Layman guide to cosmetic surgery

Every one wants to be beautiful. If they are already beautiful, they want to become more beautiful. Increasing demand for perfect beauty and the advancement of technology in medicine had given birth to cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is a surgical method which enhances your physical appearance. It can be done either to correct your appearance which has undergone damage after an accident, or to simply enhance your facial and physical features, which tend to deteriorate with age.

Who uses Cosmetic surgery?

Just about anyone who wants to improve his/her look goes for cosmetic surgery. It is not limited to women. According to a survey 11% of men also opt for cosmetic surgery. It can be a painful and an expensive procedure. It is not covered under your insurance policy. Hence cosmetic surgery is considered to be the domain of the rich and famous.

Where can I get it done?

Check your local listings or ask your family physician for links to a good and reputed plastic or cosmetic surgeon. Always make sure that the surgeon is certified by either The American board of plastic surgery, or the American board of cosmetic surgery.

What do I need to go through?

Every one is scared of surgery. More so if it is done on your face area. Ask the doctor about the pros and cons involved in the procedure. Ask him his experience in the field. Every cosmetic surgery may have certain risks involved. It is always good to be clear about the entire procedure before you start.

Ask the doctor how long you need to be away from work, will it be painful, and about the best and worst case scenarios post cosmetic surgery. He may have an album displaying pictures of previous patients if they have given him permission to use it. Check the before and after pictures to give you a brief idea about how you may look post cosmetic surgery.

What it does not do?

Remember, getting a facelift or a nose job done does not change the person within you. You are still the same person from inside.

This week in betting a to z

Each week Doc's Sports will take a look at the sports betting world in an A-Z format.

A - Anderson, Derek. Be honest - could you have named Cleveland's backup QB before last Sunday? Anderson may have been an anonymous player on an anonymous team, but he announced himself when he entered the game in relief of the injured Charlie Frye. His team was down by 14, so he led two touchdown drives in the last nine minutes, and then set up the winning field goal in overtime with an impressive scramble. Quarterback controversy?

B - BCS. As a diehard Michigan fan, this is not my favorite topic these days. We got screwed, and nothing you can say will change my mind. On the plus side, the national title game just became very easy to handicap. Ohio State is a bargain at anything less than two touchdowns.

C - Cowboys. Tony Romo looked mortal for the first time, the offense struggled at times, and the Giants looked better on offense than they have in a while, yet Dallas still managed to win, and to cover if you shopped hard enough for the right line. The way they are playing right now, there are few teams in the NFC, if any, that will present much of a challenge in the playoffs.

D - Dallas Mavericks. They started 0-4, and it looked like they had troubles. But then they won 12 games in a row, and covered in 10 of the 12. Every team wishes that they had those kinds of troubles. No team in sports is hotter.

E - Eastern Washington Eagles. Remember the name Rodney Stuckey. The guard is averaging almost 28 points a game for the Eagles, helping his team go over (way, way over) in every game they have played so far.

F - Fresno State. The Bulldogs failed to cover this weekend. What else is new? During the team's dismal 4-8 season, they managed to cover the spread just once. They failed to cover as favorites six times, including four outright losses. The low point was a loss to Utah State as 25-point favorites.

G - Grossman, Rex. Just when you thought a guy couldn't get any worse. 6-of-19 for 34 yards and three interceptions is so bad it's almost unbelievable. That's a quarterback rating of 1.3. I think I could get a rating of at least 2, and I've never been mistaken for an athlete.

H - Hype. It was only one game, but Greg Oden lived up to it. The freshman superstar played his first game for Ohio State on Saturday. His hand was still in a brace, and he was obviously rusty, but he was an absolute beast. He scored, rebounded, and blocked shots at will. When he gets healthy and in playing shape then Ohio State should cruise to a Big Ten title.

I - Insignificant. That's what home field advantage was this Sunday in the NFL. Eight of 14 home teams lost outright, including three favorites. Overall, it was another week for the underdogs, with eight covering in the first 15 games (one of which was a push).

J - Jokes. Some things this week were so bad they were funny - Georgia Tech's offense, Chris Leak as an option quarterback, Mathias Kiwanuka's ball handling skills, the new NFL referee cold weather uniforms, Fox's BCS show.

K - Kansas Jayhawks. How is it possible that the same team can beat Florida and then lose to both Oral Roberts and DePaul over a two-week period? It seems like they are just setting themselves up for their standard first round tournament loss.

L - Lackadaisical. The effort put forth by the St. Louis Rams. They looked quite good at the beginning of the year, but they have totally disappeared in recent weeks. It's hard to imagine that they'll be worth a bet for the rest of the season.

