Donuts are bakery treats made from rings of dough. There are two major categories of donut, which include “yeast” and “cake”. Cake donuts are made by dropping rings of batter made from a cake-like mixture directly into a deep fryer. Yeast-raised donuts are actually cut from sheets of dough and then allowed to “proof” in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment where the yeast chemistry increases the volume of the donut before the donut is deposited into a fryer. Both types of donuts are cooked as the hot frying oil actually soaks its way into the donut and replaces the water in the mix.

Most donuts are now made with a pre-mix that includes various obvious ingredients like flour, and eggs and milk that have had the water removed, along with other ingredients for flavor, color, or shelf life. In small, one or two person operations, such as a retail outlet or a booth at a fair, an automatic mixer is used to combine the donut mix with water at a particular temperature, and for a certain period of time, until the batter is ready to fry. In the case of cake donuts, the donut batter is put into a manually operated or electric depositor that drops donut batter into the fryer with a plunger mechanism to create the desired shape. In the case of yeast donuts, the batter is removed from the mixture and allowed to “set” as a pile of dough before being rolled out and cut into a shape by hand, much like making cookies. In both cases, when the donut is dropped into a fryer, it is allowed to cook thoroughly on the first side before it is flipped over manually to cook the second side. After being cooked, the donut is removed and allowed to cool before glazes, icings, sprinkles and other finishing touches are applied.

In larger production operations like Dunkin Donuts®, or Krispy Kreme®, and massive industrial production plants in companies like IBC® (Hostess), large automated machines handle almost all of the work. The only manual work remaining, for the most part, is now limited to the people required to open and pour large bags of pre-mixed ingredients and water into the mixers, and then transport the mix to an automated depositor (for cake donuts) or an automated sheet-cutter (for yeast donuts). These production lines are largely only limited to the width of floor-space that is available to lay down the “rail road tracks” of automation, and in many cases, these industrial systems can make tens of thousands of donuts in a single hour.

Most people are hesitant to work on their own vehicles, and yet the few critical basic automotive maintenance tasks are things that the average person can perform in their own garage, with minimal mechanical inclination and a basic set of tools.

The single most important maintenance for a car’s engine is to change your oil and oil filter. The recommended interval varies, but in most cases, changing them religiously every five or six thousand miles will extend the life of your engine significantly. Retail auto parts stores like Shucks, Napa, and Autozone are great places to go. A quick look at your manual will tell you what grade of oil and what amount is appropriate, but the vast majority of cars, trucks, and SUV’s use 10-30, 10-40, or 20-50 weight oil. Most filter manufacturers also make paper catalogs available that are mounted to the display racks, which allow easy cross referencing to find the filter part numbers designed for your vehicle. In many cases, stores will have electronic displays that will help you find the right filter with just a few button pushes.

Once you have your oil and filter, you will need a few additional items, including an oil filter wrench, an oil drain pan, a few rags, a plastic funnel, and a socket set. It also makes the job much easier if you purchase some metal ramps to raise the front of the car. When you have the front end of the vehicle up, a socket wrench will allow you to loosen and remove the drain plug in your engine’s oil pan, which is easier to locate than you might think. The oil will drain smoothly into a catch pan in just a few minutes. Be careful here and let your engine cool down sufficiently before draining the oil. Once the oil is drained, you can wipe down the area and replace the drain plug. Then the filter is removed using the oil filter wrench. Again, wipe the area and then install the new filter, using a fingertip to run a bit of fresh oil on the seal. Most oil filters can be tightened by hand, and the instructions will let you know how far past first-contact you should tighten the filter. Finally, using the funnel, locate the oil fill in your engine compartment under the hood, and fill up with fresh oil, one quart at a time until you’ve put in the amount stated by the manual. Then close up the oil fill, close the hood, and you’re ready to roll. it’s that easy.

There are many minor maintenance jobs like this one, including changing your air filter, which is a very similar process, and in fact even easier. And these two jobs, which take no more than 30 minutes at home in the garage, can keep your car on the road much longer and build a sense of pride and accomplishment at the same time.

Blackjack is one of the simpler casino games you can play in a casino, and in terms of the relative statistical advantages that the casinos maintain, it’s one of the games where you are least likely to have to pawn your shoes to try to win back your plane ticket home.

The game is played with a single dealer (the “house”) and any number of additional players. The house initially deals two cards to each player and to itself. In large casinos where there are strict rules of play to diminish opportunities to cheat, each player’s cards are dealt face-up, and the dealers card are dealt one-down and one-up. Numbered cards are worth their face value, “face” cards (kings, queens, jacks) and tens are all worth ten points each. Aces are worth either one or eleven. The best hand possible is a 21. If you get 21 with the two first cards dealt, the hand is called a “blackjack”. The goal of the game is to beat the dealer without “busting”, or going over 21.

