Online Punch

In this continuing series, we cover my move from San Diego to Chita, Siberia to be a professor at Chita State Technical University. We pick up the story going to the train station in Khabarovsk to catch the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Day 4!

If you’ve been reading this series on NomadJournalTrips.com, you know my original travel estimate was 2 days from San Diego to Chita, Russia. Well, day 4 has arrived and I am just getting on the train. This horrible time estimate is evidence of a poor math education. I blame the American education system!

I never could figure out those math hypotheticals, “If a train is going south at “x” speed and a cyclist is going north at “x” speed, when will they meet?” When are they going to meet? More like, “What the heck is cyclist going to look like WHEN they meet?” What about his family, not to mention the nightmares suffered by the conductor. I mean, really, who can do math under such circumstances?

Stairs…Evil, Evil Stairs

At the Intourist hotel, we arranged for train tickets to Chita. By we, I mean my friend Grae did everything. For $27, “we” had arranged a private berth and all was good. With a good nights sleep, we headed down from the room and out into the…pouring rain. A local was kind enough to give us a ride to the train station and all seemed good. After a bit of pointing, extreme facial expressions and so on, we discovered our train was running about an hour slow. We hunkered down and did a bit of people watching.

As we sat, I pondered my luggage. I had a large hiking backpack and something I called “the lump.” The lump was an extremely large duffle bag with tiny wheels on one-end and plastic bars running down the flat side/bottom. In theory, you could roll it or drag it anywhere. Mine was black, wet and weighed about 70 pounds. Before you snicker, keep in mind I was going to Siberia for a year. What would you take? Still, I had an uneasy feeling, but couldn’t really figure out why.

Our hour was up and it was time to head to the track platform. Like many European train stations, one had to actually walk down stairs, through a tunnel and then back up stairs to get to your platform. This is not the way it works in San Diego. It also doesn’t rain in San Diego. Rain, 70 pound bag on wheels, plastic bars, stairs…I think you get the picture.

The stairs were packed as I shuffled forward pulling the lump behind me. You would be proud. I made the first flight without maiming anyone or being slapped. Just as I stepped down the second flight, “thou was nudgeth from behind.”

Time slowed.

The lump hit me in the back of the knees. I fell back onto the lump. In a transformation beyond my primitive understanding of quantum physics, the lump became a high performance bobsled. Down I went.

Still in slow motion, I couldn’t help but notice the agility of the Russians in the stairwell. Some jumped up an ornamental shelf running down the stairs. Overweight individuals sucked it up and suddenly became thin. Miraculously, not one soul was hit on my way to the bottom. My landing was uneventful, which is to say there wasn’t a loud smack on the wall at the bottom of the stairs.

I jumped up and turned to see if anyone was injured. There was total silence. Faces just stared back at me. Apparently, the only thing injured was my ego and skin, which was turning a dark shade of red. Well, I like to make an impression! I vehemently prayed that none of them were going to Chita.

Everyone started moving again and not a word was said. Alas, the lump was not so accommodating when it came to climbing up the stairs on the other end of the tunnel.

Next - The Trans-Siberian Railway…How Many Days To Chita?!
About the Author

Rick Chapo is with Nomad Journals - makers of travel journals. Read Visit NomadJournalTrips.com to read travel articles and travelogues.

Many have cursed their computer for taking things too literally! It’s easy to blame the computer when something goes wrong.

You get to the checkout at the market, and the item you bought ‘on special’ comes up at the full price. The manager has to be called to fix it up, and what does he say?
“We’ve been having problems with the computer, it gets the wrong price on some things.”

You put in a list of addressess to your Word processor, and print off party invitations for next week. Then you find that today’s date has been inserted in the signature block - by the computer!

Maybe you have heard the expression ‘Garbage in Garbage out”? Someone, at some point instructed the computer to do what it did, It didn’t decide to screw you up deliberately. Computers can only do what they are told, they are more logical than Spock and they take everything literally.

We are going to look at why they are so pedantic!

