How to Adopt a Rescue Dog

So, what exactly do you have to do to adopt a dog? One option is to contact a “rescue group.” In my case, we wanted to adopt a Golden Retriever or Golden Retriever mix. We were familiar with the breed and knew that we could give an orphaned dog a great home. You who have never gone through the process may think it is very simple. From personal experience, I can tell you with no doubt in my mind that it’s not easy at all. You emotions soar and fall throughout the process but rest assured you will be matched with a special “forever friend”. I would like to teach you how to adopt a dog from the Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue in North Carolina.

The first step is to sit down with your family and come to an agreement on what you are looking for in a dog. Personality, gender, age, and health of the dog must all be considered. To adopt a dog from the Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue, you should try to attend one of their monthly adopt-a-thons. You can meet the staff and fill out an application form. The application form will have all of your important information and desired dog profile. The NRGRR take their mission seriously and will check your references. They even called our veterinarian in Canada to see if we were responsible dog owners! When you are approved they assign you a caseworker to keep on the lookout for any new dogs coming into their adoption system. You can also look at the Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue’s website to view adoptable dogs. The dogs come into the system as strays, shelter rescues, and sadly due to owner surrender.

The second step is waiting. Your caseworker works on your behalf to match you up with a dog that fits your profile. All dogs brought into the system are examined by a vet. They are neutered, given vaccines and treated for heartworm or other health problems if needed. The dogs are then fostered by caring families while they await adoption. Your caseworker will set up the appointment between you and the foster family to see the dog. On the day of your visit, you will interact with the dog and decide if it’s a good match for you. The foster usually insists on meeting each member of your family and will ultimately decide if you are a good match for the dog. The foster has a tough job because multiple families may be interviewed for the same dog. You may think you and the dog are a good match, but the dog may go to someone else. Try not to lose heart. The next interview may have you taking your new “forever friend” and leash into the back seat of your car.

That’s the basic process of adopting a dog from the Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue here in North Carolina. Remember, you need a lot of patience in the process of adopting a dog this way. You may have many let downs, just like I did. Do not be discouraged, for you will find the right dog in time. Our dog, Sunny, is a blessing to our family and I can’t imagine our home without her. If you want to learn how to properly establish a healthy relationship with your dog, I would suggest watching “The Dog Whisperer” with Cesar Millan on the National Geographic channel. I hope you will consider visiting a rescue when your family is ready to adopt a dog. The Neuse River Golden Retriever Rescue is a wonderful organization. Their website is www.goldenrescuenc.org.

How to draw anime

The first step in drawing “anime style” is just that~~style. What kind of character are you drawing, and for what purpose?
For example, a schoolgirl will have a different facial structure and body proportions than, say, a Fighter.

…Not to mention clothing, posture, and the fact that not all school girls or Fighters will look like these examples. these are just basic guidelines to ensure that you don’t end up with a school girl with the body proportions of a fighter character (unless, of course, that is what you want. There are no real rules when it comes to drawing anime)
Style is completely a matter of preference, but it’s a good idea to be aware of some of the main archetypes before going on to facial structure and body proportion.
Here are some examples
-Cute – Round cheekbones, large eyes, facial parts set close together.
-Evil – Drawn more ‘realistically’. Sharp cheekbones, very small pupils.
-Shoujo – Sharp chins, huge expressive eyes, elegant nose bridges, slender body.
-Stupid – Round head and body, very simplistic features, tiny little eyes.
-Fighter – Simplistic features, exaggerated body proportions, small head.
Good luck!!

Image Conscious About Your new TV?

Imagine this – You just bought an awesome new 50 inch plasma, high definition TV and you have it installed in your house and everything. Then, you go about changing all of the settings on the TV to look perfect. Then, out of your surprise, your TV goes black. You know why? You accidentally turned the brightness to zero. Now, standing there worried, you wonder, How am I supposed to change anything when I can’t see it? You have now just accomplished one thing – turning your new thousand dollar Television to a useless piece of good looking furniture, that does…nothing…but sit there and look good.

Now, lets go through this again, except with New TVs that make it easier to get a perfect picture. As the trend of just owning a new Flatscreen TV is wearing off, more people are caring how much the picture actually looks.

Most TVs now have a user menu that does very little, and a hidden menu where you can permanently ruin your set. Now, LG is offering you a break on their new 1.7 inch thin TV sets, some of the thinnest in the world. For example, you can adjust the brightness, and the TV won’t let the screen go completely black or accidentally erase the factory settings. (LG 60 series – see it at www.us.lge.com, $3,000, 47 inches)

Sharp’s new LCD TVs connect to the internet so tech support can adjust them remotely for you. By asking a few facts over the phone, such as the brightness of the room, or what you watch(such as movies, sports, news, etc.) they can optimize the picture for you from your own opinion of how it should look. They can even see if your cable or DVD player is connected properly. (Sharp Aquos LC-46se94U – at sharpusa.com, $3,200, 46 inches)

Now, television makers can take the guesswork out of having to adjust image settings, so you don’t have to. They can help you produce sharper richer images, so you don’t have to higher a professional.