Basic strategy for blackjack is to assume that the dealer’s down card is worth ten. Starting to his left, the dealer offers each player the option to “hit” (take another card) or “stand” (stick with what he or she already has). A player can hit as many times as he or she would like until the count totals 21 or over, but since the goal is only to have a hand that will beat the dealers, a player should only “hit” until their count is equal to or better than the dealer’s face up card plus 10. Basic strategy goes deeper than this, but all of the “recommended” plays are based on the fact that there are more cards worth ten than any other type of card in the deck. In some cases, the strategy is to stand back to let the dealer “bust” on a hand that you suspect will go over 21 with the next card (probably a ten), at other times, the strategy is to continue hitting until your cards are better than the hand you assume the dealer has.

Welding is a manufacturing process used to join metal parts together. There are a wide variety of ways to weld metal, but in general the process involves heating the edges or areas to be joined until the material is in a semi-solid or liquid state, which allows material from both parts being joined to mix together and, when cooled, form a solid joint.

One of the most common and simplest forms of welding is “oxy-acetylene” welding. The metal pieces to be joined are heated by a very high temperature flame, which comes from a hand-held torch. The flame is a result of a gas mixture using pressurized oxygen and acetylene, which is mixed together inside a nozzle in the torch, pushed out of the nozzle by the high gas pressure behind them, and then lit using a source of spark. Depending on the shape of the two parts being welded, a “filler rod” is sometimes used to fill gaps or add material to the joint as the metal is liquefied and then cooled. Another form of welding called “arc-welding” actually uses electricity to create the heat necessary for the process. The “arc” refers to the fact that there is a small gap maintained between the electrode in the tip of the welding torch and the part being heated, and electric current and the electrical resistance in the metals causes the metal to heat and soften. “MIG” and “TIG” (”metal inert gas” and “tungsten inert gas”) are both advanced forms of arc welding; their more formal designations are “GMAW” and “GTAW” (”gas metal arc welding” and “gas tungsten arc welding”).

Welding as a technology for controlling metal has been around for literally thousands of years, and has been a key contributor to our ability to mold our world according to our needs. Welding is used to build bridges, dams, roadways, ships, cars and trucks, and innumerable other man-made objects that you see every day. Welding is also unique among metal fabrication processes in the sense that the end result is so closely tied to the dexterity and knowledge of the welder. It is one of the last processes we use to make things for ourselves where craftsmanship is such a large contributor to quality.

Cricket is one of the more frequently played games in darts. The winner in cricket is the person who closes out all of their numbers first AND has a higher total point score than their opponents. A number is one of the pie-shaped segments on dartboards (as a side note, our favorite dartboards are NODOR Dartboards) that surround the center bulls-eye, numbered “1″ through “20″. Each segment is also separated into sections which count for a single count, a double count, or a triple count. To “close out”, the player must land darts (we play with Harrows darts) inside that number in any combination such that a “three count” is achieved, e.g. closing out the 20 would require hitting three single-20’s, or one double-20 and one single-20, or a triple-20.

A standard cricket game only uses the pie segments numbered from 15 through 20, plus the center bulls-eye. Players take turns trying to “close out” these numbers with as few darts as possible, since you only have three dart throws per round. To add some complexity to the game, once a player has “closed out” a particular number, if their opponent has not yet closed out the same number, the player throwing can score points for hitting the number they just closed out. For example, player A goes first and throws a double 19 and a single 19, closing out that number for himself. He still has a dart, and player B has not closed the 19. Player A throws a double 19 and scores 38 “points” on a running tally.

This is really the challenge of the fun game of cricket, because a person can make up ground on an opponent who is ahead in two ways, first by closing numbers, to limit his opponent’s ability to increase his point score and get closer to having his own numbers closed, and second, by hitting his opponent in the “weak spots” where his opponent has numbers that are left open.

Any way you look at it, Cricket is a great action game.

“Chopper” is a slang term used to describe a custom-built motorcycle. The use of the term originates from the fact that many backyard mechanics and custom builders started “chopping” the frames of their motorcycles to achieve different looks. These modifications most commonly involved cutting and lengthening the motorcycle’s frame along the “backbone” (between the steering head and the seat) or along the down-tubes (the section below the steering head and forward of the engine).

These changes affected both the look and the handling of the motorcycle. Moving the neck upward (and lengthening the front suspension) is used to create the “classic chopper” look. Moving the steering head and neck farther away from the rider, without raising it vertically, is used to achieve a look commonly referred to as “Pro-Street” styling. In both cases, the change is called “stretching” the frame. Stretching a frame drives changes to two measurements called “rake” and “trail”, which significantly affect the handling character of a motorcycle. “Rake” is the included angle between a vertical line and the axis of rotation of the steering head. “Trail” is a horizontal distance from the imaginary intersection of the road surface and the steering head axis to the point where the wheel contacts the ground. Generally speaking, more trail results in greater stability at higher speeds, and less trail results in better “turn-in” steering characteristics that are desirable ! on a racetrack. More experienced custom builders carefully adjust frame geometries (”stretch” and “rake”) and front fork length to keep the “trail” measurement within a range that results in a motorcycle that handles well.