The world around us has many aspects which work in the same way as a computer. There are many examples of opposites, for instance Up and Down, Left and Right, Forwards and Backwards. A light may be On or Off, maybe it’s Night or Day. Yes or No? You can think of many others. This system of two possible states is called a Binary System. If it’s not one, it must be the other.

A computer uses the Binary System to perform all its functions, the basic unit, originally a vacuum tube, then a transistor, then a chip, is used thousands of times over to make the total unit. The light being On or Off which we mentioned above is controlled by a switch. In the computer this switch is a transistor, which is either On or Off.

Now we get to the Math! Don’t worry, it’s very simple Math! In fact it’s so simple we only count up to 1. That’s right, we can only have two states so we count from 0 to 1. (That’s another thing computers are pedantic about, they insist on starting at zero).

The Binary system is a Number System. You are familiar with the Decimal system which has 10 numerals 0 to 9 (think like a computer 0 comes first). You can make up all sorts of number systems for whatever purpose you want. You probably know about a dozen (12) and have also heard of a half dozen. If you’ve used your computer much you may have come across the Hexadecimal system. This one has 16 ‘numerals’ 0-9and A-F. Another number system used by computer people is the Octal system which has 8 numerals, 0-7.

Ok so how do we count with only 0 and 1. Simple, in exactly the same way you count in decimal. The first ten numbers are OK, 0-9, but what next? We start again but add in a 1 making 10 or “one, zero”. This gets us to “one, nine” and we go to “two, zero”, and so on up to “nine, nine” then we again add a 1 to make 100 - “one, zero, zero.”

DECIMAL 0-9, 10-19, 20-…..-99, 100.

If you’ve followed me so far you are ready for the Binary sequence, it’s much simpler. Starting off at zero we have 0,1 - and that’s it. We follow the same rule and add in a 1, making “one,zero”. Next come “one, one”; then “one, zero, zero”; -”one, zero, one”; etc. These are equivalent to Decimal 0,1,2,3,4,5. How does this relate to computers? That’s next.

BINARY - 0 1 10 11 100 101

DECIMAL- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

In our computer we have transistor switches, as described above. For the math example we just looked at, we need 3 switches. These each represent a Binary Digit, or Bit. To represent a Decimal 1, these switches would be OFF,OFF,ON or 001. For a Decimal 5 we would have ON,OFF,ON, or 101. By extension you can see that with 4 switches we could go to 1111 or 15 Decimal.

TRANSISTORS [OFF OFF ON] [ON OFF ON] [ON ON ON ON]

BINARY…… 001 101 1111

DECIMAL….. 1, 5, 15

Another point to note is that each binary digit, or bit, has a value. Just as in Decimal we have units, tens, hundreds, etc. in Binary the values are 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 etc. etc. The binary code 1111 mentioned above is thus 1+2+4+8=15. what would BINARY 1010 be in decimal?

BIT VALUE 8 4 2 1

BINARY…. 1 0 1 0

DECIMAL… 8+2=10

If you wanted to work out what binary 100101100 was in decimal, you could add up the individual values. In fact people who work on the basic machines need to know “machine code”! To them 1010 would be A in Hexadecimal or 12 in octal.

One of the reasons for using the octal or hexadecimal code is to enable humans to interpret machine codes. Some mainframe computers use ‘words’ composed of 24, 32, 36 or 72 bits. These are displayed or printed in groups of three for octal, or four for hexadecimal. For example the 24 bit binary word in a computer may be interpreted as shown here.

BINARY 100 111 000 011 010 000 011 100

OCTAL.. 4 7 0 3 2 0 3 4

BINARY 1001 1100 0011 0100 0001 1100

HEX…. 9 D 3 4 1 D

This probably seems a very long-winded way to work out numbers, until you remember that these ’switches’ can operate at nanosecond speed, in the order of 1,000,000,000 times per second, large calculations become possible.

Thats probably enough to digest in one go. Next we will look at how a computer adds and multiplies.

