Home Kitchen

The center of the home – The kitchen table

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Our grandmother bought them with shiny laminate covers and chrome trim. The chairs blended perfectly with the gloss-infused vinyl and mid-century style. Our moms bought them in a vintage-perfect Early American-style maple-over-pine finish. Regardless of its appearance, the kitchen table set was the center of our homes.

Today, options abound when it comes to outfitting your eat-in kitchen. You have a plethora of sizes, shapes, styles, and materials to choose from.

One of your first considerations is the size of your kitchen. If it’s designed to be an eat-in kitchen and you have plenty of room for the kitchen table set, you’re spoiled for choice. But if you only have one corner to fill, you can still make it work. Please measure carefully to see what size table it will fit. Be sure to consider the space you’ll need to pull the chairs out from the table; three feet from the edge of the table is a good rule of thumb.

How many people usually sit around your table? If you live alone or if you’re a couple, you can probably get a small bistro table and a couple of chairs. If you’re seating a larger family or regularly make room for a few extra people, a round or oval table can allow you to accommodate an extra chair, since they don’t have corners. And you can choose the height of the table: it can be standard height, counter height, or a tall pub-height table. Look at your space and try to visualize the table on different levels. One style may be more attractive than the others.

After deciding on the size and shape of the table, you can start looking for your kitchen table set. This is where your sense of style and personal preferences come into play. Do you have a traditional decoration? Looking for a Shaker, Country, Victorian, Mid-Century Modern, Scandinavian, Mission, or European design? You can find a wide variety of wooden games in various finishes. If you want to add a natural material to your kitchen, you can select a kitchen table set with a marble, granite, tile or slate top. Some designs integrate stone with wood for an attractive look.

A perennial favorite is a glass table. You can find glass top kitchen table set with stylish metal base, solid wood base and woven rattan base. Choose a kitchen table set with a base in a material that matches your décor, but using a glass top keeps the look light and open.

It is difficult to separate the choice of table chairs from the kitchen table set. The price of most sets includes the chairs, but you can often purchase the table and chairs separately. If you prefer not to have a complete matching set, consider purchasing a matching set of chairs instead of a matching set. This way, you can have the look, fit, and comfort of a custom set.

While the table takes up most of the floor space, the chairs are where you sit. For comfort, you should try out the chairs that go with the kitchen table set you select before you buy. Many sets come with wooden chairs. Selecting chairs with upholstered seats gives you built-in comfort, but you have the option of adding chair pads to a wooden seat. Chairs come with and without armrests; armrests provide additional comfort but take up more space.

Whatever you choose, you’ll find that your new kitchen table set will become the center of your home.

Digital Marketing

Why one is the most dangerous number in business

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Dear friend,

I recently had a client come to me in desperate need of more business.

Here’s the story…

He had only been in the construction business for a short time, two years to be exact. And during that time he got off to a great start.

He was inundated with a constant stream of work from the only client he had. He had a predictable stream of income and never had to worry about losing his job…

That was until his client decided to pull out and drive off into the sunset.

In the blink of an eye, my client was out of a job and his income dried up.

What’s worse is that you didn’t have any knowledge on how to market your business effectively.

That’s when he came to me and asked me to fix things… (which I did, of course).

What does this have to do with you?

If you are a business owner and only depend on a freelance copywriter, then you are making a big mistake.

Is that how it works.

Any decent freelance writer will have more than a few clients on their books and will almost always be busy coming up with their next winner.

You see, creating a copy requires an immense amount of time and research. And for us copywriters to keep our clients happy and produce copy that makes a lot of money, we need to give our full attention to one project at a time.

And when it’s time for you to call your copywriter to create a winner (because you need a quick cash flow boost, etc.)…

Will have to wait!

Which means you could be missing out on some much-needed business.

Listen, the business world moves at 100 miles per hour and you need to constantly move and keep up with your competition. Having only one writer on your books will hurt you badly.

The time will come when you urgently need your copywriter to find a winner.

You should seriously consider having at least two top-tier copywriters on your books that you can turn to whenever you want.

This way you’ll never have to put anything on hold because of someone else’s work schedule and you’ll KNOW your copywriter will get to work producing blockbuster copy for you almost immediately.

Anyway, until next time.

Peace.

Relationship

What is healthier, broiled, grilled or fried food?

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Americans love fried foods. While it’s not always good for us, it turns out to be a fact. There is nothing we don’t like to fry, even ice cream. While the flavor is out of this world, it’s not necessarily good for you. So is grilling better than frying and why? Would it help to grill our food?

Which cooking method really adds the least amount of fat to your food, and are there any other surprises we need to know about?

