Magazine Pull

Is it possible to be a long-distance coach or mentor? Sure it is and I have been doing this for many years now. As a Founder of a Franchise System with units operating and providing service in 450 cities, 110 major markets, 23 states and four countries, being a long-distance mentor was essential. Is that hard to do?

Why yes it is hard work and it means operating on different time zones and lots of travel, a strong memory and understanding of local dynamics in my case, as our civilization is a little different in different places. Now our business is a Mobile Car Wash Franchising Company; CarWashGuys.com but do not let the unique-ness of our business model scare you.

In fact long distance mentoring and coaching is as similar for what I do as almost any endeavor with a little fine-tuning to fit the scenario of course. Now then in my retirement I enjoy mentoring and coaching and was asked if I might mentor a young entrepreneur in Chicagoland. I agreed, but since I do not live in any one City, because I travel full time;

http://www.carwashguys.com/blitz.html

I will have to answer the questions via online and asked our entrepreneur to send in any questions they might have for me. This way I can assist them and perhaps use older material to answer the same question I may have been answering for others over the last 20-years. Now then, also understand that new questions should be written down, re-fined and answered and saved for the benefit of others as well. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

The price of a barrel of oil has never been higher ($62.00+ in summer 2005 even before the chaos caused by Katrina). Some say this is a temporary spike, but more and more analysts are agreeing that this kind of pricing is here to stay. World consumption is at an all time high and given the new thirst for oil in China and India it is unlikely to diminish. According to International Energy Outlook, global demand is expected to continue to increase by as much as 59% in the next fifteen years.

Already, consumer energy bills have been increasing on average 6.5% per year for the last thirty years in the United States. Given the dramatic rise in the cost of producing energy using traditional non-renewable resources, this rate is bound to be overtaken by unheard of price increases in the very near future. And for consumers who are becoming more and more environmentally conscious, the thought of the millions and millions of tons of CO2 and other bi products being released into the atmosphere annually through the use of fossil fuels in creating energy is very alarming.

It is a no brainer that our reliance on oil to create energy leaves us very vulnerable. There are renewable technologies that produce energy, but the problem has been one of cost effectiveness. It has always been cheaper to supply energy using fossil fuels, and consequently, renewable sources such as solar or wind power have not taken off. But the situation now appears to be changing. More and more, our consumption of energy is outstripping supply. The grid can barely keep up with demand and rolling blackouts are no longer just a concept. No wonder governments are looking for alternatives. And no wonder everyone is talking solar once again.

In 1985 annual worldwide solar power system installation accounted for 21 megawatts of power. By 2004, this had multiplied to an incredible 927 megawatts in new installation power production alone. The demand for solar produced energy over the last several years has increased annually about 25%, although in 2004 sales were up a whopping 67% from the previous year.

There are several reasons for this increase in popularity for all things solar powered. Beyond the obvious environmental considerations and the privilege of not having to rely on power from a grid that is aging and stretched to capacity, solar is getting cost effective. While traditional energy production gets more expensive, technological advances are making solar power cheaper. In 1980 the cost of harvesting energy from the sun stood at about $100 per watt. Literally a hundred times more expensive than the going rate of electricity, these systems were not economically viable. By 1999 however, technology had reduced this to about $4 per watt and costs have continued to decline by about 5% per year since. The Return on Investment is becoming very attractive for many commercial organizations and consumers.

Efficiencies have been realized in several technologies. The inverters that transform the collected DC energy into usable AC energy used to deliver only about 65% efficiency. 35% of the collected energy was lost in the transformation process. Today’s transformers are so efficient they deliver up to 96% of collected energy into usable AC current.

Photovoltaic technology has also made solar collection far more efficient. Twenty years ago, only 5% of the sun’s energy hitting a solar charging panel was harvested. This figure is now in excess of 15% and will continue to climb as more efficient compounds are designed and introduced in the manufacture of these photovoltaic panels.