Tony is an experienced computer engineer. He is currently webmaster and contributer to http://www.what-why-wisdom.com. looking at things you can do At Home. A set of diagrams accompanying these articles may be seen on that website. Go to http://www.what-why-wisdom.com/historyofthecomputer.html to start.

If you only had $300 a month to spend on groceries for a family
of four, could you do it? What sort of food would make the list
and what would stay tauntingly on the store’s shelves?

Whatever your reason for having a tight budget, the truth is
that going to the grocery store without a plan is a BIG budget
breaker. And sadly all that cash ends up vanishing into our
stomachs and then…let’s stop there.

Could you save $25 a month on groceries? How about $50 or $100?
Possibly you could cut your bill by almost 50% if you consider
some of the following suggestions:

First you must divide the budget you have into three categories;
weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. Once you have the totals fixed,
try to find a way to make it work. If you budgeted too tight,
only then consider how much more you really need to spend.

Second, identify your WEEKLY needs; milk, bread, fruits. These
will be your saving graces when the troops are hungry. You can
load up every week and always have a healthy snack available.
Think about $15/week.

Third, identify your BI-WEEKLY needs; eggs, cheese, vegetables,
meat and cheese for sandwiches etc. These items have a slightly
longer shelf life but you will watch how much you use when you
know there’s still four days until your next purchase. Try $20
every two weeks.

Fourth, get the remainder of your groceries in one place. Use
cash to pay (to avoid temptation of over spending) and work out
your shopping list ahead of time. You only need to do this once
as many of the items (Cereal, meat etc.) will need to be
repurchased each time. Other items (sugar, flour etc.) may be
substituted every other month. In this example you have $200
left.

Fifth, have a schedule of meals that you can rotate. Cheap,
healthy meals like stir fry can be inexpensive as they use less
meat than full pieces of chicken or beef for dinner. Plan to
have a meat meal offset by a simpler dish like pasta every other
night. This way your family will not go through
‘feast-and-famine’ when they eat like kings the first week and
are eating canned chili every night for the last week.

Always determine your meals based on what you really plan to
cook. If you have easy weeknight staples, try to find the
cheapest method of preparing them, or make do with less pre-
packaged affair on other nights when you have more time. Using
items like frozen vegetables can make eating cheap also healthy
and convenient.

Clearly the $300 suggestion will depend on your family, the age
of your children and how much your budget really allows.
Whatever your budget, taking the time to draw up a plan and
think about your choices will guarantee that you keep more cash
in your wallet for other important things.

The loft lifestyle these days is tantamount with interior design. The initial reason for housing in industrial pavilions and abandoned warehouses was actually to save on money as opposed to paying much more for a traditional housing unit. Now they are considered the frame of interior design. But the interior designers tasked with decorating these spaces may still face the same doubts as anyone undertaking the decoration of a new home, which can add to the pressure of designing for an unknown space.

What makes these large loft spaces stay true to the industrious feel is mostly the industrial air within. Use of a cold material adds to maintaining that industrial feel which originally occupied the industrial space. Because it so bright and there are no boards, the polished cement floors help to make spaces seem larger. To help distinguish different spaces within a loft you could use different colors or shades of stain on the concrete floor. One suggestion is for you to choose a narrow color palette, but of vibrant shades. You might also want to use bright color in the kitchen and bathroom: reds, oranges, and greens particularly are perfect for contrasting the coldness of the concrete and reduce the aseptic feeling that tends to imbue lofts.

You should choose a small number of larger pieces of furniture. Too many items will lead to a busy and untidy impression, because the eye takes in everything at once. You are successful in your design if the loft shows with emptiness, a small amount of items, little time, busyness, and simplicity.

If you are looking for an unsecured loan with no credit check, you may find yourself looking for something that is just not there. But, you may be able to find some opportunities to get a great loan for funds, nonetheless. To find the right loan product for your needs, you’ll need to consider several aspects about the loan itself. No matter if you have poor credit or an outstanding credit history, you have opportunities to find the loan that you need throughout the web, with a wide range of different qualifying opportunities.

