Monday, March 3, 2008

Office Cubicles, Ergonomics and your Environment

The care and attention that must be dedicated to the choice of the proper cubicle environment for your employees must exceed that spent on any other aspect of the office milieu. There is no other furnishing choice that will have such a drastic effect on your employees' well-being, morale and job satisfaction (and thus your bottom line) than the cubicle.

Depending on the choices you make, your employees will see their cubicle as a valid tool to assist their professional efforts, keep them organized, alert and comfortable, or they will see it as a dank, dark, cramped dungeon where they have to suffer the agonies of the damned. The proper cubicle is a balance between privacy and preservation of acoustics vs. the need to be in contact with the rest of the team.

Find more information on the growing trend of Going Green for business.

Cubicles must never be set so high that employees can't see over the tops, neither should they be set so low that the entire office is given the resemblance of a cafeteria. The open section of the cubicle should be large enough to allow a person to enter, even when carrying a large box or piece of electronic equipment. The best cubicles are the ones that to some degree face a source of natural light, whether it be a skylight or a window. Is your business going green?

Ergonomics are first and foremost in the list of features to look for in a cubicle, and the various work surfaces must be fully adjustable. A desktop that forces a keyboard or mouse into an unnatural position can be a carpal tunnel syndrome claim waiting to happen. Since employees come in all shapes and sizes, then the cubicle's ergonomic features must be fully adjustable to suit them all, tall and short, thin and portly. Since no one size can possbily fit all, the adjustability must include desktop altitude, separate keyboard tray with in/out and up/down movement, a separate mouse surface which must also be adjustable, and an overhead or side mounted monitor arm which allows the LCD panel to be easily moved to where it is most comfortably viewed.

All cubicles must contain an L shape and the PC must always be placed in the center of the L, allowing the employee to have access to working surface on both sides at a 90 degree angle. The chair is also a critical feature. It must be almost infinitely adjustable, including the lumbar support, seat angle and backrest height. With care, you will select a cubicle which will be beneficial to your employees and their productivity!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Arts and Culture Events of Aspen Colorado

Aspen Colorado Summer Arts and Culture events

The resort town of Aspen, Colorado is best known for its winter activities and for the huge rush of tourists heading for the town during the months when snow falls and the skiing and snowboarding slopes are at their best. However, Aspen Colorado is also a great place to go during the warmer months, and many people who decide that they are going to take a trip to Aspen Colorado just for the summer end up staying there as permanent residents.

Clearly, there must be something more than skiing and snowboarding going on in this town to make it such a magnetic destination. Here are some of the great summer arts and culture events that you can enjoy on a trip to Aspen Colorado when the sun is shining brightly and the entire world is green.

Condo and Private Home rentals - Aspen Lodging

The Aspen Music Festival is one of the best summer events if you are interested in classical music – every year classical artists are invited to the festival, which runs from the end of June to the middle of August. The length of the Aspen Music Festival gives you plenty of time to check out some of the best classical performances that you are likely to hear in your life, and the backdrop of the mountains of Aspen Colorado give you the perfect place to go for nature hiking, animal watching and all kinds of summer sports before settling down to an afternoon of some of the best music ever composed.

Activities in Aspen and Snowmass from Aspen Tours

The Aspen Dance Festival also takes place during the summer and is performed by the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. If you are interested in dance this is a great way to spend time during the summer gaining a greater appreciation of the arts. Aspen Colorado also offers a host of museums such as the Aspen Art Museum which has an excellent selection of contemporary art for you to spend time studying. If you are scientifically minded, you may also enjoy the lectures which you can hear at the Aspen Center for Physics.

View all events in the Roaring Fork Valley - Aspen Calendar of Events

All of these events give you a great way to relax and enjoy your stay in Aspen Colorado with diversions which will stimulate your mind once you get back from a day of outdoors activities that stimulate your body. Aspen, Colorado offers you a great well-rounded vacation experience during the summer with excellent arts and culture events that everyone can enjoy!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Travel-Top Five Las Vegas Hotels

The lover of elegant, opulent resorts might believe that they are a kid in a candy store when they first set eyes on the Strip or Downtown Las Vegas. This is a city where multi-billion dollar resorts are built as wild dreams immortalized in concrete, glass, steel and palpable luxury.

A great Las Vegas hotel is far from being the ultimate in hospitality and amenities. It is a theme embodied in every facet of the property, whether the inspiration is an Arthurian legend, the grandeur of the Pharaohs, the 1,001 Nights, or the majestic wonders of New York, Venice, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Bellagio, Monte Carlo, the Barbary Coast, the Gold Coast or the Saharan desert.

