k_nitin_r

Christmas trees help create the festive spirit. If you invite friends and family over to your home then a tree is definitely something you ought to have. If you head out to be with family during the holiday season then it is probably something that you could skip, but not entirely because you would be seeing a tree at wherever it is you will be spending the holiday. There are the instant Christmas trees that have all of the decoration on it when you unpack it - it's something you could consider if you don't want to have to set it up only to have to take it down after the holiday season ends. It isn't as much fun as decorating the Christmas tree yourself because that is part of the Christmas experience.

The circuit breakers that I previously had were earth leakage circuit breakers (ELCBs), which probably are not used in newer installations in some other parts of the world. I now have ground fault circuit breakers (GFCBs), which seem to trip when I use a specific section of a cooker unit. I am guessing that it probably does not serve the same purpose as the kind you are dealing with. Are you working with the arc fault circuit breakers (ARCBs)? I probably need to get an arc fault circuit breaker to prevent melting sockets from connecting appliances with two pin plugs to the three pin socket receptacles using an adapter; the adapters almost never have a stable electrical contact with the plug of the appliance and eventually melts with some charring. I believe the import of new two pin equipped devices is being restricted but that has done little to affect the sale of such devices.

@partha I would suggest you try the VPS services on Xisto/Xisto - they are just as good and will cost you much less (you can pay with MyCENTs). The cheapest VPS service that I used cost about three dollars per month and they ran for about two months before crashing the third month so there was an outage of three days in the third month. I didn't renew my subscription for the fourth month. On Xisto/Xisto, I didn't have any outages this whole year.

They say that when you want to work on the electricals when there are a bunch of other people around, pull out the fuse and carry it around in your pocket. It is highly unlikely that they would be carrying spare fuses of those sizes around, though they could swap fuses between circuits. You really had a lucky escape along with your buddies. I'm glad things turned out okay.

declan, Just an FYI, the last post on the thread (other than the spam post) is on July 2013, so do not be disappointed if you do not get a reply. We have a lot of members who join the forum and make an introduction post, but many do not choose to make Xisto their community of choice, instead preferring social networks such as FaceBook and Plurk.

Recently, all of the computers that I have purchased have recycled packaging and the packages are slimmer. About ten years ago, the boxes were at least twice as thick and the laptop and were packaged within a plastic bag held in place by plastic holders (probably because thermocol can get messy) and bubble wrap. Now, laptops simply have a plastic bag and something made of recycled paper to hold the laptop in place within a stiff cardboard outer box. It's minimal packaging because nobody really looks for a pretty box like they used to back in the day - the box is tossed out the day the warranty expires, or sometimes even on the day the laptop is placed into a laptop bag.

Mich, Private hospitals are businesses and so they can set their own prices. People who are willing to pay for the service will go to the hospital no matter what they charge. The widespread availability of healthcare insurance has only driven the prices at hospitals higher. It is understood that you would have insurance if you are walking into a hospital. If you do not have insurance, then you better have a really thick purse to lighten on your way out. Government-run hospitals are an alternative for those who cannot afford the prices set by private hospitals. These hospitals usually have poorer standards of cleanliness and the staff is usually rude. The government-run hospitals are essentially just places where you want to spend as little time as possible - all you want is to get your prescription or medications and head out as soon as you can. Privately run hospitals try to keep you in the hospital for longer with a pleasant environment, a cafe for refreshments, and additional services such as valet parking, gift shops, and a mini-mart. In some parts of the world, all hospitals are run by the government and you do not really have to shell out as much for medical services, though not everybody is happy with such an arrangement.

This year, some dentists' clinics have been doing the exact opposite of the giving-out-candy strategy that some dentists employ. These dentists take candy from the kids! No, I don't mean that they yank away the candy by distracting the kids. I mean they literally hand out cash, tooth brushes, and balloons in exchange for the candy that the kids turn in on Halloween. The dentists then send the candy to the military as a way of thanking them for risking their lives to protect those of others. The kids actually seem pretty excited to turn in a pound of candy for a dollar in cash despite candy being the most attractive bit about the celebration of Halloween. The dentists also hand out healthier goodies to the kids, promoting better dental health within their communities.

