When it comes to swimming pool resurfacing, the best time is probably the spring. Resurfacing a swimming pool in the middle of winter is actually silly, while doing so in the summertime could simply get in the way of poolside barbecue parties and the like. So why not autumn you might be thinking?
Swimming pool resurfacing is best carried out the springtime because the weather should be pleasant enough for such outdoor work and then the brand new pool, as it were, will be ready to be enjoyed right away! On the other hand, work carried out autumn cannot be fully appreciated until the middle of the following year. Of course, for those who have an indoor pool, any time of the year is good!
But whatever is the best time for this type of job is not the real choice, the real choice is in if you should go with commercial pool resurfacing or perhaps do things all on your own. If you wish to save hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars, then you’ll just have to do things yourself. Fortunately, this is not too hard if you’re able to follow instructionsand have the right tools and materials to work with.
[Do-it-yourself resurfacing] is actually fairly popular, largely because of the worldwide web and its amazing reach. It’s possible to buy DIY kits now and have a swimming pool resurfaced in an afternoon. It’s not a big ol’ project, either, especially if you follow the instructions as given. Once done, your resurfaced pool won’t need another such renovation until twenty to thirty years later!
Much depends on applying the right materials correctly. But once it’s all done, there will not be a need to resurface the pool for another twenty to thirty years – if fiberglass coating was used. Many other materials, though much less money, are nowhere near as strong, for instance cheap epoxy paint that lasts only two to six years.
Melissa and Doug toys have been popular holiday stocking-stuffers for many years now, and the eponymous husband-and-wife company keeps presenting new models each season. Based in Wilton, Connecticut, they’ve been known for making upscale educational toys, especially of the old-fashioned wooden kind, though in the many years since its founding Melissa and Doug has grown to provide its very own vision of such things as classroom supplies and arts and crafts products.
Speaking of vision, all design work is handled in the United States, along with a grueling application process that rivals those at the likes of Microsoft and Google. The attention is on problem-solving, which seems far better for engineers than toy designers. But evidently it really works, as its two hundred American employees have helped Melissa and Doug to post a straight eighteen years of growth in a row – even during this economic crisis!
And with fifty hopefuls for each available spot, the company can afford to be so selective. The bright minds that do achieve a career with the popular toymaker happen to be responsible for numerous popular categories of products, from dolls and puppets to playsets based upon common household activities such as cooking. The collection even features a full-fledged lemonade stand and a “bug house” for collecting insects!
Redefining early childhood fun is really a recent though successful venture for a company that first built its reputation by selling nostalgic old-fashioned toys, the type kids see in kindergarten picture books for example wooden train sets. But with a marketing savvy that has seen it and its wares mentioned in leading media outlets from The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal to The Oprah Winfrey Show, there is little question that no matter what the company decides to undertake, it is likely to be highly profitable!
Swarovski is seen as a name that has been long associated with luxury goods such as fine glass miniatures and crystal chandeliers. Such expertise provides them with an advantage in terms of making diamond stimulants like rhinestones, which are made of rock crystal, glass, or even acrylic but could almost rival the cost of real diamonds in some instances.
The finest rhinestones can exhibit many of an actual diamond’s characteristics, for example rainbow effects and also sparkling in the sunlight, due to special coatings and production processes. However for all their diamond-like characteristics, most are more tell-tale than everything else, for instance its intrinsic softness on account of the lead in its composition, rendering edges and also facets rather easily scratched and quickly rounded. Contemporary manufacturing methods may also give them away, as they involve molding instead of traditional cutting, thus making fairly obvious seams. Still other tell-tale signs require but modest magnification to spot.
The global headquarters for Swarovski is Wattens, Austria, near world-famous Innsbruck in the Tyrol region. From here the company has made quite a reputation for itself as a premier provider of luxury goods over its more than a hundred years of existence. Named after its founder, Daniel Swarovski, the company also runs an indoor theme park in Wattens that revolves around its work. Born in 1862 to a glass-cutter who owned a small glass factory inside a area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs that now lies inside the Czech Republic, Swarovski became quite skilled at the craft and even managed to patent an electric cutting machine that made lead crystal glass jewelry easier to produce just thirty years later. From 2004 through 2009, it had been his company that provided New York City with the star for the famous Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.