M - Manning. It was a bad weekend to be a member of football's royal family. Both of their teams lost, and neither QB looked particularly swell. The two players have only covered once in eight tries over the last four weeks.

N - Nevada. The Wolf Pack have been a trendy pick on tournament brackets for a few years, and they look like they will be again this year. They are led by forward Nick Fazekas, averaging 22.6 points and 12.7 rebounds, and they are 4-1 ATS.

O - Oakland. How bad are the Raiders? Houston managed only 161 yards of total offense, including just 32 in the air, and they beat Oakland by nine points.

P - Prime time. What Jay Cutler isn't quite ready for. His first game wasn't a disaster, but he looked much more like a raw rookie than the savior he was supposed to be. He passed for 143 yards, but half of that came on one pass, and receiver Brandon Marshall did most the work, breaking three tackles on the way to the end zone. Cutler will get there, but he won't be worth betting my money on for a while.

Q - Quarles, Shelton. The only active NFL player with a last name starting with Q. He missed Tampa's game this week with a knee injury. There's nothing noteworthy to say. It's just really hard to come up with things that start with Q.

R - Red Zone. The Dolphins should spend their entire practice time this week working on punching the ball into the end zone. They had first downs inside the ten twice and came away with nothing either time. Nick Saban will be doing a lot of screaming.

S - Suicide. That's what Trojans' players must be contemplating after laying a gigantic egg in what should have been a simple, and absolutely crucial, game against UCLA. If they do kill themselves, Florida will send the biggest bouquet to the funeral.

T - Turkey Hangover. Of the six NFL teams that played their last game on Thanksgiving day, only one, Detroit, covered this week, and only Dallas won straight up. Maybe the extra few days of rest isn't a good thing. Will Cincinnati and Baltimore have the same problem next week?

U - Upsets. They're the norm in college basketball this season. Florida lost to Florida State. Kansas loses to everyone not in the top 25. Marquette lost to North Dakota State. There is some serious money to be made betting the underdog morning lines if you pick the right ones.

V - Vick, Michael. He had a 'good' day, and his team won by 10. I still can't make myself believe in a quarterback whose good days are 50 percent passing, 122 yards, and two touchdowns. It's not a wonder that trade rumors are popping up. If he gave Raiders' fans the finger he wouldn't make it out of the stadium alive.

W - Withdrawal. What I am likely to suffer from with no college football for the next two weekends. I only have to make it until Dec. 19 and the Poinsettia Bowl. I'm counting the seconds.

X - eXplosion. Reggie Bush had one of the offensive variety this week. He had two touchdowns in his career until now, and he got four on Sunday. Most impressive was his receiving impact, with well over 100 yards and a touchdown. When Marques Colston returns to the lineup, the Saints could be even more dangerous offensively than they already are.

Y - Young, Vince. Two weeks ago I thought this guy should have stayed in college for another year. Oops. Twice in a row he has led his team back from big deficits, and he has looked like a seasoned veteran doing it. Tennessee is already a good bet, and they are going to be a good team next year.

Z - Zero. The number of things that Tampa Bay fans have to feel good about after their team's game against Pittsburgh. Bruce Gradkowski was terrible, they couldn't run, they couldn't contain the pass rush. The Bucs had the look of a team ready to mail in the rest of the season.

A few tips for safe online shopping

More and more people turn to online shopping every day. The number of people shopping online is staggering. With this increase the instances of credit card fraud has also started to increase very rapidly. If someone steals your credit card nowadays, they can easily run up a large bill online shopping with fraudulent purchases. Before the days of the Internet, when someone stole your credit card, there was still a chance that someone would ask for identification before they would let you buy something. However the Internet takes that human interaction out of buying, so it is harder to stop people from making fraudulent purchases. Here are a few tips for safe online shopping.

The first tip that you should do when safely shopping online is to make sure that the web site you are shopping on is a reputable web site and that any payment screen is part of a secured site. You can tell if a web site is secured by looking in the bottom right hand corner of the browser for a padlock. If the lock is locked, then you are on a secure site. If the lock is not locked, then you are not on an unsecured site.

The next tip for safe online shopping you should make sure you do is to make your login information on your account confidential, and very strong. What I mean by strong is that your username should not just be your name, and your password needs to be something different than your birthday. A good password should be at least eight characters long with letters, numbers, different capitalizations, and also some special characters like a $. This will make it almost impossible for someone to “guess” your password when trying to login to your account.

The final tip for safe online shopping is to keep your antivirus up-to-date, and not to click on links that you are not sure about. Some of the worst viruses on the Internet today try to steal your personal information so someone else can use it to make fraudulent charges. If you keep your antivirus up-to-date, then you will have a smaller chance of getting any of these very harmful viruses.

