Is it worth to do all the house repairs ourselves?

• Whenever there is a repair work to be carried out in my house, a number of arguments arise between me and my wife which sometime ends up in small tussles. The reason is only that I am a miser as regards paying the proffessionals where as my wife is totally of a different view. According to her one cannot be master of everything.
• As a DIY (Do it Yourself) enthusiast I use to follow the step by step instructions provided on the various sites on the internet and proceed to perform the repairs myself.

I am sharing the modest experience as a DIY enthusiast:

• One fine morning, the water line had a crack and the water started flowing all around. As usual I started attending it. As the plumbing was concealed without knowing I had broken the walls to a large extent and ended up spending more on cement and paint.
• Similarly I had a bitter experience in trying to paint the house, trying to the electrical wiring, trying to repair the hot water system as all these got messed up and I ended up spending more.

All these experiences had thought me a lesson that one cannot be master of everything. I realised that I had been pennywise and pound foolish. It is all right as regards minor repairs where as trying to do the major repairs with a view to save will result in only in messing up the things, creating a chaos and more expenditure.

How to sleep better?

• Sleep is a vital part of life and its lack can have severe consequences.
• If one suffers from insomnia or other sleep disorders, the first thing to do is to consult the doctor.

Causes:

• Anxiety: A condition in which individuals feel high tension, apprehension, feeling of helplessness, fear, worry and uncertainty.
• Hormonal changes in women.
• Age: With the ageing of a person the secretion of a hormone melatonin which aids sleep decreases.
• Medical conditions like allergies, arthritis, asthma, heart disease, high blood pressure, hyperthyroidism and parkinson's disease.
• Pain due to medical illness or injury.
• Working in night shifts or long shifts.
• Side effect of certain medications.
• Overuce of caffeine and alcohol.
• Extreme noise, temperature or a change in perxon's surroundings.

Tips to have a good sleep:

• Have a bath in warm water before going to bed as this relaxes the muscles to a great extent.
• Listen to mild music as this surely relieves stress to a great extent.
• Drink a glass of milk before bed time as it soothes the nervous system.
• Avoid Caffeine, Alcohol and Tobacco.
• Sleep in a well ventilated room.
• Sleep on a good firm bed.
• Sleep on your back.
• Keep regular bed time hours.
• Perform some physical excercises during the day. Pranayama, Surya Namaskar, yogasanas and brisk walking are very effective in my experience.
• Go to bed early in the night and get up early in the morning.
• Avoid naps in the afternoon.
• Avoid illuminations in the bed room.
• Pray the almighty both before going to bed and after getting up for a few seconds. This provides a great relief, stress, tension and worries. Just do your duty and do not worry about the results and leave it to the Lord. When we do not worry about results, there will be no reason for worry, stress, anxiety, anger, hatred, likes, dislikes or sorrows. As a result the mind and the body both will rest in peace.
• Practice meditation daily.
  

Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

• Lake Titicaca is located on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is located 3812m above sea level making it the commercially navigable lake in the world. By the volume of water it is the largest lake in South America.
• Titicaca or isla del Sol is a sacred place the site of the inca origin on the northern part of the island. The first Inca Manco Capac, the son of the Andean deity, identified as the Sun, is said to have emerged from a prominent crag in a large sand stone known as the Titicala,the sacred rock.
• A temple was built at this rock called the Chinkana. The passage ways are twisted to give the shape of a maize.
  
• The demands are on to consider Titicara as one of the wonders of the world.
  

The Epics of Ramayana

• The literary work depicting the heroism of Rama. But for the spiritual minded it is an epic depicting deep spirituality for their life line.As the incarnations are both human and divine an overall view would just show the literary meaning and the heroism of Rama and shall be another fiction. But for a person with insight , the spiritualism deep rooted into the epic Ramayana Rama as the hero inculating us with the spiritual ways of life shall be visible.No doubt both are right in their places.
• The sages like Valmiki and Vysa have achieved deep spiritual vision with which they could see the spirituality and the divinism involved in the Ramayana.
• The intension of the sages is not to teach history or geography but to impress upon the man's history of divine existence and the spiritual destiny of man.
• The Bhagvatta Purana after giving a long narration of the devotee kings, finally says that it has narrated the stories of all those men whose souls have departed leaving their memories.
• So don't look for historical authencity or factual accuracy for the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharatha as they are narratives and stories of men with spiritual insight who could see far deeper.
• The Sundara Kanda as also the whole of Ramayana has got both its spiritual and literary aspects . This chapter of Ramayana shows Valmiki's literary & poetic excellence and hence known as Sundara or beautiful . Another view can be it relieves Sita of her sorrow & hence Sundara . It can also mean a messenger & the Kanda includes the message sent by Rama to Sita . Sundara is also a name of an intermediary who establishes a mutual contact between a hero and a heroine as Hanuman did in the case of Lord Rama and Sita.
  
• The recovery of something lost is also described as Sundara . In Ramayana the topic dealt with the discovery of the abducted Sita . The study of the Sundara Kanda is considerd equivalent to the study of the whole of Ramayana as far as the spiritual merit is concerned .Just as the Upanishads are said to contain the supreme purport of the vedas ,the Sundara Kanda is supposed to be the heart of Ramayana.
  

No more painful injections.

• IIT Kharagpur along with Tokai University of Japan invents micro needles that can inject the drugs or extract blood painlessly.
• The micro needle is developed on the basis of the principle of suction based pressure.
• Diabetic patients will immensely benefit as they need to undergo pathological examinations very often for diagnosis and management.
• The suction action is provided by the micromechanical pump which works using a piezoelectric actuator attached to the needle.
• The diametre of the needle is as small as 30 micrometre. The device is also attached with a vibrator which helps in making the process painless.
  

LAW OF JOKES

Law of queue: If you change queues, the one you have left will start to move faster than the one you are in now.

Law of the Telephone: When you dial a wrong number, you never get an engaged tone.

Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.

Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

Law of the Alibi: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

Bath THEOREM: When the body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.

LAW OF ENCOUNTERS: The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

LAW of the RESULT: When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will!

LAW OF BIOMECHANICS: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

THEATRE RULE: People with the seats at the furthest from the aisle arrive last.

LAW OF COFFEE: As soon as you sit down for a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

Beware. Conficker virus to attack today.

• Conficker virus has infected upto 1.5 million computers till date.
• The virus attack can have access to personal files, send spam, clog networks or crash sites.
• Conficker also known as Dowmadup or Kido, first appeared last November.
  
• It can infect our computers via net or by hiding in USB memory drives used to ferry data from one computer to another. Once it has entered a computer, it digs deep setting up defences making it hard to extract.
• The virus can pass out vital informations stored in the computer which is infected.
• Symantec has come out with a free trial version software that can detect and remove this virus.