Realistically, common sense says that adding fat to a fryer or pan adds fat to something that is already fatty, namely meat, which is the most common fried item. The lowest amount of fat that will be added is when the food is grilled, because the flames or electric broiler will cause the fat to melt and separate from the food.

In a test conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, the differences were quite incredible. Three samples were made, one grilled, one lightly sautéed and the third deep friend. The roast beef sample, made under a broiler, had about one percent added fat, while the sautéed variety had about twice as much, but was surprisingly almost exactly the same as the fried variety.

The problem is that we usually put a lot of fried meats and other things in the dough. Honestly, the meat doesn’t absorb that much fat on its own, but the breading and other factors absorb a lot of it.

Now using a lean fat, we see that frying may not be as excruciating as you thought, but… and there is always a but in the equation it is not, many of us are not satisfied with just frying, we pay little attention to the types of oils with which we fry, often buying the cheapest variety instead of the one that is best for us.

There are good fats and there are bad fats. Butter can be eaten in moderation and if you fry food in it, you are setting yourself up for heart disease in the future. Vegetable oils, pure corn oil, may be the way to go if you are going to fry and forget about the flour or the breading. Fry without it to keep fat absorption to a minimum.

Clearly, grilling is the best way to cook your food, as long as you do it on the kitchen stove. However, some of us thought that grilling our food outdoors was the answer. It cuts down on the fat, but there are also some grill factor considerations.

California scientist James Felton has studied the effects of cooking over hot coals, the traditional variety, and believes that some grilled foods can cause cancer.

There are two ways this can happen, but the more traditional way, according to Felton, is when the fat from the meat drips onto the coals, causing a chemical reaction when the flame is turned on to blacken the meat. If you move the coals to the side so the fat doesn’t drip directly onto the coals, you tend to avoid this. Cooking on the gas grill can also help in this battle.

You can also try cooking at a lower temperature and moving the coals around if you are going to grill over traditional coals and also try using regular wood instead of charcoal to grill your meat.

If none of that appeals to you, the reality is that grilled foods seem to be the best option. Firstly, the flame is coming from above and fat is dripping into a pan below, secondly, there is less fat than when frying, and thirdly, the grill may be doing things to your body that you are not prepared for.

Do we need better reasons to grill your meat or fish?

Health Fitness

Life Fitness G2 Home Gym Review

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If you’re making the decision of what to put inside your home gym, you should check out a fitness store that carries Life Fitness equipment and check out the Life Fitness G2 Home Gym. This usually costs around $1400 for the top models and is well worth your money. There are cheaper options, of course, but they do not have the same quality as this brand.

Details and specifications
The Life Fitness G2 home gym measures 71 inches long, 83 inches high, and 48 inches wide. There is an optional leg press you can add, in this case the width becomes 81 inches. But even if it makes the equipment bulkier, the leg press and calf raise are really added benefits. Some home gyms have them as well, but they are much bulkier compared to this model.

Some games have side bars that do not need to be lifted to remove them from the bar. If you decide to go with the Life Fitness G2, you need to make sure you have extra ceiling space to be able to get the sidebar out of the rack.

The Life Fitness G2 home gym frame and parts are guaranteed for life. The ear pads and cables are guaranteed for three years, which sounds like a good deal.

G2 Features
The Life Fitness G2 comes with a weight stack of around 160 pounds. You can place the pin at the level of weight you want to lift.

The kit comes with a low row bar, an ankle strap, a side bar, some exercise cards, and two different sized handles. These are great features and will cost you more if you buy them separately. You also have the option to purchase an additional 50 pounds.

It is safe to say that the Life Fitness G2 Home Gym feels much more stable compared to other home gyms. It also has that commercial quality feel. You don’t have to worry about wobbling and moving around, especially when doing the leg extension part. It also has a low cable that allows you to do seated rows, work shoulders, legs and biceps.

You can also switch between different exercises as the machine has a contoured backrest and comfortable seat.

Probably the only downside to the Life Fitness G2 Home Gym is that its seat can’t be moved, so you can’t do exercises like triceps extensions. But you can do many other exercises.

Legal Law

How social factors influence our choice of music

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The music industry has always been notoriously unpredictable, and the old A&R maxim that the cream always comes out on top is far from a fact. For any band that makes a living from their music, there are at least a thousand that never will, and the proportion of musicians who actually get rich through their work is even smaller. However, there is a general feeling (if not a real consensus) that the musicians who make it are there because, in some way, they are inherently better than the swathes of artists left in their wake.