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Twenty of the country's thirty largest hotels are here, including all of the top thirteen. Choosing the best among this rarefied group is a difficult task as it presents a choice between the perfect and the ultimate.

Certainly among the top five would have to be the latest masterpiece from the man who built the Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio. Built on the old Desert Inn site, Wynn's is definitely angling to be be the ultimate among ultimates, with its indulgent catering to the wealthy and super-wealthy. The greens fee on the Wynn golf course is $500, so you can just imagine the level of the rest of the amenities.

Explore the Grand Canyon

The Bellagio earns its place among the greats due to its exquisite fountains, unparalleled aesthetic beauty, the memorable Conservatory, the superlative art, the sublime Via Bellaggio shops, its world-class La Cirque and Picasso restaurants and the 65,000-square-foot Spa Bellagio, considerably bigger than some Strip hotels' whole casino floor.

The classical favorite has to be Caesar's Palace, perhaps Vegas' most iconic hotel. With 129,000 square feet of casino and the sumptuous Forum Shops, Caesar's is a must-stop on any Vegas tour.

In a city where bigger is always better, you cannot possibly pass on the MGM Grand, the largest hotel in the country with 5,034 rooms and a 175,000 square foot casino floor, about as large as a small airport. Everything about the MGM is supersized, from its 27,000 square foot Grand Pool Complex, the gigantic Spa at MGM Grand, and your choice of three of the top 10 world great chef's restaurants: Joel Robuchon, Wolfgang Puck or Emeril Legasse.

Find local course and lodging packages if you are planning a Las Vegas Golf Vacation

Rounding off the top five, the Venetian is what you come to Las Vegas for: A convincing illusion which transports you to another continent to ride a gondola under the Rialto bridge, any resort which includes the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum and Streetmosphere has to be in the top five!

Friday, February 8, 2008

Picking a Keynote Speaker for your Event

The primary factor in deciding what kind of event or keynote speaker to hire for your next meeting or conference is twofold: the subject matter and the audience. There really aren't any leaders per se, it depends on the kind of group or conference you plan to have them address. For example, if you have a business audience you obviously want a well known and successful business man or woman. Donald Trump frequently serves as the keynote speaker to this type of audience. If the meeting is a woman's group, you most likely want a well-known woman executive. If they also have celebrity status, so much the better.

Speakers are available for every conceivable purpose and industry and you can easily find them or the bureaus that handle their bookings online on the internet. There are business speakers, motivational speakers, healthcare speakers, training and consulting specialists, celebrities, best selling authors, sports stars, personal growth experts, global affairs experts and entertainers, to mention just a few categories. The list is almost endless.

In the technology field, there are many well-known leaders from companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Boeing, Motorola…and more. They appear regularly as keynote speakers at trade shows and other meetings. So don't even consider trying to find out which speakers are rated as best. There's simply no pat answer. It depends on your topic, your audience and how much you're willing to pay.

Looking for Event Venues for your next gathering?

What is suggested is that you take a reasonable amount of time to peruse the many pages of internet listings. Many of their bureaus and representatives list their key speakers and briefly describe their backgrounds. Others ask you to answer some basic questions about what you're planning and, based upon your answers, offer up their candidates for you to choose from. It's pretty certain that you will find a selection of suitable candidates and be able to hire one or more that will fit the bill.

We all love celebrities and would feel safe choosing a well-known person or star as our keynote speaker. So take your time and look, look, look. It's pretty likely that you will even find one or more in your industry or business whom you've heard of.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Network Backup Software

Data loss and corruption of important system files is more than frustrating for any computer system or network. Losing entire hard drives or servers however is the ultimate data disaster nightmare. It is estimated that fifty percent of businesses that suffer failures of this magnitude may never recover from the financial stress put on the business. The industry average cost per hour of downtime is $82,000. For operations like a brokerage or a bank data center that cost increases to $650,000 to over 2,500,000 per hour making network backup critical.

The software products in the network backup arena offer many products to help with data backup and protection. They make restoring your system to working condition easier than it has ever been. A company called NovaStor has an Integrated Disaster Recovery option it is possible to clone your hard drive. Hard drive cloning is creating a backup of every file on a computer, network, or server. With this backup software it is possible to restore your system in a matter of minutes instead of hours, days, or even longer.

The Integrated Disaster Recovery option is included in two of NovaStor's software backup solutions, NovaBACKUP and NovaNET. Both backup solutions allow a user to perform data backup and hard drive cloning. Hard drives can be cloned to DVD, CD-R/RW, network attached storage, modern dual-layer DVD media or lomega Rev drives.

