Prudent Mortgages

Given the nature of the internet it is only natural that abbreviations should be created. Shortenings such as ROFL, lol and ttfn have become common in their usage, allowing the writer to type faster and still be understand by the vast majority of those they attempt to start a conversation with.

Not so with the dreaded phrase ASL.

Whereas many of the other phrases exist for ease, ASL is naturally intrusive. Age, sex and location – three of the very things many people use the internet to conceal. A person is immediately judged upon them or worse still, if the answer is somehow pleasurable to the other user one of the following questions are almost always close behind.

“Married?”

“Got a boyfriend?”

“Want to cyber?”

I am a woman, but it has not stopped me claiming to be a seventy six year old male just to get the wrong person off my back. And guess what? They never sent me a message back. Even when a person uses ASL perfectly innocently, because they see it as a standard opening gambit, many people’s backs are already up.

There is more to a person than their age, sex and location. Discover those things. Start a conversation as you would in real life, with a person you have never met before at a party, not like some sleazeball in an internet chat room. It’s amazing what friends you can make if you do!

Andrea is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/ which is a site for Writers. Her online writing portfolio can be found at http://astephenson.writing.com

The other day, after putting a fresh roll of toilet paper on the plastic holder, I pulled on the toilet paper roll at the precise time the toilet was flushing and the plastic holder flew up in the air and made a perfect dive right down into the toilet at precisely the moment it was flushing at full strength. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The plastic holder was gone in a flash and I was amazed that this six inch device would be so easily scooped up, but it was. I tried everything to get it out, wire, snake, but it was too far gone.

I figured it was at the first turn where the inner canal bends so I took the tank off thinking I could
reach down in there and force or pry it out. No such luck.

When you take the tank off you can’t reach into the canal where the water actually flows, so don’t waste your time doing that.

It was at this point I decided I had to remove the toilet.

Interestingly enough the toilet will continue to flush when something is stuck in it, but at a minor rate; that is it will take longer, swirl in the basin longer, and it won’t accept all of the sewage, and will have to be plunged frequently.

Besides things getting stuck in toilets there is another reason you might have to remove one. At the base where it’s attached to the floor they sometimes begin to leak. A puddle will form and soon you’ll be getting a call from the tenant.

1. To remove a toilet first shut off the water at the faucet underneath the toilet.

2. Flush and drain the tank completely. Sponge out any excess water from the basin and the tank because you’re going to be lifting all of this up so you want it to be as light as possible (as well as not spilling any water on the floor). It’s a good idea to lay down a little newspaper somewhere where you’re going to set the toilet because you won’t get all the water out of the inner workings.

3. Disconnect the hose that provides the water supply to your tank. This can be done by unscrewing the plastic nut that attaches underneath the tank.

4. Look down at the base of the toilet and you’ll see two little plastic caps. Pop those off and underneath them you’ll see a nut and washers. Loosen both nuts on either side of the toilet and set them aside. Take off the washers.

5. Now comes the first tricky part. Carefully, with the utmost of delicacy, lift up the toilet. The reason I say delicately and carefully is that you don’t want to disturb the bolts that the toilet is fastened to. It’s a pain in the neck to replace them, but it can be done if you do knock one of them out.

6. Lift up on the toilet and set it aside. Chances are, if you look up at the bottom of your toilet, your toy soldier or toilet roll holder is lodged at the turn
right before the water plunges into the big sewer pipe in the bathroom floor, or it might be at the first turn a little higher up. In the case of my toilet roll holder I couldn’t get it out from the bottom and therefore had to turn the bowl upside down (the tank was off) and jiggle it around the curves until it came out where the seat is. Depending on what you’ve got stuck in there and where it’s stuck you’ll have to be creative in your method of dislodging it.

7. After you’ve succeeded in clearing the obstruction you’ll need to put a new wax gasket on the bottom of your toilet. First remove the old one and clean the area where you’re going to put the new one. Also clean up the remnants of the old wax from the base where the toilet fits on the floor. You might want to wad up a little newspaper to stick in the hole so that you don’t drop something down there. Get it
all cleaned up and remove your new wax gasket from the box it came in. With your toilet leaning on it’s side stick the wax gasket over the hole it goes around. The second tricky part is getting the wax gasket to stick or stay in place while you lift the toilet upright and place it over the bolts in the floor. I’ve had them fall off over and over, but the warmer it is the better they stick.