This calls to mind Robert M. Pirsig’s question about quality: what makes something good? Is there really any objective standard by which that quality can be measured? Most people would say yes, as they can easily tell if a band is awesome or a bunch of untalented hackers, but when it comes down to it, this is just personal taste and opinion. Although certain technical qualities such as musicianship, structural complexity and production values ​​can be pointed to, the music is more than the sum of its parts: the Sex Pistols cannot be dismissed as not having the technical genius of Mozart, as neither can Stockhausen’s music be effectively ranked above or below that of Willie Nelson. It seems that when it comes to music, you have to instill in it a Philosophik Mercury that is as intangible as it is unpredictable. The only barometer by which we can judge is whether we like it or not. Or is there something else?

Recent history is littered with examples of works and artists that are now considered classics (or at least have become wildly popular) that were at first outright rejected by talent scouts, agents, or industry executives. Harry Potter, Star Wars, the Beatles – they all fall into this category, as does Pirsig’s classic work. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, which was rejected 121 times. If phenomena of this magnitude could be overlooked, then what chance do artists of moderate talent ever have of being noticed? On the other hand, the entertainment sphere is teeming with performers who could never hope to be anything close to moderate talent. So does the entertainment industry really know what it’s doing, when so many of its predicted hits fail miserably and rejected unknowns keep popping up with hits on the charts? Recent research seems to suggest not.

Now that Web 2.0 is in full swing, social media is changing the way we access and perceive content. The age of digital music is upon us, and the ease with which new music can be obtained from unsigned bands has created a new economic model for distribution and promotion. Buzz itself is the latest buzz, and word-of-blog/IM/email has become a very powerful tool for aspiring artists. Combined with the fact that individual downloads now count towards a position in the official song chart, the cycle of promotion and distribution of new music can be carried out entirely online. But does such baffled convenience make it easier to predict what will become a hit?

The standard approach of major labels is to emulate what is already successful. At first glance, it seems like a perfectly valid strategy: If you pick a woman who looks a bit like Shania Twain, give her an album of songs that sound the same, an album cover with a similar design, and spend the same amount of money to promote it, then surely this new album will also be a success. Often, however, this is not the case; instead, another woman who possesses all these characteristics (with music of a similar quality) appears out of nowhere and continues to bask in a spell of pop stardom.

This approach is clearly flawed, but what’s the problem? It is this: the assumption that the millions of people who buy a particular album do so independently of one another. This is not how people (in the collective sense) consume music. Music is a social entity, as are the people who listen to it: it helps define social groups, creates a sense of belonging, identity and shared experience. Treating a group of such magnitude as if it were just a compilation of discrete units completely eliminates the social factors involved. While a single person, away from social influences, may choose to listen to Artist A, the same person in real life will meet the artists through their friends, either locally or online, and will end up listening to Artist A instead. Artists C and K, which may be of similar (or even lower) quality, but that’s not the real point. Music can have as much to do with image as with sound.

This raises more questions about quality: Is a song’s popularity based on some kind of chaos theory, all things being equal? Certainly, there is a cumulative advantage effect at work when promoting music: a song that is already popular has a better chance of becoming more popular than a song that has never been heard before. This is clearly seen on social networking sites like Digg and Reddit, where an article’s popularity can grow steadily until it reaches a certain critical mass of votes, at which point its readership suddenly explodes and it goes viral. Such snowballing effects have been known to bring fairly robust servers to their knees with incoming traffic.

Duncan J. Watts and colleagues recently conducted a fascinating study on the effects of social influence on an individual’s perception and consumption of music. The process was described in an article in the NY Times. Using their own Music Lab website, they studied the behavior of more than 14,000 participants to determine what factors influenced their selections.

Participants were asked to listen, rate and, if they wanted, download songs from bands they had never heard of. Some of the participants only saw the names of the songs and bands, while others also saw how many times the songs had been downloaded by previous participants. This second group, in what we call the social influence condition, was divided into eight parallel worlds so that participants could see previous downloads from people only in their own world. We didn’t manipulate any of these rankings: all artists in all worlds started out identically, with no downloads, but because the different worlds were kept separate, they subsequently evolved independently of one another.

Although the article does not provide information on the demographic details of the sample audience, given the nature of the medium (an online music site that assesses user behavior on online music sites) and the size of the sample, It is probably fair to assume that the results are reasonably indicative. It turns out that the study produced some very interesting revelations:

In all social influence worlds, the most popular songs were much more popular (and the less popular songs were less popular) than in the independent condition. At the same time, however, the particular songs that became hits were different in different worlds, just as cumulative advantage theory would predict. Introducing social influence into human decision-making, in other words, didn’t just make the hits bigger; it also made them more unpredictable.

