A recent study suggested taking vitamin C supplements may reduce the risk of gout attacks, so this is worth considering too.

These are just some simple remedies that may help curb gout attacks. Visit my website: http://www.gout-diet-tips.com/home_remedies_for_gout/ for many more ideas.

Brad Watson is a freelance author, programmer and website-master. He loves researching and writing about simple ways to alleviate symptoms of many common disorders and diseases. To learn more about gout visit: www.gout-diet-tips.com/

What is Geocoding?

“Geocoding is the process of assigning geographic coordinates
(e.g. latitude-longitude) to street addresses, as well as other
points and features. With geographic coordinates, the features
can then be mapped and entered into Geographic Information
Systems.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocoding)

How do I Geocode an Address?

There are a number of ways to geocode an address. The
complicated way is to download the US Census data (Tiger/Line),
write some programming code and database code to interact with
the database, and go from there. The much easier way is to use
an existing geocoding provider. There are many on the net today.
Many have programming interfaces in Java, .NET, or even Ruby,
ready for you to plug into your application.

What are some uses of Geocodes?

Many people ask why addresses should be geocoded. Let me ask you
this: Have you ever wanted to generate a list of customers that
lived within a certain distance from a point? Or have you wanted
to display on a map where your customers are from? Both of these
questions require you to geocode your data in order to find the
answer. When you have an address geocoded, you can then use the
latitude and longitude to perform searches and mappings with it.

My husband and I try to go skiing for a week at least once a year and so far we’ve been to about 15 different ski resorts on the east coast, anywhere from Ontario to Quebec, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. But we had never been out west in the Rockies. Well, it was time to change that…..
So we planned a trip to the Canadian Rockies, and for both of us it was the first time for us to see this majestic mountain range. Just after we landed on March 4, 2006 we started off with a whirlwind four-hour tour of Calgary to get a sneak peak at Canada’s Heart of the New West. Our extremely knowledgeable tour guide took us to the Calgary Tower, Fort Calgary and past the Stampede Grounds and Calgary’s Saddledome. Of course Canada Olympic Park was one of the main attractions on this tour.
The same evening we enjoyed a wonderful Italian feast at Il Giardino on 4th Street and we had a chance to get to know one of Calgary’s most successful entrepreneurs. We enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of Deirdre and Henry Brost at the historic Twin Gables Bed & Breakfast and got a huge surprise at breakfast when we realized we were enjoying our morning meal with two big celebrities (you’ll have to read the article to find out which famous people shared the B&B with us….).

After breakfast we walked all the way from the Twin Gables to downtown from where I took the C-Train to get to the Kensington area, one of Calgary’s main restaurant and shopping areas. I had a brief lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant called Indochine Bistro where I found out that the young owner had originally come to Canada as a refugee from Vietnam. What an amazing success story: from Vietnamese boat person to successful Calgary restauranteur….
Then it was time to head west on the Transcanada Highway to our destination for the next week: Banff, a picturesque town nestled inside the famous Banff National Park, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Of course we went skiing and we had a chance to check out 3 major ski resorts: perfectly groomed Norquay, high altitude Sunshine Village - located on the Continental Divide, and the unbelievably huge and scenic ski area of Lake Louise. Well, there is definitely something to be said for West Coast skiing…..

Two outstanding attractions are the historic Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise and I had an opportunity to explore both these magnificent structures in detail. Canada’s history is inextricably intertwined with the history of the railroads. The Canadian Pacific Railroad played a key role in opening up the west and these castle-like railway hotels figured prominently in Canada’s development of the West Coast.
Last Friday a wonderful adventure provided the highlight of my trip: I went dogsledding with Snowy Owl Adventures on a crisp crystal-blue winter day, high in the mountains above the town of Canmore.

Our adventure was almost over, but I had one more chance for exploration: on Saturday I took the gondola up to Sulphur Mountain from where I got a perfect 360 degree panoramic view of Banff and the surrounding mountain ranges. I checked out the Cosmic Ray Station and after a brief forest hike past the Banff Springs Hotel, I visited the Banff Park Museum, one of Canada’s oldest natural history museums.
Our Alberta explorations were rapidly coming to an end, and just before we headed to the airport we went on one final walk through Calgary and explored the famous +15 walkway system that keeps Calgary visitors sheltered from the harsh winter air. We also explored a beautiful tropical hideaway called Devonian Gardens….

