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Top Tools That Will Help You Choose Your Real Estate

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Choosing real estate is one of the most important decisions you will ever make – probably just behind deciding on who you’re going to marry. Not only is this an incredibly expensive purchase and one that you hope will be a good investment, but it’s also a decision that will impact on your day-to-day life moreso than perhaps every other. The distance you travel to work, the options available for your entertainment in the evening, the comfort you feel when you relax in the evening… all will be dictated by your real estate.

Which is why you shouldn’t rely on just your instincts alone to choose your property. Of course you need a good estate agent and a good surveyor, but likewise you can also fall back on tools and gadgets that can help you too. Read on to see which devices will help the most and how you can take advantage of them.

Computer

The first job of a computer when choosing real estate is to help you browse the various homes available and to find an estate agent. Thanks to the marvels of the digital age, it’s no possible to replace ‘leg work’ with ‘finger work’ – you can have done the vast majority of your hunting before you have even left the house.

Phone

Your phone of course is also a crucial device, and the one you will use in order to call up and make bookings so that you can view various properties – as well as to hire all the other services you will use. If you have a smartphone (who doesn’t these days?) then you can even set reminders in your calendar to ensure that you never miss a viewing. What makes a phone most useful of all though, is almost undoubtedly the camera. This will allow you to take snapshots of the place you’re looking around to look back on later. This is a great strategy, because it will allow you to remember much more clearly what each place looked like and also to show it to friends and others who might be able to give you advice.

Tablet

If you want a bit more space to work with, then a tablet can be a useful device for running full-screen apps to let you plan layouts, take photos and schedule appointments. Plus they make you look and feel like a pro…

Notepad

It may not be particularly high tech, but the notepad should never be underestimated. Not only will it enable you to take notes on the places you are looking around, but you can also use it to write down questions that you want to ask your real estate agents. This way you can make sure that you don’t go to view the property with a million questions, only to come away realising that you haven’t actually asked any of them.

Meanwhile notepads can also be used in order to sketch things out, to take measurements, to write down phone numbers and more. A smartphone might be very handy then, but sometimes it’s the old fashioned gadgets that are the best…

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Kevin Preston, the author of this post, is a part time blogger and a real estate agent. He has many years of experience in the field and People consider him one of the best brains in the field of real estate. He likes swimming and playing football in his spare time.

Five Tips To Help Dog Separation Anxiety

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taro shiba:

From puppies to adult dogs, anxiety can be present regardless of age, size, breed and gender. Separation anxiety can happen for a variety of reasons, but luckily for us dog owners, there are a lot of solutions to helping your dog overcome this problem. In order to help a dog feel comfortable being left alone, follow these five tips.

Exercise

Before you leave the house and leave your furry friend behind, make sure he or she has had a good deal of exercise. Whether this means taking a long walk or a short run before leaving your pet at home, exercise will help your pet feel more relaxed when you walk out the door. This is because your pet will have less energy to focus on being left alone and will most likely fall asleep easier when you leave.

Avoid contact

As much as you want to tell your dog you love them as you’re leaving and pet them, making a big deal about your departure is only going to make it more difficult. By being casual when you’re leaving your pet behind, it’ll seem less serious and won’t make them think that the world is ending as you shut the door. When you return after your departure, it’s also important not to overreact when you see your pet again. Remaining calm will help the dog feel relaxed and will make them realize you leaving and returning isn’t that big of a deal.

Say goodbye early

It’s always a good idea to prepare for your departure a little early so that your pet has time to cope with the situation. Just like you should be avoiding eye contact, you also should be avoiding showing any sort of affection right before you leave. Whether you’re putting your dog in a crate or you are simply shutting the door behind you, don’t say goodbye and don’t act like you’re leaving forever.

Be calm

Never feel guilty about leaving your pet, ever. Instead, show your pet that everything is going to be okay by showing confidence and positive energy. Being calm and assertive can help ease any feelings of separation anxiety in dogs and will help you break this habit faster.

Start small and grow gradually

The first step to breaking this habit from your dog is to start small. This could mean doing little things like only leaving your dog alone for five minutes or using one tip at a time until you can handle all five. The most important thing is to do things gradually so that it’s not a shock when you pay less attention to your dog as you’re leaving the house. Eventually over time, you will see that both you as the owner and your pet will be less stressed and hopefully anxiety free!

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Jessica McNeal is a freelance writer and dog lover. Because she loves animals, she loves to make sure they’re safe from harm and are protected with pet ID tags. She buys her animals ID tags from Ketchum Mfg. Co. and is always satisfied with their products.

How to Make Moving Home Less Stressful

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Moving home is one of the most stressful experiences life has to offer, along with getting married and the loss of a loved one. As with everything, there are certain things you can do to make the experience go a lot smoother and reduce some of the stress. Try following these simple steps to help make sure your move goes to plan!