Consistent with these results, an individual’s independent evaluation of a song is a much less significant factor in its success than social influence factors. The intrinsic quality of a song, if it can be measured at all, is outweighed by cumulative advantage, meaning that a few key votes at an early stage can radically alter the course of the overall selection process. This has some significant implications for musicians, producers, and promoters. Essentially, it means that no amount of market research can allow you to accurately predict which songs will be successful. The behavior of a few randomly chosen individuals early in the process, whose behavior is itself arbitrary in nature, is eventually amplified by cumulative advantage in determining whether a song advances to the next level. The randomness of such a process means that unpredictability is actually inherent in the

Lifestyle Fashion

I want to make a boy want me when he has already rejected me! 7 tips on how to make this happen

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Well, this situation is complicated, isn’t it?

It may seem impossible, but it is not. In fact, you can win a guy back even if he has rejected you. This is how you do it:

get some away

It is very important to allow time to pass after the rejection has occurred. The last thing you want to do is act like the kind of girl you’re going to need a restraining order against.

So take a break. You need to let your wounds heal a bit, and he’s made it clear that he doesn’t want you around…for now anyway.

Reopen the communication

After a decent amount of time has passed (a month is a good goal), you can carefully try to re-establish communication.

How you do this depends on how close the two of you were and how intertwined you were in each other’s lives (whether you worked together, had mutual friends, etc.). The important thing is that this first interaction is friendly and brief. .

Make him want to stay in touch with you

Now that you’ve resurfaced and he’s remembered you well, you’ll want to give him a good reason to stay in touch.

If he left something of his at your house, great. You can always use that as your reason. However, it’s even better to give him a more personal incentive: tell him about a cool event you know he’d enjoy, invite him to a mutual friend’s party, etc. You can even host your own get-together and make it so cool, they won’t be able to resist going.

Keep things fresh and casual

You have successfully worked to get back in touch with him and have re-entered his life. Now, it’s important to keep up the game face and not screw it up by being too emotional or reopening the past with him.

Stay calm and mentally let go of the previous rejection. Don’t let yourself think about it. Make it clear that you have no expectations of him other than to be his friend. This will make his mind think why and also drive him a little crazy; men always want what they can’t have. If you walk away from the table as an option (or at least lead him to believe that), then you are automatically more attractive.

make him jealous

Once you’ve been back in each other’s lives for a while (it’s bad to do this too soon because it seems staged and obvious), it’s time to make him jealous and remind him how desirable you are.

Get your friends to help you out by spreading the word that you’re in a hot new situation with a new guy. He wants the word to return to the real object of his affection. Another way is to simply mention your new “relationship” casually to mutual friends or acquaintances.

start flirting

If the jealousy game was successful, he will soon talk to you and might even act very friendly as he questions you for information about your new “relationship.”

Don’t ask her if she’s seeing someone, because you want her to think that you don’t even care. Instead, get her blood boiling a little with some very sexy flashbacks and flirtations.

roll it all back up

Now that you have him interested and intrigued by you again, cut him off.

Be strong and do this even if you don’t want to; It will benefit you in the long run and make his desire for you stronger if you don’t return his calls, texts, emails, etc. for a moment.

He wants to see you and talk to you, but he can’t. It’s the perfect setting and puts you in a prime position to get it back. Once he sees or speaks to you again, he’ll be putty in your hands.

Pets

From Darwin – Evolutionism to Intelligent Design – Inevitably!

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No rational mind, given the evidence of buttons and buttonholes in a garment, would deny that both “intelligence” and “design” played a role in the creation of such a garment. Mystery of mysteries, however, the brightest and most educated in our culture reject such considerations for infinitely more sophisticated living organisms, insisting (dogmatically) that they somehow evolved by chance: the occasional mere “copying errors” ( when the double helix splits). , reproducing itself) from one of the 3 billion base pair elements of DNA – just miscellaneous errors, but somehow perfectly and fortuitously sequentialproducing complex plants, animals, humans!

The attitude of the intellectual elite – the smartest and best educated leaders of society, the editors of the New Yorker magazine, columnist Richard Cohen, Judges and others – is that:

  • Darwinism is a proven scientific fact;
  • Creationism, disguised as Intelligent Design, is just a religious zeal that seeks to bring Religion into the classroom;
  • Such teachings must be repressed by expelling the teacher. (The recent documentary film “Expelled” and books on similar topics describe the consequences of teaching a competing theory, such as Intelligent Design. Remarkably, a century ago fear of similar backlash caused even world-class scientists to do the same thing.) unthinkable:
  1. Dr. Charles Walcott, Director of the Smithsonian Institution, in 1909, discovered 60,000 fossils in the Canadian Rockies from the all-important Permian Age, but reburied them in lockers in the basement of the Smithsonian, fearing personal criticism, because presented challenges to Darwin’s theory. all the fossils showed fully formed extant creatures. This great treasure trove of fossils, the largest ever found, was recently rediscovered.
  2. Dr. Albert Einstein, considered perhaps the greatest “thinker” of all time, added a “cheating factor” to his field equations so that the expanding universe they described would have a “constant” size, to avoid inference to the first line of Genesis. He later admitted: “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Pro-Darwin scientists, no doubt firm believers in his theory, are convinced that life originated when lightning struck an inorganic pool of prebiotic “soup”, and then evolved into all life forms by “random mutations” and “survival of the fittest”. However, as truthful scientists, they describe their efforts to validate Darwinian evolutionism with honest admissions of the mysteries found in their research: “almost like a miracle”; “How could this come from that?”; “but what came first, like the chicken and the egg?”; and “if so, there would seem to be very little difference between a Darwinian explanation and a frank admission that a miracle was in the works!”; etc. Such candid acknowledgments by pro-Darwin scientists demonstrate: they cannot prove what their defenders claim.

