Analyse Your Dreams

I just came across a very interesting website. The site www.dreamforth.com is a free online dreams analysis website. How does it work?

Dream Dictionary - The site has a dream dictionary where you find different terms and objects alphabetically and you can find what it means to dream of them.

Otherwise enter your dream and click interpret to find out what it implies.

Suppose you have dreamed of the sea. Find out what it means here at Dreamforth.com

http://www.dreamforth.com/search.php?query=sea&type=dreams&page=1

Don't know if it works or not or how much of the subconscious one gets to understand from the interpretation. Often one wakes up from a ridiculous dream and wonders what it could really mean. This dictionary might help! In my opinion, its quite a lot of fun - if you dont take it seriously!

My dreams are mostly long and protracted - nothing as simple as, for eg, a rose or the sea or goats - how does one interpret them? Maybe there are other sites out there.

How to Track Santa This Christmas Eve!

Santa Tracker - NORAD Santa Tracker - Track Santa on Christmas Eve!

When is Santa starting out from his village in the North Pole? All the hard work - packing gifts, preparing goodies and making toys in his own special toy making machine - have almost come to an end! As per last reports from Santa's home - Santa Claus couldn't resist the smell of gingerbread from the kitchen and fox trotted around the kitchen with Mrs. Claus - with the elves looking on and frowning! In some three hours he will ride out on his sleigh and with his lists of good and naughty. The sleighs are being loaded as I write this and instructions have come from Santa's home - that he will be too busy to answer mails today.

How do you know when is Santa Claus going to reach your town?

The NORAD website has day to day updates of the happenings at Santa's Village with loads of games and activites. It is by far one of the most popular website during Christmas Eve!

Try the official Norad website at the link given.

North American Aerospace Defense Command has been busy many years now tracking Santa's flight Christmas eve! The best part is that you can now track Santa on Christmas Eve at Facebook, Twitter, on your mobile phone and of course right from your PC by just downloading a simple Google Earth Application.

Track Santa on Christmas Eve with this Norad Santa Tracker 2010 here!

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/index.html

How To Ask For A Pay Raise At Work

How to ask for a pay raise at work is a pretty tricky business. You have been working at the same salary for some time now. You believe you are invaluable to the Company. You like to think that the Company believes the same too. You also believe you are overdue for the raise. However your Boss shows no signs of acknowledging your monetary worth. More often than not, you are the one to have to raise the issue. So how do you ask for that raise? Here are some tips to keep in mind while asking for that all important salary increase.

• You find out your worth. The best way to do it is talk with your peer group in the same profile outside your company. Or you can consider a hypothetical situation – if you were to walk out, how much salary would you be likely to get?

• If you are in sales or customer service – you can easily find out the business or repeat sales you have generated for your Company. That should form the benchmark for your raise.

• Find out inflation related changes since your last raise. Factor in the same while asking for your raise.

• Find out the growth of your Company in the past years. The surest way to show ignorance or get fired is to ask a hefty raise in a Company that is going downhill.

• Find out how much people in similar profile or rank as yours are getting in your Company. Compare profiles, job importance, responsibilities before putting up your case. There cannot be too much discrepancy in a company for people with similar profiles. However many a times – new recruits negotiate themselves to a better salary. Work this knowledge to your advantage when asking for that raise.

• Make a presentation of your case in a formal environment with your Boss. The formal appointment cues in your Boss to your seriousness about the issue. Give your Boss a figure based on your research.

Remember knowledge combined with prudence always has an advantage. And of course negotiating skills! No company likes to lose a valuable employee. The cost of hiring a new employee often works out to be higher. However, many a times one loses out on a raise due to lack of industry knowledge, insecurity or plain diffidence in talking about money.

How To Make Pasta

I guess how I made Pasta would be a more appropriate title for this post! Anyways, here it goes...

