The Better Idea

2005-06-26

What is your attitude?

Do you have an attitude? If you do, what kind is it? What a silly question, naturally everyone has an attitude. The question should be, is your attitude POSITIVE, NEGATIVE, I DON'T CARE, WHAT EVER or SO WHAT.

Let's diagnose the word attitude.
Always being there when your partners falter
Training your team to work together as one
Teaching the basics of becoming a true leader
Instructing those around you to be more positive
Traveling the world over to find the true leaders
Understanding your goals and dreams
Demonstrating a willness to help those who need your help
Education, get the proper tools required for successful completion.

Together Everyone Achieves More. During our life we take pride
in what we do. If we have a great ATTITUDE we will achieve more
satisfaction for our efforts.

Will a poor attitude build a strong team? Very unlikely because you will be driving people away. A great or (Positive) attitude brings people closer to you. Get positive, dream and live your life to the fullest.

2005-06-20

Why Do A Back-up?

The Importance of Doing a Backup

When you accomplish something you feel good about what you have done. If you don't put in some safeguards all of your work is in vain.  Sometimes we look at what we have done and wonder what happened.  At that point it may be too late and you need a massive amount of help

Let me tell you what happened to me.  I had this great website that is my bread and butter.  My site literally broke. How did this happen?

I had forgotten 2 basic steps.

• 1. I worked on my different files while they were live.
• 2. I didn't back-up my work.

After my mentor Joe Sansoucie spent several hours fixing what was broken, he said to me don't you think you should backup your work?

We take so much for granted when we have something that is important to us.

I will from now on take the following steps to preserve what I have built. I am not saying that you should backup something everyday but you should backup all of your files on your hard drive, on a cd or floppy disk and keep it some where that you can get it quickly in case something happens.

By doing this backup once in awhile you save yourself a lot of headaches and a lot of frustration.  The reason to keep more than one backup copy is what will you do if your computor crashes.

Step one
Set up a file on your desktop and name it something you will remember (system backup) and find the folder(s) that you want to backup.

Step two
Be very careful when working in your files while they are live because you can break your site very easily. You can use your site backup utility but this will make a zip file which you will download to your computor.

Step three
Once you have your files downloaded to you computor it is also very important that you back them up on a floppy disk or cd and store them in a safe place.


Thanks Joe for this great advice. Back-up, Back-up and Back-up

2005-06-16

Are You Out There?

Team Where Are You.

Calling all of my team, Lorie, Marcial, Annie, Justin, Amanda, Tyrone, James and Luckenson please contact me. If you are not receiving my emails I have to know that also.

We all have work to do building our team and making it the strongest that it can be.

The following will help us all grow and make a stronger pressence.

• Surfing a minimum of 30 sites each day in our traffic exchanges



• Uploading your photo to your programs



• Read your in-house email



• Check the conference schedule here



• Attend conferences, they are very informal and offer an abundace of tips to help you succeed



• Download the conference software at here,all conference times are Eastern Time



• Check your Time Zone here

2005-06-15

Why Backup Your Files!

How important is it to backup your files.

Over the past weekend I had the unfortunate opportunity to completely restore my computer.  When you perform a complete Sytem Restore from the restore disks that come with your computer, it wipes out everything.

First of all it took about 2 hours for the restore process to be completed.

Then I had to spend about 8 to 10 hours just downloading and installing the Windows Updates from Microsoft.  I ordered the SP 2 update on a disk which saved me 22 hours just for that one file.

Why did it take so long? Unfortunately I am on a dial up connection which is slower than a snails pace.

I had to download and reinstall Firefox, yahoo, and msn messenger.

The easy part was putting my files back. A few months ago I really learned the art of doing file backups. All of my files are stored in two places,

• My Computer Hard Disc
• Also on CD's

I have got all of my files back on my computer and am ready to get back to work.

That is the importance of doing a backup of your files so that you do not loose all of your hard work. 

2005-06-11

Phishing Alerts!

How not to be lured into identity theft...

What is phishing?


Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) is the act of sending an e-mail to a user claiming to be an established, well known company, or government organization in an attempt to scam the user into divulging private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and bank account numbers, which the legitimate organization should already have. The Web site is bogus and set up only to steal the user's information. This can also be done with the use of pop-up ads or sites that rely on mistyped URLs to fool the user into believing that they are actually viewing content by a reputable company. Phishing is also referred to as brand spoofing or carding and is a variation on the word “fishing”. The premise is that bait is thrown out with the hopes that while most will ignore the bait, some will be tempted or fooled into biting.