Note 1. A challenge to Darwinism at the basic creature level is the argument from compound improbabilities: chance sequential chance mutations (Darwin’s basic theory is that “misprints” of single elements in the split of the double DNA helix occur randomly). According to Darwin, errors that improve survivability in the competition for life are passed on to offspring; however, if they are disadvantageous, the creature does not survive and the mutation is interrupted. How then to explain the bird – it escapes predators because it can fly – and it flies because of wings, feathers, a light body, twig legs, a simple digestive tube, and a beak for eating worms and seeds? Each of these characteristics should be the result of chance mutations of a main creature type; however, how can an honest Darwinist really believe that each attribute resulted from an initial random mutation and that all of them just happened to occur simultaneously.

Note 2. However, it is unquestionable that Darwin’s theory does apply to life, but at the secondary level of subphyla, after the initial organism (somehow) came into being; thus, the variety of beak shapes of finches (adapting to food sources), fur colors of humans and bears (optimizing against the strengths or weaknesses of extreme sunlight that threaten life in various areas of the world where the ancestors originated: Africa, India, Northern Europe, etc.) – “Moths, pansies and dogs can change color and size, but they are still moths, pansies and dogs”.

However, opposing Darwinian evolutionism is a pantheon of scientists and mathematicians with a litany of overwhelming scientific disputes, presenting the astronomical improbabilities of Darwinian evolutionism in all relevant scientific fields.

By logic, therefore, since no theory can be proven or disproved, but with the unquestionable mathematical implausibility of Darwinism (by default, not faith), Intelligent Design has to win intellectually as the most reasonable theory for the causal factor of life on Earth!

Recognizing, however, that the ruling authorities of Western culture have strong beliefs in Darwin-Evolution, the inevitable culture clash is evidenced in expressed convictions: “humanity is nothing more than an accident of nature”; “man might never have existed”; “So there is no moral authority higher than man!” With such a belief system and no moral or ethical restraints, man’s uninhibited curiosity has already been unleashed:

  • Cloning of sheep and dogs, supposedly achieved.
  • Human cloning?
  • Animal-animal mating – sperm-ovum?
  • Human-animal mating – sperm-egg?
  • Many genetic experiments are being reported in various countries, with Drs. Frankenstein freaking out in his labs, disregarding the possible nightmarish risks of unintended consequences!
Real Estate

Accommodation Management Companies: Expert Management or Incremental Income

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As a hotel owner/investor with perhaps one or two hotel assets, you have invested your hard-earned capital and risked tapping into your loans in pursuit of a profitable lodging operation. Also, given your limited exposure to the hospitality industry, you may have selected a professional management company to operate your hotel. Perhaps a “top tier” management company, a company that not only franchises hotels but also provides management services. Alternatively, he may have selected a “second tier” company. That is, a hotel owner/franchisee with dozens, maybe even hundreds of hotels managing their own assets and those of others. Or perhaps he has chosen a smaller boutique firm with possibly one or two hotels of its own looking to add to its management portfolio. No matter who you have selected, you expect them to have your best interests in mind with every decision they make. Well, that may not be exactly the case.

The goals of lodging owners and investors are rarely completely aligned philosophically or financially with the goals of their designated management or sometimes even their brand. Operators and brands often have conflicting goals, which are in direct conflict with maximizing profitability for owners. For example, brands have an interest in maintaining brand standards and creating “brand equity”, which may not always be in the best economic interests of an individual accommodation asset. Sure brands will argue that what’s good for the brand will have a trickle down effect on you, but changing your new wallpaper behind the front desk from a shade of beige to a shade the brand wants to install in all its hotels (which I that a major brand has asked them to do, which will remain anonymous) is actually a misuse of capital that will never affect revenue or guest satisfaction.

Management companies, on the other hand, have an interest in growing their portfolios and their income (usually a percentage of your own), but may not be motivated to help your hosting operation achieve its maximum financial return. short individual or, even worse, long. finished. They may also lack the experience or incentive to control costs, seek the best market position for an individual property, maximize a hotel’s market penetration, or possess the knowledge to find their way through the myriad of distribution channels. old and new.

