An intermediate level quiz with answers.
Thanks to: Halloween – All Things Topics
Halloween Quiz
Month: October 2021
Do You Need To Clean Your Humidifier?
Let’s start with an easy question: Do you need to clean your humidifier? Yes. If you don’t clean your humidifier thoroughly and regularly, you could be introducing additional mold and mildew spores into the air. Furthermore, if you don’t clean it often enough, your machine could also see decreased functionality and effectiveness due to mineral buildup, which could cause a blockage in your machine and result in a broken nebulizer or heating element. So, yes, it’s best to clean your humidifier and do it often if it’s getting regular or heavy use.
How Often To Clean a Humidifier
The water in your humidifier should be replaced daily. It’s recommended to thoroughly clean your humidifier somewhere between every 3 to 7 days. If you skew on the latter side of that spectrum and start to see pink mold starting to appear by the time cleaning day arrives, go ahead and increase the cleaning frequency.
The Best Way To Clean a Humidifier
To start on your humidifier-cleaning journey, it’s best to start at the source with your humidifier manufacturer’s cleaning instructions. Whether you should use vinegar or even bleach will depend on your unique machine, though vinegar tends to be the more commonly used cleaning agent for this particular job. While instructions vary from machine to machine and manufacturer to manufacturer, we’ll give you a rough idea of how to clean a basic system.
- Unplug the machine and pour out any remaining water from the tank and the base.
- Fill the base with a 1:1 ratio of water to vinegar. Let it sit for a full hour or more depending how badly your humidifier is in need of a clean.
- While the vinegar works away at the mold, slime, and buildup on the base, fill the reservoir with a couple cups of vinegar. Replace the knob to seal it, then shake and shake some more. This will help loosen any grime. To empty, press on the little spring lever on the knob. The vinegar should slowly seep out, flushing the nozzle while it empties. Once empty, fill with water, shake, and empty.
- Once your base has soaked for an hour or more, pour out the solution and wipe out the interior of the base with a cloth that has been soaked in vinegar. Any buildup or remaining residue should wipe off relatively easily at this point. Use the vinegar cloth to wipe down other exterior elements as well, allowing everything to air dry before storing.
Timely advise from Patricia Shannon for Southern Living©
Ways to make your home naturally smell amazing
Photo credit: © Shutterstock
Use baking soda to deodorize carpets
Before running the vacuum, lightly sprinkle carpets with baking soda to remove musty odors and pick up excess dirt.
Hang activated charcoal in closets
Bags of activated charcoal can be found at many retailers, and are great for absorbing smells from smelly closets, car trunks, and other damp, dark places. Apply a few drops of essential oil to add scent or purchase bags that contain fragrant herbs like lavender alongside the charcoal.
Make DIY room sprays
With a little water, rubbing alcohol, and essential oils, it’s easy to make a DIY room spray that will make your space smell great. Added ingredients like vodka and vinegar can help neutralize odors in soft surfaces like couches and carpets.
Use vinegar in the laundry to remove musty odors
Forget a load of laundry for a couple of days? Add in a cup of vinegar to remove mildew smells from towels and other garments. Vinegar can also be used to clean the washing machine, or as a germ-killing additive in loads of laundry with smelly workout gear.
For more of the same, click on the “Source” link below.
Article by Amy McCarthy for Yardbarker™
Source: 20 ways to make your home naturally smell amazing (msn.com)
Garden Glossary: Gardening Terms Beginners Should Know
Here are some common gardening terms to get you started
By Fine Gardening editors
Here are some common gardening terms you may run across as you explore garden centers and plan your garden. Understanding what each term means will help you to pick the best plants for your goals. For example, gardeners will often use annuals in container designs or in hanging baskets due to their short life cycle. With good care, perennials will come back every year, and so should be accounted for in the overall design of your garden.
Plant life cycles
Plants are categorized by their expected life cycle. Some plants grow and mature from year to year, while others mature during the course of one season and then die off.
| Annuals are plants that complete their entire life cycle in one season. In other words, you plant one in the spring, enjoy it all summer, and then it dies. Annuals are popular for their exuberant color and low cost. Think petunias (Petunia spp. and cvs.). |
Perennials are plants that come back year after year. A perennial is generally a good buy, even if it is a little more expensive than an annual, because you only have to buy it once—as long as you don’t kill it. Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia spp. and cvs., USDA Hardiness Zones 3–11) are common perennials.
Biennials live for only two years. They grow leaves the first year and add flowers the second year, and so require a bit of advanced planning. After the second season, a biennial usually dies. One great biennial with exciting first-year foliage and second-year flowers is silver sage (Salvia argentea, Zones 5–8).
