How to Buy Energy Efficient Appliances

Be sure to check out Part 1 of this article (Do You Own Energy Efficient Appliances?).

Now that you've determined which of your appliances need to be shipped out and replaced, you need to know what to be on the lookout for.

Load Balancing

In this analysis phase, you need to compare your findings from the discovery stage with the details of newer appliances. There is no magical threshold to be met, since everything is relative. Simply go to your local hardware store and look at the Energy Star ratings. One of the best indicators of the efficiency of new appliances is the Energy Star tag. This tag will display the number of kWh the appliance uses (also known as the Energy Guide Rating), as well as an estimated annual use cost. Clearly, you want to look for the ones with the lowest values. This equals less energy use and a lower power bill. Compare these number to what you have at home. If you don't have numbers to compare it to, this itself might be a sign that you are in need of a newer more energy efficient appliance.

Once you have learned which appliances need to replaced, it's time to get out there, and find some new appliances. During this research phase, you'll want to keep your eye open for certain requirements and features. Some things you want to watch for are the following:

Refrigerator

1) "Energy saver" switch - This can turn off the anti-sweat heaters, which help reduce moisture. Fortunately, this is not needed most of the year.

2) Smaller unit size - The smaller the refrigerator, the better. There's no reason to cool more area than you need.

3) More insulation, such as heavy door hinges which prevents cold air from escaping.

Washer

1) Front loaders typically have a higher capacity and lower water usage. This is over the older-style top loaders, which typically have an agitator built in the center.

2) High spin speed to remove excess water. This help reduce the amount of time needed to fully dry your clothes. The more water your washer removes, the less drying time you need in the dryer.

3) Load size sensor to reduce the amount of water used for smaller loads. This sensor will automatically detect the size of your load, in order to reduce the total amount of water needed.

Dryer

1) Moisture detector to prevent unnecessary drying time. Once the dryer senses the majority of moisture has been removed, the dryer will notify you to end the cycle, if desired.

2) Find a dryer that is large enough to reduce the overall number of loads. If you can run one larger load, versus 2 smaller loads, you will reduce the total energy needed. This is mainly due to the dryer already being heated, versus having to heat it twice from scratch.

3) Note: Dryers are NOT Energy Star Rated. This means you will not find an Energy Guide Rating sticker on dryers. The main reason for this, is most dryers use a similar amount of energy.

At this stage you should have narrowed down your choice of appliances. Of course you need to have a good balance of practicality and energy efficiency. Don't pay for features you don't need such as larger capacity appliances, or steam cycles. More features do not typically equal a better savings for the end user.

How to Buy Energy Efficient Appliances

Federal Government Entices Lenders to Lower Your Mortgage Balance

Today is a new day for borrowers in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. Today is the first day that the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 goes into effect. This act was designed to motivate lenders to work with the consumers in keeping their homes. In the past, despite the current economic crisis many lenders have found themselves in, they have not been so willing to work with the borrowers to help them keep their homes from foreclosing. That all hopefully stops today with HERA.

As the government recognizes the enormous load of future foreclosures that are coming and the repercussions that brings to our economy they have decided to step up to the plate. According to HERA (Housing and Economic Recovery Act) the Federal Government will now be insuring all new, reduced 30 yr fixed mortgages in attempts to motivate lenders to reduce struggling borrower's loan amounts of up to 90% of the property value. In other words, the bank slashes your mortgage amount in half, you get to keep your home, lower the mortgage payment and in return the bank saves itself from not only the whole costly foreclosure process but now has a federally insured loan and a paying customer. It's a win-win for everyone.

Load Balancing

Though it would be ideal, not everyone is eligible for this perk of HERA. In order to qualify you cannot have been convicted of fraud, certify that you have not intentionally defaulted on an existing mortgage and did not obtain the loan fraudulently (you wouldn't believe how many borrowers fudged their applications to get a loan), your mortgage payment must exceed 31% of your monthly income as of March 01, 2008 and last but not least you must occupy the home as a primary residence and the home must be listed as so. Sorry second homeowners and investors but you don't make the cut!

You should know that lenders are NOT required to participate in this program though it would be in their best interest to do so. Another important factor to understand is that if your lender does agree to this and your loan amount is reduced you are not allowed to take any second mortgages within the first five years. You must also split 50% of your equity with FHA when you sell it and there is holding period of which I am not aware of how long. Not a bad trade-off if you ask me.

All in all, this Act is a step in the right direction. It's the strong motivation the lenders need to help homeowners keep their homes. I applaud the government for stepping up and passing this act. I can't wait to see the positive effects it has on our economy in the future. If you're interested in finding out more about the HERA program you can visit http://www.HUD.gov

Federal Government Entices Lenders to Lower Your Mortgage Balance

The Balance of Equality Between Men and Women

The age of the ´new man` dawned more than two decades ago yet man, in all his wisdom, persists in seeing this shining age of equality between men and women through his own rose coloured RayBans.

So many men consider themselves to be creatures of a modern age because they put out the garbage or wash a few dishes. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Modern families struggle to earn enough cash to support three or four children, put two cars in the driveway out of necessity because mother has to be able to drive to work, and pay the mortgage; a great deal of this finance is contributed by wifey-poo.

