The Content Composer Org

Hate opening the post? Dread receiving the bill and Bank Statements? Sounds like your finances are becoming a problem.

The ostrich solution never works when it comes to debts – they just don’t go away that easily. Take a tip – there’s never a better time like the present to tackle a debt problem – as soon as piling bills give you a knotted feeling in your stomach, face up to the problem.

Here’s some practical advice.

Make savings on your credit card bills.

Savings should be easy to come by. You just need to make cold calculating use of the special deals that many of the credit cards are offering.

Savings can be found by moving your balances to credit cards with lower interest rates and special introductory offers. For example, take advantage of the 0% deals on balance transfers such as that offered by Mint – they’ll give you 10 months interest free but there’s a 2% balance transfer charge. Marks and Spencer have the best transfer free 0% introductory offer. Their 0% deal lasts 6 months.

And ensure the interest you pay on any new purchases is reasonable – better still, since you’re now cutting back hard, don’t use your card at all! However, if it’s not practical to avoid using you card, then try HSBC. They offer 0% for 9 months on balance transfers and new purchase – but they also levy a 2% balance transfer charge.

The credit card companies may call you a “rate tart” and hate you for switching around but be hard nosed and regularly move your balances between cards to take full advantage of their introductory offers. Then, when you’re a month off the end of a deal, look for a new card and get the balance transferred.

Reduce your monthly expenditure with a Debt Consolidation Loan.

The purpose of a Debt Consolidation Loan is to reduce your monthly outgoings. You take all your existing loans and credit card balances and roll them together into one loan that gives you a single and lower monthly payment. The lower repayment is realised by reducing the overall rate of interest you pay and spreading the loan repayments over a longer period of time.

But as with everything, there are snags to watch out for. After you’ve rolled up all your existing loans into the Debt Consolidation Loan, don’t start reusing the old credit lines you’ve just paid off. If you do, you’ll simply end up digging yourself into a deeper hole and make your position much worse!

And there’s another aspect you might be forced to consider. If you’re a homeowner looking for a fairly big consolidation loan, the lender may want your debt secured against your home. If this happens, think carefully before signing. Remember, if you fail to sustain the agreed repayments, the lender can apply to the courts and force you to sell your house. That would certainly be bad news!

Seek help.

There’s lots of help available to assist people resolve their debt problem. A good starting point is the Citizens Advice Bureau. They’re local with 3,200 branches throughout the UK and are there to help.

Then there’s the Consumer Credit Counselling Service. Through its free national telephone service and eight centres, the Service is able to help people with debt problems throughout the UK . Their specialist skills have already helped thousands of people by providing counselling on personal budgeting, advice on the prudent use of credit and, where appropriate, managing plans to repay debts. You’ll find their web site at www.cccs.co.uk or phone them on 0800 138 1111.

There’s also the National Debtline. This is a confidential, free and totally independent source of debt advice. Visit their web site at www.nationaldebtline.co.uk . On their site you’ll find a free information pack with a personal budget section, debt advice and free fact sheets. Alternatively, phone them on 0808 808 4000.

Debt Management Plans.

If your debts exceed £5,000 and are spread across three or more creditors, a debt management plan might be for you. But you’ll need to be able to allocate at least £100 per month to help repay the debts.

Basically under a Debt Management Plan, you agree to pay off your creditors with a single fixed amount each month. A debt management company then receives this sum and allocates the money between your creditors. In return, your creditors have to agree to freeze the sum you owe so no more interest or charges pile up.

Some debt management companies charge a fee for their service but others, including the National Debtline and Consumer Credit Counselling Service, are paid by your creditors.

IVA.

An Individual Voluntary Arrangement, commonly shortened to IVA, is a formal agreement made through a county court and can cost several thousand pounds to set up. It pays off your debts and in return for your creditors agreeing to write off a percentage of your debts, you pay an agreed monthly sum. The agreement lasts for between 3 and 5 years with periodic reviews to identify whether you can afford to pay off more each month. Lump sum payments can also be made and this will shorten the period you are in the IVA.