Apart from the incident in London involving the policemen making a false testimony about the group, there have been attempts to defraud them as well. When they tried to acquire land to build a temple, they made payment for the land but then the landowner refused to hand over the land. Attempts were made to portray them as some kind of organized crime cult as well and they didn't retaliate in any way. Think of them as Buddhist monks who spread the joy like people do during Christmas, except that for them every day is like Christmas because they are constantly engaged in religious service.

A lot of people have stumbled across this forum when searching for web hosting services. I had a rather slow database server provided by the previous web hosting service that I used and I did not have much database activity - it's from other customers using the shared hosting service. The service desk of the hosting provider simply stated, "Oh, I'm sorry. You are using a shared hosting service so you should not expect to get a timely response." That was just a plain rude remark from them, almost as though admitting that they offer their unusable shared web hosting package to just about any naive folk who fall for their marketing gimmick. There are lots of service providers that try to hook you in to using their service and then try to prevent you from moving away by holding on to the domain name that you have registered with them.

There are primarily two different kinds of photo editing software. One kind gives you pre-defined transformations that you can make to a photograph, such as red-eye removal, blurring and sharpening of the image, adjusting the brightness and contrast, and applying filters to turn the photograph into a black-and-white image or to apply a sepia filter to the picture. The other kind of photo editing software is actually full-fledged graphics editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Paintshop Pro and lets you use the whole set of drawing and editing tools to alter images. The former is easy to find - Google's Picasa lets you do a whole lot of transformations while making uploading of images easier too. For the latter, Adobe Photoshop is the best that is available while other alternatives are compromises.

Governments are always trying to keep guns away from their citizens. Keeping all the guns of the nation within the government does make it easier to counter attempts to overthrow the government by force, but such means can be cause for international intervention due to a violation of human rights. Giving guns to the citizens poses a different kind of problem - it takes away too much control from the government and could lead to regional factions that creates its own rules that the government would be required to play to. Having a democratic (elected; not the democrat party) government in control is probably what people need because they would at least have a legal system in place to keep the activities of the government in check.

A ticket for overgrown grass? Having grass is actually good for the environment and overgrown grass would help convert more of the carbon dioxide into oxygen. In India, they have penalties for houses that neither harvest rain water nor have any plants covering a certain percentage of the area of the residential land. However, the penalty is not enforced, which is surprising for a third-world nation that is known for corruption, especially after the high-profile cases involving the licensing of the 2G and 3G spectrums, and real estate involving international property developers. The eight inch tall grass is probably more of a concern in areas that are known for snakes and alligators. Having a broken down car sitting on blocks is only a concern if it is rusting and has leaking fluids. Leaking radiator fluid can be toxic to pets and other animals. Leaking engine oil, transmission fluid, or other lubricants can cause harm to the environment too. However, in many cases while the laws may have been created in good faith, the enforcement of the laws is simply a means to make money.

The statement, "We often provide the means of our own destruction," was mentioned in Civilization V in reference to eagles providing the feathers with which people create arrows to shoot down the eagles. Of course, in the case of the eagles, there is little that they can do because it is natural for them to grow and shed feathers. However, we as humans experiment out of curiosity, and mass-produce devices out of greed to commercialize on our findings. In Minority Report, a computer was able to determine the intentions of a human being and would arrest would-be criminals before the criminal act could be performed. This is probably similar to what we have today with the government monitoring messages posted on social networks, on the telephone network, and over the Internet in general. There is software available to determine the general mood of a particular city based on the Tweets of the individuals from that city. Similarly, the outcome of elections is determined through Tweets even before the votes have been cast. Of course, this assumes that people who post messages on Twitter or any other social network are actually the people who go out and cast their votes because often people choose not to vote because it is something that they have never done or because they do not wish to queue at a place several kilometres away for something that does not immediately benefit them in any way. Cruise control within cars is along the lines of the what we see in Knight Rider, but cruise control systems in some cars have malfunctioned and have put their owners in moving high speed death traps when the cruise control system develops a mind of its own and the owner sits helplessly in the driver's seat, holding on to the steering wheel for dear life. Following the incident in which the accelerator pedal was caught underneath the floor mat of a vehicle, Lexus has made it possible for the driver to override the accelerator pedal input by depressing the brake. Lexus is probably overdoing it though because you can no longer ask a passenger to change the audio track, change the GPS destination, or look up the phone number for a ringing call when the vehicle is moving - this is prompted several independent vehicle service centers to provide their quick-fix solutions to disable the safety features built in by Lexus and therefore we would not be able to rely on the manufacturer's safety systems after modifying the vehicle or buying a pre-owned second-hand vehicle that may have been modified. Even if you are buying a certified pre-owned vehicle, there is a chance that the safety system has not been checked and the vehicle was only tested for mechanical fitness.

