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The filter in a fish tank is its life. Without it the water will turn stale and the fish will die. Filters keep the water clean enabling the fish and plants to survive. The relatively new salt water fish tank filter used nowadays, have been the product of long research work that has designed advanced technology to form sound filtration systems.

The Megaflow Sump filters are noiseless and efficiently clean both fresh and salt water tanks. The salt water fish tank filter is available in so many varieties that it is difficult for the fish lover to choose the best. Of late the EHEIM canister filters have reaped satisfying results. They come in a package that is easy to set up and the filter has a filtration process that includes three stages of biological, mechanical and chemical purification. Its unique feature is the multi purpose handle and the patent pending technology that has been used.

This fish tank filter has a locking and unlocking system, a handle to carry it and it can also be used for priming purposes. Filling the tank with fresh water is very simple. The input and drainage pipes need to be connected and with the handle bent to the start position, the salt water fish tank filter pump makes the water to flow into the tank. As soon as the water fills up in the tank, it needs to be plugged and at once the filter starts action.

The media baskets are instrumental in obstructing water flowing to the wrong places. With well interlocked media baskets the chances of cleansing are reduced to a great extent .One cleaning in 3 to 6 months would be enough. The tank filter comes with the media basket fittings and the various valves. The other advantage of the filter is that the input and output water pipes have a swivel capacity of 360 degrees so that filling in fresh water and draining out used water can be done without a hassle. Not just this, the o- ring that is integrated to the filter with a silicone base makes sure that there is no leakage of water during the process of filtration.

An added facility is the cover of the impeller that reduces maintenance cost by half. The impeller has a ceramic shaft and the bearing of carbon makes the filter soundless. The motor that is used for the fish tank filter ensures an effective function and low electric consumption. Life expectancy of these filters is long and efficiency is also guaranteed. The salt water fish tank filter prices range according to their capacity. With more water holding capacity the tank needs a high power filter and the cost goes up. Affordable prices are kept to suit the budget of all.

carl formby owns and operates http://www.aquariumsuppliesmarket.com, a site dedicated to Aquarium Supplies and Aquarium Lighting DIY.

For anyone who has looked at a snowboarder before and pondered just how simple it likely is to stand on a board and go down a mountain, you’ve never done it. Snowboarding is not simply about standing on a waxed board and sliding through snow. It might be if you are still on the bunny slopes, but at a certain point, it gets more complicated. For those beginners out there, a quick rundown of the basics of merely standing on your snowboard will suffice for showing you how even stance can be problematic.

When you first start out in snowboarding you have to make the basic decision of how you would like to stand. You cannot simply hop on and hope for the best. It’s like choosing whether you’re right or left handed. Simply put, you can’t choose.

Basic Stance

There are two basic ways to stand on a snowboard. The first of these is to put your left foot forward. Known as a regular stance, this is the most common method as most people are right handed and feel more comfortable like this.

However, there is also a goofy stance in which your right foot is put forward. Though this is less common, some people feel they must board in this style, as it is more comfortable.

For those with any experience on a board, be it skateboarding or surfing, you probably already know exactly which style works best for you. Don’t assume right off that if you’re Goofy on a skateboard, you’ll be goofy on a snowboard though. Occasionally these preferences change with sports.

You should try both methods first, preferably before sliding down a steep mountain face.

Practice

You might not think of it right away, but any time you do something with your feet you’re likely putting one foot forward before the other. By practicing in a few everyday activities you can figure out which foot that is and use it while snowboarding. Methods for deciding might include riding your bicycle and seeing how your feet rest when coasting or comparing which foot you step off with in basketball or soccer. Anything that displays your foot preference is helpful here.

Setting the Stance

Another thing many people don’t realize is that they have to set the width of their own stance. Snowboards don’t come with preset dimensions that you must conform with (though they can if you’d like them to). Instead, you must choose the proper width and adjust your bindings accordingly. For this, you should make sure you are balanced and comfortable and that the width is only slightly wider than your shoulders.

Angling

Another important part of setting your stance and the bindings is the angle at which your foot sits in relation to the board. Often, this will fall between 10 and 30 degrees, but you should check to ensure that the angle you have is comfortable for you. Try it out a few times and adjust as necessary. Nearly every aspect of your feet on that board is adjustable and you should continue adjusting until you get it just right.

Finally, just remember not to copy another person’s stance. Yours is unique and will feel right to you. Everyone else has their own unique stance. Snowboarding is a great outdoor sport that can be made even better if you take the time to ensure that you are comfortable on your board.

Tony Brian is a freelance writer for outdoor sports magazines and a contributing writer for tippmann 98 custom specializing in snowboarding,snowboard, and sp-8

This guide will show you how to correctly use safety wire. Several organizations require safety wire including FAA, FIA, SCCA, NHRA, and many others.