All levels of government are increasingly looking at solar to provide stable, cost effective and environmentally friendly power. 35 states now have some kind of rebate program for homeowners that install solar power systems. And this is not just the southern “sunny states”. While California is the clear leader in promoting solar powered energy solutions (a program introduced in 2003 is promoting the introduction of solar powered energy systems into a million homes over the next several years) New Jersey and New York are next in line for solar investment.

At the municipal level, many jurisdictions have introduced solar solutions for traffic and streetlights. 50% of the energy used to run the City of Sacremento’s water purification plant is solar. NASA uses solar powered energy systems in many of its buildings. And governments are not using solar just because it is good for the environment and sets an example for commercial entities and consumers (although these benefits cannot be lost on them!). They’ve concluded that opting for solar systems will save them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

With so many rebate programs today homeowners are coming to the same conclusions. Once the initial return on investment is recouped (as early as 4 to 6 years with the rebate programs in California for example), solar users don’t have any additional energy bills, almost no maintenance to worry about and are not slave to an electrical grid that is becoming more and more fragile as demand outstrips supply. No wonder solar power is getting attention!

Solar power is still more expensive than traditional energy production methods, but the gap is narrowing every year. Solar power applications are also multiplying at an amazing rate. House heating, solar pool lighting and heating, hot water tank heating, calculators, flashlights, solar garden lighting and on and on. Solar is clean, it’s efficient and it’s here to stay.

To pass the BSCI exam and become a CCNP, you have to be aware of the proper use of passive interfaces. You learned about passive interfaces in your CCNA studies, but here we’ll review the basic concept and clear up one misconception regarding passive interfaces and OSPF.

Configuring an interface as passive will still allow the interface to receive routing updates, but the interface will no longer transmit them. While the command itself would make you think this command will be applied at the interface level, that is not the case. Below, we’ll configure ethernet0 as a RIP passive interface.

R1(config)#router rip

R1(config-router)#passive-interface ethernet0

Ethernet0 will no longer send RIP routing updates, but will accept them.

The passive interface concept is clear enough with RIP, IGRP, and EIGRP – all protocols that send routing update packets. But OSPF doesn’t send routing update packets – OSPF sends link state advertisements. It’s the inability of the passive interface command to stop LSAs that lead many to think that passive interfaces cannot be used with OSPF.

Even though OSPF does not sent “routing updates” in the form that RIP, IGRP, and EIGRP do, you can still configure an OSPF-enabled interface as passive in order to prevent OSPF traffic from exiting or entering that interface. No OSPF adjacency can be formed if one of the interfaces involved is a passive interface, and if you configure an OSPF-enabled interface as passive where an adjacency already exists, the adjacency will drop almost immediately.

Let’s see that in action. R1 and R2 have an existing OSPF adjacency over their Ethernet interfaces. In an effort to reduce routing traffic, R1’s e0 interface is configured as passive. The adjacency drops right away.

R1(config)#router ospf 1

R1(config-router)#passive-interface ethernet0

18:31:11: %OSPF-5-ADJCHG: Process 1, Nbr 2.2.2.2 on Ethernet0 from FULL to DOWN, Neighbor Down: Interface down or detached

Knowing how to use the passive interface command is a vital part of being a CCNP, and of being a master networker. Good luck to you in both of these pursuits!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of free CCNP and CCNA tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages.

For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” and “How To Pass The CCNP”, just visit the website! You can also get FREE CCNA and CCNP exam questions every day! Pass the CCNP exam with The Bryant Advantage!

A massive and growing phone market following the rule of introducing the next big thing has now made it incredibly hard for individuals to compare phone special offers. Most of the time, there are tons of aspects that mobile customers may need to look into when making phone comparisons that some of the most primary ones get forgotten about.

As a result, one forever end up owning a phone which is either too pricey or a phone which is not suited for your mobile phone call profile. Hence we mention in this blog about the two most fundamental things that people should always notice when making mobile purchases. This might help people land a mobile phone that at least meets the basic criteria folk are looking for.