Load Balancing

The days when men reserved the bread winning role exclusively have long gone. Nowadays women hold down professional working roles alongside their domestic obligations with ruthless efficiency and most of them would not even consider back pedalling to the days when they were a stay at home Mum.

So what is the problem? Division of labour is the problem. Men still believe themselves to be exempt from certain chores, using the excuse ´ah, well, that´s women´s work` or ´well you see she does it so much better than me.`

The standard routine of a working woman´s day will include waking the children, cooking their breakfast, dressing the children, feeding the family pets, washing the dishes, loading the washing machine, preparing packed school lunches and organising lifts to the school bus or even driving the kids all the way to school.

The routine for her husband, on the other hand, will entail hauling himself out of bed, eating his breakfast, getting washed and dressed and heading out of the door without a thought for the chaos his wife is trying to pull into order in the kitchen.

This lady will then go to work herself and put in a full day, just like her husband. Only when he is thinking about heading for home, she has to collect the children and then brave supermarket queues before finally arriving on the doorstep, hoping for a ten minute rest before cooking supper.

So many of these valiant ladies get through this killing routine every single day, then tackle a large pile of ironing on the weekend while Mr Helpful is slaving over a hot golf club.

It is about time modern men reviewed the situation and did a little time and motion study. Most of those with even limited intelligence will realise their wives are carrying too heavy a load and need a little help.

The Balance of Equality Between Men and Women

Five Ways To Help Your Employees Create A Healthy Work/Life Balance

Encourage flexible schedules. Perhaps your employees want to work longer days Monday through Thursday, with Friday off. If they need to pull an all-nighter once in a while, they'll be okay with that as long as they know they're free to take a "mental health day" afterward. Provide flexibility in their schedules when possible. Employees must get their work done, but they're adults. Self-motivated people don't need to put in face time, and their leaders don't need to
install a metaphorical time clock in the break room.

Don't let people become workaholics. When you see individuals working too many nights and weekends, encourage them to take a break. Identify coworkers who might be able to share the load. They'll appreciate your concern, as well as the fact that you noticed their extraordinary efforts. Yes, asking an employee not to work so hard is counterintuitive. But you're not being totally altruistic. Overworked people make mistakes and display poor judgment. Eventually, they
burn out. Clearly, that is not good for your company.

Load Balancing

Set a good example. As a leader, you set the tone for everyone else. When employees see you staying in the office until 8 p.m. every night and working through lunch, they feel a not-so-subtle pressure to do it, too. But more important than that, you're burning yourself out when you do that. You can't be a vibrant entrepreneurial leader if you're running on empty. Everyone will suffer for it.

Get creative with benefits. Unusual perks that help employees balance their own lives are relatively inexpensive and are worth their weight in gold. If you can't establish an onsite daycare center, maybe you can help several employees with small children to pool their resources and hire an in-home nanny. If there's enough employee interest in fitness, you could buy a corporate gym membership or get an aerobics instructor to come to your workplace several days a week. Some companies offer shopping services, adoption reimbursement, and even pet care and pet insurance for employees. The point is to get involved in their personal lives in helpful, loyalty-cementing ways.

Bring joy into the workplace. It blurs the boundaries between "professional" and"personal." Many employees view "work" as a place of drudgery and duty and "life" as the arena for fun, friendship, and family. Lighten up the workplace and people will quit seeing work as a sentence that must be endured until the fun kicks in. "Schedule an occasional lunch at a nearby restaurant," suggests Sujansky. "When the files and office space need to be cleaned and organized, hold a purge party, complete with pizza and drinks. Hold a 'Bring Your Kids to Work Morning' that segues into a day at the zoo. Laugh loudly and often. You'll find that as morale skyrockets, so does productivity."

This article may be reprinted for your use in an organizational newsletter and or e-zine provided that you contact Kelly Hanna, Director of Sales and Marketing at 724-942-7900 to gain permission.

Five Ways To Help Your Employees Create A Healthy Work/Life Balance

Balancing Parenting With Work

As a working parent a good work/life balance helps to keep you motivated, happy and in the right frame of mind. Creating quality time for you to spend with your family is important for many reasons including your own well-being and the feeling of fulfillment of being a significant part of your children's development.

Here are a few tips:

Load Balancing

1. Prioritise your free time:

Block off a day or half day at the weekend and stick to it.

2. Diarise it:

Plan something that you know you and the family will enjoy. Even if it's watching 'X-Factor' together.
The value is being in each other's company and making it worthwhile.

3. Think of how to engage them:

It's been proven that even the most laborious of subjects can enthuse a child if portrayed in an engaging way.

Be inventive, explore your local area, go to a race evening (these are often geared towards families with a concert and loads of children's activities), learn to trampoline. Whatever is going to be a fun family event- the Internet is full of activities (free and not so free!) to entertain children of all ages.

4. Tell the family about it beforehand:

This commits you and them.

5. Take away ALL distractions:

For that time, turn your phone off (or put on the voicemail), lock away your Blackberry and do not turn on your computer unless it is to play a game with the children or help them with their homework!