I was having a small get-together, a kind of mini kitty party a few days back and I decided to make pasta (with sauce and all of course). For some unknown reason (after all I had never tried to make pasta before), I decided it was the easiest thing to prepare. So, I went about shopping the evening before.

Ingredients

I picked up the best-looking packet of macaroni, a can of baked beans, a tinned mushroom, a tin of tomato puree. Then I looked at the cheese available and found just the right thing, a packet of grated cheese. See, I had done my research on the net. I had found a dozen recipe of pasta. Its another matter that none of them advised putting all these stuff together. I also picked up bottles of garlic salt and white pepper.

Just as I was leaving, I was suddenly assailed by doubts (a rare thing, but there…) I got a packet of noodles and some perfectly cut frozen vegetables as well as a bottle of soya sauce – to make noodles if worse came to worst!

I started my pasta at midnight after bundling off the kids to bed, the party being scheduled for the morning.

Cooking The Perfect Pasta

As per instructions on the net, I would need 5 liters of water to boil 500g of Pasta. I found my biggest pan could hold just 3 litres. I made do. The water had to boil first. That went fine. Then sidle in the macaroni into the boiling water. Yes, please don’t throw it in, the water’s boiling, the pan’s full, just coax in the pasta, unless you have a preference for getting scalded! Keep mixing it, so that the pasta doesn’t stick to the bottom. One really has to be careful. The best instruction I found online said that, take a bite and remove the pasta just when you feel the softness is as you would like to eat it. There is some philosophy somewhere here. So many things in life are that simple!

I removed and drained the the macaroni onto a colander. I kept aside some of the liquid to use in the sauce. You will find there is very little liquid left when 500gms pasta is boiled in 3 ltrs of water!

Pasta Sauce

Next step was to prepare the pasta sauce. I put two tbs of butter into a pan, then scraped some garlic cloves into the pan. Then I sprinked garlic salt and white pepper. I added the mushrooms from the can (drained), then emptied a 200 gm tin of tomato puree. The paste seemed to be very very thick. So I added the reserve water I had kept aside and let the mixture simmer. It was a real pungent taste. I realized too late that the tomato puree was really thick and just 3-4 spoons would have sufficed. So I had to keep on adding water to get the right consistency! So I had a huge pan full of pasta sauce. I made some white sauce next. I am not going to describe the process. Oh, well. I boiled some milk (200 ml), added some butter and mixed in 2 tsp of white flour. Is that white sauce? Well, I always prepare it that way…

Final Dressing

Now for the finale. I mashed 3 medium sized potoes which I had previously boiled. I brought out my largest casserole (I was not really prepared for the huge quantity). Then I poured in the macaroni. Added the mashed potatoes, the baked beans (with the juice), the white sauce. The pasta was still dry. I added the sauce I had prepared. I realized I needed just one-fifth of the prepared quantity! But I strained out all the mushroom from the sauce to add to the pasta. I mixed in all the contents, cooled it and stored it away. I entire process lasted one and half hours, including preparation time.

Just before serving the next day, I took out the amount needed onto another much smaller carsserole, sprinkled the grated parmesan cheese on top and heat it in the microwave till the cheese melted.

So there, I had my pasta ready (so what if we all had to eat pasta for 3 days!) and it really, surprisingly tasted good!

Try it, and tell me the results! Just remember 500 gm pasta would maybe feed around 15 persons as a snack, and my party was just for 5 people.

And now the family has started on the noodles (remember the packet I got as back-up)!!! But that recipe is another story.

How To Clean Your PC

PC users these days start off with the internet unlike in ancient times when PCs were mostly standalone. However with constant use of the Web a lot of junk files tend to get accumulated in the PC and unless cleaned regularly, they really slow down the system.

