Unique Car Door Makes Life Easy

admin — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:49:00 +0000

http://www.flixxy.com/high-tech-car-door.htm

Extension Cord Safety

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:24:40 +0000

8 Things Never To Do With An Extension Cord

Mar 22, 2012

Extension cords are a convenient way to bring power to electrical devices. Used without proper caution, however, they can become a fire hazard and pose a risk to your personal safety. Follow these tips to help keep your home safe:

Selecting extension cords

Purchase only cords that have been approved by an independent testing laboratory.
For outdoor projects, use only extension cords marked for outdoor use.
Read the instructions (if available) for information about the cord’s correct use and the amount of power it draws when running.
Select cords that are rated to handle the wattage of the devices with which they’ll be used. A cord’s gauge indicates its size: The smaller the number, the larger the wire and the more electrical current the cord can safely handle.
Also consider the length you’ll need. Longer cords can’t handle as much current as shorter cords of the same gauge.
Choose cords with polarized or three-prong plugs.
For use with larger appliances, thick, round, low-gauge extension cords are best. For smaller appliances and electronics, you can use thin or flat cords.

TIPS ON DRIVING GREEN

admin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:14:25 +0000

http://learningcenter.statefarm.com/auto/safety/green-driving-tips/ —— Practicle tips on driving green and SAVING MONEY.

Spring Tornados Are Just Around the Corner — Myths About Tornados

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:29:08 +0000

6 Myths About Tornadoes

Feb 9, 2012

By SFLCAuthor

When you’re in the path of a twister, every second counts. Knowing effective ways to protect yourself and your family could help save lives.

Myth 1: Opening windows equalizes air pressure and helps prevent the roof from being ripped off.

Fact: This act does little or nothing to prevent damage and wastes precious minutes in an emergency.

Tip: The powerful winds of a tornado can shatter windows. Help avoid injuries caused by flying, broken glass by taking shelter in a windowless room.

Myth 2: Taking shelter under an overpass during a tornado will protect me.

Fact: Overpasses and bridges can actually concentrate airflow from a tornado and become dangerous “wind tunnels.” Hiding under an overpass may subject you to severe injuries from flying debris or even cause you to be blown out into the storm itself.

Tip: While not an ideal solution, it may be safer to find a low spot, such as a ditch, and lie face down with your hands covering your head.

Myth 3: The safest place to hide in a storm is the southwest corner of the basement.
Fact: A corner is often safer than against the middle of a long wall, which may be vulnerable to collapse in a tornado. A better bet is to gather in a small, windowless interior room on the lowest floor in a home.

Tip: Protect yourself from flying and falling debris by taking shelter under a heavy desk, mattress or sturdy stairwell.

Myth 4: Tornadoes are easy to spot.

Fact: A tornado may not be visible until it has picked up sufficient dirt and debris. Waiting to take shelter until you can actually see a funnel cloud puts you at risk.

Tip: Listen to weather reports for tornado warnings. A warning tells you a tornado has been spotted on radar and that you should seek shelter immediately.

Myth 5: I could outrun a tornado in my car.

Fact: It’s never a good idea to try. The average ground speed of a tornado is 30 mph, but its winds can exceed 200 mph. Even if you’re able to stay ahead of the funnel cloud, you could find yourself driving through drenching downpours and flying debris. You might also encounter downed power lines, trees, and other dangerous obstacles in the road.

Tip: While it does not recommend escaping a tornado by car, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says if you are in open country and the tornado is distant, it may be possible to drive out of harm’s way. After detecting the direction of the storm’s movement, drive at a right angle away from the tornado.

Myth 6: Tornadoes never strike here.

Fact: While some areas have a greater likelihood of tornadoes, these dangerous storms have occurred in every state in the U.S., in both urban and rural areas, and over land, mountains, and water. Never assume a particular location will be spared and always heed tornado warnings when they are issued.

Tip: Even if tornadoes are rare in your area, develop an emergency plan and practice it with your family.

More information about staying safe during a tornado is available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the American Red Cross.

The information in this article was obtained from various sources. While we believe it to be reliable and accurate, we do not warrant the accuracy or reliability of the information. These suggestions are not a complete list of every loss control measure. The information is not intended to replace manuals or instructions provided by the manufacturer or the advice of a qualified professional. Nor is it intended to effect coverage under any policy. State Farm makes no guarantees of results from use of this information. We assume no liability in connection with the information nor the suggestions made.