8. With great patience and strength, gently, ever so gently guide the toilet down onto the bolts sticking out of the floor. Please do this with the utmost of accuracy because if you don’t and you knock one of those bolts out you’ll have to replace it. And that’s no fun and lengthens the job.

Settle the toilet back onto the bolts and then
squish the wax gasket down. The best way to do this is to sit on the toilet. Kind of press and turn it a little to work the wax gasket into place, but gently, always gently. If you’re very very lucky you won’t have to repeat this procedure.

9. Replace your washers and nuts at the base of the toilet, and tighten, but just snug.

10. Reconnect your hose underneath the tank, and turn the water back on and let it fill the tank.

11. Now comes the big test. Cross your fingers and say a prayer because the wax gaskets don’t always fit right. Flush the toilet and see if any water leaks out around the base. If it does, then you’ve got to go back in there and replace the wax gasket again. You can’t use the old one because it will be all messed up. Don’t think you can caulk around the base and
stop the leak. I’ve tried that and it just keeps leaking at a slower rate.

On occasion I’ve had to put one gasket on after another because they didn’t fit right and kept leaking around the base. Also, I’ve broken the bolts that hold the toilet to the floor. Usually what you have to do to replace them is drill a new hole, get a new bolt which can be screwed into the new hole like a wood screw, and on the other end it has threads to put a nut on. The reason they usually come out in the first place is because the wood is rotted around where the bolt is attached to the floor, or because you didn’t align it properly when you were setting it back down on the bolt.

It does go well sometimes though. When I took my toilet out to retrieve the toilet paper holder the wax gasket worked perfect and the bolts stayed in place and there were no leaks. Whew…a lucky break. Good luck!

1. Turn off water supply.
2. Flush and drain tank.
3. Disconnect water supply hose.
4. Pop ornamental caps off and loosen nuts on either side of toilet.
5. Remove toilet.
6. Dislodge stuck item.
7. Remove old wax gasket and replace with new one.
8. Reattach toilet to floor.
9. Replace washers and nuts.
10. Turn water back on.
11. Check for leaks.

Jim Muckle is the author of The Property Manager (Managing and Maintaining an Apartment Community.) To see the contents of this booklet, and other booklets by Jim Muckle please visit his website at Booklets From Jim Muckle @
http://hometown.aol.com/jimmuckle/myhomepage/business.html.

Recently several large trucking companies have announced huge profits due to hedging against fuel prices, which came down towards the last quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006 before racing back up in the middle of Q2 2206.

Large Profit takers were Swift Transportation, Knight Transportation, FedEx, UPS and many others. Now with oil prices pushing upward and Hurricane Season coming and of course the looming Iran Nuclear Weapons Showdown of 2006 most in the transportation sector are not so optimistic. In fact many have significantly raised rates to be assured they are not slaughtered in Q3 2006.

There were some carriers including Covenant Transportation with losses and some companies are now talking Mergers. In fact the CEO of UPS has said the company may consider an extremely large acquisition. This makes a lot of sense, but who might that be? Would it be Yellow/Roadway, a Rail Road, Covenant or some other Cargo Container Company?

When UPS says; “extremely large” they would mean Big as in enormous. So who are the players and will UPS indeed kick off a huge string of mergers once again in the Transportation Sector like FedEx did a few years ago with their move into FedEx Ground and FedEx Freight? Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Who says scientists can’t market? Here are 10 easy marketing ideas that a group of folks at the National Institute of Standards and Technology came up with today during our monthly Marketing Action Group:

1. Listen to (and write down!) the questions your clients ask. They’re clues to the problems you can help them solve. They’re also topics for your next article, talk and e-newsletter. Don’t invent this stuff – just listen!

2. Plan and write out your next sales conversation. Got a meeting next week with a hot prospect? Write down the words you will use to find out who the decision makers are, what the budget is, the scope of their problem, and how you’ll ask them to take next steps. If you have no idea how to do this, send me an email and I’ll help you think through it.

3. Read a marketing article. Most non-marketers don’t go out of their way to read about marketing. A painless way to stay motivated, though, is to read one new article every week. Start here: http://www.turningpointemarketing.com/Free_Resources/Articles.html

4. Pay attention to the marketing messages all around you. See if you can pick out the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) and call-to-action (what they want you to do). Practice thinking like a marketer.