Online, you will find some of the best loans available to those with poor credit. Here’s what to look for in the options that you are considering.

An unsecured loan with no credit check is near impossible to find unless you look at the fast loans options offered throughout the web. These loans are offered to individuals at very high interest rates and some are payable very shortly after they are provided to the individuals. Others are simply provided to individuals who have the ability to pay their loan back because they have a good income flow.

Watch your interest rate. Loans that do not check your credit history are loans with high interest rates. You would be surprised at how low your credit score can be and lenders will still provide a loan for you. In either case, the most important thing for you to do is to shop around so that you find the lowest opportunity for yourself to save money. Just a slight difference can really save you a lot of money in the length of your loan.

Guaranteed loans are also an option. If you need to borrow money for one reason or another and have some capital, you can look into guaranteed loans. These will use your equity, your home’s value or other assets to secure the loan. Other types are those that will provide the loan to you while you sign over the ability for them to charge your checking account a certain amount per month in payments. This gives them more security to know that you’ll pay your loan back to them.

Fast loans, such as payday loans are another option. These allow you to borrow money against your next paycheck. The ability that these have is that they can help you to get funds fast and you repay the loan within a couple of weeks. If you fail to repay them, there are huge fees though. But, for instant money, this is an excellent way to go.

It can be a bad idea to take on any loan that you can not pay back. It is wise to only take out as much as you can afford because getting a loan and not paying it back properly can leave you with a lot of debt, a lot of heart ache and a bad credit history. Take the time to research the best loan options available to you throughout the web, though, and you are likely to find an option or two that you can take full advantage of. You may even find some excellent opportunities for unsecured loans with no credit check.

Susan Dean is the webmaster and publisher of
http://www.discount-personal-loans.com
Visit her site for discount personal loans.

First let’s start with definitions:

SEO: Search Engine Optimization, SFO: Search Friendly Optimization.

These two things are what most webmasters have trouble balancing. These things seem to always be on opposite ends. On one hand you have to make sure search engines can crawl your website without any problems. On the other you have to keep the site looking good to keep your visitors.

These are all based on what kind of site you plan on making. A corporate website selling shoes in the real world might focus on keeping the site looking good to visitors. And maybe pack it up with flash and all kinds of descriptive images. On the other side a site about online products, e-commerce, might cut back on the images and focus on seo. I will go into both of these just in case.

Let’s start with seo. The first thing you need if you choose seo is to meta tags. Now there many meta tags generators out there for a quicker way to make them. But I suggest like me you make them yourself according to the search engines you want your site to better perform at. In short you have to study those search engines and find out how they get their content and what meta tags they require or may find usefull. Mine is based on google so check out the source of the blog and those are the tags that google uses.

Also a site that may help you out with your seo is: http://sitesubmit.ca/ they require you to be a member to use their tools but it’s worth plus it’s free. They have many seo tips and tools. In your reaserch of the search engine don’t forget ranking. Find out what they base their search results on and how they decide which results show up first when a user queries. Like google uses google googlerank and overall page rank. But you may hav eto increase your content on a subject in order to increase your keyword density and such.

Second sfo. SFO is fairly easy to accomplish once you have the right info. Like many sites they host regular polls and surveys about what users like and their personnal opinions. It’s an effective way of knowing your audience. Once you know most of your visitors like certain kinds of things you start providing them. Therefore pleasing your users and making a successful site. But never forget about the stalistics the users don’t need to tell you. Like what browsers usually visit your site and what operatinf systems they use. And as many webmasters know firefox and internet exploer(leading browsers) have different rendering engines. So find out which most of your users use and customize your site to it. Also if the stalistics show that they have just about equal users use what we a splash page. To allow the user to show which version of the site they want to view. Two versions of your site may be hard to keep up but remember it’s worth it. In one case one of my friends had to do four different versions. And keep them updated at the same time.

But also you may have to balance the two together if you want them both. Though it is hard it may be for the best.

Owner of All About Adsense! I write articles of my knowledge in my spare time.

