Matthew Keegan asked:
Chevy’s flagship car, the Impala, finally has the power to match its heralded name. Ever since the car was redesigned in the late 1990s, the Impala has been more of a pretender than a performer. Now with an optional small block 5.3L V8 added to the mix, the 2006 Chevrolet Impala can go toe to toe with the Chrysler 300 and the Dodge Charger. The changes for the Impala are not all under the hood, Chevy took the time to redo the entire car and they did it with care. Let’s look at some of the changes for 2006.
More Power – A V6 is a great engine, especially in these times of high gas prices. Still, if you opt for a car of the Impala’s size, at least having the option of purchasing a V8 makes sense, doesn’t it? You better believe it. GM has sweetened the deal by plunking in a V8 that incorporates Corvette technology as the engine heads with “their pent–roof combustion chambers and flat–top pistons deliver high horsepower”, this according to Chevrolet’s promotional material. In addition, GM’s “displacement on demand” technology allows the V8 to squeeze out a miserly 28 mpg on the highway [18 mpg city] with computer equipment that shuts down unneeded cylinders at the appropriate time. Cadillac tried this in the early 1980s with its V8-6-4 engine that failed to live up to the job as computing technology then wasn’t what it is today. Fortunately, current GM technology makes this a reality for current models.
Better Looks – When it comes to “looks” beauty is subjective. Yet, previous Impala models had a bit of a pedestrian look to them. In the highly competitive large sedan category, this can easily mean lost sales as the choices for similarly priced, but more aggressive looking cars is strong. All new sheetmetal, a more assertive nose – similar to the Cobalt’s – and updated headlights and tail lights gives the Impala a fresh and assertive look.
More Models – 6 in fact. The return of the “SS” as the signature model should help sales. SS, or “Super Sport” is a term that was originally used for the 1961 Impala and by the mid 60s came to represent each of the performance models in the fleet. The Chevelle, Nova, and Camaro all had that designation then while the Impala, Cobalt, Malibu, and TrailBlazer wear it today.
Improved Interior – If you are going to change the skin and what is found under the hood, you might as well dress up the interior, right? The LTZ model – who the heck knows what that stands for – has heated front bucket seats trimmed in leather. Throw in 8 way power and lumbar support for the driver and you are talking top of the line comfort. On select models new “flip and fold” rear seating is available; side curtain air bags for the front seat is standard on all Impalas; and keyless entry, power windows, tilt wheel, OnStar, cruise control, and a host of other features all come standard on the Impala.
Prices start in the low 20s {US} and climb to nearly 30K {US} for fully loaded SS models. How the SS sells remains to be seen, but its bold, fresh look will certainly appeal to those who previously dismissed the Impala.
Craig Whalen asked:
Don’t underestimate the importance of being a part of a team. We as human beings are designed as relational beings. We’re not meant to go through this life on our own; and in every area of our lives we’ll find ourselves thinking, acting, and living like those we choose to surround ourselves with. In every area of life, we need to make sure that we surround ourselves with people who are going where we want to go.
Whether it’s in your family, in your business or your job, in your social relationships, or in your spiritual life, you need to be teamed up with like-minded people who are going in the same direction that you want to go. If you’re constantly associating and relating with people who are negative, you’ll become negative. If you’re surrounding yourself with those who complain about the way things are, the economy, their circumstances, their rotten boss, etc…you’ll find yourself complaining about everything, too.
On the other hand, if you have a mind to continually look for ways to improve yourself, your home life, your career, your spiritual life, your business, and you surround yourselves with like-minded motivated people who also are actively improving their circumstances, you’ll find yourself encouraged and motivated to reach your potential as well.
Look to the goose for direction.