Examples of phishing scams…

eBay spoof… In 2003, a major phishing scam occurred in which users received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user's account was about to be suspended unless they clicked on the provided link and updated their credit card information. Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a legitimate organization's site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being contacted by eBay and were thought they going to eBay's site to update their account information. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher” counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately.

The government wants your financial information…

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), this scam involves emails that claim to be from regulations.gov, a Web site where consumers can participate in government rulemaking by submitting comments. The emails' subject lines typically read "Official information" or "Urgent information to all credit card holders!" The message's text claims, "Due to recent changes in Rules and Regulations, it is required by Law for all Internet users to identify themselves in compliance with CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) to create a secure and safer Internet community." The email includes a link to a Web site that mimics regulations.gov and asks readers to provide their personal and financial information. In fact, there is no law requiring all Internet users to register with the government. And regulations.gov does not collect financial information or charge consumers a fee for submitting comments. Consumers who provided their financial information in response to this unsolicited email could be at risk of identity theft.

Fake Web browser address bar…

An ingenious new type of phishing attack replaces the address bar at the top of a Web browser with a fake one. This technique allows the phisher to display a completely fraudulent Web address URL, while taking the consumer to the phisher's spoofed site. The fraudulent site instantly detects the user's browser, and runs custom JavaScript code that removes the real address bar and replaces it with a fake address bar at the top of the browser window. The copy is exact. It has the "Address" field, it displays a URL web address that appears to be a secure link to the real bank (e.g. "https ://
), and it has the "Go" button on the right hand side. In almost all respects, the web address and web page appear to be real. You can even type in the bank's web address directly into the fake Address bar. This is a live piece of JavaScript code, not a static fake Address bar image. This attack affects multiple browser platforms. It does so by automatically detecting the consumer's browser, and applying a custom JavaScript that replaces the look and feel of the Web Address bar with an appropriately designed working fake. This type of attack used along with an email asking to update your personal information, is a very effective way of increasing the percentage of users' information acquired.

Phishing targets and the broad range of companies spoofed…

Although many types of Web sites such as retail and Internet Service Providers are spoofed, the major target is the financial sector. Some major institutions targeted are:

• Citibank


• U.S. Bank



• Paypal


• Visa


• AOL


• Nationwide


• Chase


• MSN



• Yahoo

• Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for personal financial information. Phishers typically include upsetting or exciting (but false) statements in their emails to get people to react immediately.
  
  


• If you get an email or pop-up message that asks for personal or financial information, do not reply or click on the link in the message. Legitimate companies don't ask for this type of information via email. If you are concerned about your account, contact the organization using a telephone number you know to be genuine, or open a new Internet browser window and type in the company's correct Web address.
  
  


• Never email personal or financial information. Email is not a secure method of transmitting personal information. If you initiate an online transaction and want to provide your personal or financial information through an organization's Web site, look for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon in the browser's status bar or a URL for a Web site that begins “https:” (the “s” stands for “secure”). Unfortunately, no indicator is foolproof- some phishers have been able to forge security icons.
  
  
  


• Review your credit card and bank account statements promptly to determine if there are any unauthorized charges. If your statement is late by more than a couple of days, call your credit card company or bank to confirm your billing address and account balances.
  
  


• Use anti-Spyware/Adware software and keep it up to date. Some phishing emails contain software that can track your activities on the Internet without your knowledge.
  
  


• Use a firewall. A firewall helps make you invisible on the Internet and blocks all communications from unauthorized sources. It's especially important to run a firewall if you have a broadband connection. Finally, your operating system may offer free software “patches” to close holes in the system that hackers or phishers could exploit.
  
  



• Be cautious about opening any attachment or downloading any files from any Email you receive, regardless of who sent them.

Be sure to double check before clicking a link in any email that you think is spam. If you have any accounts with banks, paypal, msn, yahoo, ebay, etc. go to them through the information you received when you signed up.

Do not click the links in emails unless you are absolutely sure who sent them and be very cautious about opening attachments.

2005-06-07

Afloat in A Sea of Abundance

Inspirational Articles that Help Develop your Highest Self and Greatest Potential

Afloat in A Sea of Abundance
by Rebecca Fine


In the days of the mighty sailing ships, when brave souls voyaged into the unknown, dependent on the winds and their as-yet incomplete knowledge of geography and navigation, one of the greatest and most dangerous challenges was to traverse the area known as "the doldrums."