Some parts of the world have a maximum retail price associated with just about any product that you buy over the counter. However, when a hospital charges you for something like Aspirins, the maximum retail price no longer applies because they are providing a service - they have somebody carrying the pills in a container or a plate along with a glass of water and they provide you with a combined bill for the service and the product. This is similar to when you go to a restaurant and they bring you a can of Coke and they insist on opening the can and pouring it into a glass - if all they did was place the can on your table, it would be the sale of a product, which is why they make it a point to ask you if they can open the can and pour the drink. However, what price they set on the combined product and service is their business decision so if they choose to make money off their patients, then that's just the way they do business. Legally, there is little that can be done unless the government includes regulations to limit the price that is set on the services bundled with products. Some hospitals charge a registration fee because as soon as you enter as a patient, they have you fill up a form and they maintain a file containing your information. One of the really expensive services that healthcare providers charge for is a magnetic resonance imaging scan. The price is apparently because the equipment costs quite a lot and they have to recover the costs from each time they charge for the use of the equipment. Again, the equipment is like an electronic device - its price cannot be regulated by government agencies just like they cannot regulate the price of the Apple iPhone. The manufacturer can set any price on the equipment and the hospitals have to pay for the equipment if they hope to offer services related to its use.

sheepdog, There are two different interpretations of the term train spotting. The first is wherein people stand at a watch point, probably a tall building or hill top with a view of the tracks, and keep track of what kind of train passed by and how many of them there are. Apparently, it is a British pastime. The other interpretation of train spotting is the use of drugs, usually heroin. Injecting heroin into the veins creates a darkening of the vein, similar to the tracks of a train and that is how it gets its name. People typically associate drug use with injections because it poses greater secondary risks, such as infections and uncontrolled bleeding if not performed correctly (although there's nothing 'correct' about injecting drugs to get high). In the past, meditation was an euphemism used to describe drug consumption too, often referring to LSD. The peddlers of drugs probably created the notion that meditation was the same as being high because meditation was considered a cool thing to do and most people had little idea of what meditation meant or felt like.

sheepdog, It's nice to hear about your recyclin of empty tea jars. I recall having a tin of a gourmet tea that I used as a piggybank. The golden shade of the tin never faded and the combination of black and golden seemed really grand and very bank-like. They had a picture on the tin from the old chivalrous times, though what it was, I can no longer remember. You really ought to consider moving out to a different part of the world where help is easier to find. There are lots of volunteers who travel around the world to help out in the country side for a week or two, and the policies of the United States in keeping people out surpasses that of just about every other nation.

sheepdog, You must be glad that you did not get a laptop instead of an all-in-one desktop because most laptops have only 4 USB ports, unless you add more with a USB hub or with a docking station. There are typically ports for connecting a monitor, television, or projector, and ports for external hard disk drives, both of which look a little like USB ports though you would probably be able to tell from a closer look at the port that they are different. Lenovo came up with a pretty interesting design in which they have one of the eSATA data storage disk ports to double up as a USB port in some of their laptops - you can hardly tell that a USB port can fit in there till you have read the documentation or have had somebody tell you. It makes you wonder why more manufacturers don't do it and why it isn't a part of the eSATA standard. Then, there is the matter of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports - why would the manufacturers provide USB 2.0 ports when they could have it completely loaded with USB 3.0 ports? It's probably a cost saving design thing, but it cannot possibly cost that much more for after all, it is just a few USB ports. Often, the provision for additional monitors is because the ports are different. There's the HDMI port, the VGA more, a DVI port, so if you had three different kinds of monitors, you could use them all at once through each of the different ports. Then, there are also monitors that work through the USB port, so there's that too. If you have a set of eight USB ports, you can use them all up to connect eight additional monitors.