The complete mobile market is booming on the basis of incredible features like interactive maps that keep getting added every week. On the other hand, a really large majority of folk get cell phones based on their appearance, brand and astonishing marketing only to regret at a later stage when cell phone customers find that their breathtaking mobile phone lacks a profoundly basic feature like sending emails or picture messages. Tons of magnificent dear cell phones sell on the basis of hype, brand and looks at prices that are unjustified given the lack of features. For example the very latest Apple iphone does not let folk forward messages to all. Unfortunately, this phone’s target audience, early 20s, gets to regret the loss of this cell phone feature only after spending years worth of salary on it. Consequently make sure that your good new cell phone has all the features like mp3 players you require before buying it. Since mobile corporations will never tell mobile customers about the mind-blowing features like interactive maps that their phones lack, researching online mobile write-ups is the very best way to do it. Save money with MobileShop and Nokia.

Eating is one of the many sources of enjoyment given to us by Nature. Though it was intended for this activity to be a source of nourishment for the body, since most modern day dietetic innovations avoid proper food combining methods, they tend to do the exact opposite.

In a traditional diet, everything is mixed together in every possible way. Ease of digestion is not the goal, but rather the excitement of the senses in one meal. Dr. Tilden used to say that Nature never produced a sandwich-a modern dietetic abomination. Such protein-starch combinations are of recent origin and like most modern meals today, instead of feeding the body, they actually poison it.

Bad Food combining creates indigestion, fermentation and gas. Food is fermenting and putrefying in the intestines, which is one of the main causes of constipation, a clogging up of the bodily tissues.

Therefore, simplicity of a meal should be the goal when eating for health. This includes first and foremost, proper food combining principles, consuming the right quantity at a time and eating only when truly hungry.

Certain foods take longer to digest than others and therefore should not be eaten at the same time as ones that would leave the stomach quicker. Ideally, eating one kind of food (fruit or vegetable) at a time would be the most ideal, but granted, we live in a society where success at certain things might hinge on enjoyment of the practice.

Variety is one sure way of increasing enjoyment but when it comes to food, especially for the health seeker, this should be approached with care.

Food combining: Classification of Foods

Foods (when eating for health) can be classified as follows.

Fruit:

1. Sweet Fruits: Tropical fruits, Bananas, Mangoes, Papaya, Dates, Dried fruits, Sweet apples.

2. Acid Fruit: Citrus, Lemon, Tomatoes, Berries, Pineapples.

3. Sub-Acid Fruit: Most tart apples, Pears, Grapes,

4. Melons: Cantaloupe, Honey-Dew, Water Melon etc

5. Fatty: Avocadoes, Olives, Durian, Young coconuts

Nuts and Seeds

1. Non-Starchy Foods:

Green leaves, Carrots, Fruit Vegetables e.g. Cucumber, Bell Peppers, Zucchini

2. Starchy: Cooked Vegetables (roots), Grains (if necessary)

3. Lettuce and Celery:

Listed above are foods in their various categories, in the next part of the article on:

“Food combining: Learn the tips on this necessity for better health today.”

I will ensure to go over the details of food combining principles for eating right.

Boy, would it have been easier if we just ate like apes eh? Eat a mono-meal of fruit and a few leaves and call it a day. Well, in this present age, that is close to impossible for most people, hence the need to at least learn better food combining methods for health.

See you in part 2 of this article.

Foras Aje is an independent researcher and author of Fitness: Inside and out, a book on improving physical and mental health naturally. For more information on natural health and wellness visit http://www.bodyhealthsoul.com

I used a broadband comparison (Broadbandgenie.co.uk) site to check out the various deals available for broadband companies last week. Wow there are a lot of cheap deals, which are very tempting.

As it was, I decided not to change my provider (though I did find a better deal with them). What the broadband comparison site did do for me though was tempt me into buying some mobile broadband.

Have you heard of mobile broadband? I had come across it a few times but not really paid it any attention. What mobile broadband is, is basically what it says – broadband on the move!