Geese, as most of you know, are migratory birds. They fly north during the summer months and fly south to escape the cold in winter months. They fly for thousands of miles each season and, without being part of a team that’s all headed in the same direction, they’d never be able to make the journey alone. I’m sure you’ve seen a flock of geese in flight. They travel in that V-formation with one leader out in front and the rest of the flock following in formation behind. The reason for this formation is that the flapping of the wings of each bird causes an updraft that helps the bird behind fly with less effort. It’s like drafting behind a semi on the interstate to save gas or a racecar driver using the draft from the car ahead to effortlessly slingshot past. When the lead bird gets tired he falls to the back of the flock so that he may regain his strength and another, more rested, goose takes his place at the head of the formation. Sharing the workload in a combined effort helps the flock to travel hundreds of miles without stopping. Additionally, if one of the geese is sick or injured and drops out of the formation, two healthy geese accompany the injured bird to the ground to aid in his recovery and keep him safe. Now that’s a model of teamwork we all need to embrace.
T.E.A.M.
Together
Everyone
Achieves
More
Apply this team philosophy to each area of your life in which you want to grow. If you want to start a business, hang out with successful business owners. If you want to learn to speak in front of a group of people, hang out with active public speakers. If you want to be a millionaire, hang out with millionaires! It’s our nature. You will become like those you spend most of your time with, so choose your relationships wisely.
Amber S Smith asked:
Laptops nowadays aren’t just about size anymore. Manufacturers are continuously churning out new laptops with better and higher specifications, so much so that a new laptop right now could be outdated and outperformed by the new models in six months. If you want to improve your laptop’s performance and keep it a little farther away from obsolescence, you should seriously consider buying more laptop memory.
What’s So Special About It?
You’ve probably heard about random access memory (RAM) before. It’s one of the specifications that manufacturers and retailers use to measure up laptop units against one another. If you’ve ever modified or upgraded a desktop computer before, then you’ve definitely seen how RAM modules look like. They’re the long green strips of chips that are held in position by clamps on the motherboard.
Memory for laptops, however, is very different. RAM modules for laptops are considerably smaller than their desktop counterparts for the simple reason that laptops are smaller. Laptop RAM modules are designed not only to fit in the smaller chassis but also to consume less energy. That’s why laptop memory is often very expensive. You’re paying for regular performance squeezed into a much smaller component.
Despite the difference in size, RAM in laptops performs the same functions that it does in a desktop computer. Your computer uses RAM to temporarily hold bits of data while your processor is performing calculations. The more RAM you have, the more bits of data your computer can handle simultaneously. That’s the simple explanation why there’s a considerable boost in performance when you add RAM to any computer.
When Should You Get More?
There are some situations that really call for you to buy more memory for your laptop. If, for example, you’ve got a computer that performs sluggishly despite having an adequately fast processor, the problem might lie with the memory (or lack thereof). Installing new or updated software could also require you to add more memory to your laptop.
Most computer users agree that there’s no such thing as ‘too much’ when it comes to RAM on laptops. Although as little as 256MB of RAM will get you by on a basic, no-frills laptop, even that kind of unit will have average to poor performance in terms of speed. High amounts of RAM are nothing short of necessary on laptops running newer operating systems like Windows Vista, where even 1GB of RAM is often not enough.
Before you go to the electronics store and clean out their RAM section, though, it’s a good idea to take a look at your laptop’s user manual first. All laptops have a certain limitation with the amount of RAM that each one can handle. Older models can usually hold up to 2GB, while the latest ones can hold up to 4GB. It’d be an awful waste if you were to buy more RAM, only to find out that your laptop couldn’t handle the addition.
Getting more memory for your laptop isn’t cheap. Buying SODIMM - the size specification for laptop memory - can set you back as much as $120. In most cases, though, the boost in speed and improved performance are well worth the cost.
Peter Murphy asked:
A fact of interpersonal relationships is: before others will like you, or even begin to like you, you must like yourself. We can actually call this fact the “Golden Rule” of interpersonal relationships. If you don’t like yourself it becomes difficult for others to like you and, because of this fact, quality relationships with those around you can become more difficult to maintain whenever you find yourself not liking yourself.
When you don’t like yourself it shows in your verbal language, body language and other behaviors. In all interpersonal communications, whether good or bad, the language you use to talk, your body posturing, along with other behaviors have a strong influence upon new and existing relationships, each and every one of them. Your behaviors, including both verbal and non-verbal communication, speak volumes about how much you like yourself.