The most effective detox diet is one that is rich in fresh whole foods, meaning vegetables and lean meat. That’s right, meat. Actually, there actually is no such thing like a detoxification diet; the whole idea is without scientific proof and, frankly, the good old-fashioned diets of most traditions around the world have sufficed for their diverse communities for millennia of human history with no problems.
The main idea behind a detox diet is that consuming certain foods will harm your body – or, in another twist, your body itself naturally creates toxins just from daily living, harmful materials which should be flushed out. It is a very curious idea, that the body should need purification of the very things it needs, based on the precise “brand” of detoxification dieting is doing the proclaiming, but there’s no scientific evidence whatsoever for almost any of the diets that self-identify as detoxification diets.
Please do yourself a favor and forget about any detox diet plans – concentrate on fresh whole foods and foods that have undergone as little processing as possible, foods like vegetables and lean meats, particularly fish and seafood. Consume a variety of grains, too. Eat naturally. You’ll do just fine.
The one thing anywhere close to a detoxification diet is the type of very narrow, specific meal plans which must be followed by people for instance certain epileptics. A high-fat ketogenic diet extremely low on carbs has been scientifically shown to benefit many epileptics for whom no drug has proven satisfactory. The biochemical mechanisms for such success isn’t yet understood, however what is clear is that ketogenic diets help such folks, and prior to adopting this kind of a spartan nutritional lifestyle these people often undergo a transitional eating regimen which could superficially resemble some sorts of so-called detox dieting.
Price comparison is simpler than ever now thanks to the worldwide web, making the work less onerous for those who dislike shopping. With no crowds to face, no lines, no screaming babies and kids playing around knocking you off your knees, what is not to like?
Even in the best-case scenarios, price comparison offline involves physically traveling from store to store, which might not simply be down the street, and after that looking for the things you have in mind. Doing exactly the same thing online, however, calls for but a few mouse clicks,a few key taps and you’ll know in mere seconds whether or not what you want is available at the price you want!
The wide-spread adoption of the internet by one and all has truly been an economic boon for consumers. No longer limited by local retailers or cumbersome mail-order, shoppers are now able to do a fast and simple price comparison right in the comfort of their own homes. This has made everything more affordable than ever before as increased competition forces retailers to improve their offerings, particularly with regards to pricing structures. “Knowledge is power,” wrote English philosopher Francis Bacon more than three hundred years ago, and it’s really more true today than ever before with regards to looking for the best deals!
Of course, for people who really enjoy shopping, people who enjoy traveling about and seeing everyone going about their business – those who find retail environments like a shopping center fun – even matchless online bargains aren’t any match for physically being at another place and taking in all the sights and sounds. For the one thing the internet will “never hold a candle to” is offering the vague sense of community that comes from being in a crowd, all the hustle and bustle and lively commotion.
“How to make a presentation” is amongst the most widely used keyword search phrases on the internet because everybody wants to know how to present well when discussing something before a lot of people, especially strangers. It also happens to be the subject of a lot of books on just what can be done so that people like what you say.
Presentation skills are not going to sprout up out of nowhere overnight, of course, especially from any book, much less any ol’ book on the topic, of which there are a great number going back thousands of years, even. But as with anything in life practice should make perfect and the key is to very much take to heart what these kinds of books have to offer.
By the same token, a professional speaker knows a lot of things that are not in such books, things that require the type of first-hand experience that’s honed over many years or at least many attempts. You get good at something by doing it, and like any art the skill of public speaking requires not only an understanding of the theory but actual mastery of the practice.