Do’s & Donts of a Minor Car Accident

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:01:56 +0000

The Do’s And Don’ts of A Minor Car Accident

Feb 15, 2012

By SFLearn State Farm™ Employee

The fender bender you were just in appears to be minor. No one looks injured and there is minimal damage to the vehicles. First breathe a sigh of relief – then take these precautions to help prevent your small accident from becoming a big problem.

Don’t drive away.
Do stay at the scene and move your vehicle to a safe place out of traffic even if there appears to be no damage. If the other car is parked and the owner isn’t around, leave a note with your name and contact information.

Don’t assume there aren’t injuries.
Do assess yourself and your passengers. Even low-impact collisions can cause injuries, some not appearing until days after the accident.

Don’t sign any documents and avoid accepting or offering cash for repairs. You may end up paying out-of-pocket to repair damage to your car that only appears minor, or you could pay the other driver more than necessary.
Do stay calm. Take notes and photos, and exchange information with the other driver, including your name, address, phone number, driver’s license number, license plate number, insurance company, and policy number.

Don’t assume an accident is too minor to be reported.
Do call the police or file a report on your own. This will help your insurance agent handle your claim. An accident report could also help protect you from issues that may arise later about the extent of damage to your vehicle or injuries to you and the other driver.

Don’t forget to notify your State Farm agent.
Do discuss your options for handling potential claims.

The State Farm Pocket Agent® smartphone app makes it easy to capture the essential details of an accident. Pocket Agent can help you diagram the accident scene, record witnesses’ names and numbers, contact your agent, and even locate nearby repair shops.

Learn more about what to do after a car accident.

Tax Time Internet Scams

admin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:56:44 +0000

Beware These Signs Of An Online Tax Scam

Jan 27, 2012

By SFLearn State Farm™ Employee

Beware These Signs Of An Online Tax Scam

As tax season starts, be alert for phishing emails that appear to be messages from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Scammers use email, websites and even social media to trick taxpayers into sharing personal and financial information, which they can then use to steal your identity. Meant to either frighten or entice, these fraudulent messages may threaten a tax audit or offer a tax refund.

But know this: The IRS does not generally send unsolicited e-mails to taxpayers or request financial account security information, such as PIN numbers. Further, they will not discuss tax account information with taxpayers via e-mail or use it to request sensitive financial and personal information from taxpayers.

Signs of a tax scam
Scams may appear legitimate and some may even use the IRS logo. Warning signs that you’ve received a fraudulent message include:

Requests for personal and/or financial information, such as your Social Security number and bank or credit card account numbers.
Tempting offers that might persuade readers to click on links or respond to messages.
Threats that suggest consequences for not responding to the email.
Incorrect grammar, spelling or phrasing—especially when referencing the IRS or other government agencies—and links to inaccurate URLs. Rather than relying on links listed in the message, manually type the official IRS website directly into your search engine address bar to follow up.

Reporting scams
If you receive an online message you suspect is a scam, the IRS suggests taking the following steps:

Do not open any attachments or links. These could lead you to a fake IRS website, where opening a link could download malware or allow someone to hack into your computer.
Ignore messages that offer a refund. Instead, go to the IRS’s Where’s My Refund? site to determine if you are actually receiving a refund.
Forward the message or web address to phishing@irs.gov.
Delete the message.

Learn more about scams that impersonate the IRS The IRS also provides additional information about precautions to take if you receive messages that appear to be from the agency

Car Insurance Law Changes on November 1st

admin — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:04:30 +0000

The changes are a roll back of the 2009 changes found in the Governor’s’ budget bill. Whether this is good or bad depends on your perspective. If you have insurance but for whatever reason you are in need of budget cutting , this is a good chance to keep some coverage and still trim your budget. Minimum limits will be reduced in Liability, Medical Pay, and both Un & Under insured Motorist coverages. If you are currently NOT insured this may give you the ability to afford insurance. Now on the other side of the coin, if you are involved with a driver with minimum limits, you will have less protection and will have to carry higher limits for Under Insured Motorist coverage, thus increasing your insurance cost. Also in the original bill was the ability to stack the coverage for Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist. In effect you could for a small cost, increase the coverage on the occupants of your auto by up to 4 time the coverage stated on your policy. Taking this away has hurt everyone who carries insurance. To read the complete article my comments are based on, check the hyper link below.

http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTENTID=101990&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm

Family Excitement Near Their Residence

Craig Teronde — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:58:59 +0000

My son and his family live on Guam, an island filled with history. Normally seen on a tour or at a memorial site.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-psLQ_44LxY

The bomb was uncovered by a Sumatomo backhoe worker about 8:50 am this morning at the construction site of the new Nambo Insurance Building in downtown Hagatna.