But an IVA’s might not be for you. They’re best suited to people who have a reasonably high level of income or a lump sum to contribute. And if you fail to meet the agreed monthly payments, you can quickly be made bankrupt. A specialist Insolvency Practitioner would handle all the negotiations with your creditors regarding the value of your debt to be written off and also administer the process of repaying them.

Bankruptcy.

This must be the very last step but one which more people are opting for -bankruptcies have increased by a third during the last twelve months.

With a bankruptcy all your assets, including your home, may be sold to repay your creditors. Then after a year, all your debts are totally written off and you’re free to rebuild your financial life.

But records of your bankruptcy will remain on your credit history for seven years. These are the records kept by the big credit agencies such as Experian and Equifax and they are referred to by all the banks and lending organisations. Bankruptcy will decimate your credit rating and for the first year or two, make it very difficult to obtain a mortgage or any other form of credit. Nevertheless it will give you a clean slate to rebuild from.

Scrouge Online specialise in providing access to Life Insurance, Mortgages and Personal Loans along with a comprehensive product information bank.

DBxtra is a powerful query and reporting tool that hides many of the complexity and technical expertise required for creating connections to disperse data sources, building queries, designing reports, and delivery information throughout an enterprise or to your customer base.

With the ability to connect to multiple databases or data sources at the same time, DBxtra allows for cross platform data aggregation and the ability to answer questions that would typically take IT time to migrate data into a single reporting database. Through powerful query and filtering mechanisms users have the ability to browse and achieve fine grained retrieval of data to answer detailed business questions.

DBxtra uses a project level approach and Explorer type tree structure to categorize database and DBxtra objects that facilitates the production queries and reports. This explorer tree structure drastically improves the reusability of objects, speed in access to information, and reduces the man-hours required to design and produce subsequent reports.

The production of reports can be produced in a variety of formats including HTML, Microsoft Excel, CSV, XML, or PDF with the option to be merged into personalized E-mails. Also available is a visual report designer where your choice of formatting options can be employed to produce just the right look for your report.

DBxtra comes very close to their goal of “no programming or database knowledge required”. All the while creating a new breed of power end-users.

Getting familiar with DBxtra

How a product “feels” is always a big concern when delivering a product that will actually improve the productivity of end users and reduce the burden on IT. I personally like to try a product without reading the documentation. While I have years of experience as a DBA, analyst, developer, and data modeler I honestly try to block all that information out of my mind to “feel” what it would be like to operate under limited expectations. The only mind-block I needed to get over was double clicking on objects to activate their usage. Honestly if I would have read the help on the top and bottom of the screens this could have been eliminated.

DBxtra has a very nice step by step approach, almost like an Install Shield approach, that drives you through creation of queries and reports. Once getting use to clicking through this stepwise approach I was building queries and reports quicker than I could think of examples to model. All of which I didn’t need to know anything about data models other than identification of which database my tables where. The only database modeling concepts that end users need to understand are tables, columns, joins, filters, sorting, and aggregate functions. All of which are very teachable and most end users understand a large subset of these concepts.

DBxtra comes with a load of documentation including tutorials and video streams. All of which are very helpful and will walk you through the major features of this product. I watched all the tutorial videos and picked up some valuable hints on how to use the product. It is very unusual for vendors to go to this length to educate their end users. I read this as a true commitment on the vendor’s side to make sure you are able to use the product and it not to become shelf-ware. Very admirable!

Another training aid is the shipment of a sample data source, with queries, reports, and schedules. This allows you to quickly dive into the product and get a good feel for the product without ever touching your data sources. Of course you will eventually want to produce some queries and reports against your databases as there is nothing better for determining the effectiveness and usefulness than seeing your own data.

Corporate Profile
Quanticus S.A. de C.V. is a software developer located in Querétaro, México.
We have more then 10 years experience in developing database software tools and ERP software for the small and medium sized company.
Our staff includes 4 administrative, 8 sales, 6 support and 12 developers people.
The company was established about 4 years ago.
The product DBxtra was released November 2004.
Morelos 166B
Col. Centro
Querétaro, Qro. C.P. 76000
México
Tel.: +52 (442) 215 44 96
USA: (201) 399 22 18

Problems Solved

Can your end users get to the data they need? How often do they need to wait for a developer to provide assistance in the extraction of vital information? It does not matter if you are part of the executive team or an end user. Often times when you want to get to information from a database or restricted system you need to request work to be done on your behalf. You are at the mercy of your IT staff and in particular developers, data analysts, data administrators.