Extending about 30 degrees on either side of the equator, the doldrums are subject to days, weeks, even months of no wind at all. After a long and difficult crossing from Europe to South America, lying becalmed in the doldrums — with no land in sight and with the ship's supply of fresh water dwindling — was a terrible and life-threatening situation.


But history and legend offer us some fascinating insights into the power of our own thinking and belief. Back then no one had yet figured out how to determine longitude, although latitude was easily calculated. So if you could not see recognizable land, you could only know in what band of latitude you currently were. Exactly where you were in that ring around the earth was, at that time, unknowable.


And so it happened that at times a ship would fetch up off the coast of South America, out of sight of shore, fresh water supplies exhausted and death knocking at the door. Then, with what must have been the sweetest sound those sailors could ever have hoped for, the lookout would suddenly call out that a ship was approaching in the distance.


Once the ship was within hailing distance, the cry went up: "Water! Give us water!"


And the reply would come back, "Lower your buckets over the side."

You see, although the sailors didn't know it, they were afloat in a virtual river of drinkable and life-sustaining water flowing from the mouth of the powerful Amazon River, which carries nearly 20 percent of all the earth's runoff water into the sea with such force that the fresh (or brackish but safe) water flows as far as 100 miles out into the Atlantic.

The sailors, dying of thirst, only THOUGHT they were experiencing lack. The REALITY was that they were afloat in a literal sea of abundance. Exactly what they needed was within their reach the whole time, but the APPEARANCE of scarcity and their BELIEF in that appearance threatened to overpower them.

They could have died — and many certainly did — believing in lack while surrounded by abundance.

In his amazing 1910 forgotten classic, The Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles writes:

"I have said that people get rich by doing things in a certain way, and in order to do so, people must become able to think in a certain way.

"A person’s way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things.

"To do things in the way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think. This is the first step toward getting rich.


"And to think what you want to think is to think TRUTH, regardless of appearances.

A couple of months ago, my friend TERESA ROMAIN of Access Abundance [www.accessabundance.com ] wrote in my ezine, The Certain Way, about how Galileo changed the world by looking at things from a new perspective. By dropping the prevailing attitude that the sun revolved around the earth, he was able to see that the opposite was, in fact, the truth.

The key to finding the truth, she noted, was choosing to cast off the old notion and look at the situation anew, through a new lens. Teresa wrote:

"The path that lies before you is one of unlimited abundance. And it begins by SEEING the abundance available all around you.

"As you begin to experience life through the new lens of abundance, you'll find that many of the problems you face today will simply disappear. As for the ones that remain, your relationship to them will have changed profoundly, empowering you to take actions that are congruent with and support abundance."

What old beliefs, what old ways of looking, seeing, and perceiving do YOU need to cast off right now, my friend? If you find yourself "in the doldrums," how can you take a fresh look today and begin to see the abundance that surrounds YOU so that you are empowered — not becalmed and hopeless?

The choice is always available. If you have chosen unwisely before, remember that every moment is new and the great power lies in your ability to CHOOSE AGAIN, no matter the appearances and no matter what it seems everyone else thinks or does.

Teresa says that this choice "is the path that leads, ultimately, to the fulfillment of your dreams." Mr. Wattles says this choice is "the first step toward getting rich."

And, bearing in mind those long-ago sailors, I would add that this choice can be the ultimate choice — for death or for life itself.


That choice, every moment, is yours. Which way do you choose — right now?


Rebecca Fine is the founder of The Science of Getting Rich Network where you can download your free copy of the amazing 1910 forgotten classic, The Science of Getting Rich.
http://www.scienceofgettingrich.net/gifts/fouryou.html
©2001 Certain Way Productions.


Posted at 12:00:04 PM  |  Post Comment  |  Read Comments (2)

2005-06-06

What is Welding?

As some of you know, I worked as a welder and a welding metalurgist for 30 years. Welding is not all that difficult but it does require a certain amount of hand and eye cordination.

Two forms of welding are used today and have been for many years. Electric Arc Welding and acetelene welding. Acetelene welding is used primarily for metal sculptures.

I could probably go into most any munincipal power plant and find a boiler that helped to build. What a scary thought that is.