Have Back-Up Plans

You may have the perfect vision planned out for the day of your move, but life has its own plans, which will almost certainly throw a spanner in the works and veer something off course. If you’re lucky, your day will go exactly as planned, but it’s almost certain that at least one thing will go wrong – so be prepared and have a contingency plan for every step of the journey!

Hire Professional Movers

It’s tempting to try to skimp on costs and recruit friends and family to help you make the move, but with such a momentous and stressful task, it’s much easier to hire a professional removal company. Professional movers have moving home down to an art: they can supply you with everything you need to get packed up and ready to go, and then they’ll do all the heavy lifting and deal with the transportation of your stuff. If you really can’t afford to hire professionals, then you should definitely make sure you over-recruit on the friends and family front! There are sure to be things you’ve overlooked, or things that take longer than planned, so it can’t hurt to have extra people on hand to help – they probably won’t end up being “extra” after all!

Allow Plenty of Time to Pack

Packing is probably the part people dread the most about moving home. Just how exactly do you box up your entire life? Allow yourself plenty of time to get everything done when you know for sure that the move will be going ahead.

Organise Your Packing

By allowing yourself plenty of time to pack, you’ll have the leisure of organising your boxes properly, making the transition into your new home much smoother. Before you even get started with packing, you should declutter your entire home and get rid of anything you won’t need in your new house. Anything you haven’t used for months, or even years, can be donated to charity or sold beforehand – that way you’ll have that much less to pack! You should also pack by room and category so you know where to find things as you get settled into your new place.

Keep Essentials Close

The things you use regularly – at least once every day – should be kept nearby. Either keep these things with you when you travel yourself, or pack them last so they’re the first thing to emerge when you unpack. Having toiletries and kitchen utensils you use every day close to hand will mean your regular day-to-day activities such as washing and cooking won’t get thrown off track by the move. And don’t forget to pack the toilet paper last of all!

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Matthew Sanders, the author of this article is a very perceptive man. He is working with MetroMovers, a removal company in Sydney. They are known to provide the best service that too at affordable prices.

Concerned about a sweet neighbor

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My neighbor across the street is a widow. She’s an older lady who lives alone and she’s been having a hard time lately. Luckily for her she has two great sons that look in on her frequently and come over to do yard work and get her groceries etc.

For a lady of her age she normally pretty spry. I mean, I see her out walking around every day and even driving her car once or twice a day. I think for a lady in her mid to late 80’s that’s pretty darn good! And no – she doesn’t appear to be a scary driver.

The reason I said she’s been having a hard time was because she just had surgery on one of her eyes and it didn’t go all that well to begin with so for a week or so she had blurry vision and couldn’t drive or even walk around very easily outside. I felt bad for her. I was offering to do extra things for her if she wanted. She did call me a few times to help her out.

One of the times I went over to help her with something we end up sitting down and talking over a cup of coffee and I noticed her mothers ring. She has a stone in it for each of her kids and each of her grandchildren. When I was a jeweler I used to make rings like that quite often. We called them Family Rings though.

My neighbor seems to be doing well now. She got the stitches out of her eye a few days ago and that made a huge improvement. That sounds funny to say “stitches out of her eye” doesn’t it?

Trying to fix a digital camera

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I have three digital cameras. I really only use one of them as the other two are older models. Actually, now that I think of it I suppose I can say that I have four digital cameras if you count my mobile phone as it has a camera on it that’s 8 megapixels and it really does take quite decent pictures.

Anyway … the other day I was speaking with my sister and we talked about going out one weekend to take photographs around the city. My sister used to be an artist but because of recent health problems she really hasn’t been sketching or painting so I suggested that she might be able to express herself through photograph and she seemed to like that idea.

This past weekend I pulled out one of my older digital cameras – a Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 and I discovered that it had a problem. At first, once I’d put in new batteries, the LED screen would flash on for a moment with the message – “Lens cap still on” – and I’d remove the lens cap and the power would go off on the camera. The lens wouldn’t extend out or move in anyway and the LED screen wouldn’t come on with the lens cap off and it wouldn’t do much with the lens cap on either.

After a lot of research on the internet I finally discovered a a page that suggested that I plug in the cameras AV connection so that the LED screen wouldn’t turn on when I pressed the power button and that that would give more power to the lens motor. I tried it and the lens extended but then the power shut off again and I couldn’t get it to retract! I’d read on several pages to try tapping the lens or gently twisting it to the right to get it retract so I tried that many times and after two days of trying the lens went back in .. but still, the led screen won’t work. Now I’m thinking that it might be one of the retaining rings or the internal battery in the camera.

OR … I just don’t know … maybe I won’t get this camera working again. I’d like to. It took great pictures and it was an expensive camera back when I originally bought it. It would be nice to get some more use out of it or at least to see if my sister might enjoy photography as much as I do.

If anyone has any ideas as to how to fix this cameras lens and led screen problem I’d love to hear your suggestions. I really don’t want to take it to a camera store or back to Sony as that would probably be very expensive.

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