With DBxtra end users are liberated from the ever-increasing queue that is experienced every time they need IT staff to produce reports or extract data. DBxtra allows users to access multiple data sources in disperse database systems and pull information from these sources in a systematic pint and click fashion. The ease in which it is to produce reports, and more importantly alter reports when business rules change, will have a drastic impact and increased productivity for your end users while also reducing the burden on IT.

Since DBxtra can connect to most any database or data source, you can provide a tool the is truly cross-platform independent. This actually reduces the toolset required, provides a single access point to data, and reduces training requirements.

Who should use it

Anyone who wants to produce quality reports or just query data in an ad hoc manor can benefit from DBxtra. With a powerful toolset DBxtra assists end users as well as the IT staff. in the categorization and processes around defining where information is, how it is retrieved, and who needs the information. Developers, analysts, and DBAs will benefit from this tool as they interrogate data across multiple systems.

Working with DBxtra

Below is presented with my experiences working with the DBxtra product. While the demos and tutorials take you through many of the feature set it is highly recommended you use the product to see how it works in your environment.

When you first start up DBxtra you are prompted to accept the license agreement and then need to create a DBxtra database for housing reports. Within the directory you supply to house the DBxtra database a new directory will be created along with a .mdb (Microsoft database) file. While using DBxtra additional directories and files may be created in this directory. I was then prompted to create an administrator password for the Microsoft database and then required to login. These few setup procedures and only need to be done once and were not time intensive.

All work is done through projects and you will need to create one before producing any report or querying any data. After you have defined a project you can define the connections to databases and add database objects to use within the newly created project. I was very happy to experience an error free mechanism for creating connections to Oracle, SQL Server, and Microsoft Excel.

After defining a project and adding database objects to it you are then put into the Data Explorer. The Data Explorer is the heart of the organizational system for DBxtra where you access and place objects such as database objects, reports, and queries. Data Explorer is a tree structure that, as you get familiar with the toolset, allows for easy retrieval and quick access to previously defined objects. At this point it is a nice place to click the “Show Data” option and prove to yourself the ease at which DBxtra can extract information from different data sources. You may also at this point get familiar with one of the more powerful filtering mechanism through the “Show field values” option. With this feature you can extract values for an object that can be used in equality matches on columns. Just click the “Show field values” box, select a field for the equality operation, and magically you can use the drop down list and assign a value for the equality. Powerful and very user-friendly. Now just hit the “Show Data” button to return the filtered result set.

Query Builder allows for the definition and saving of queries within the Data Explorer tree structure. Defining a query is accomplished through naming the query, selecting data sources, selecting objects for the query, building relationship and filters where necessary, and then possibly sorting the data. As you use DBxtra you will soon notice that tabs across the top of the screens present the order in which you should follow. It is an easy approach to define the object or procedure you are building and very intuitive at the same time. I personally like things that have a definite flow and DBxtra provides that for me.

Building reports where again just as easy. Just follow the script presented in the tabs on the screen. Reports have the ability to be exported to text, XML, PDF, Microsoft Excel, and HTML. A unique feature of the DBxtra is to export the report to a Microsoft Excel pivot table and chart where the Excel spreadsheet is pre-built with a constant connection to the data sources. Whenever the database is updated and the user of the Excel report presses the refresh button the data in the spreadsheet is also updated.

Other options that I did not try were the E-mailing and scheduling of reports. I did watch the demos and looked at the screens. Again the common thread of the step by step tabular approach existed in these options and thus presented no surprises. An interesting feature was the ability to write a simple e-mail merge operation that allows for the sending of a report in an email while tailoring the e-mail on merge fields for personalization.