Given that average management fees, currently hovering around 2.5% of a hotel’s total gross receipts (including incentive fees), are significantly below rates of yesteryear, it’s no wonder. In recent years, in an attempt to increase revenue, management companies focus on generating incremental revenue by adding properties to their list at lower rates. Many of these companies maintain the same number of staff and resources by spreading them over more assets.

Take the following example. At the current rate rate, an additional $25,000 in hotel revenue represents about $500 in fees. Let’s face it, $500 is not a significant enough return on the additional efforts, staff time, and resource allocations it would take for the management firm to generate that additional $25,000. However, as a homeowner, it can make the difference between paying your mortgage with cash flow or out of pocket.

The economic facts just don’t add up. Consider a typical select-service hotel with 100 rooms, an average daily rate of $70, and 70% annual occupancy. Average rates for this hotel would be around $35,000. With management company revenues per hotel at such a low level, what can an owner really expect from them? While your hotel may benefit from any spending power, it will also absorb travel-related expenses related to management companies, accounting services, co-op marketing, etc. This is often an area where some less scrupulous management companies recoup some of the revenue lost in recent years.

When the fees are at this low level, the game becomes volume. It is not my intention to criticize any management company. I was COO of three small to medium sized companies operating national brand and independent luxury hotels and currently represent many hotel owners through our consulting practice. I see both sides of the problem. But… there are few volume-focused companies in any industry you can think of that are known for their outstanding levels of service to their customers.

So what’s an owner to do? Become an informed owner who monitors your hotel’s performance (or hires someone to do it for you). Please note that for $35,000 a year in fees, your services may be restricted to the limited supervision of a property manager; let’s hope it’s good. If you’re hiring a management company now or are in the stages of interviewing one, ask yourself a few questions about their relationship and how they will report back to you on how successful your hotel is. You may not need all of the information suggested below, but you certainly do need some. ask yourself…

Get a report from a company representative who is on site for a day or two each month detailing their findings of the physical plant, operations, and sales efforts by the staff they supervise? Does his finding match yours?

Obtain timely monthly operating statements that compare results against budget and last year?

Receive monthly reports on the performance of the hotel measured by third-party companies, such as
1) Smith Travel Research’s STAR report to review its REVPAR performance against a precise competitive set and market tranche;
2) TravelClick’s Hotelligence Reports to measure your GDS penetration;
3) Distribution channel contribution reports to review your brand, internet, wholesaler, GDS and other contributions to your revenue?

Receive monthly booking pace reports to review your revenue position compared to the same period last year along with an action plan for improvement?

receive monthly sales reports such as; Top Customers report showing the productivity of the hotel’s top 20 customers and the changes in their productivity year over year; reports on the returns generated by advertising expenditures in pay-per-click, GDS, print and other advertising media; and salesperson productivity reports to determine who sells and produces at your hotel?

Obtain reports on the effectiveness of your reservations department (such as conversion and coverage reports) and the quality of a guest’s stay through secret shopper calls or visits?

o Receive monthly reports on how satisfied your guests and staff are compared to your brand or similar hotels?

Receive reports on the industry performance in the areas of profitability, expenses, labor costs, REVPAR generation and market penetration of your hotel at least once a year to compare the performance of your management company?

o Receive annual reports on changes in the market, such as more or fewer competitors, new or closed businesses or industries in the area?

Or receive an annual marketing plan with monthly or quarterly updates on progress?

receive assistance in the planning and implementation of capital projects?

Receive an annual report on asset condition and franchise compliance?

As an owner, the ball is in your court and many times you hire a management company because you are too busy to get involved in the details necessary to ensure that the return on your hotel investment is maximized. Maybe it’s time you took some time to investigate if this is happening?