Another way of becoming a better speaker may be, ironically enough, to try one’s hand at writing. Such an exercise frees up the soul, in time anyway, which is a necessary ingredient for successfully engaging an audience: the ability to invest all of your heart and soul in delivering a message. By the same token, writing, real writing, should engender an expansion of the mind (or “soul”) so that one’s very capacity for the recently mentioned “heart and soul” should likewise increase.
Unorthodox musings, to be sure, and perhaps not immediately practical, or ever practiceable – but it’s the reality, all the same: delivery has to do with character, within the sense of who and what one really is. Writing (and, by a further extension, reading) may help bring it all out.
The W-4 Form is used by employers to calculate the amount of tax they should withhold from their employees’ wages, salary, or other monetary compensation. Strangely, though it ought to match the tax due on 1040 series IRS forms, the two amounts often differ substantially!
Why should this be? Well, when an employee fills out a Form W-4 (the official name) and stipulates the number of allowances to be claimed, the individual is basing the claim in large part on the expected tax filing situation for the year – namely, how much he or she is expecting to earn.
Each allowance decreases the amount of federal income tax withheld, which in turn lowers the tax refund that may be due. In fact, one’s tax liability may possibly even be raised!
No interest is paid by the government in instances of over-withholding, but if, as a result of those allowances claimed, under-withholding results, the employee will need to pay penalties at a some point. The situation is rendered all the more confusing for some due to the fact that it is possible to claim different numbers of allowances between a W-4 Form and a 1040 series form.
Another potential source of misunderstanding entails the fact that the W-4 Form does not deal with seasonal employment. Just a casual layman’s perusal of tax policies at the level of the end-user shows how truly esoteric tax laws can be! When even simple matters like reporting income and claiming allowances can be subject to such nuance and variability, one truly does wonder just whom these laws are meant to benefit.
Yet believe it or not, though wider tax policies at the macro level may be open to debate, many of the little nitty-gritty details such as those layed out here were actually intended to help rather than hinder or even hurt.
Mention the subject of business communications these days and many people will think of instant messaging, cloud computing, and the like. Not surprisingly, it’s the 21st Century! But in spite of our ever increasingly wired world, numerous senior executives lament the lack of communications skills in even middle management. Ironically, all of the automation that technological innovation offers appears to make people much less thoughtful as well as, evidently, less intelligible, too.
The Powerpoint presentation can serve as an example of what’s wrong. Everyone expects charts – or thinks everyone does. Therefore charts are dutifully made, only with no knowledge of what is really being graphed. It is like the old lament about Hollywood movies relying more and more on visuals as opposed to story, graphics instead of concepts. In fact, it is a cry that goes all the way back to Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, who’s recorded as having believed that the creation of writing made men’s memories much more unreliable, the logic being that the faculty was exercised less frequently and thus rendered weaker. (Now how’s that for an anecdote to open your next sales presentation with!)
Yet there’s little doubt that new employees today seem a little less capable of critical thinking and close reading. Thus, those much-maligned Powerpoint presentations: big on visuals, short on actual information, or data that’s useful. Evidently, we are now at the point where, meetings being required, many decide on using Powerpoint as “filler” for having something tangible to say, very similar to what semanticists call verbal barking, only in this instance the “rhetoric” is visual and meant to distract attention.
What to do? AT&T’s Bell Labs, the Google of its time, once tried an executive grooming program, an ambitious in-house program created to raise the next generation of leaders from within. It lasted only one or two classes, because a lot of graduates, schooled within the classics designed to make them better thinkers and therefore more fully realized human beings, began to put their families above the business. Such is the problem: organizations demand organization men, but not simple yes-men, either.
In 2004, the third largest earth quake ever documented on a seismograph, at between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Richter scale, erupted beneath the Indian Ocean, causing the Indian Ocean Tsunami that killed over 230,000 people and causing billions of dollars worth of water damage in dozens of countries. Indonesia was the first, and worst place to be hit by the tsunami, whose waves reached up to a hundred feet and above.