Most safety wire ranges from .020 – .040 in diameter. For most applications it is composed of stainless steel or inconel, although copper and other metals can be used. The two main purposes of safety wire are:

1. Retain bolts and components from falling off the vehicle in the event of failure.

2. Prevent fasteners from backing off due to vibration or other environmental reasons.

Several chemical compounds as well as nylon lock nuts advertise the same claims. While these products are great at preventing back out, they do nothing to retain failed components. Also both products become ineffective at high temperatures.

Drilled Bolts For Safety Wire


The first step to safety wiring any item is drilling a hole for the wire to pass through. Due to corrosion issues I suggest only drilling stainless, titanium, or aluminum bolts. If those materials are not available I advise finding a pre-drilled bolt that was correctly treated post drilling. Regular bolts and nuts are pretty straight forward. You will need to secure them and drill the smallest hole that will allow your gauge wire to pass through them. While drilling you should use plenty of cutting fluid and go slowly. There are jigs available for this but I suggest you make your own vice jaws with small piece of soft wood and an extra bolt. Banjo bolts require a special procedure due to the fact they are hollow.

Drilling banjo bolt for safety wire


To drill a banjo bolt start by drilling a very shallow hole almost on one of the corners as show above in red. Next rotate the bolt 30 degrees and drill a slightly deeper hole as shown above in blue. Finally one more 30 degree turn. This time drill all the way through as shown above in chartreuse. Below is a finished bolt.

Banjo Bolt

In this example we will assume you want to wire two bolts and a banjo fitting together. First measure the distance between all the mounting points. No point should be more than 5″ apart and the total distance should be under 20″. In this example all 3 points are 3″ total. Take the total distance and multiply it by 3 to get the length of wire you need. So in our example I started with 9″ of wire. Start by threading the wire through first bolt and bending it back on itself in the middle as shown below.

Safety Wire


Using wire pliers twist the approximate distance to the next bolt together as shown in the next image. The number of twists you will need depends on the gauge of wire you are using. Usually the box the wire came in will be labeled. An easy way to count twists is to know how many twists each pull of your pliers makes. The set I use makes three twists per pull. Assuming I wanted 9 twists per inch and I had one inch to span, I would pull the handle 3 times. For two inches I would pull the handle 6 times.

Step 2


Now thread one of the wire leads through the next bolt. You will want to do this in a way as to make the wire want to tighten the bolt not loosen it. Now twist the next segment leading up to the third bolt.

Step 3


Now thread the wire through the last bolt and twist the remainder of your wire. About half an inch past the last bolt you can trim off the excess wire and bend the wire down on itself. The reason you pigtail the wire is to prevent stabbing yourself with it at a later time.

In addition to this guide there are several pictures and a movie to go along with it. These can be viewed at: http://volvospeed.com/Mods/safety_wire.html

http://www.volvospeed.com

Most people know about networking. Sometimes it appears that whom you know is more important than what you know! Some people want to know who knows you too! What do you think? Has this been your experience? What do you believe?

Networking has been around for a long time. It is a tactic used to go after new business, gain competitive advantage, “close deals” and get the sale! Sometimes, it can be a little superficial. Few people establish meaningful long-term relationships. Few people discover what lies under the business suit and what a person’s true passion is. Let’s be honest, the focus of networking is about you! It is all about you and not the other person!

There is a new concept gaining acceptance. It is called netweaving!

Netweaving is a new term created by Bob Littell who lives in the Atlanta metro area. netweaving is 180 degrees different from networking. With netweaving, the focus is on the other person. netweaving is seeking to help others and networking is seeking to sell to others. A Master NetWeaver listens first and looks to become a resource for other people! Bob believes that people are incomplete. Many people face challenges, have needs and problems to resolve.

Netweaving seeks to help others and not sell others! By simply asking, ” How can I help you”? Take notes about the people that you meet. You will be quite different from everybody else and your next networking event!

Commit to contacting them after the event. Meeting with them for coffee or lunch. Become a resource for them! First, seek to help them! Also, netweaving encourages people to build Trusted Resource Networks and send business to them. Check out Bob Littell’s website: www.netweaving.com and start netweaving today!

So should you drop networking and turn to netweaving?

Well, you can do both! Apply your networking skills to discover great opportunities. Use netweaving to make a difference with the people that you connect with at the event! Learn about netweaving! Study it! Become a disciple! If you love helping people, adopt this new philosophy. You will become a valuable resource for others and a hero for many! You will discover that people will be attracted to you and want to learn more about you! It will raise your stature in your community. You will stand out!

So, if you want to make a positive impact in your business community, become a Master NetWeaver! Teach someone else about the benefits of netweaving and pay it forward!