Imagine if half the people that called your sales team hung up within 10 seconds. Not people they were cold-calling but interested people calling them. Heads would roll. At the very least, you’d want to know why so many people were disengaging. Chances are it’s happening to you right now, every day. Your sales team isn’t the problem; it’s your most visible and active company representativethe website.

There’s an easy to measure, but often overlooked number that can tell you a great
deal about the effectiveness of your website. The ’short visit rate’ is the percentage
of visitors that leave your website within 10 seconds.

The percentage itself is not really important. Every website, every audience and
every industry is different. Even the most sophisticated websites can easily have 50
percent of visitors bailing early. What is important is what you’re doing to reduce
this number. Why? Because there is no cheaper way to repair the spout that feeds
your pipeline. While it may take months to test and correct your sales process,
telemarketing or direct mail efforts, the Web allows for rapid and cost-effective
testing. You can positively change your short visit rate in a few days, even a few
hours.

The Impact

If visitors to your site don’t stick around, they can’t request more information, take
the demo, sign up for the newsletter or do any of the things the site was designed
to make them do. It took considerable time and money to bring these visitors to
your site–each time one leaves, you’re squandering your general marketing and
advertising efforts and dollars. Worse, those visitors leaving are likely seeking
information or a solution elsewhere on the web. You’re helping create demand for
your competition.

The Cause

Short visits are usually a combination of two things–the wrong people coming and
your site’s inability to engage the visitor. This is particularly true when it comes to
traffic from search engines. Because these visitors are looking for something
specific (and usually in a hurry), it’s only logical that they would quickly bail if the
site doesn’t satisfy their needs.

What To Do About It

Luckily, we’re dealing with the web, where the data is rich and the adjustments are
easy. The first step is to see where you are. Ask your webmaster or web marketing
person to report on the percentage of both all visitors, and search visitors that are
leaving within 10 seconds. If they can’t get this information for you, enlist some
help or get a simple web traffic analysis tool, as this is basic data every
company should capture.

Once you get these numbers, don’t flip out. It’s just a baseline, a starting point
from which to improve. Ask yourself, ‘what might be causing these people to
leave?’. Visit your site in your prospect’s shoes. Might it be the non-differentiating
or overly technical message? Maybe the site just doesn’t look very professional.
Perhaps the majority of your prospects simply don’t like the color red. Most likely,
it’s the lack of any compelling reason to stay. If you don’t have something to grab
visitors’ attention and get them clicking for more, you can continue to expect poor
retention rates.

Sometimes I find it helpful with my clients to look at this problem from a traditional
point of view. What if this was a tradeshow booth? How could we get people to stay
at the booth longer? The key here is to work together with your sales and
marketing folks (notice we left the IT department out) to brainstorm and come to a
consensus as to what you suspect the single biggest problem might be. Once you
decide, have your webmaster make the necessary changes and measure the
difference. If you don’t get a whole lot of visits, it may take a long time to come to
a conclusion. This is where doing a quick pay-per-click advertising campaign can
come in real handy if for nothing else than to get some inexpensive market
research.

You’ve Got Nothing to Lose Except Business

It’s easy to dismiss this entire problem; after all, you probably didn’t know you had
a problem. And you can always add more sales reps and send out more mailers.
However, the ‘problem’ could actually be an opportunity in disguiseif you take
these first steps. You may be surprised how enthusiastic your web team and senior
management are about wanting to improve in this area. It is fun, challenging and,
unlike many other aspects of business, an effort that provides rapid and rich
feedback. Hold contests! Give the person or team that comes up with the most
dramatic improvement the corner office! He or she just made your company more
efficient and profitable.

Short-visit syndrome is something most executives don’t like to mention, let alone
talk about. Fortunately, confronting the issue head on and doing things to remedy
it is far less painful than you think and the results are well worth the effort.