partha, Good to have you come onboard and be a part of the Xisto community. This is the time when we are actually in need of new members to add to the discussion so you have picked an opportune moment to sign up. Right now, we have sheepdog, demonboy, and myself who are pretty active on the forum. sheepdog can share with you quite a bit about puppies, having had several of them at home, apart from raising flowers. Sounds like the perfect life? Wait till you hear about the dark side from sheepdog. demonboy has quite a lot of insightful things to say about just about any topic and, hailing from Ireland, can tell you quite a bit about leprechauns, their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that a lot of people are in pursuit of, the legend of the Isle of Man, and the works of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. I hang out around the forums sharing *BLEEP*-bits of whatever I can and but anything and everything I say pales in comparison to anything that you hear (or, rather, read, unless you have a talking computer) from sheepdog and demonboy. Opaque runs the forum and you will see him post to the forum every once in a while to get the conversation going. Do read the rules of the forum, which involves navigating to a yonder thread that will tell you a lot of things but would tell you not to copy-paste content directly off the Internet, like your college professors would tell you time and again, and be nice with the gentle folk and gentle with the nice folk of the forum. I look forward to seeing more posts from you on the forums, and if you have any questions do feel free to ask.

If you are looking at cashing in your skills and experience, you ought to take up game development. A few years ago, it was the coolest thing to do - build an app, release it on the App Store and the Play Store, of course after paying a fee to Apple and Google, and then keep marketing and promoting your app like crazy. Now, perhaps, it is less of a craze but an opportunity still exists because Internet Service Providers are a whole lot cheaper for mobile broadband Internet access. For consulting, the time has passed because people are more likely to hire someone who they can meet physically unless it is a really small low-paying gig or something that involves specialty skills that are in low supply. For instance, I cannot imagine someone looking to hire an IBM Maximo consultant online to help with enterprise asset management. However, it is common to find a consultant to help with setting up the Apache web server or developing a PHP application.

Video games are definitely involve a lot of art. When you receive a computer game within a package, the graphics on the box are art. The advertising on banners and on television are art. The cutscenes, which are movie clips, are art. Sounds, music, and singing are included in computer games too. Adventure games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle are largely dependent on the dialogue-writing and story-writing, which are forms of art. There are just so many different kinds of art involved in making and selling computer games that it seems like it is just the perfect thing to do for an art graduate. Computer science majors are living the experience too, as computer game developers, and work the magic behind the scenes.

Hospitals have a tendency to resort to fraudulent means as they seek to post higher profits. It's common all across the world and they may bill you for equipment that was never used, which is what I received once, medications that they never supplied, as you have observed, or even consulting that was never provided. Often, they prescribe things that aren't needed, although you can't blame them when they are simply covering themselves legally.

The political correctness is a way to get the younger generation to be more sensitive to other people around them. It probably hopes to makes them less aggressive, something that has been the result of trends that have built upon each other to make it 'cool' to be a gangster. Turning up in school with a hand gun or a rifle and shooting everybody around seems to give kids these days a high and a feeling of accomplishment. The push for political correctness is a psychological way to get people thinking about kindness, sensitivity, and handling situations without resorting to aggressiveness. Political correctness can get taken a bit too far when politicians use them in speeches to further their agenda. Also, overdoing it can turn people off when they go as far as getting people to change their names because of what it means in a different language. Good luck trying to sell that idea - a simple name change can require tons of documentation and weeks of paper work processing and there aren't many who would be willing to go all the way just to change one's name.

It would help if you could post the model number of your laptop too. The Dell XPS 13 designation simply states that your laptop is from Dell's XPS product line and has a thirteen inch display screen. The XPS product line is for performance systems so you would likely have a rather responsive system to work with.