Kenneth D. Brown is President and CEO of E3 Capital Resources, LLC (E3C), a business development company that specializes in business success systems, leadership, sales, communication and technology. Ken is a passionate entrepreneur and coach. He embraces the servant leadership philosophy and serves as a catalyst for free enterprise, small business and economic development. Ken works with growth-oriented companies in technology, health care, manufacturing, financial and business services industries. E3C stands for Entrepreneurship, Empowerment, Evolution, Connect, Collaborate and Create…. as in greater opportunities for all entrepreneurs worldwide!

Check out the company website: http://www.smartadvantagecoaching.com Ken’s Business Community website: http://www.my-business-community.com and Ken’s Podcast: http://www.E3C.podOmatic.com

Are you trying to get out of the rut you are in financially? Perhaps you’re trying yet another diet to lose that stubborn 20-30 lbs. that will not budge. Or maybe you are wondering why your personal relationship keeps falling into the same pattern. You’ve tried everything to change, but nothing seems to ’stick’. You might see results for a few weeks, even months, but it won’t be long before you discover yourself back at the place you started. The problem is, you are relying on your will, and that simply will not bring lasting results.

You see, when you are using your willpower to make a change in your life, you are relying on the conscious part of your brain to maintain control. What scientists have discovered in the last decade or so is that the underlying part of the brain, or the nonconscious brain, accounts for over 96% of what we actually do. Your conscious brain exerts creative control, but your nonconscious brain is where the long-term results come from. Below is a comparison between the conscious and the nonconscious brain.

- The conscious brain makes up about 17 percent of total brain mass and controls just 2 to 4 percent of actual perceptions and behavior. The nonconscious brain makes up about 83 percent of total brain mass and controls 96 to 98 percent of perceptions and behavior.

- Conscious impulses travel at speeds of 120 to 140 MPH, while nonconscious impulses travel at more than 100,000 MPH!

- The conscious brain processes about 2,000 bits of information per second, while the nonconscious brain processes about 400,000,000,000 bit of information per second. Yes, you read that right: Four Hundred Billion.

- The conscious brain is volitional, meaning it is controlled by conscious will, it sets goals and judges the results. The nonconscious brain is servile, meaning it sets no goals of its own. It executes the goals it is provided with. It doesn’t judge the merits of results, only whether they match the given goals.

- The conscious brain perceives past and future, and the nonconscious brain has no concept of time. Everything is happening now as far as it is concerned.

- The conscious brain has a very short term memory span, about 20 seconds for most people. The nonconscious brain remembers everything it experiences, forever.

A good analogy for the relationship between the conscious and nonconscious mind is a thermostat in your home. The thermostat represents your nonconscious mind, and you walking around your home represents the conscious mind. Assume your thermostat is set to 80 degrees. You come home from work and realize it’s kind of warm in your house. So, you open the doors and windows to cool the place down. This works for a few minutes, until the thermostat registers a dip in the temperature, and the furnace kicks in to bring the temperature back up.

Realizing that didn’t work, you open up your refrigerator to cool your house off. Again, you manage to bring the temperature down a bit in your kitchen, but the thermostat soon registers the change and the furnace kicks in again. No matter what you do, the thermostat, which controls the temperature for the entire house, has a lot more control over the situation than you do. Unless, of course, you walk over and re-set the thermostat itself to a more comfortable 70 degrees.

If you’re thinking no one would be foolish enough to try to cool their house down this way when they could simply adjust the thermostat, this is exactly what people are doing everyday in their lives when they are trying to use their force of will to override what their nonconscious brain is set to. As you can see from the statistics above, this is a futile effort. The nonconscious brain trumps the conscious brain easily when it comes to achieving results.

For example, if your nonconscious brain is programmed to believe you are always in debt, then no matter what actions take place to change that in the short term, your nonconscious brain will work 24/7/365 to bring you back to that reality. Does your willpower work that consistently? Of course not. This is why many lottery winners end up bankrupt within a few years of winning their jackpot. they view themselves as poor, so that’s what the nonconscious brain makes happen. So, if you win the lottery, take the annual payments. You may blow the first few annual payments, but you’ll eventually view yourself as a wealthy person, and be much more likely to hold on to that wealth in the latter years.

If you want to change something significant in your life, whether it be money, health or relationships, you have to learn how to re-program your nonconscious mind, or your thermostat. You have to instill new beliefs, so that the nonconscious mind guides you to that new homeostasis. This process will be covered in an upcoming article.

Lane Romero-Reiss is an InterNetwork Marketing Consultant, helping network marketers build their prospect lists while getting into cash flow quickly. Lane utilizes step-by-step video tutorials and explanations that will provide value to even the most seasoned network marketers, but are simple enough that beginners will be able to follow along. He can show you how to fully monetize your lists by offering tremendous value through a guided training program.