Along the way we got to explore some great skiing, magnificent mountain scenery and historic buildings, the exuberance of a dog-sledding team raring to go and the outstanding hospitality of the people of Alberta. We’ll be back…..

Susanne Pacher is the publisher of a website called Travel and Transitions (http://www.travelandtransitions.com). Travel and Transitions deals with unconventional travel and is chock full of advice, tips, real life travel experiences, interviews with travellers and travel experts, insights and reflections, cross-cultural issues, contests and many other features. You will also find stories about life and the transitions that we face as we go through our own personal life-long journeys.

Submit your own travel stories in our first travel story contest (http://www.travelandtransitions.com/contests.htm) and have a chance to win an amazing adventure cruise on the Amazon River.

“Life is a Journey Explore New Horizons”.
The story with photos is published at Travel Stories and Photos (http://www.travelandtransitions.com/stories_photos/canadian_rockies.htm)

How do I know a good web hosting service from a bad one? What features should I be looking for when choosing a web host? What is bandwidth or transfer? How much storage space do I really need? What tools should they offer me and which ones do I need?

In this article I will attempt to give you the short version of answers to those questions for you to use as a reference. A lot about choosing a web-hosting provider depends on what your website needs and every website has different needs.

First question was “How do I know a good web hosting service from a bad one?” Before doing business with anyone on the web that is going to be as important to your business as a web hosting company, you should do a search on the name of the company and look for criticisms, complaints, etc. Keep in mind no one has 100% satisfied customers and finding just one complaint on the web doesn’t mean that the company is a bad one. However if you find a lot of complaints, I would move on to the next provider.

Now about the bandwidth and transfer question I mentioned above. Bandwidth and transfer are basically the same thing. Some tech guy might know a difference I’m not aware of, but it won’t be much difference. This is the number of times each file in your website is downloaded for the web host’s server to the visitors computer.

In other words, the size of you webpages in kilobytes plus the size of each graphic or other type of file that is served to the users computer is the amount of transfer you are using. If your website will have a lot of graphics, movies, downloads, etc., make sure you choose a web-hosting plan that offers you a lot of bandwidth. The average website doesn’t need more than 2-5 gigabytes of transfer per month.

How much storage space do I need? The storage space is no different than your computer’s hard drive. If the web host offers 100 megabytes of storage space that is just like having a 100-megabyte hard drive. If your files are not more than 100 megabytes then that is plenty of storage. Most web hosting companies offer plenty of storage space, more than the average website will ever use.

The question, “What features should I look for and which tools do I need?” are ones that I can answer together.

What about the web host’s support policy. Do they offer 24/7 tech support? Do you think you will need 24/7 tech support? This is one area that is important for you to consider. The Internet is 24 hours per day. Your website is online 24 hours per day. So it is possible you might need 24/7 tech support.

How do you contact tech support there? Just email? Is there a phone number? Do they use support tickets? Do they have a chatroom or forum for tech support? How accessible your web hosting tech support is will determine how fast things get fixed when you have a problem. See if you can send in a tech support query before signing up. See how fast you get an email back or if they answer the phone when you call them.

Those three important issues, bandwidth, storage space, and tech support are not the only things you need to consider. Do they offer Cpanel or an easy-to-use control panel for managing your website? Can they show you a sample of the control panel before you sign up? If you choose a web host that does not have an easy-to-use control panel are you tech-savvy enough to get around in the root files?

How many databases can be created on your web hosting plan. How many do they allow? Do they offer instant-install or install-on-demand features like picture galleries, content management systems, forums, blogs, or other website enhancements?

These are all questions you need to ask before you sign up with any web hosting service. If they do not give you all that information on the automatic signup page, email them and ask them questions. Their response may be all you need to know about whether to choose them as your web hosting provider or not.

I hope this article has helped you to learn about some of the things you need to consider when choosing a web hosting service. Cheap is not always good. This is your online business. Treat it well and choose a web hosting serviee that makes things easier for you.

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