Will the Egg Hatch and Other Breeding Questions

When you're new to bird breeding, you may feel as though all you have is questions. However, you also may think that you can't possibly ask some of the questions you have because more experienced breeders will think you are unintelligent. While your local librarian will tell you the only stupid question is one you didn't ask, finding out a few of the basics can help you feel a bit more confident.

Reading Your Bird's Body Language

Understanding what your pets are telling you can be a real challenge, even if they can talk. After all, few parrots communicate their feelings with words, although at least one African gray has been known to loudly announce, 'I'm bored!' when he were being neglected. Luckily your bird's body language speaks just as loudly as he does, allowing you to understand exactly how he is feeling.

Bird Safety

Despite the fact that some of them can outlive their owners, birds are more fragile than many other types of animals. In fact, miners used this weakness to stay safe underground. They often carried a canary with them because they knew these birds were so sensitive that the canary would die if the air in the tunnel was unhealthy.

Pet birds have this same susceptibility to unhealthy odors. Teflon pans, aerosol sprays and even furniture polish can be lethal for your birds. Always be sure to use anything with a strong odor in a well-ventilated area that is well away from your birds.

Acne Scars and Their Treatment

The unsightly appearance of acne lesions or pimples isn't the only potential problem with the disease, unfortunately. In some cases, it's possible for acne to leave permanent scars.

Some conditions may appear to be scars that are not. Macules and other bumps can occur even after acne is treated. Redness may persist for up to a year. But these aren't true scars. They're not permanent.

Acne Myths Exploded

There are several common beliefs about the causes and course of acne that simply don't square with scientific studies. Fortunately, it isn't necessary to understand them in depth to separate fact from fancy. Common experience can help persuade, too.

Acne and Skin Care

Good skin care practices play only a minor role in whether a person develops acne. But they are essential to treating it, and to good skin health in general.

Some believe, mistakenly, that a thorough scrubbing will help prevent acne. Actually, washing has little effect on whether acne develops or not. The effects occur mostly afterward, once acne has occurred.

Decompression Sickness

One the earliest and most well-reported cases of DCS, or Decompression Sickness, was encountered during the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Workers spent long hours in caissons, compressed-air filled chambers underwater near the supports of the bridge. When they surfaced, they experienced joint pain, abdominal cramps and sometimes death. The condition came to be known as 'caissons disease'.

Home Networking - Troubleshooting a Home Network

Troubleshooting a network can take myriad forms. But most problems tend to repeat themselves. The first step is usually distinguishing between a software problem and a hardware problem. Unless you have specific reasons to question some other aspect, start troubleshooting by checking the hardware on your network. One of those reasons might be that you've just installed some new software that affected network settings.

Home Networking - Setting Up and Using a Shared Printer

One of the reasons many home network builders go through the expense and effort in the first place is to share a printer. If someone splurges several hundred to several thousand dollars for a color laser printer, they don't want to shell out that money for each computer in the home. Fortunately, sharing a printer in a Windows-based home network is easy. It isn't much more difficult in Linux.

Home Networking - Security Issues and Guidelines

Home networks are less expensive and easier to set up than ever. But sometimes the knowledge needed for building them isn't accompanied by guidelines on how to secure them. In some cases, those guidelines are simply ignored. In either case, that's a data disaster waiting to happen.

It's certainly possible to be paranoid about security. That excessive concern is just that, excessive. But a certain amount of caution is wise, not paranoid. Security is like medical insurance. You don't need it often, but when you do you'll need it badly. If you don't have it, the consequences can be severe.