Hardware / Software Requirements

• Processor 600Mhz
• 128 MB RAM
• 25 MB available space on hard disk drive
• Microsoft Windows 98 SE or later
• Microsoft Excel 97 & Outlook 97 for higher level features

Download and Installation

You can get a free 15 day trial off DBxta’s web site at http://www.DBxtra.com/DBxtra/registro.asp

If you would like to keep in touch with DBxtra and receive some free support and other valuable information about using the product while you are in trial then you should give them your name. But name registration is not required for the free trial. As an interesting feature to the download, if you decide to not purchase by the end of the trial the product deprecates itself from the Professional Edition into the Free Edition. I have never seen this before and like the concept because you don’t need to worry about removing the product. Plus at the end of the trial you still have a product that is usable. The download and installation went very swiftly with a clean and very few clicks to install the software.

License

There are three distinct products for DBxtra that include a standard, professional, and report viewer. After a trial period of 15 days the product deprecates to a free version. Pricing is currently available for a single concurrent user and you are given price breaks as the number of concurrent users increase. This ranges from around 25%-33% depending on how many licenses you buy. Also to note is that the license is for concurrent users and not for installed copies of DBxtra. This means that you can install everywhere and use where you like. The pricing is very reasonable in my opinion and depending on the number of licenses you purchase you can put the power of data extraction into end users for less than $150 USD. Support is free as are upgrades for year 2005.

Rudolf Vanek

See more information: http://www.dbxtra.com

Weightlifting is a sport with a long history. It was part of the first Olympic games held in 1896 and it is the only Olympic sport in which competitors use heavy weights. With time passing, weightlifting has developed into a body building technique as well. In fitness, weightlifting is also called weight training and is more popular with men than women.

Weightlifting in Competition

Weightlifting is a sport in which competitors are supposed to lift heavy weights. The sport is practised by both men and women. Weights are placed on steel barbells and they differ in color and heaviness.

There are two versions of weightlifting: the snatch, where competitors have to lift the barbell above their head in one single move, and the clean and jerk, where they first lift it up to their neck and then above their head. In both types of weightlifting, competitors have to keep the barbell above their head for a few seconds, while keeping their arms and legs still.

Weightlifters compete in eight series, depending on their body weight. There are three judges to decide whether the lift is successful or not. If a judge thinks it is successful, he shines a white light; if not, he shines a red light. If there are two white lights shining, the lift is considered a success. Prizes are usually given to competitors who have lifted the heaviest weight in snatch, clean and jerk and the two combined.

Weightlifting in Fitness

It was Hippocrates who first explained the principle of developing your muscles by weight training, when he said that what is used grows and what is not wastes away. Millions of men dreaming to develop their muscles are using weightlifting as a body building technique. If performed properly, weightlifting can provide important benefits to an individual’s health and well-being.

In fitness, weightlifting often involves lifting gradually increasing amounts of weight. This technique uses a wide variety of equipment to target different muscle groups. Some fitness trainers have adapted it to provide the positive effects of aerobic exercise. Weightlifting is part of the training program of many sportsmen.

As a muscle developing technique, weightlifting is based on the principle of gradual overload. Those who practice it overload their muscles by trying to lift at least as much weight as they are physically capable of. This way, the muscles respond by becoming larger and stronger. The procedure is repeated with heavier weights as the muscles strengthen. If not supervised, weightlifting can be quite risky, especially for beginners.

Generally, each exercise is repeated until the moment of muscular failure. Contrary to general belief, this is not the moment when the individual think he can no longer continue, but the first lift that fails because of inadequate muscle strength. While some fitness trainers agree with this principle, others claim that it leads to overtraining and that training to failure is suitable only for the last set of exercising.

Weightlifting can be a very effective work-out technique. You get to choose your exercises and the weights are adjusted to exhaust each muscle group after a certain number of repetitions. Moreover, unlike other exercises, weightlifting has a very high precision level, as the practitioner knows exactly when to stop.

Weightlifting has many other benefits. Both men and women can use it to improve their physical attractiveness. Men achieve this by growing their muscles, while women develop a firm, toned body. It also helps metabolism and increases fat loss. An interesting side effect of intense exercising is the rising level of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, which help with improving mood and overcoming depression. However, for some people, this can turn into almost an addiction, feeling an intense need to work out whenever they are in a bad mood.

See http://www.weightliftingnews.com for all the latest news and resources about weightlifting

It is time to teach you a bit about the greatest power a human possesses: that is the power of thought. You think your own reality!