Shopping Product Reviews

The CRM Story: Going Beyond the Customer Database

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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts
that swept the business world in the 1990s with the promise of changing forever
the way small and large businesses interact with their customer bases. In the
In the short term, however, it turned out to be an unwieldy process that was best at
theory than in practice for various reasons. The first of these was that
it was just so difficult and expensive to track and maintain the high volume of
necessary records accurately and update them constantly.
In recent years, however, newer and more advanced software systems
Tracking features have greatly enhanced the capabilities of CRM and the true promise of
CRM is becoming a reality. As the newest and customizable internet price
solutions have reached the market; competition has lowered prices so
that even relatively small businesses are reaping the benefits of some customs
CRM programs.
At first…
The 1980s saw the rise of database marketing, which was just plain gimmicky.
phrase to define the practice of establishing customer service groups to talk
individually to all customers of a company.
For larger key clients, it was a valuable tool in keeping the
open lines of communication and service tailored to the needs of the client. In the
However, for smaller customers, it tended to provide repetitive survey-like information.
information that saturated the databases and did not provide much information. ace
companies began to track the database information, they realized that the basic bones
were all that was needed in most cases: what they buy regularly, what
spend, what they do.
Advances in the 1990s
In the 1990s, companies began to get better at managing customer relationships.
making it more like a two-way street. Instead of just collecting data to
for their own use, they began to give back to their clients not only in terms of
the obvious goal of improving customer service, but on incentives, gifts and
other advantages for customer loyalty.
This was the beginning of the now familiar frequent flyer programs, bonus
points on credit cards and a series of other resources that are based on CRM
Track customer activity and spending patterns. CRM was now used as a
way to increase sales passively as well as through active improvement of
Customer service.
True CRM comes of age
Real customer relationship management, as it is thought of today, really began
seriously in the early years of this century. When software companies started
launching newer and more advanced solutions that could be customized in
industries, it became feasible to actually use the information in a dynamic way.

Instead of entering information into a static database for future reference,
CRM has become a way to continuously update the understanding of customer needs and
behaviour. Information Branching, Subfolders, and Custom Features
allowed companies to break down information into smaller subsets so that
could evaluate not only concrete statistics, but information about the motivation
and customer reactions.
The Internet provided a great help in the development of these huge databases.
by enabling off-site storage of information. Where before companies struggled
supporting the enormous amounts of information, the Internet provided new
possibilities and CRM took off when vendors started moving to the Internet
solutions
With the greater fluidity of these programs came a less rigid relationship
between sales, customer service and marketing. CRM enabled the development of
new strategies for a more cooperative work between these different divisions
through shared information and understanding, leading to increased customers
satisfaction from the order to the final product.
Today, CRM is still used most often by companies that rely heavily on
into two well-differentiated characteristics: customer service or technology. The three sectors of
The companies that rely the most on CRM, and use it to great advantage, are
financial services, a variety of high-tech corporations, and the
telecommunications industry
The financial services industry, in particular, tracks the customer level
satisfaction and what customers are looking for in terms of changes and
custom features. They also track changes in investment and spending habits.
patterns as the economy changes. Industry-specific software can give
Truly impressive financial service providers reviews in these areas.
Who is in the CRM game?
Around 50% of the CRM market is currently split between five major players
in the industry: PeopleSoft, Oracle, SAP, Siebel and relatively new
Telemation, based on Linux and built on an old standard, Database Solutions,
Inc.
The other half of the market falls to a variety of other players, although
The new appearance of Microsoft in the CRM market may bring about a change soon. Either
Whether Microsoft can capture a piece of the market remains to be seen. However, their
Brand familiarity can give them an edge with small businesses considering a
CRM package for the first time.
PeopleSoft was founded in the mid-1980s by Ken Morris and Dave
Duffield as a client-server based human resources application. In 1998,
PeopleSoft had evolved into a purely Internet-based system, PeopleSoft 8.
There is no client software to maintain and it supports over 150 applications.
PeopleSoft 8 is the brainchild of over 2,000 dedicated developers and $500
million in research and development.
PeopleSoft built on its original human resources platform in the
1990 and now supports everything from customer service to supply chain
management. Its easy-to-use system that requires minimal training is relatively
economical to implement. .
One of PeopleSoft’s major contributions to CRM was its detailed analysis
program that identifies and classifies the importance of customers based on numerous
criteria, including the amount of purchase, the cost of supplying them, and the frequency of
Service.
Oracle built a strong base of high-end customers in the late 1980s,
then burst into national attention around 1990 when, under Tom Siebel, the
company aggressively marketed a CRM solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
Unfortunately, they were unable to keep track of the incredible sales that
harvested and ran into a few years of real trouble.
Oracle landed on its feet after a restructuring and its own refocus on
customer needs, and by the mid-1990s, the company was once again a leader in CRM
technologies continue to be one of the leaders in the company.
market with Oracle Customer Data Management System.
Telemation’s CRM solution is flexible and easy to use, with a
toolkit that makes changing features and settings relatively easy. The system
it also provides a fast-paced learning environment that newcomers will appreciate. Their
The uniqueness lies in the fact that, although compatible with Windows, it was developed as a
Linux program. Will Linux be the wave of the future? We don’t know, but yes
I mean, Telemation is ahead of the game.
The last years…
In 2002, Oracle released its Global CRM package in 90 days that promised
rapid implementation of CRM in all company offices. Offered with the package
it was a flat fee service for setup and training for major business needs. .
Also in 2002 (a stellar year for CRM), SAP America’s mySAP began using a
middleware hub that was capable of connecting SAP systems to external and
front and back office systems for a unified operation linking partners,
employees, processes and technologies in a closed-loop function.
siebel
consistently based its business primarily on enterprise-sized companies willing
to invest millions in CRM systems, which worked for them to the tune of $2.1
billion in 2001. However, in 2002 and 2003 revenues fell because several
CRM firms joined the fray as ASPs (Application Service Providers). Thesis
companies including UpShot, NetSuite and SalesNet offered CRM-style business
tracking and data management without the high cost of traditional CRM startups.
In October 2003, Siebel released CRM OnDemand in collaboration with IBM.
Their entry into the hosted monthly CRM solution niche hit the market with
mange strength. For some of the monthly ASPs it was a call to arms, for others it was
a sign of Siebel’s growing confusion over brand identity and growing loss
of market share. In a stroke of genius, Siebel acquired UpShot a few months
later to get them started and smooth their transition to the ASP market. It’s
it was a successful move.
With Microsoft now in the game, it’s too early to tell.
what the results will be, but it seems likely that they can get a piece of
small businesses that tend to buy based on familiarity and usability. asp will
will continue to grow in popularity as well, especially among midsize businesses, so
companies like NetSuite, SalesNet, and Siebel’s OnDemand will thrive. CRM in the
The web has come of age!
This article on “The Story of CRM” reprinted with
permission.