The construction site is located at the north-east corner of the intersection of Route 4 and West O’Brien Drive.

[Caption: Navy EOD technicians examine WW II "depth" bomb before defusing it]

The Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit [EOD] was called to the scene, along with Guam Police, Guam Fire and Guam Civil Defense.

At the scene, before defusing, EOD Chief Eric Van Gogh told PNC News that a fuse was still attached to the unexploded bomb and they decided to de-fused it in place and then transport it for safe detonation elsewhere.

That prompted a widespread evacuation across downtown Haganta that effected the DNA Building, the Bank of Guam, the Agana Shopping Center, the Flores Library, the Judicial Center, The Academy and other businesses including a Mobil gas station next store which has a 9-thousand gallon underground gasoline tank on site.

Roads were also shut down including West O’Brien Drive from Route 4 west to San Ramon Hill and Triangle Park; and east to Route 8; as well as north from the O’Brien-and- Route 4 intersection to Marine Corp Drive and south from the same intersection to the McDonalds on Route 4.

The potential danger also prompted EOD to order a mandatory evacuation within a radius of 2,500 feet around the bomb.

Guam Civil Defense, police and fire officials went to buildings in the area to order the evacuation. Civil Defense Spokeswoman Leslie Leon Guerrero said that the order was enforceable for government employees but private business, while strongly urged to evacuate could not be forced to leave their buildings.

Guam Police began opening up the roadways about 2:20 Wednesday afternoon, after a more than 5 hour shutdown.

[Corner of Route 4 & West O'Brien Drive 11 am Wednesday morning .. Nanbo Insurance construction site where bomb was found in background]

Chief Van Gogh speculated that the device was probably dropped from a plane and has laid dormant for nearly 66 years.He said the bomb is similar to a depth charge used to attack submarines during WW II, but this one was designed to be dropped from a plane.

The EOD had to wait for clearance from the FAA because the bomb lay under the flight path to the airport.

source : pacific news center.com

Summer Swimming Safety

Craig Teronde — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:40:14 +0000

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”

How did this captain know, from fifty feet away, what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten?

Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia,Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source:CDC).

Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine (Fall 2006), described the instinctive drowning response like this:

Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs. (Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble – they are experience aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in their own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are in the water:

Head low in the water, mouth at water level Head tilted back with mouth open
Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
Eyes closed
Hair over forehead or eyes
Not using legs – Vertical
Hyperventilating or gasping
Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
Trying to roll over on the back
Ladder climb, rarely out of the water.

So if a crew member falls overboard and everything looks O.K. – don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them: “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are. If they return a blank stare – you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

Article Source: http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/drowning/?10981

Sharing the Roads with Motorcycles

Craig Teronde — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:40:15 +0000

Although the automobile is still considered king of the road, there are numerous other types of vehicles on the roads these days: commercial vehicles, buses, bicycles, scooters and motorcycles. It’s becoming more and more important for motorists to share the road with these other modes of transportation.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) there were more than 6.7 million motorcycles registered for street use in 2006 and the numbers continue to increase each year.

Unfortunately, the number of accidents involving cars and motorcycles has increased as well. In 2007, 78 percent of the motorcycles involved in two-vehicle crashes were struck from the front. In 40 percent of those cases, the other vehicle was turning left while the motorcycle was traveling straight or passing another vehicle.

The rules of the road apply equally to someone driving an automobile or riding a motorcycle. Motorists shouldn’t crowd the motorcyclist or cut off the motorcyclist’s right-of-way. Motorcyclists should operate their equipment responsibly and not take unsafe advantage of the motorcycle’s maneuverability.

Considering the crash statistics and the increasing number of motorcycles, the key to a safe traffic mix is understanding and learning to share the roadway. Don’t let yourself be one of those who says, “I didn’t see him.” Make sure, as the driver of an automobile, that you’re as diligent in looking for motorcycles as you are for other vehicles.