Most choppers are built by modifying an existing Harley-Davidson ® and include a “V-Twin” style engine, with two cylinders positioned to form a “V” shape, which is a styling cue of Harley®. However, in the sixties and seventies, the use of in-line four cylinder Japanese engines and twin-cylinder engines from the British manufacturers were also very popular, and many chopper purists still build their custom motorcycles around these engines today. Today, the aftermarket for Harley® -compatible parts has created a world where parts from a vast array of manufacturers can be assembled together to result in a motorcycle that very closely resembles a Harley® “chopper”, but in fact does not have a single part made by that corporation. The most successful custom builders also fabricate parts of their own design to achieve truly unique motorcycles.

Private Mortgage Insurance is a charge applied by lenders when the down payment amount on a home loan is less than 20% of the purchase price. Generally speaking, between 7% and 10% of a home’s selling price will go to the costs of selling, e.g. commissions, listing fees, closing costs, and taxes. PMI is intended to protect the lender against the possibility that a borrower will default before the amount borrowed can be recovered by selling the property. PMI is not insurance, in the sense that you are not paying a premium for protection against financial losses.

PMI charges are calculated based on a multiplier associated with the down payment percentage. However, your PMI charge does not decrease incrementally as the size of your down payment goes up. For example, one person who can put down 10% on a $100,000 home, and another person who puts 13% down on the same home value, will both pay the same amount on a monthly basis.

Historically, many borrowers continued to pay PMI long after their equity, based on the original value of the property, was greater than 20%. This drove legislation that forces lenders to discontinue the charges automatically once a borrower reaches 22% equity in the home based on the original value, assuming good payment history and no liens on the property.

Research Idaho Falls Mortgages and PMI before your decide on your mortgage.

Pareto’s Rule, or the Pareto Principle, is typically used to refer to the idea of the “80 / 20 Rule”. The principle describes the concept that, in any given group of people or things, a relatively small percentage (e.g., 20%) is significant or important, and a relatively large percentage (e.g. 80%) is inconsequential. Pareto originally used this concept to describe relative financial wealth in a society and the fact that a relatively small percentage of the population controls a disproportionately large amount of the money. However, over time, people have applied the “80 / 20” rule to many other systems and observations.

For example, many people who manage a project use this rule when talking about the amount of time or effort that is truly critical to success as compared to the amount of time that is dedicated to marginal or supplementary work. Many leaders would simplify that to say that the last twenty percent of the work to be accomplished takes eighty percent of the total time required, and conversely eighty percent of the progress required is made in the first twenty percent of the schedule. An auto mechanic might note that eighty percent of his time at work is taken up by peripheral tasks like filling out paperwork, cleaning his service bay, or handling phone calls, and only twenty percent of his time is truly dedicated directly toward repairing vehicles. A family gathering might reunite you with the twenty percent of your family who contribute to eighty percent of the happiness you gain from attending. The real value of the concept of the “80 / 20 Rule” is in the realization that, in any situation, it’s important to remember that usually only a small part of what you are presented with is truly significant and worth time, thought, and attention.

Loosely speaking, an engineer is any individual whose primary professional work involves using creativity and analytical ability to resolve technical problems. The term “engineer” is largely a job title, but most engineers develop theoretical knowledge and technical problem-solving skills while getting a technical degree from a university, and many eventually go through a defined process to receive a Professional Engineer’s license.

There are a wide variety of categories of engineering, with the lines drawn around the areas of theoretical knowledge and the end applications. Some of the most commonly known types of engineering programs and careers are Mechanical, Electrical, Software, Civil, Chemical, and Industrial. There are also Manufacturing engineers, Hardware engineers, Systems engineers, and many others. Most engineering educations include a significant amount of higher-level mathematics, combined with coursework in the natural sciences, and classes in a particular area of specialization.

Engineers and engineering are responsible for most of humanity’s use of technology in our continual effort to improve quality of life. Structural engineers use their knowledge of physics and materials to build the buildings where we sleep, eat, work, watch professional sports, and receive medical attention. Civil engineers use similar principles to design and build the roadways and bridges that allow us to travel by car, and the dams that provide us with electricity. Aerospace engineers design the planes that carry us home for the holidays. Chemical engineers work with energy companies to gather, process and use our fuel sources more efficiently. Mechanical engineers designed the engine, transmission, frame, suspension, wheels and bodywork in the trucks that you pass on the freeway, and an Industrial engineer helped to organize the factory that manufactured the clothes you are wearing right now. Electrical engineers helped to design the circuitry, and software engineers wrote the programs, that allow me to type this article, and gives you the opportunity to read it on your computer.

In a broad sense, engineers are key contributors to the world as we know it, and they are already creating the world we will come to know in the future