When you think about something, thought waves escape from your brain. These waves are similar to those of a transmitter and these waves travel through space and cause a reaction on the universe.

Scientists have already begun to experiment with the power of thought, I read on another web site that an experiment with crystals was made, and it was proven that human thought affected the growth of those crystals.

You must know that just as we have a mind, the entire Universe also has one. The human mind and the cosmic mind exist. The earth is condensed mind. The entire Universe is condensed mind. The waves of the universal mind saturate the infinite space. The very fabric of existence is thought.

The first thing that an architect who designs a house does is to create the project in thought, then he/she projects it on paper as a drawing, lastly the house crystallizes. Thus, everything, every building first existed in the mind. Nothing can exist in the physical or material world in which we live without first having existed in the world of the mind.

It is becoming necessary to for all people to learn how to concentrate and project thoughts with precision. To learn to concentrate, that is to fix your attention on a single thing. When you fix your attention on a task, when you concentrate on that task, you can be certain that your brain emits powerful thought waves that will effect the very substance of the universe.

It is important for you to truly concentrate. To shut out other thoughts that are capable of distracting you. You should learn how to concentrate your mind. You believe that you want to succeed in life and have health, money and love. Most people do. Reflect a little, learn how to handle the force of thought. When you learn how to handle the power of thought you can then proceed to success with certainty. Just as the arrow guided by the hand of the expert archer reaches its target.

Remember that the world is a product of thought. You are what you are because of the thoughts you have had. You can totally change yourself by making use of the power of thought. Each person projects into the world of the cosmic mind what he/she is and what he or she wants to be. The projection of the mind crystallizes the physical and then we have a life that is rich or miserable, happy or wretched. Everything depends on the type of mental projections that we have crystallized.

If the thoughts have been done with sufficient concentration, followed up with actions, the result will be success. Try it today, think of only one thing that you desire, let no other thoughts interfere, and you will see your thoughts turned into reality.

Learn more at: www.staffofpower.com

Ralston Heath is an ordained minister and on a mission to help the rest of the world.

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and it is a standard, public format designed for sharing headlines and the content of web sites (previously known as the RDF Site Summary).
But RSS feeds are not just for news anymore. Almost anything that can be organized into smaller items can be then syndicated through an RSS feed.

Overview of RSS:

In many ways, it is similar to newsletters that web sites offer to keep viewers updated. The substantial difference is that this system does not require users to provide their e-mail addresses since it offers a direct channel to the information.

An RSS feed is a lightweight XML (Extensible Markup Language) web page that contains a list of items (each identified by a link) such as the headline, date/time and a description of new item published.

When syndicating news headlines, for instance, those fields can be used for the story title and the summary.

RSS started in the world of blogs. Its objective was to help people reading too many blogs to organize their information, especially blog creators, who found it hard to keep updated since it implied a hard routine. They had to visit those pages every day using their web browsers. Their wish was to find an easy and simple way to check if there was any new content on their blogs. Once RSS was created, the problem was solved.

Since it’s inception in 1997, RSS has evolved into a popular format of sharing content between sites (including sites such as CNN, BBC, Disney, Apple iTunes and many more). Some experts think it has one of the most popular formats for distributing news headlines on the Web.

Today, there are more than seven hundred thousands websites utilizing RSS feeds. It’s popularity is due to this fact: RSS is a simple XML document, easy to generate and light to transport. It can be used for many different objectives, it grows easily and everybody can use it.

In other words, RSS is an excellent ally for those people who want to be updated by multiple on
-line sources and who wish to find their overwhelming amount of information organized in a simple and automated way.

How RSS Works:

Here’s how it works: The web site makes an RSS feed, or channel, available for viewing, just like any other file on the server. In order to read this information, you need to install software called an RSS reader on your computer. Then you connect this software to the RSS feeds for your favorite pages and click update in your RSS reader. This way, the program checks the RSS feeds and tells you what is new on your selected sites.

About ITX Corp:

ITX Corp is a business consulting and technology solutions firm focused in nine practice areas including Business Performance, Internet Marketing, IT Staffing, IT Solution Strategies and Implementation, Technical Services, Internet Services, and Technology Research. To learn more about what ITX can do for you visit our website at http://www.itx.net or contact us at (800) 600-7785.