6. When you have enjoyed your time together commit to the next one.

Balancing Parenting With Work

Etrack: A Load Off Your Mind

One of a trucker's greatest fears is an accident where loss of cargo or personal injury occur. Even with this fear forefront in his mind, he may be pressed to drive faster than the law allows or through adverse weather in an effort to make a target delivery date. Most times, safety and speed are conflicting priorities and something has to give.

Some truckers have found ways to be more safety-conscious as they skirt the limits of the law. Regardless of those choices, the underlying necessity of stable cargo load is of vital importance on the highway and the interstate. That's where etrack can help.

Load Balancing

Etrack is an ingeniously simple system for establishing multiple anchor points within a trailer. The more anchor points that exist, the greater the number of choices a driver has for configuring his load to its optimal balance or stabilization.

Etrack is made of high-strength steel and available in either galvanized or powder coated finish. The variety of lengths available provide great flexibility: 2', 5', 8', 10' lengths mean a rig owner can configure the placement of the etrack to best suit his own needs.

The lengths of material are lined on the outside with holes. The holes are for securing the track to the floor of your trailer and on into the frame. A number of etrack fittings can be found at online retailers, including d-ring and o-ring styles.

After the system is installed, a driver has the opportunity to distribute his cargo load more evenly than ever before. When cargo is better loaded, there is less risk of shift during tight turns or steep inclines. Both driver and persons in other vehicles traveling alongside are much more safe with etrack in place.

So go on, get on the road safely.

Etrack: A Load Off Your Mind

The Nintendo Wii Fit and Balance Board - here are

The Nintendo Wii Fit features four main categories of exercises to choose from: Strength Training games, aerobics, yoga and balance. Among the detection capabilities of the revolutionary movement of the Wii, Wii Fit 's, even with the inclusion of the balance board, a device placed on a sturdy flat surface so that the movements and gestures of those who can read about it.

This clever device has more than 40 different exercises across four areas of training, such as tiltBlock soccer balls, including a rotating power whirling circle or balance to hold the perfect yoga pose. These are, of course, recreational activities, and do not forget the ski jumping and heading footballs, that challenge the player in the overall balance of the body.

Load Balancing

This is a controlled movement with arms, legs and other body parts that belong to the games dance, movement, balance and skill that Nintendo says it will help to build muscles and stability.

The Wii Fit BalanceCouncil will ensure that your mom, yoga, your father, to do push-ups, and you play the practical-the-head soccer balls-but-not-the-panda-head mini game that comes with it. There are a variety of graphs embedded in a frame to ensure that the program, and woe to you stick when you miss a session, because you get a good old annoying when you're away from your Wii Fit to stay too long.

This system was designed with motion-sensing controllers and play for a wide audiencenot hardcore gamers and I have to say you think it works pretty well around the world.

Fitness is about the cardiovascular, agility and endurance. Fitness and fun at the same time. It 'possible that the Wii Fit and the Balance Board can provide a healthy workout? You bet.

The Nintendo Wii Fit and Balance Board - here are

DNS Load Balancing

Load balancing is a computer technology for the distribution of requests for information about multiple resources. For example, multiple links to a site or host entry will be served by the distribution of requests across multiple servers with the same content, but is on different IP addresses. Each time an application must be connected to the domain name sends the authoritative nameservers for the domain of all the IP addresses associated with the name of the client orApplicant.

The management is done in a "round robin" fashion. This means that the authoritative name server's IP in order to respond to the client a list of changes, the random order or placement of addresses in a certain order. A client is normally sent a link to the top of the list, and so rearranging the list, the server requests for access to the domain name server finest. In this scheme, the IP addressesare presented in order, which means that the first client request, the IP registration first, the second request, the second record, and so forth to go forward in the list. This is a simple method to implement, but in some cases, is flawed for several reasons. Customers to manage connections through the relocation of a connection attempt with a resource that does not respond to the next resource available, so that in general the connection is ultimately successful.

Load Balancing

The operation of the DNS loadThe balance is pretty simple in practice. In general, there are several so-called "front-end servers", each of which has its own IP address. All servers are then physically connected via a network to the main resource on the "backend". The list of IP addresses is that the list of customers to the Internet, comes a request for access. The IP address is of course the situation on the Internet, where the resource is physically located and easily accessible. The list israndomized data set in order and every customer is trying to establish a connection with the first IP address of the list. If the connection fails, the client tries to make the next IP address, and then the other, and so on.

There are several limitations of DNS load balancing, which prevent its use in some cases. DNS load balancing is not the only method of load distribution. Other methods include direct routing, in which to change the MAC address of incomingPacket data, and Network Address Translation (NAT), load balancing, with the translation of queries through load balancing. Restrictions on the DNS load balancing, above all, to ensure that it is not possible with this method, a uniform distribution of all the receiving server.

DNS management tools can also be used in load balancing. DNS management tools allow you to monitor the IP address to ensure the ready availability of connectivity. There are also DNS management toolsdeveloped in order to identify the MAC addresses of devices using the IP address. These allow the maintenance of the hardware which is very useful in large networks.

DNS Load Balancing