India and Sri Lanka were also among the very badly hit places, suffering well over 12,000 and 35,000 deaths. The Tsunami was also noticed as far as away as South Africa, where significantly smaller but nevertheless measurable waves washed ashore many hours after the initial earth quake, killing at least eight people.
In addition an estimated ten million more people had also been left homeless or displaced because of the tsunami. The extreme seismic activity of the earthquake itself shook the entire planet an estimated 1 centimeter, and also triggered earthquakes along faults as far away as Alaska.
Granted the degree of water damage suffered by the affected countries, it was also feared that the death toll of over 200,000 may possibly double because of the threat of waterborne illness and disease, which due to relief efforts was able to be avoided. Nevertheless, the physical water damage inflicted from the sheer power of the waves, which inundated thousands of kilometers of coastlines on every side of the Indian Ocean, was vast. Complete villages were wiped off the face of the earth and in addition cities experienced tremendous damage as a result of the sheer force of impact and the subsequent flooding.
The scale of the disaster motivated what is by some considered the biggest humanitarian response ever conducted. The World Bank initially estimated that total relief efforts would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of five billion dollars, USD. Over the next several years, the United States alone offered roughly 350 million dollars to help fund relief efforts.
Even a number of large private corporations, for example Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and BP, all pledged tens of millions of dollars toward recovery efforts within the affected countries. Within a week, about 1.8 billion dollars, USD, had been pledged by various countries around the world before relief efforts were relegated to UN control. Though immense, there has still been a big amount of criticism directed towards the US and Europe for their perceived insufficient allocation of funds. Some nations, Sri Lanka in particular criticized donor countries, claiming that they had yet to see any of the pledged donations made by some countries at all.
Though absolutely essential to all life as we know it, water may also be a catastrophically harmful force, and as much good as it does, water damage has simultaneously been one of the greatest threats to civilizations through history. Evidence of humanity’s collective concern with water damage are located in the Deluge Myths, that have been shared (in various iterations) by cultures across the globe. What’s more baffling is that many of these great flood myths originated in places that, at the time of their conception, had no interaction by any means and in some cases were completely oblivious to each other’s existence. Another problem is damp mold restoration, perhaps one of the most unseen problems which is built mostly from water damage too.
Maybe the renowned instance of a deluge myth, detailing apocalyptic degrees of water damage, is the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, shared by all three major Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam). The story goes that God, sick and tired of the wickedness of mankind, decides to flood the earth to destroy all life – save for Noah and his family, whom God deemed as righteous enough to survive. He instructs Noah to build an Ark, and upon it he’ll house his family and two of every animal so that once the flood waters have receded, the earth may be repopulated. God then vows never again to destroy the earth by flood. Although still perceived literally by certain Christian fundamentalists, the story is seen today as allegorical, with next to zero scientific proof of water damage to support ever such a flood occurring. What’s interesting about the story is its similarities with legends and myths beginning from other places.
On the opposite side of the world from Mesopotamia where the Abrahamic deluge myths originated, the Native American Hopi tribe of Arizona in the United States has its own model of the deluge myth. Based on Hope mythology, humanity was damaged four times by the water damage of a great deluge for much the same reason as in the Abrahamic myths: Hopi Gods angered by the depravity of men decided to clean the slate, sparing only a select few who lived lives dubbed good enough to reboot yet another iteration of humanity.
Modern scientists have long pondered over the origins for these kinds of myths, and their findings, interestingly enough, aren’t evidence of actual water damage, but alternatively facts that ocean born life existed in locations that have become far from any bodies of waters. Ancient peoples having identified seashells and the remains of sea creatures atop mountains and far inland were most likely the inspiration guiding these deluge myths. Obviously given the advantages of modern science, we now know that these shells and sea creatures are certainly the fossilized remains of life that once persisted in prehistoric oceans. Given that millions of years ago, the earth was shaped very differently because of plate tectonics, oceans once existed in places where there have since dried up into deserts and plains, leaving evidence of the life they harbored behind.