You probably know that RSS stands for “Remote Site Syndication”, but what does that really mean to you as a marketer and more importantly can you use RSS to make money online?

As you keep reading you will learn to understand the benefits of using this recent technology in your internet marketing efforts to increase traffic and profits.

Plainly put, RSS feeds are printed in XML, a unique mark up dialect much like html. That means that they have mechanisms included that detect structures in a file. The structures identify the content and how that content will be displayed inside that file. RSS is what makes big newscast websites feasible: RSS documents are used to generate a data feed which will send headlines, links or virtually any other portion of information to a channel viewer application, regularly called a news reader.

These readers are subscribed to certain RSS feeds and constantly check them, alerting the user when any new information has been added to the RSS feed.
So, how can you use this to your benefit in internet marketing?
Here are the most common ways to integrate RSS feeds into your marketing plan:
you can use RSS to replace any email marketing you are presently doing, use RSS feeds to increase traffic to your blog or web site or build your own RSS feed so your messages and information show up on thousands of websites, blogs and desktops via the internet.

While many marketing experts will agree that email marketing isn’t over, with the advent of increasing spam complaints and filters coupled with the danger of viruses originating from an email, more and more people are wary of even opening your email.

With RSS, your email won’t ever get filtered and have a greater chance of actually being read vs. a normal email and your marketing outcome can only be better when people actually read your messages. You can even incorporate autoresponders in conjunction with RSS.

With RSS feeds on your web site or blog allows you to add dynamic theme related content to your web pages making your web site or blog very popular with the search engines. The constantly updated content is just what the search engines desire and helps increase your search engine ranking with more traffic driven to your page.

Possibly the best way to use RSS to help your online marketing goals is to establish your own RSS feed. This way your information will be available on any website that is using the RSS feed you are supplying that information to.
There’s even automated software to submit your RSS feeds to the different directories that furnish the feeds to people using them as described above.

RSS is still a relatively unknown technique of increasing traffic to websites, but is becoming more accepted every day. As an internet marketer, this is a great opportunity to benefit by this this new technology before all the online gurus start taking advantage of RSS.

There is a lot of information on the internet pertaining to RSS and how to use it as a tool in marketing. The basis of this writing is only the tip of the iceberg to get you aquanted with Remote Site Syndication, and yes you can make money with rss!

Chet Holcomb of Internet Promotions Marketing Tools is a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product using marketing tools that work. His numerous articles provide a wonderfully researched resource of interesting and relevant information.

You may reprint this article freely if the content is not altered and the authors resource box is displayed.

As technology advanced forward, many of the things we’ve taken for granted for years are being reborn under the banner of wireless or wireless satellite Internet. Of course, we’re talking about a lot more than just receiving the Internet from a satellite connection. Many other technologies have also obtained new life through the use of “sky birds.”

Some of the most visible changes in technologies has been in communications and entertainment. Cellular telephones use satellite services to bounce signals literally around the world. Although cell phone service is typically within a 2 mile radius of a cellular tower, by using the power of stationary satellites, a signal or connection on a cell phone can be routed to wherever another cell tower can be found. This is especially good news for those people who tend to be in more remote areas.

Wireless satellite Internet is a connection to the web that’s available anywhere the sky can be seen. Using a satellite to make the connection into the web holds the promise of all the web all the time, anytime. The always on no matter where you are can be a major benefit for many people. This feature is especially promising for serious followers of sports, sport teams, news, weather junkies, stock reports, etc. Imagine anytime, all the time, whenever there’s a computer to be able to log into you Internet connection using wireless satellite Internet services.

Another technology that falls under the umbrella of wireless satellite Internet is the whole television genre. Companies like Direct Way and Dish Network are rapidly building infrastructure that replaces traditional antennae or cable television reception options. For about the same price as cable-TV a clear view of the southern sky will deliver crystal clear television with all popular channels.

Movies on Demand is an up and coming technology that will literally allow you to order movies to watch whenever you want. No more being tied to the start times of the networks, cable companies or even the satellite entertainment providers. All movies, whenever, all the time is the driving force behind the wave of growth in this fast paced industry.