The Integrated Disaster Recovery system allows restoration of entire systems without having to reinstall the original software or the operating system. To achieve this, the system is booted up with a recovery disk, and then the system backup is recovered. For networks on Hewlett-Packard drives NovaNET is equipped to make the entire process even easier. With HP One Button Disaster Recovery from NovaStor, systems can be completely restored with the simple press of just one button.

These backup software products can be utilized for much more than their hard disk cloning abilities. Both software packages allow a user to schedule backups in advance and run automatic virus scans before the backup. But even more valuable than that is the knowledge that your data is preserved with the highest integrity and a reasonable price, check with a computer services directory for more options.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Travel-Grand Canyon Mule Rides

When you are planning a trip to Las Vegas or to any of the other cities in the area, the Grand Canyon is one of the sights which you absolutely have to see. Hiking through the trails of the Grand Canyon is one way to enjoy it, but another way which a lot of people find more enjoyable is to take a mule ride - on the back of a slow moving mule you can enjoy a slow and leisurely paced day with plenty of time to enjoy the vistas of the Grand Canyon and the rugged natural beauty of the southwestern United States.

Mule rides in the Grand Canyon are a relatively inexpensive way for you to get a great look at the Grand Canyon and get the full experience of this beautiful part of the country. One of the things that you have to remember, though, is that there are a finite number of companies offering mule rides - because the Grand Canyon is such an attractive destination for tourists you may have to book your Grand Canyon Tours on a traveling mule several months in advance.

There are also a number of rules that you must consider - generally there is a weight limit. Although the mules which are selected for use by the mule ride companies are particularly hardy and healthy they have their limits and usually you will need to weight less than two hundred pounds when you are fully dressed and carrying everything that you are taking with you. This will have to include your backpack, water, etc. (and you will want to carry water because you are likely to become thirsty, not to mention hungry, over the course of the day).

Depending on the Grand Canyon mule riding tour that you choose you may stay for one day or two, and your trip may include a stop at a ghost town or small village along one of the trails. For many of these trips which include plenty of stops there will be places along the way where food and drink will be provided, so factor this into your planning and you may be able to simply show up and enjoy the trip without having to bring a lot of heavy supplies with you.

Also keep in mind that the day after you ride on a mule you are likely to be sore, so you should have some time to relax after your mule ride. Good luck planning a mule ride in the Grand Canyon!




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Monday, January 28, 2008

Discover Cabo Pulmo-Baja's Best Kept Secret

You will find the hidden Baja vacation destination of Cabo Pulmo just a short drive northeast from Cabo San Lucas. If you're enthralled by kayaking and snorkeling amongst a brilliant array of colorful tropical fish in crystal clear waters, Cabo Pulmo represents a worthy vacation choice or a delightful side trip from Cabo San Lucas. This resort resembles a small village set in a largely unspoiled, pristine landscape overlooking the Sea of Cortez. The resort sits on the edge of a national marine preserve established by Mexico in 1995 where you will find a living coral reef that is one of only three in North American waters.

For more information visit the Cabo Pulmo Vacation site.

Cabo Pulmo's reef system is endowed with tropical marine life that makes it a favorite destination for snorkeling and scuba diving. The reef is readily available from shore and no boat is required. The waters around Cabo Pulmo are clearest between March and October. In addition to the reef, there is the wreck of a tuna boat called El Vencedor that sank in 1981 off the Cabo Pulmo Cape and now forms an excellent artificial reef that also attracts divers. Chances are you will see the Pilot Whales that are common to this area in April and large Jack Crevalles abound in August and September.

To reach Cabo Pulmo from Buena Vista, which is off Mexico's Highway 1, take a paved road marked as La Riberia east from Las Cuevas. This 12 mile long road will pass through La Riberia, a small village of about 2,000 containing a church, a cemetery, tortilleria, a Premex station, trailer homes and simple houses that overlook the beach. From there, take the coastal road south toward Cabo Pulmo. It is paved for part of the way but also contains an unpaved portion about 16 miles long between La Riberia and Cabo Pulmo. This may sound complicated but, in reality, is fairly easy. Remember that large, paved access roads bring in traffic that destroys the ambiance of un-crowded areas like Cabo Pulmo.

Although Cabo Pulmo is a quiet and mostly undiscovered spot now, the Mexican government is now surveying the bay in consideration of giving it national park status. The government has also made the Pulmo reef a nature preserve where no fishing or even anchoring is permitted. If shore development occurs in his area, there is a possibility that pollution could spell the reef's death. So see it now. It's uniquely worthwhile.

Click here for information on Cabo San Lucas Sightseeing