5. If you manage others who perform your client work, visit a client with your employee to show interest. This keeps you fresh and demonstrates your commitment to the client. It also shows the client that there’s more to your organization than their sole point of contact.

6. Give a copy of this article to your staff and ask them to come to the next staff meeting prepared to talk about the ideas that this generates. Ask people to commit to one new task. Have them give a progress report at the next meeting. Rinse, repeat.

7. Draft a 3 or 4-question survey to do short, conversational telephone interviews with your target audience to find out what they struggle with…what’s on their wish list…what they want from you. Do NOT ask them if they want to buy anything from you. This is a relationship-building task, NOT a sales call. That comes much later. Ask others you work with to pick two clients or prospects and call them. Compare notes and discuss your findings.

8. Think of small solutions that you can offer to important problems. Or small solutions to little problems. The key is to think small. It’s less intimidating for your customer to “sample” you and makes it easy for them to take a first step.

9. Practice saying your Positioning Statement out loud. To the mirror. In the car. In the elevator. If you don’t know what your Positioning Statement is, that’s a problem. Email me and I’ll give you a hand.

10. Visualize doing any one of these things successfully. Really – it’s what professional athletes, speakers, performers, and successful people do all the time. Visualize it, and it will be so.

The next time a scientist tells me they can’t market, I’ll know better. These ideas clearly prove that theory wrong!

(c) TurningPointe Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.
Marketing educator, Kelly O’Brien, is creator of the Create a TurningPointe! Marketing BootCamp and Advanced Marketing Clinic. To learn more about these step-by-step programs, and to sign up for FREE how-to articles and marketing reports, visit http://www.TurningPointeMarketing.com

For many people, a cruise ship can be the ultimate budget travel destination. A cruise provides a great, one price, vacation, and one of the main attractions to booking a cruise is that just about everything is included in the price. As a matter of fact, in some cases the daily cost of a cruise can be less than the daily cost of a decent hotel room. When you consider that the price of the cruise includes not only the room, but all the food and entertainment as well, it is easy to see why cruises are so popular with budget minded travelers.

Of course, there are some things that are typically not included in a cruise package, and it is important to find out what is included and what will need to be paid for as an extra. For instance, most cruises do not include alcohol, and require passengers to pay their bar tab upon departure. In addition, most shore excursions and local sightseeing is not included, so it is important to get a detailed list of such excursions, including the price.

In addition, since advertised cruise prices are based on double occupancy, cruises are often less of a deal for solo travelers, since the single supplements can add quite a bit to the price of the cruise. It is always a good idea to inquire about special single rates if you are traveling alone.

The location of the cabin is another important consideration when booking a cruise. The interior cabins on the lower parts of the ship are generally the least costly, while the higher, larger cabins with ocean views are the most expensive. If you have never taken a cruise before, it is a good idea to get advice from those who have experienced cruising. These people can provide valuable insight on the best balance of cost and comfort for your first cruise experience.

As with other kinds of travel, getting the best deal on a cruise will take some time, some planning, some perseverance and plenty of shopping around. It is a good idea to shop as early as possible, particularly for popular destinations like the Caribbean or Mexico in the high season.

Of course, it is possible to save money by traveling in the off season, and this can often be a great strategy. For instance, even though it is the middle of the winter and most people are not thinking about vacations where you are, it may be warm and inviting in many tropical cruise destinations. It is important, however to check out the local weather, and to avoid the rainy season in the destinations you are considering. Steering clear of hurricanes, tropical downpours and other weather problems can help you get the most out of your cruise.

It is not always necessary to shop early, of course. Cruise lines have been know to offer some spectacular discounts at the last minute in order to move unsold cabins or avoid leaving with a less than full passenger load. There are many last minute travel newsletters that provide details on these types of cruise deals, and these last minute travel deals are a big hit with retirees and others with the time to see the world.

K Hoyng is the web master and operator of www.quickcash2u.com which is a good source of financial, travel, remodeling, and much more information. Visit us at www.quickcash2u.com/Cruise.html

First, my apologies to who ever is offended by the title of this article on home business.

Okay back to the question. Can every Tom, Dick and Harry start a home business?
I know you may have a different view from mine. But let me first tell you that just like a candle lights up a room, this article was written with the intention of providing some light on home business.

So my answer is that “YES” every one can start a home business. It does not matter where you are from or your level of education. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can start a home business.