You can drive the 34 miles between Lincoln and Conway on Route 112 in just about an hour. But you’d miss experiencing one of the most colorful scenic drives in the entire northeast – and some would say the U.S. for fall foliage.

Route 112, or as its better known the Kancamagus Highway, is the only road that runs directly east and west through the heart of the White Mountain National Forest. This is a dramatic road built to show off the magnificence of one of New Hampshire’s best-loved scenic spots.

During the summer and fall foliage months you’re likely to have plenty of company on your drive. But if the weather is clear who cares if the going is a little slow – this isn’t a drive to rush anyway.

You’ll find plenty of pull-offs to admire the views and take a bunch of photos if the weather cooperates. Be warned though… the White Mountains are notorious for generating their own weather, especially in the Presidential Range, where many of the peaks are above timberline.

So what will you see?

At the western end of this drive where Interstate 93 meets Route 112, lies Lincoln. The Lincoln, and close-by Cannon Mountain, areas abound in gift and specialty shops, including Clark’s Trading Post.

Lincoln is your starting point on this fall foliage scenic drive, and as you head east towards the Kancamagus Pass you’ll be climbing to 2,860 feet in the first 10 miles.

Just east of Lincoln you’ll find Loon Mountain, a ski resort by winter and a playground in the summer and fall foliage months. Loon is worth a side trip to ride the Gondola to the summit for breathtaking views, and exploring the Glacial Caves, and the summit observation tower.

Continuing east on the two-lane highway you’ll enter the Pemigewasset wilderness region of the drive. Close to Hancock Campground is the parking lot entrance to the Lincoln Woods Trail. This popular and easy trail leads into the wilderness area and makes a great excursion to view the Pemigewasset River, and the wildlife that inhabits the area.

As you head out to the Sandwich Range Wilderness Area the road offers interesting turns and views through the Kancamagus Pass. You’ll find plenty of scenic overlooks to admire the mountain ranges, especially during the vibrant fall foliage season. Autumn is a spectacular time to travel this part of the road.

Another side excursion along this stretch of the road is the Greeley Ponds Scenic Area. Located about one mile from the highway and about 9 miles east of Lincoln this is a beautiful place to have a picnic lunch, and view the two ponds and towering cliffs.

Continuing east you’ll enter the Swift River valley region. This area abounds in scenic stops, and hikes through the forest offering stunning views of the valley and mountains. The hike offering the best views is the MT. Potash hike but at 4 miles requires a few hours to appreciate fully.

For a shorter and easier hike drive to the Rocky Gorge Scenic area and take The Lovequist Loop Trail. This is about an hours walk around Falls Pond and offers fishing and a marvelous window into the beauty of the natural plants and vegetation of the region. You’ll cross the gorge formed by the Swift River over a rustic footbridge.

Back in the car you’ll drive a short distance east to the Covered Bridge and the trailhead to the Boulder Loop Trail. If you’ve been saving your energy for only one hike then this is it. At about 3 miles round trip it can take you anywhere from 2-4 hours but you’ll get outstanding photo opportunities of MT. Chocorua and the Swift River Valley. The hike itself is mostly a gradual climb with some step pitches. This is one of the more popular hikes during fall foliage season.

The last piece of the Kancamagus Highway fall foliage scenic drive takes you to the eastern end of the drive where Route 112 meets Route 16 in Conway.

Protect Your Windows Network: From Perimeter to Data
by Jesper M. Johansson and Steve Riley
Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series (2005)

As the title should tell you, this is an unabashedly Windows-oriented book. It’s no surprise, considering the authors are both employees of Microsoft. Jesper Johansson is the Senior Program Manager for Security Policy, and Steve Riley is the Senior Program Manager in the Security Business and Technology unit. Both authors are extremely knowledgeable, and participate in speaking engagements around the world on a regular basis.

Microsoft-centric view aside, I deal primarily with Windows-based networks, so I found this book to be extremely informative in my security continuing education. The authors attempt to cover a great deal of ground, so by necessity, some areas are covered in more depth than others. The areas covered are divided into 6 parts: “Introduction and Fundamentals,” “Policies, Procedures, and User Awareness,” “Physical and Perimeter Security: The First Line of Defense,” Protecting Your Network Inside the Perimeter,” “Protecting Hosts,” and “Protecting Applications.”