Todd Miechiels is a B2B search marketing consultant who helps companies that suffer
from short-visit syndrome and other Internet marketing challenges. He has worked
with Georgia Pacific, Boston Scientific, DuPont, and numerous small and mid-market
B2B organizations. Todd’s website is http://www.miechiels.com

As spring arrives many of us are left with a legacy from the short days and long nights of winter - a whole heap of extra pounds we could do without. And it’s not all due to overeating during the festive season. It seems that whether we have lots of parties to attend or not, we are all programmed to eat more in winter.

It’s all to do with our brain chemistry and especially the feel-good hormone we produce called serotonin. This hormone helps us feel calm, balanced and in control of our emotions and without it we start to feel down and depressed. But levels of this hormone drop in the population as a whole in winter and as the nights draw in and the amount of daylight we all receive diminishes, we are increasingly attracted to eat sweet and starchy food in an attempt to raise serotonin levels.

Of course, a sudden intake of sweet or starchy food causes blood sugar and then insulin levels to peak and we actually experience a rapid drop in blood sugar as insulin does its work and reduces the glucose level in the blood. As a result, we crave sweet and starchy food even more!

Whereas all of us experience this drop in serotonin levels to some degree, some 5 to 10% of the population - those who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (or SAD) - have an acute form of this problem and may gain anything up to 30lbs in weight each winter. It’s also thought that some 25% of the population suffer a milder form of the disorder. SAD affects not only your eating patterns but leaves you feeling depressed, lethargic and sleepy - none of which contribute to anyone maintaining their summer shape.

It’s all very well, knowing why we gain weight each winter, but what can you do about it?

During winter it’s important to maintain a balanced diet, keeping blood sugar on an even keel, even if you find you need to eat a bit more than in the rest of the year. If you choose your carbohydrates in the form of whole grains and vegetables and always eat some lean protein with every meal or snack you will take yourself out of the high-low blood sugar trap and will gain less weight.

You will probably also find that with the arrival of spring, the pounds drop off more easily because you will be less attracted to heavy winter foods and are happier to eat salads, fresh vegetables and lean proteins so the start of spring is a great time to lose weight for summer.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

Janice Elizabeth Small is a health and wellness writer and slimming coach. She became interested in seasonal affective disorder after seeing the effects of winter on herself and her clients.

For more information about Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms, causes and treatment see her site at http://www.allaboutSAD.com

Yachting as a sport, leisure pursuit or used as an organisation instrument is really pleasing. There are also excellent sailing & boating events which make it equally refreshing & can be something that the entire family can go & take pleasure in simultaneously. One of the foremost weeks of the sailing year is the Cowes Regatta Week; this power boating event takes place once a year and has been functioning since eighteen twenty-six that makes it the longest running event at this moment. With more than one-thousand sailing vessels & seven thousand applicants playing a part, being studied by 100,000 spectators each day Cowes week has attained the position as 1 of the primary yachting corporate hospitality & public occasion of the year. Click here to find the best Cowes Week events with Ondeck Sailing.

The eight thousand five-hundred competitors contain Olympic & world class trained sailors to leisure sailors. Nonetheless, if you’re not onboard yourself, viewing the sailing, benefiting from the parties and live attractions & to be involved in the unique atmosphere, makes it a one of a kind corporate sailing event.

With Ondeck Yachting School, two-thousands & eight sees the initiation of their most recent Regatta Division. Strengthen on their tremendous position within the sailing charter marketplace, this has seen Ondeck Yachting School, run some thriving regattas for companies, they have recently joined-up with Britannia Events, the leading organisers of industry sailing events within the United Kingdom.

The course of the racing event itself will differ each day as features such as the weather status, tidal torrents and relative speed of each series of yacht is taken into deciding. A typical Skandia Cowes Event has over 35 starts each day for members of cruiser series one designs & keelboats; adding up to over a 1000 sailing boats. At this moment the Solent which is a considerably busy merchant channel, is occupied with boats of all divisions & is especially vibrant in colour because of the spinnakers. As pointed out before on top of the power boating shows the week includes a great number of onshore activities which include live comedy & cocktail parties. From private or commercial residential parties & nominally private yacht organisations and boats, there are huge marquees erected in the harbours serving canap©s & drink.

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