Liking yourself should be a natural act for everyone. Unfortunately it’s not. Liking yourself is a learning process that starts from infancy. As a growing child, the more people like you, specifically those close to you, the more you develop a liking within you for yourself. From this point of reference you learn, through the experience of numerous interactions and many life events, what liking is and what it means to you. What should be obvious here is that you learn to like yourself.
With this concept in mind it should make logical sense that you can like yourself more, after all liking yourself is a learning process, as we have seen. However, liking yourself more means getting to know yourself more. This requires some introspection on your part, a looking inward within yourself, and we all need to do this if we want others to like you more.
Many of us have things about ourselves we don’t like and most of us have more than one thing or behavior about ourselves we don’t like. Perhaps it’s the language we use to talk with or how nervous we get when first meeting someone. Maybe it’s how we behave when someone points out a fault of ours. The good news is that you can change your attitude about practically anything you don’t like about yourself by paying attention to it and becoming aware of it.
It’s important to note that the attitude you take about yourself can fuel the degree of liking you have for yourself. If you consistently have a negative attitude about yourself and your future youwill become even more negative through time and therefore may find yourself disliking yourself even more. If, on the other hand, you take a positive attitude about yourself, an attitude that facilitates your liking for yourself, as often as possible, you can develop a deeper liking for yourself.
When you pay attention to something you don’t like about yourself you have choices to make in what to do about your findings. The choices are: change it, accept it, or ignore it. The choice is always yours. However, ignoring it will certainly bring you back to facing it again sometime in your future, whereas changing it or accepting it can bring you to a point of liking yourself more, which in turn will influence others to like you more because they will see what you see in yourself. Also, you will be a happy and cheerful person to be around, which will attract people to your company.
Any time you engage in the evaluation, change, and or acceptance of those things you don’t like about yourself you are making an investment into liking yourself more. This investment, much like the interest acquired from a savings bank account, is accumulative. The more you find to like in yourself the more you will like yourself, and when people see that you like yourself more they can’t help but to like you more.
Steven Gillman asked:
I know about weird jobs, having been a “skip-tracer” (one who tracks people down - in this case to serve subpoenas), a repo man, and a newspaper ad-inserter. I have even had a few unusual business endeavors, including selling stuffed animals in jars (”Canned Critters” - they never did catch on), and earrings made form fish scales (those did better). Here are some weird ways to make money that I haven’t tried - and hopefully never will.
Elephant Tender
This job involves taking care of the elephants for a circus or zoo. Mostly that means a whole lot of shoveling of large piles of - well, you get the point. Apart from being a dirty job, it can be dangerous too.
Political Writing Business
Did you think politicians write their own pamphlets and other campaign materials? Come on - they hardly think their own thoughts. One writer says she charged $25 to $35 per hour for writing for politicians.
Hot Walker
A hot walker is the person that walks the racehorses around after a race. This is important, because if a horse doesn’t cool down before returning to the stall, the overheating can cause kidney damage.
Weird Restoration Business
Old merry-go-rounds need to be restored if they are not thrown away. Someone has to do it, and undoubtedly gets paid fairly for this specialized field.
Translator Of Technical Manuals
What do you do when you want to translate that technical manual or users guide for the VCR from Japanese to English? Call someone who does this work. Tedious, but the pay is okay.
Bird **** Jewelry
No, I’m not making this up. There really was (is?) a man who had a business selling bird-poop jewelry. He encased the various types in acrylic, and made them into pendants and earrings.
An Awful And Weird Job
I recently read about a woman who worked as an assembler of hypodermic needles. Her job was to attach the needles to the syringes. She was paid by the piece, and made less than $6 one shift, due to all the time spent tending to her wounds.
Maybe you don’t want to ever be a sumo-wrestler’s assistant, or for that matter a proctologist, or have any of the weird jobs listed here. But they are fun to read about.