Plant behavior types
| Native plants. Although you’ll frequently see this term pop up in gardening textbooks, websites, and magazines, there is not a firm consensus on what the definition of “native plant” actually is. Some say it’s a population of plants within a defined geographic area that exists there without being introduced by humans. Others define it as a species of plant within a particular ecosystem that is not a result of an introduction and that historically occurred, or currently occurs, in that ecosystem. Things get a little dicey when it comes to determining what constitutes an “introduction” and what exactly is meant by “historically occurred.” The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, offers this succinct definition: a plant that occurs naturally in the place where it evolved. |
Invasive plants are plants gone wild. They escape the garden and threaten the habitats of native plants. A plant may be an invasive species in one area of the country and benign in another. English ivy (Hedera helix and cvs., Zones 5–11) is a good example; it is a terror in the northwestern United States but is well behaved in other parts of the country.
Plant forms
The terms below can help you plan your garden’s structure. Some plants, such as trees and shrubs, keep their “framework” throughout the season. Some of these plants can help to provide winter interest by lending beautiful bark and elegant forms to the garden during the cold season. Herbaceous plants die at the end of the growing season and will either grow back in spring (perennial) or will need to be regrown from seed or repurchased and planted (annual).
| Woody plants, typically trees or shrubs, form a permanent structural framework that supports their foliage. An oak tree (Quercus spp. and cvs., Zones 4–9) is woody. |
Herbaceous plants, generally annuals or perennials, grow from the ground up every spring and die back to the ground in fall or winter. Their structural framework is fleshy and temporary. An impatiens (Impatiens walleriana cvs., annual) is herbaceous.
Leaf markings
Some plants have interesting foliage features, such as variegation. These plants are often prized for adding variety to the garden and breaking up the “sea of green.”
| Variegated plants flaunt more than one color on their leaves. A variegated hosta (Hosta spp. and cvs., Zones 3–9), like ‘Pandora’s Box’ may have green leaves with white streaks. |
Types of trees and shrubs
Also known as “woodies,” trees and shrubs are considered nonherbaceous perennials. Some woodies are evergreen, and go throughout the cool season, whereas deciduous woodies lose their leaves in the fall and winter and then revive in the spring.
| Evergreen plants keep their leaves through the winter. A pine tree (Pinus spp. and cvs., Zones 3–10) is a common example. Evergreens make Christmas trees a reality. Perennials and shrubs can be evergreen too. |
Deciduous plants drop their leaves for the cold season. It’s because trees such as maples (Acer spp. and cvs., Zones 3–9) are deciduous that you have to rake your yard in fall.
Source: Garden Glossary: Gardening Terms Beginners Should Know – FineGardening
The 10 most invasive sites on the internet
We all know that our online browsing habits are being tracked. Unless you take steps to prevent it, most websites see where you come from, what you are searching for and what you like.
All this data is valuable to sites and services, as they use it to serve targeted advertising. Ever searched for something on Amazon and then seen an ad for a similar product on Facebook? That is targeted advertising at work.
Thankfully, not all websites treat you as a treasure trove of information. You might be pleasantly surprised to find out which sites have the least amount of trackers. But on the other end of the spectrum, the biggest culprits shamefully stuff their sites with hundreds of trackers.
Here’s the backstory
There are plenty of ways for a website to track you. Some might be subtle, like an invisible pixel or cookies, while others access your device’s GPS to locate you on the globe. But who are the biggest offenders?
VPN provider SurfShark launched an investigation to find out, and some of the results are somewhat surprising. Its findings revealed that some of the most commonly-used websites hide up to 100 trackers, all designed to collect as much information on you as possible.
The most invasive sites
SurfShark found 143 trackers on the most invasive website, 92 of which are used for advertising purposes. Tracker counts also vary by category, with Men’s & Women’s Lifestyle websites having the most trackers (59) on average than other categories.
The most invasive sites are:
- theChive (143)
- Salon (139)
- NY Daily News (126)
- HGTV (121)
- Crooks and Liars (116)
- Barstool Sports (116)
- LADbible (114)
- Adweek (112)
- Refinery29 (111)
- USA TODAY (104)
How to stop sites from tracking you
If you don’t want websites or services to track you, there are ways to stop them. Here are some suggestions:
- Use a VPN to block your location. When you mask where you are from, in most cases you won’t be served ads that relate to your area.
- Switch to a secure browser that has additional privacy features. Browsers like Brave have been developed to block sites from tracking you.
- Restrict ad tracking in your browser, or block ads completely. In Google Chrome, click on the menu icon and tap Settings. Next, select Privacy & Security and click Cookies and Other Data. Then slide the toggle next to Send “Do Not Track” request with your browsing traffic to the right to enable it.