Stock Market on Your Computer

Many of you have heard of the stock market, where you buy a portion of a company and as their stock price increases, so does the money in your wallet.  But for those of you who are planning on investing on stocks, or if you are just a competitor, this is for you!   StocksQuest is kind of like a game with money.  Of course, StocksQuest is free and you don’t actually receive money or lose.  Once you have an account, you can join groups and play competitively.  Not only are you competing against opponents, but you’ll be able to learn a few things about the Stock Market.

Let’s walk through the steps of how to register for free and start competing.

Registration

Step 1:  Go to www.stocksquest.com

Step 2:  You’ve just reached to home page of StocksQuest.  To begin the painless registration process, click on Sign Up.

Step 3:  Fill out the registration form.

Step 4:  Now that you have registered, log-in to your My Stocks page.

Play Competitively

Step 1:  You have reached your portfolio named StocksQuest.  This is an individual folder where you can experiment with stocks.  You can reset this folder at any time.  But to play competitively, you need to Join a Contest.

Step 2:  Click on Join a Contest, which is on a bar that looks like blue tabs.

Step 3:  I have created this contest for What’s Up Wakefield’s readers.  You will be asked the Contest Name and the Password.

Contest Name:  wake

Password:  wuw

You’ve now joined the contest.  So, spread the word to friends and family to make this competition more fun.  Good Luck!

How-To: Creating Your Very own Website

Almost everyone now who has a computer with internet access has a website of their own. That website could be a personal one just about them, or they could have a small business. Maybe kids have a MySpace or FaceBook page, or maybe they made one completely from scratch. By reading this handy guide, I will walk you through step by step making your very own website, with your very own name in the URL. The process is fairly simple, and you don’t any programming experience at all or you don’t need to pay for anything. You just need to know how to work a computer, how to use the internet, and need an internet connection (which I am pretty sure you have, considering you are reading this article on the internet).

Types of websites

There are many different types of websites, of which have many different types of programming used to make them (don’t worry about all of the programming terms I use, as we will get to that later in the guide). Some websites include a personal website, which is just a site about you. You probably wouldn’t have any more than 10 pages in a personal website and you would use CSS or HTML to make it, and use JavaScript to spruce it up and add effects. Another type would be a website for your small business. This website would probably have no more than 30 to 40 pages or so, and would probably use CSS. Finally, the third website you would want to make is a large business one, consisting of 100 pages or more. These are industrial companies, such as Microsoft, who have literally thousands upon thousands of pages on their website. We don’t really need to worry about making one like that, because I am going to show you how to make a personal website later on in the guide.

Programming used to make websites

There are so many different programming languages out now used to make websites, but I am going to cover just the most basic and most popular languages. The most popular is probably HTML, because every site has some HTML code in it. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML uses tags to organize and format text, pictures, audio, and multimedia into a website.Another Type of language is called Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. CSS works by making a default layout and format for a webpage, and each page would have the same layout and format, except with different content on it. CSS is more complicated to script than HTML, but once you get that script in, that takes care of all of the formatting so all you have to is type regular text into the text editor.

JavaScript is a scripting language that can actually be embedded into HTML code. You would use JavaScript maybe to add a clock or visitor counter to your website. JavaScript is very complicated and hard to learn, but I will talk about it later.

Time to make your website!

Now that I have explained to the basics of a website and how one works, we can now start working on your very own! First of all, we need web hosting. This is server space to store all of the files on that will be viewed on the internet. I am going to use FreeWebs in this example, but there are many others, some of which include 110mb, Yahoo Geocities, GoDaddy, and 1&1. I am using FreeWebs because it is simple to use and is very popular.

First of, start by going to http://www.freewebs.comOnce at the FreeWebs site, click the button “Start Now”

Now, a window should pop up. Enter all of the info into the fields shown. Your username will be in the web URL, in this case I used: “whats-up-wakefield-example-site.” It will say if it available or not. Enter a password, and make sure it a strong one, and that you can remember it easily. Now enter your email address. Select your gender and your age, and I chose “my age is private”. Read the terms and conditions, check the box, and click Go!

Now, if all the information you entered is correct, you should now pick a template to use. I am going to use “Clean as a Whistle” For my example site. Click the one you want, and then a confirmation box will come up. Click Ok to proceed if you really want to use the template you selected.

Next, Describe your site. The site title will be what you see at the top of your internet

browser. Select Done! to continue

An advertisement will come up. Select the “No thanks, let me build my website” button up at the top to continue

After you continue, this page should pop up. Click the second option, Start my website from a blank canvas, and click continue.

Now, You can edit your site however you want! Use the toolbox on the side to add multimedia and widgets to your website. All of the formatting options are in the toolbox. You can add new pages and preview your site any time you want. I was talking about JavaScript earlier, and there are multiple sites you can get free JavaScript codes from that will make your website more creative. You could add a clock script or even a visitor counter script. The widgets you can add are also very neat too. They allow you to add shout boxes, and all the things like that to your website. Do whatever you like, because now it is YOUR website!Thank you for reading my guide and I hope this helped you out a lot in creating your very own website! Here is the link to the example site I used: http://www.freewebs.com/whats-up-wakefield-example-site