It seems that most of the big name mobile phone companies are now involved in providing you with a USB mobile dongle that you plug into your laptop, which gives you broadband access from all over the UK (well anywhere you can get a mobile phone signal anyway).

I have to say it’s great, one of the better purchases I have made recently. Really gives me a freedom to take my laptop where I want to be, rather than be stuck where I can find a wireless hotspot. My advice? Get hold of a deal for yourself you will not regret it.

Have you heard this before? “I am the manager of a San Francisco branch sales and service office for a company with its head office in Atlanta. Overall, it is a good company to work for. The problem is that on many occasions we seem to be left out of the corporate loop. I have voiced my concerns to senior management and they always say that they will correct the communications gap and they do for a month or two. Then it goes back to the way it was. Is there anything that I can do get managements attention?”

You are not alone, mushroom farming in multiple facility businesses is more common than not. Most branch offices, whether they are part of a small or large company feel that they are the foster children of their parent organization. The vast majority of information disseminated by a company, especially a small business is done informally. In general, the staff finds out who is leaving, what changes to the organizational structure have been proposed, major capital investments and what orders have been received around the coffee machine or at the lunch table. Although memos may be written by management to advise the staff, employees are usually well aware of any announcements long before they are committed to pen and paper.

It’s not that they want you to keep you in the dark. In most cases, you are facing what I like to call the out of sight, out of mind syndrome. I know how frustrating this can be to you and the branch staff. It leads to a low moral that equates to reduced productivity.

Rectifying the communications problem is not an easy task and requires on-going effort. The first thing that you must realize is that although senior management is the group implementing change, in most cases they do not directly disseminate the information. That tasks falls to administrative assistants and secretaries. It is important that you cultivate that group of people. On your next visit to the head-office invest in some lunches and promote the need for inter-office communication with them. Make sure that there is a mail slot for inter-office correspondence and ask the person who is responsible for sending whatever is in that mailbox to you, to throw in copies of any general company memos that they get.

It is a two way street. You should also be aware, that the staff at the head-office feel that they have no idea what is going on at their branch offices. It is equally important that you keep the head-office advised of branch happenings. With some concerted effort, you may be able to convert the mushroom farm to a rose garden!

Robert Berman is a business consultant specializing in business development, strategic planning, acquisitions & mergers and international sales & marketing. He has been a columnist for the National Post Newspaper under the byline of “The Business Doctor” and he has authored “The Business Buyer’s Manual”. He may be reached at Robert.Berman@businessbuyersmanual.com or visit http://www.businessbuyersmanual.com

The B group of vitamins may be one of the most commonly misunderstood of the vitamins, simply because these are several distinct vitamins lumped together. The fact that the vitamins in this group are known by both letter and number becomes confusing to many people. It’s just often more difficult to remember numbers, meaning you may remember that it’s one of the “B vitamins,” but not remember which number is associated with that particular one. It may help to find out that each of the B vitamins also has a name.

• B1 is also thiamin
• B2 is also riboflavin
• B3 is also niacin
• B5 is also pantothenic acid
• B6 is also pyridoxine
• B7 is also biotin
• B9 is also folic acid
• B12 is also cobalamin

You should note that there are four additional substances in the B complex group, though they are not known as vitamins because they are not necessary for normal body function. They are choline, lipoic acid, PABA and inositol. When you purchase B complex vitamins, these four will not be included, and at least one or two of the recognized B vitamins may also be omitted. B5 and B7 are so widely available in food that most people simply get enough of these vitamins, even if they aren’t eating a healthy diet.

Arguably one of the most commonly recognized uses of the B vitamins is an energy booster. Some health care professionals tout the advantages of taking B12 in large doses to combat tiredness, but most seem to agree that starting a regimen of B vitamins is only advisable in severe cases.

More recently, research suggests that some Vitamin B deficiencies may aggravate certain health issues or health risks, and that an increase of those vitamins will help relieve symptoms or lessen the risk. Notably, Alzheimer’s is one of those diseases and sufferers of this disease sometimes show improvement from added Vitamin B on a daily basis. Vitamin B2 has also been used to help some migraine patients.