The dictionary defines weld this way:

1. To fuse material by heating: to join together pieces or parts of some material by heating, hammering, or using other pressure, or to be joined in this way to weld two pieces of iron together

 
2. To repair or construct something by fusing: to repair or construct something by heating its pieces or parts so that they fuse together to weld a metal sculpture

 
3. To associate or become associated: to join or become joined in a union or a close association

If you apply heat to a material it changes the molecular structure in such a way that it becomes a molten liquid. This is the theory behind welding.

Welding over the years has changed dramatically to accomodate the way we have progressed. In the early years welding was accomplished by placing a bare electrode into a holder of some kind that would allow electric current to flow through. If you talk to some of the old timers  they will tell you that the electrode that they used was nothing more than a coat hanger.

The coat hanger, therefore, was not very manageable because you could not maintain a stable electrical force. The electricity heated the electrode which in turn heated the material to be joined.

Welding is not limited to metals however. Plastic is welded in such a manner as to melt to pieces and they become one upon cooling.


Posted at 08:42:50 AM  |  Post Comment  |  Read Comments (1)

2005-06-05

High Atop The Wasington Monument

There are many who would like to rewrite history as we now it. They take prayer out of our schools, when we say the pledge of alleagiance they don't want us to say "under god". There are some who want to remove religion from government property. The Washington Monument took 40 years build.

"HIGH ATOP THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT"

I thought that you and others may like to know this. One detail that is not mentioned in DC: There can never be a building of greater height than the Washington Monument.

With all the uproar about removing the ten commandments, etc., this is worth a moment or two of your time. I was not aware of this historical information.

On the aluminum cap, atop the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, are displayed two words: Laus Deo. No one can see these words. In fact, most visitors to the monument are totally unaware they are even there and for that matter, probably couldn't care less.

Once you know Laus Deo's history, you will want to share this with everyone you know. But these words have been there for many years; they are 555 feet, 5.125 inches high, perched atop the monument, facing skyward to the Father of our nation, overlooking the 69 square miles which comprise the District of Columbia, capital of the United States of America.

Laus Deo! Two seemingly insignificant, unnoticed words. Out of sight and, one might think, out of mind, but very meaningfully placed at the highest point over what is the most powerful city in the most successful nation in the world.

So, what do those two words, in Latin, composed of just four syllables and only seven letters, possibly mean? Very simply, they say "Praise be to God!"

Though construction of this giant obelisk began in 1848, when James Polk was President of the United States, it was not until 1888 that the monument was inaugurated and opened to the public. It took twenty-five years to finally cap the memorial with a tribute to the Father of our nation, Laus Deo .. Praise be to God!"

From atop this magnificent granite and marble structure, visitors may take in the beautiful panoramic view of the city with it's division into four major segments. From that vantage point, one can also easily see the original plan of the designer, Pierre Charles l'Enfant .. a perfect cross imposed upon the landscape, with the White House to the North. The Jefferson Memorial is to the South, the Capitol to the East and the Lincoln Memorial to the West.

2005-06-04

Doing the unexpected.

Many times in our life we are called upon to do something that may be out of the ordinary.

When we were growing up we were taught to do many things, such as,  how to, make a living, save, prosper, learn, teach, drive, pray and how to live our lives to the fullest.

Of all of the how to things mentioned above, there is one that we all are. Though all of us never went to college to be a teacher, each one of us taught someone to do something. Yes, we are all teachers, for example we taught our children how to drive when they became old enough. We taught someone the art of doing just about anything.

Doing the unexpected is what is so wonderful about the life that we live. Teaching someone how something works or why it is done in a certain way is somewhat unexpected of us. How that someone uses that knowledge is completly up to them. Therefore, if they use what you have taught them they might succeed or even be a better person for it.

I can remember a time a few years ago when I was a American Legion Post Commander. It was in the month of May and we were getting ready for our local Memorial Day ceremonies. I had my speakers all ready for the day, well, on the morning the ceremonies were to take place my main speaker went to the hospital. I became the unexpected main speaker. You do these things that are out of the ordinary so that you can move on.

I think that doing the unexpected things in life help to make you a better person. Many people in my life have done the unexpected to help me. There is one person in particular that took me by the hand, and taught me how to make and develope a website. He taught me about Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). This happened about a year or so ago. Thanks Joe, this was unexpected.

Therefore, if we do the unexpected we become a better person and it may help us succeed with anything that we endeavor to do. 

2005-06-03

Discipline!!

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