How not to lose 10000 dollars in the casinos

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For the last several years one Saturday of each month some friends and I would get in the car and drive to Atlantic City for a night of gambling, and it has always been one of the best days of the month.

We have never really been big gamblers we usually just stayed with the slots or the roulette table, until six months ago when someone decided we should learn to play poker because that’s where you can win lots of money fast.

So we all started playing poker in a weekly Friday night game together till we were good enough to play in the casinos. For practice I would play Online Poker in some free multiplayer poker rooms and eventually I felt confident enough to join an online casino poker room for real money.

At first I was losing hand after hand but the more hands I played the better of an understanding I was getting for the game, and every night I started making less and less mistakes and I actually started to win a few hands.
After about 2 or 3 months of this we decided it was time and we all drove to the casino to play some Poker.

We did ok for first timers, no one got rich but no one came home broke either. We decided that instead of our monthly trips we should start going every Saturday, and soon we would be leaving every Friday after work and coming back late Sunday night

Last month we decided to join this small tournament, the buy inn was only a few hundred each and the prize was 10,000 dollars, so we all decided to go for it and to try to start making real money playing poker, and in the end it paid off, I am still not sure how but I won the poker tournament and the 10,000 dollars grand prize.

Before the tournament we had all agreed that if one of us won it we would go out and have a big party with the money, but I had a much better idea

I decided that I could turn this money into a much larger amount and since it was easy to win the first time it should be easy to do it again.

Now from my personal experience I know that the Roulette table is a great way to double your money fast, there were many nights id have 20 dollars in my poker before leaving the casino and I would manage to double it on one spin of the roulette wheel, and now I had ten thousand dollars and could walk away with twenty thousand in just minutes.

So against the advice of all my friends I looked for a roulette table where the same color had won three times in a row. Once I finally found a roulette table that had come up red 3 times in a row it I place all my winnings on black and what luck it came out red again and I nearly passed out on the casino floor.

Ever since that night I have not won anything I have played. The best piece of advice I can give anyone out there is to not let winning go to your head. If you are up in the casino, go home and enjoy the money. It is important to remember that gambling in a casino or an online casino is supposed to be fun and relaxing and if it is not go read a book or something.

World cup 2006 preview - iran

Outright Odds: 750/1

Group D Winners: 14/1

Iran’s last appearance in the World Cup, back in 1998, produced a shock 2-1 victory over the United States, in what could have been described as a very diplomatic result. After qualifying emphatically for this year’s tournament, including a 2-1 home victory over Japan, Iran will be expected to more than merely make up the numbers.

Iran won nine out of their 11 matches and qualified with a match to spare, although were pipped to the top spot by Japan, who beat them in the return fixture in the final round of fixtures.

Their efforts did not go unnoticed and they ranked at an all-time high of 15 in June 2005, ahead of fellow qualifiers Ukraine and Sweden and European champions Greece. To give you some idea of their position in the world game, they were rated just one place below Italy.

Iran are blessed with a plethora of attacking talent. Veteran striker and captain Ali Daei is the most prolific ever in international football with over 100 goals to his name and he topped the Asian scoring charts with nine qualifying goals. He will be 37 in Germany and this will surely be his last major finals.

Hamburg’s Mehdi Mahdavika, who netted the decisive goal against the United States eight years ago and Bayern Munich’s Ali Karimi, who was crowned 2004 Asian Footballer of the Year will be recognisable to the domestic audience. Mahdavika has emerged as Iran’s major attacking force in Daei’s twighlight years and has been given license to support the attack rather than being restricted to his traditional spot on the right wing.

Striker Vahid Hashemian is another player with Bundesliga experience, plying his trade for Hannover 96 following a transfer from Bayern Munich, as does midfielder Fereydoon Zandi who plays for Kaiserslautern.

Iran are lead by Croatian coach Branko Ivankovic who has successfully rebuilt the side which failed to qualify for the 2002 finals after losing to the Republic of Ireland in the play-offs.

While the victory over the United States sticks in the memory, it is the country’s only victory in six attempts at the finals and overall the squad lacks experience at the highest level, especially in defence. While Ivankovic has turned Iran’s fortunes around, they will need more than good morale to see them through a tough qualifying group and their final match against Angola could be their only chance of success.

Recommended Bet:

Despite their improvement, it is unlikely Iran will get anything from their matches against Mexico and Portugal but their attacking prowess could yield a final match victory against Angola at odds-against.

Iran to beat Angola @ 6/4

How to get around excuses for not exercising

Over the years, there have been people making up plenty of excuses to avoid exercising. Some of these excuses are creative, some are ridicules, but most are in a group of common excuses used everyday to justify not having to make the effort to improve their health and well being.