Here’s the good news. Websites with the least amount of trackers:
- Wikipedia (3)
- TikTok (3)
- Instagram (4)
- XVIDEOS (4)
- Netflix (5)
- Bandcamp (5)
- FB Messenger (5)
- XNXX (6)
- National Parks Service (6)
- GameForge (7)
By Charlie Fripp, Komando.com
Source: List: The 10 most invasive sites on the internet (komando.com)
The Health Benefits of Male Bonding
costco.com Health Magazine
Halloween Quiz and More
Click to see video quiz:
See page 3 for activity notes. Answer are on same page. Enjoy !
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Feel Dizzy When You Stand?
costco.com Health Magazine
Hobbies of Successful People
(This is a dated article, but still gives one an idea of what successful people do to unwind)
Whether they’re hitting the campaign trail or overseeing multibillion-dollar empires, even the world’s hardest-working and wealthiest people need time out of the spotlight to recuperate from a long day of work. Click through for a glimpse at some of the hobbies of your favorite celebrities today.
Hillary Clinton — Mystery Novels
A May 2016 NYMag article revealed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton enjoys mystery novels, notably those written by female authors and including female protagonists. Talk about female empowerment. She and Bill also enjoy watching TV shows like “House of Cards,” “Madam Secretary” and “The Good Wife.”
Donald Trump — Golfing
It’s no secret that Clinton rival and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump loves golf. He’s frequently photographed golfing, he’s mentioned it on the campaign trail and, oh yeah, he actually owns golf courses around the world.
Warren Buffett — Bridge
Warren Buffett loves to play bridge. He discussed his hobby on CNN Money and said that more than 95 percent of his bridge games have taken place online over the last 15 years. But that doesn’t stop the billionaire from playing in-person. In 2007, he was filmed playing bridge with Bill Gates at an annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting.
The Berkshire Hathaway CEO has a net worth of $64.9 billion, which is a measure of assets versus liabilities, reported Forbes. Ranking No. 3 in the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest people in America, Buffett is a world-renowned investor known for his down-to-earth personality and money know-how.
Meryl Streep — Knitting
Famed actress Meryl Streep, known for films like “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Iron Lady” and “Mamma Mia!,” has simple tastes. She enjoys knitting, according to numerous interviews with the star. In a 2014 interview on “Blank on Blank,” a PBS series, the Academy Award-winning actress said she even once found an old knitting bag, which had an unfinished sweater for an ex-boyfriend.
However, knitting is not her only hobby. An interview with The Talks revealed Streep does most of her own cooking, though she had someone cook meals for her and her family when her children were younger.
The actress lives a rather frugal life, she told TheRecord.com in March 2015. “I live a very unspectacular life,” she said. “I love to sit on my chair in the living room and knit. Or I cook or read a book. I’m a very frugal person.”
Iggy Azalea — Horseback Riding
Rapper Iggy Azalea has been photographed over the years riding horseback, and she also revealed her hobby in a video she made for “On Air with Ryan Seacrest.” The singer even owns her own horse and was photographed riding it earlier this year.
Larry Ellison — Sailing
Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle, has a $49 billion fortune, according to Forbes. His hobby of choice is sailing — and he’s really good at it. In 2013, he and his team won the America’s Cup yacht race for the second time in a row.
“It’s funny, because I realized after losing twice that my personality wouldn’t allow me to quit while losing,” he told Business Insider in 2014. “And then after winning the America’s Cup, I discovered my personality doesn’t allow me to quit while winning.”
Arianna Huffington — Sleeping
Hobbies don’t have to be complex or extreme, as proven by Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington. In a December 2010 Ted Talk, she said, “I learned the hard way the value of sleep.” She fell asleep at her desk, she explained, and broke her chin. In her talk, she said that there is a culture of one-upmanship when it comes to how busy we can be and how little sleep we get.
Taylor Swift — Baking
Multi-Grammy award-winning singer and songwriter Taylor Swift has done more in her young life than most people could dream of doing in a lifetime. But off-camera, she has a rather “normal” hobby: baking. On her Instagram, Swift likes to share pictures of her latest baked sweets, like her chai sugar cookies with cinnamon eggnog icing.
Richard Branson — Kitesurfing
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, has been photographed on numerous occasions kitesurfing, such as when he’s at home on Necker Island, his private island in the Caribbean. The famed entrepreneur has a host of other interests such as swimming and flying hot air balloons.
Bill Wyman — Metal Detecting
Bill Wyman, former bassist of the Rolling Stones, must surely have one of the oddest hobbies out there: metal detecting. “Metal detecting is not just for anoraks or eccentrics; it’s probably the best and most enjoyable way of learning about our history,” said Wyman in a press release announcing the Bill Wyman Signature Detector.
Simon Cowell — Watching Cartoons
The famed reality TV judge takes enjoyment in simpler things, like cartoons. Simon Cowell told GQ magazine he watches cartoons each morning, like “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons.”