Here are some basic maintainence steps that have worked very well for me in the last decade for my PC/laptop. You can try them before calling in the experts. The steps are for Windows users

Clean Temporary Internet Files

Go to Internet Explorer/Tools/Internet Options

At Temporary Internet Files
Delete Cookies and delete temp. internet files

Reduce the No. of Days to keep in History to 3. The default option is 20

Clean Temporary Files

Go to Run at the Start Menu
Type %temp% and click ok
Select all the temporary files that appear and send to Recycle Bin

Empty the Recycle Bin

Empty the recycle bin at periodic intervals as it tends to slow up the PC.

Here's another way to clean those temporary internet files and the recycle bin. Use this regularly.

Go to Start / Program / Accessories /System Tools / Disk Cleanup
Run the Disk cleanup

Defragment Disk

Go to Start / Program / Accessories /System Tools / Disk Defragmenter

Analyze and defragment the disk if recommended. This can be carried out once in two months or so.

Last but not the least scan the PC with an antivirus (that has not expired!) regularly.

How To Get Rid Of The Insurance Agent!

The Insurance Industry promises many things. All those delightful, costly, lengthy insurance commercials promise you the best of education, terrific pensions that takes care of the world tour, lovely sea-front mansions, huge cars, etc etc. And they all make you believe just taking an insurance would get you those! You know where the money for all these ads come from? Of course your auto insurance quote, your life insurance quote and all the terrific insurance quotes you get and the many policies you have taken! Know what, you may not really need more insurance (i mean risk coverage by that, not investments, though insurance companies tend to mix both and absolutely misconfuddle you!). But would your agent take that. No. You will be convinced and then convinced some more that you absolutely need that policy. So how do you get rid of these pesky perseverent species?

Here are some surefire ways to keep them away.

- Tell them you are at the hospital, and could they please come over with the best life insurance quote. And then ring them back again the next day. That surely will give them a taste of their own medicine.

- You car just had an accident and you want someone/anyone to come over and clear up the mess. Most of them dont want to take ANY responsibility.

- Ditto the procedure for house insurance

- Tell them you are out of a job and could they help enhance the credit limits

- Convey conspiratorially you have a diamond mine in your backyard and could they come and survey it and then get it insured. If nothing, your garden may get dug up!

Warning and P.S. - i have nothing against insurance people. And you do need insurance. Just make sure you only cover as much as you need and as much as you can afford! Also insurance is "sold" not "bought", the poor guys are just doing their job, for a living!

How To Attract Women With Your Online Dating Profile!

What Women Look For In Online Dating Sites!


If you are a serious player in the online dating space you better watch out! Women are growing more discering with a proliferation of these sites and can smell a scam well from a distance (at least the net savvy ones can!)

Here's what you should do to attract the right kind of attention

Profile Picture

Women get turned off by the obvious fake photos. Put something of yours that is recent. You can put on a cap or maybe the glares, in case you feel you are ordinary looking. But never don both. And if you are balding, then shave it all off and pose! That will be just sooo cool.

Remember a good profile picture will be ninety percent of the job done. The comments and your views come much much later.

Education

Emphasis your education, always. If you are from a top college dont hesitate to mention it. Girls dont mind nerds irrespective of what you may have heard. maybe you can mention the freelance project you did while at college that got a patent.

Activities

Next comes this important aspect. Dont ever mention taking your previous/current girlfriend to the beach has been your favorite pasttime. You can mention movies, maybe taking your mom shopping (she knows you are caring). And dont forget to mention your interest in sports...basketball, soccer, even MMA will do. And F1 and snow sports will positively score on the cool quotient

Music

Make sure you spice up the latest hits/favourites with some healthy 80s and 90s music. At least you are grounded.

Other activities

You can mention the cartoons you like. They seem to score these days. Dont give your political views. And mention any instrument you can play (doesnt matter if you did it in 3rd grade)

You should ultimately come across as bright, funny, intelligent, smart, reasonably good looking, dependable, caring, strong...whew

Top these with a snap of a gang of guys having fun (preferably with you at the centre). At least she knows that if you dont work out, she has got leads on some best looking guys around (your friends!!!)