The vital questions that you will want to ask before you hire a computer technician. Never let a novice technician near your network. You friend’s son can do much more harm then good. Network downtime translates into lost revenue.

1) How long have you been doing this?

Every week I run into a client who has been using a son, daughter, nephew or the like to manage their small business IT needs. The phrase “real good at computers” crops up in interviews with new clients all of the time. The reality is, being good at using computers is far different from knowing computers. An experienced technician can quickly identify software and hardware problems, and will either know the procedure for remedying the problem, or know where to find the answer.

2) Where else have you worked?

Experience is a vital prerequisite. Experience in setting up a simple peer-to-peer network for an aunt’s day care business does not necessarily translate to the kind of network experience required for a large enterprise. Experience is a must in the tech world. A good technician is always up to date on the current state of technology, and must possess a large “Bag of Tricks”. This bag includes litany of past experiences and contingencies that make up what we consider experience. A great example happened to me several months ago. Last December I got called into investigate the appearance of a bazaar biohazard looking background that appeared on the background of a PC. It was obviously a hijack of some sort. It took four hours and an assemblage of tools to repair. The good news, the next call a week later took a whole half hour to fix, because it was now in the “Bag of Tricks”.

3) What do you work on?

Many so called geeks will likely attest to knowledge in a wide array of computer areas. The reality is that the computer world is a vast expanse that contains hundreds of varied technologies. A person who is particularly skilled in the Windows XP operating system may know nothing about the Windows Server 2003 environment. They look alike, yes, but are indeed very different animals both in purpose and function. Let a PC man get his hands on a MAC, and wait for the blank stare. Visa versa holds true as well. The only difference is that a MAC guy would not be caught dead touching a PC, at least not in mixed company.

I had an experience some time ago with a company’s worst nightmare. The book-keeper’s husband was “really good” with computers and was contracted to provide network support for a small (6-10) PC network. He immediately installed a bunch of Windows 98 tools on an NT based server, at first slowing it to a crawl, and finally toasting the entire PERC-RAID controller, essentially killing their server. The upside is that I got called to ride in like the Calvary and fix the whole mess. My advice to him, don’t touch a server until you know what a server is.

Don’t ever let a novice technician anywhere near your network. Network downtime translates into lost revenue or productivity.

4) What degrees or certifications do you have?

The world of computers is ripe with certified and degreed technicians. Certification means you passed a test. A degree means that you passed all of the classes. Having the paper in hand does not guarantee experience. The level of knowledge needed to be a well rounded computer technician takes years of dedicated experience and training. I personally have two degrees, each taking years to complete, and half a dozen certifications from Microsoft. Where did I learn to implement a two city VPN with secure file and print sharing? I learned from experience. Where did I learn to effectively communicate to Ethel the part time receptionist, who first touched a computer last year, the proper way to save data to a file server? I learned from experience. The point being a good technician will bring knowledge, experience, and humanity to your home or workplace.

5) What is your company about?

A slick phone book ad or commercial does not tell you much about the company you hire, except that they paid for an advertisement. I have encountered dozens of companies who pay their sales staff twice what they pay their techs. This translated to high prices, low return, and poor service. I cannot count the times I have inherited a new client, often on referral, who is frustrated by the slick salesman who sent over “Skippy”, the new tech, to fix their system. Skippy showed up, looked all of twelve years old, and preceded to cause even more problems than there were to begin with. Why? No experience, no clue, and high costs. Be aware that “Skippy” is often paid eight to twelve dollars and hour out of the Seventy-five or Ninety you are paying. Who gets the rest and how concerned are they about the service you receive?

In my experience the best new clients are ones that come on referral. A referral – based client begins with a trust relationship already in place. The dialog goes like this. “Mike H. says you are the best computer guy ever, and that’s good enough for me”. The point here is to ask those people around you who they recommend. What was their experience with a particular company’s service?

6) What is your experience with our business or software?

A knowledgeable and conscientious tech will be the first to admit zero or limited knowledge of what you do. I met an architect once who told me “I can build you the nicest Pizza Hut on the planet, but I can’t tell you to make a pizza”. The same holds true for a technician. A good technician is skilled in a core set of principles that are inherent to all like computers and networks. Many businesses use a variety of proprietary software that is unique to their particular business. This type of software can take weeks or even years to master. A technician cannot possibly master the subtleties of all software in the client realm. Therefore it is critical to choose a technician who has mastered a strong set of troubleshooting skills, and understands the core principles of computer hardware. operating systems, and networking.

A Montana Native, Kelly McCann, MCSE, MS.Ed has been active in community development, education, and business in the Billings, Mt area for over 20 years.

For computer support in the Billings, Mt area go to http://www.McCann.bz

To answer your computer questions go to http://www.IamTHEgeek.com