Vin Diesel — Dungeons & Dragons
Vin Diesel, the actor known for “The Fast and Furious” franchise, likes to play the tabletop, role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons in his spare time. On his 48th birthday, Diesel even celebrated with a cake designed as Dungeons & Dragons rule books.
Elon Musk — His Job
Justine Musk, ex-wife of Elon Musk, told the New York Times in 2015 that work is Elon’s hobby. But take a minute to look at what he does, and maybe it won’t be so difficult to understand why: Elon co-founded Tesla Motors and SpaceX.
Angelina Jolie — Collecting Daggers
Angelina Jolie’s hobby is collecting daggers. She told W Magazine in 2008 that her mom took her to buy her first daggers when she was 11 or 12.
Steve Wozniak — Segway Polo
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has an unusual hobby: Segway polo, which is exactly what it sounds like. He loves the sport so much he participated in the 2009 championships, reported Business Insider.
Mark Cuban — Basketball
Here’s another billionaire who turned his hobby into a job. Before buying the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, “Shark Tank” veteran Mark Cuban was a dedicated basketball fan. Nowadays, you can find the “Shark Tank” business mogul cheering — and shouting — on the court.
Oprah Winfrey — Taking a Bath
Oprah Winfrey, billionaire media proprietor and former talk show host, said that bathing is her hobby. On Oprah.com, she even blogged about a hand-carved onyx bathtub by stonecutters in Italy. She eventually got rid of the tub during a redesign of her bathroom.
Photo credit: JStone, Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful Women, JStone / Shutterstock, Flickr, Shutterstock
Article by Stella Osoba Oct 14, 2016
Michael Galvis contributed to the reporting for this article.
Life Hacks From Warren Buffett That Anyone Can Use
You don’t get to be one of the richest people in the world without knowing something the rest of us don’t. Often referred to as the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett has a net worth of $102.2 billion, according to Forbes.
1. Decide That You’re Going To Be Rich
In order to be rich, you have to believe that one day you will be. According to the Huffington Post, Buffett once reportedly said, “I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.”
For best results, set high expectations for yourself and work toward your goals and aspirations.
“Then, make it clear to yourself, your family and friends that you have a commitment to become financially independent,” said Randall “Dolph” Janis, an insurance agent at Clear Income Strategies Group. “Create your future with a plan, knowing when to get aggressive against knowing when to be conservative.”
2. Start Saving at a Young Age
By age 15, Warren Buffett had earned $2,000 delivering papers and selling magazine subscriptions, according to CNBC. He used $1,200 of his earnings to invest in a farm, forming a profit-sharing agreement with the farmer.
The lesson? “Start saving money as early as possible, so that you get into the habit,” said Brittney Castro, founder and CEO of Financially Wise Women.
This is important whether you’re saving to invest in a business or buy your first house.
3. Reinvest Your Profits
When Buffett was in high school, he and a friend bought a pinball machine. According to Biography, the pair put it in a barbershop and quickly earned enough to buy more machines and install them in other shops. The friends eventually sold all the machines for a profit of $1,200.
If you want your fortune to grow, the best thing you can do is keep reinvesting it in your business. Of course, you can enjoy the fruits of your labor, but don’t spend it all in one place.
4. Graduate College Early
Because of Buffett’s sharp mind for business, it’s no surprise that he managed to finish college in three years — two at the Wharton School of Business and one at the University of Nebraska, according to the book “Icons of Business.” Although college costs weren’t nearly as high in Buffett’s day as they are today, it’s likely that he saved money by completing his education in three years instead of four.
Today’s college students can save by following his lead.
For the 2016-2017 school year, the College Board estimated that the average cost of tuition at a private college was $33,480. If you attended a state school as a resident, you spent $9,650 per year. However, graduating early could save you even more when you factor in the cost of student loan interest paid out over the next 25 years.
5. Bounce Back From Rejection
Ironically, Harvard Business School rejected Buffett after his interview. But instead of sulking, he headed to Columbia and met Benjamin Graham. Graham is a legend in the investment industry, and he became Buffett’s mentor. Much of Buffett’s incredible investing success could arguably be credited to Graham and the lessons he taught him.
“Turned down? Who cares, keep going, it happens all the time,” said Tom Scuccimarra, national sales manager at M&O Marketing. “You can’t take it personally, and you can’t let it push you off course of your dreams.”
Even if you get rejected from a school or job opportunity, it’s important to keep moving forward. If Buffett had quit after Harvard dismissed him, he wouldn’t be where he is today.
[This are just the tip of the tips. Click on the link for 16 more tips]
Article by Ashley Redmond for GOBankingRates
Source: 21 Life Hacks From Warren Buffett That Anyone Can Use (msn.com)