How many people do you know who were going to start exercising and start getting in shape and they were going to start this coming week, but that was two weeks ago and they still haven’t started yet? What excuse did they have this time? Maybe this has happened so many times, you stopped counting. Maybe this has even happened to you more times than you can remember. Well, what’s stopping you?

Here are some of the most common excuses used by people to not exercise, and the ways that you can get around those excuses if they have plagued you and are stopping you from partaking in a healthier lifestyle.

By far and away, the most common excuse used today is; “I don’t have the time to exercise”. The old perception that you have to exercise for 1 to 2 hours a day is just nonsense. A good, solid exercise routine doesn’t have to last for more than 20 to 30 minutes a day to be very effective. If you can’t find up to 30 minutes a day to exercise, then how do you manage to find up to 2 hours or more a day to watch TV?

Another popular excuse used often is; “I can’t afford to pay for a gym membership or for home equipment”. The fact is, you can get in better shape and lose weight without ever setting foot in a gym. Walking and or jogging around your neighborhood or in the local park don’t cost a dime and will give you all of the benefits of a cardio workout at the gym. Doing callisthenic exercises such as crunches and pushups and so on at home also cost nothing. Home fitness equipment can also be purchased that will give you a good resistance workout for under $50.00 such as resistance tubing bands and an exercise ball.

“I don’t know how to exercise or what exercises to do” is an excuse that gets used from time to time, but there are several ways to learn how to exercise right and what exercises to do. Using the services of a qualified, certified personal trainer is the best way to get you going in the fight direction. If affordability is an issue with a trainer, there are workout videos and books that you can buy to help you out, you can even find loads of exercise books at your local library that you can check out free of charge.

Another excuse that seems to be fairly common is; “I’m too old and/or out of shape to start exercising”. This excuse is really only valid if your doctor has told you that you should not exercise for some medical reason. If you are very out of shape or you are a senior citizen, then you may just have to start out slowly. Even starting out with only 5 minutes a day of exercise and slowly increasing as you go is much better than doing no exercise at all.

Last but not least and by far my favorite excuse is; “I hate anything to do with exercise”. This one always gives me a laugh. Most people who really think they hate exercise do so because they are stuck with the image that exercise is a series of boring, grunt and groan exercises involving heavy weights, or jogging far enough to complete the Boston marathon. The old adage of “no pain, no gain” is still embedded in the minds of many people, and who wants to have to go through pain every day to get in better shape? Exercise is really all about getting active and getting your body moving. Even playing in a softball league or hiking on a trail or bicycle riding is good exercise. Just find activities that you like to do and you will find that exercise can be fun.

Ok, no more excuses. The time is now. Making the time to spend even 30 minutes a day to get active, get in some exercise, and get yourself more healthy and fit will by far be the best thing you can do for yourself and your family. Think of how much more you can enjoy doing the things you like to do when you are in better condition and better yet, think about how much more you can enjoy your children as they grow up and how much more you can enjoy your grandchildren later in life.

Using online video can help increase your business profits

Marketing is a business necessity wherein tools and technology innovations are utilized to increase a business’ profitability. The relatively new online video technology is one technology example that can be harnessed to increase profits and even possibly lower marketing costs.

Now that video can be attached to almost any web page, the possibilities of using video as a marketing technique (in the same manner of television) is slowly but surely gaining ground.

- Research on the phenomenon of communication retention show that people remember only 10% of what they have read and 20% of what they hear; however, people remember more than 50% of what they see and hear at the same time – just like watching a movie.

- Marketing analysts report that companies that currently use on-demand video, video e-mail or streaming video podcasts have reported sales increases of close to 25%, sometime more. The increase in client response is attributed to the fact that multimedia rich content is a better catalyst to move and/or persuade clients towards buying a product or service because they can see its benefits in action.

- As far as online viewers are concerned, video builds credibility and trust. It is very similar to having a live person communicating to the end-user/client the benefits of doing business with somebody that they can see and listen as opposed to something that they read online. Customer rapport, trust and a mutually fruitful business relationship is much more easily established and achieved.

- Sending personnel to various locations at the same time to set up a product demonstration invariably entails a long list of additional expenses. Doing the same using online video, streaming video or on-demand video obviously lowers the costs significantly. Lower product marketing costs results into more profits for the company.

- Cost of savings is not limited to product marketing costs. Video can also be used to set up conferencing and training methods, locally and internationally. Live conferencing and training can be easily set up and synchronized between two or more groups of people, regardless if they are at different time zones, at the same time.

The above are only a few of the dollar related reasons why the emerging technology of online videos is fast becoming an effective marketing and