Copyright © 2004-2005 Evaluateek Publishing.

Sports

What is the best penis size to make a woman reach multiple SCREAMING orgasms?

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Wondering what is the best penis size that will make your partner not only reach multiple orgasms, but also screaming orgasms? Well, if you take the time out of your day and read on, you will find out what exactly it is that drives women absolutely crazy. Once I found out the truth about what women really wanted, I went and naturally increased my penis size to reach the size that women most wanted. What happened after I naturally increased my size is something that has improved my sex life by 180 degrees. I’ll talk about that a bit later too.

But first…

Let’s go over the 3 different sizes that most men have.

1.) You have the erected class less than 5 inches. With this size, it will be extremely difficult to try to bring a woman to orgasm. In fact, it is practically impossible with intercourse alone. There will have to be a lot of foreplay involved and it will have to last quite a while for her to “maybe” have an orgasm.

2.) You have the 5-6 inch class. This is the class I was in (which was 5 1/2 inches). The men who are in this class deal more or less with what the men in the first class above deal with.

3.) You have the average 6-6.5 inch class. If her erect size is in this class, then she should be able to make a woman orgasm…as long as she can last a long time during sex.

So with those 3 classes above, you can clearly see that if you’re lacking significant size, you’ll have to make up for it elsewhere (being able to last longer during sex, being an expert at foreplay, etc).

Now, let’s talk about what women really want.

A.) What turns women on?

What will get women turned on is a large flaccid penile size (not erect) and an erect penis size that is long, thick, hard, straight in shape (no banana curve), and muscular looking (veined).

B.) What size makes your orgasm?

Through countless hours of research and surveys conducted by various organizations, the size of the penis that makes it easy for women to orgasm is between 7 and 9 inches. Anything above that, for most women, can be painful and unpleasant.

C.) What makes her reach MULTIPLE orgasms?

To get your partner to reach MULTIPLE orgasms, it’s not just the duration that’s important. You should also have a thicker penis, a harder erection, a larger penis head, and you should be able to last a long time during intercourse.

When you have ALL of those things with your masculinity, that’s when you can certainly make her want sex quite often… to say the least!

What happened to me once I got older?

When I took the proper steps to NATURALLY increase my size by 2 inches in 8 weeks (which, by the way, was with NATURAL penis exercises), my sex life took a 180 degree turn for the better. I’m lasting a long time during sex, my partner is having multiple orgasms, and my confidence level is through the roof.

How should I do to grow bigger?

Well, the best advice I can give you is to stay natural (as with the method I plan to do). Trying to enlarge your size unnaturally is not only ineffective, but also dangerous (side effects, potential diseases, penile deformity, and more) and can be very expensive (as with pills, expensive tools, and surgical procedures).

When you go natural, you get ALL the benefits I mentioned above… with no side effects, and your results will last a lifetime. That’s because natural methods are all about giving you FULL enlargement…not just increasing length, OR thickness, OR firmness, etc. When you only focus on one aspect, you will most likely run into problems (and SERIOUS problems).

It’s like exercising your body. If you spend most of your time working your biceps and neglecting other areas of your body, you’ll not only look ridiculous, but you’ll also cause imbalances in your body… leading to injuries, poor bodily functions, and more.

So, if you want to make your sex life something special, I recommend that you increase your size naturally to around 7-9 inches and make sure you choose a method that also enhances other areas of your manhood. Doing this will surely make your partner reach orgasms that you and she will never forget.