The correlation between certain health issues and vitamin deficiencies is certain, though finding the right treatment may be tricky. One of the most common problems with using vitamins from the B complex group to treat health issues is the fact that many diseases and health issues have overlapping symptoms. Treating those symptoms may ultimately cause more problems than it cures. Talk to your health care professional before taking extraordinary steps toward a vitamin regimen, including those that include complex B vitamins.

Bob Benson is the founder of Vitamins online. You can check out our website at www.diet-weight-loss-supplements.info

These days, you can’t be too concerned about your health. With possible toxins and lower nutritional values found in the foods we eat and the things we drink, many people have taken to buying supplements to help aid their health. Here’s a list of natural health supplements that can lead you to a more sound and healthy way of life:

Saint John’s Wort: Used for over 2,000 years, this supplement is a simple plant that can greatly aid depression. One of the most widely used natural health supplements, in a double-blind clinical study, Saint John’s Wort was proven to be equally as effective as pharmaceutical antidepressants, while giving less side-effects then their drug company counterpart.

Bee pollen: People take bee pollen in supplement form to help increase energy and vitality. In addition to offering several required vitamins and minerals, bee pollen acts as an enhancer to the immune system, as well as being a useful tool in cleansing the body of harmful toxins.

Athletes have been known to take bee pollen regularly to help enhance their endurance, stamina, recovery time from exercise, and more. It may also prove to be helpful in alleviating the pesky symptoms of hay fever. With all these possible uses of bee pollen, it’s amazing to find out that it can also be used to aid in weight loss. A substance in the pollen known as lecithin helps to stimulate your metabolism and flush fat from your system. This is another one of the most widely used natural health supplements.

Fish Oil:
Harvested from the bodies of fish, fish oil is purified through a scientific process and turned into supplement form. Containing Omega-3 fatty acids, these natural health supplements can have numerous effects on your body for the better. For one, fish oil can aid in preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. It has also been associated with better memory, clearer thinking, and health of the heart.

One of the best nutrients for brain health, this supplement’s effect on your body can be vast. Be sure to only purchase pharmaceutical grade fish oil, however, since this is the process which removes the heavy metals found in fish due to pollutants. If your fish oil is not pharmaceutical grade, you run the risk of consuming such dangerous materials as mercury.

Why not check out our nutrition guide at http://www.nutritional-supplement-guides.com/nut-ebook.html

This no nonsense book will tell you everything you need to know about nutrition.

Ans also, what supplement we personally use for our nutrition needs at http://www.nutritional-supplement-guides.com/what-we-use.html

John Gibb is the owner of Nutrition guides, a website offering free nutrition advice and a quality nutrition book for newsletter subscribers.

Negative thoughts can be very self-destructing, it’s true that how we think is who we are.

Before I go on any further, let’s take a quick test

Close your eyes and count slowly to 10, while counting concentrate on listening to the numbers.

What did that prove?

While you were counting, what else were you thinking about? Unless you’re different from most people the answer would be, “I only thought of the numbers”.

Our minds can only think of one thing at a time, so next time a self doubt or a negative thought pops into your mind, then quickly think of something positive, in other words, change the conversation in your head and this will change the negative thoughts in your mind.

Have on stand by a few positive thoughts that you can switch too next time the negative ones attack your thinking.

Do this every time a negative thought enters your thinking and you’ll be surprised by the changes to your life, pretty soon you’ll find that after you changed to the positive thought a positive action will follow.

As well as, the mind switching thought technique, why not find a “peaceful” spot where you won’t be disturbed and for at least 15 minutes everyday, practice thinking nothing but positive thoughts or thinking nothing at all, before too long you’ll be amazed by the results.

About the Author: Garry Munro is a consultant, speaker & coach in the area of self-development.
Based in Australia he runs his own business “Minds Alike”.
Visit his blog site www.mindsalike.blogspot.com for a FREE EBook and more articles on success, business and self motivation.

Source: www.isnare.com