The book is filled with practical, common sense analysis of security, both with respect to genuinely securing systems, and avoiding practices of “Security Theater.” Each chapter ends with a section entitled “What You Should Do Today,” reinforcing the action items suggested throughout the chapter. The book also includes a CD containing a few helpful tools. These include a password generator, a HOSTS file that blocks known spyware sites, and a script to revoke SQL Server PUBLIC permissions.

The writing style is at times humorous, and very down-to-earth. This book is valuable both as a casual read, and a comprehensive reference for securing networks. I highly recommend it to anyone in the Information Security field, as well as anyone looking for a place to start educating themselves about network security.

John Biasi is an IT professional, and the creator of the Security Theater of the Absurd website ==>http://www.security-theater.blogspot.com

The following true story regarding identity theft points out an example why it is so important to get a copy of your credit report at least once a year. I know it’s all real, because it’s someone else’s credit that is being destroyed, right in front of my face. I’ve carried out everything possible to help, all to no avail.

Here’s how it started. About 3 months ago, I started receiving credit card offers for a person that lived at my address 8 years ago. I thought it strange and had some questions regarding how this had just started up, but I just threw the credit card offers away.

Then two months ago, I started to receive paperwork from a welfare type of health agency. Pondering what it was all about, I opened the letters to see if I could fix the problem and get that info to the right person. It turns out a letter stated that “they were trying to get more information regarding the insurance benefits that were recently applied for.” Right away, I knew it was someone trying to cheat the system that our taxes pay for.

I notified the police and an officer showed up quickly. I gave him some of the credit card offers and one of the insurance letters. He gave me a case number and his name, in case anyone needed to call him. I also went to the FTC website and filled out the form and I went to the Direct Marketing Association and filled out their form to stop any mail offers to this other person at my address. I haven’t heard a word back, but I continue to get the letters about insurance and a delinquent loan.

So I called the department that handles this “free” insurance (the insurance that all the rest of us pay for). I was predicting that after I told them it was a case of “identity theft,” they’d do something right away, but they merely didn’t care. Their response was, “well we will just get in touch with them at this other address we have.” I was expecting that the government office would immediately cut off benefits to this phony person, but instead they just wanted to find a way to continue the benefits flowing no matter what. So someone that is using a different person’s name (and that other person’s actual social security number) is receiving benefits free and clear from the government, all benefits that the rest of us pay for.

And yesterday, I got a notice from a bill collector in New York. They were collecting on an unpaid debt from Bank One, and of course it was in the name of the identity theft victim. I knew for sure that when I called and told them it was an identity theft scam, that they’d want the police case number and then they’d go after the “fake” person. Instead, they did not want any information about the identity theft, but said they would find the “right” person with the social security number and get their money from them that way. Imagine the surprise of the person who is having someone else use their social security number. I have a feeling that many more of those types of collection letters will be coming to my address.

My frustration stems from the fact that I’ve done everything I could think of to help someone else who hadn’t even lived at my address for 8 years. I have no way of getting a hold of this person or I would have told him as soon as I discovered the identity theft matter. This person is not aware that someone else is using their name, their previous address and their social secuity number. When the victim applies for credit or for a job, he’s going to be in for a “shock” when he gets declined because of several bad debts that were never his.

That’s why each of us should check our credit report and look for any suspicious activity. We all have past addresses and if someone gets our past address and social security number, we may not ever hear anything about it, until it’s too late. With credit, if you catch a problem early, the credit report can be corrected and the identity thief will just move on to someone else. If not caught early, there could be several items of someone else’s derogatory credit to fix on our report, and it can be costly in terms of time and money.

It is my hope that by providing this information, that someone else may benefit and not have to go through extensive identity theft correction. I also want to improve awareness that all those welfare programs we pay for are being used by people who are not who they say they are (and the welfare office here doesn’t seem to be concerned).

Copyright (c) 2006

Jessica Deets writes about information of interest to help people. There’s more news and information about identity theft at the website at http://www.BestIDTheftNews.com