BUT, not every Tom, Dick and Harry will maintain and grow a home business. This is where many people fail.

What do you need to maintain a home business? You will need to have qualities for home business oriented people.
Below are some of these qualities that will help you to maintain and grow your home business:

1-Home business people are careful about money.
They always know how much money they have. They know the value and cost of things so they can recognize a real bargain. That is why they can maintain their home business.

2-Most home business entrepreneurs earned money when they were teenagers babysitting, mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, sacking groceries etc. They got their patience from here that helps then grow their home business.

3- home business people are competitive by nature.
Many were active in sports and other competitions in high school and college. Others were competitive in wanting to make good grades, earn the respect of their parents and teachers and achieve their goals. This quality is very important in a home business.

4- Home business owner believe in the old adage, “the early bird gets the worm.” They sleep and eat enough to maintain their energy levels but they don’t usually linger over non-productive tasks. This helps them focus important energy on growing their home business.

5- Successful home business people are risk-takers who trust their hunches and act on them. Taking risks can be small first steps, like placing your first ad in a mail-order publication. Without this quality, you may not even be able to start a home business, let alone growing a home business.

6-They have a “head for home business.
“They are always thinking of new ideas and new ways to make money or increase their home business. They are not afraid to put these ideas to use.
7-Home business entrepreneurs are usually loners rather than joiners.
That’s one reason why the home business, mail-order business is so appealing to many entrepreneurs. They prefer a solitary work environment (home business)

8- Successful home business are usually honourable people.
They do business based on a handshake or a promise. They tend to form strong associations with others who share this work ethic.

9- Home business people do set aside time for leisure activities and family. Their principal form of relaxation is their work, but they do realize the importance of downtime and spend time with their family.

10- Home business people don’t retire. They may sell or change their business, thinking they will retire, but they always jump back in with a new project or get a new idea that they just can’t ignore.

11-Successful home business is professionals. Whether working from their bedroom, the kitchen table or a modern, well-appointed home office, they operate just as they would if they were in an expensive office building in a major city. When they are working, they don’t let outside influences distract them.

In general, successful home business is people who have high energy; feel self-confident, set long-term goals, and view money and financial security as a measure of accomplishment and piece of mind. They persist in problem solving, take risks, learn from failures (their own and from others), take the initiative, accept personal responsibility and use all available resources to achieve their success. Successful home business people compete with themselves and believe that success or failure lies within their personal control or influence

Well, I hope this article will benefit who ever wants to start a home business.
Just keep in mind that every one can start a home business, but what differentiates between the successful home business owners and the failures are as out lined above. Take care.

Mary Janet is an enterpreneur who has wide knowledge on starting and growing any type of home business. Visit her website: www.homebusiness-4-enterpreneurs.com/homebusiness/index.php

The Nokia 3109 classic has proved a real winner for Nokia since its release in June 2007. The 3109 classic is quite well featured for the price. The overall design of this phone is less than we have come to expect from Nokia.

In terms of the the display the handset is fitted with a 1.8 inch screen, which, taking into consideration other options available for this sort of money is a bit disappointing. The screen is a TFT, 256K colors. The battery cell that is shipped with the 3109 classic is a Li-Ion 1020 mAh (BL-5C). On to battery cell usage the Nokia 3109 classic has 380 hrs standby time and 4:00 talk time. Polyphonic (64 channels), MP3, AAC ring-tones are enabled on the Nokia 3109 classic including a vibrating alert. The 3109 classic has support for 2G GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 . If you use the Internet on the move, you will be pleased to know a WAP 2.0/xHTML compatible browser is included. The 3109 classic weighs 89 g which is reasonable for a phone of its type. In terms of colours this phone can only be bought in Grey. The Nokia 3109 classic comes equipped with bluetooth, for interactivity with a number of devices. Additionally the 3109 classic has, Voice memo, Push to talk, Calculator, MP3/MP4/AAC/AAC+/H.264/WMA media player, Calendar, Java MIDP 2.0, Voice command and Built-in handsfree.

Regrettably for Nokia the 3109 classic faces some very stiff competition meaning it is fairly easy to pick up some great deals on this phone. Thanks to the Internet it has never been faster or cheaper to buy a mobile. Purchasing online will save you a lot of money, it is even possible to get a free handset for 12 months , which, if you are clever will not cost a dime.