borduur-blog

[borduur-blog]

Different types of online casino games

The advent of online gambling has introduced casinos and casino games to an even larger number of people than before. The online casinos have also done their bit in attracting more player traffic by offering a vast variety of games for the players to choose from. The casino games can be classified into three basic types: • Electronic gaming machines: These include the video poker and slots machines. These are generally played at by a single player at a time with no involvement of other players or a dealer. Slots are won solely by luck and are available in different forms such as classic slots, video slots, 3-reel and 5-reel slots, megaspin slots and progressive slots. Video Poker involves the use of strategy and skill to some extent to win the game. It also has variants like level-up video poker, multi-hand video poker and progressive video poker. • Table games: These games are usually played with cards, dice or specialized equipment like roulette wheel. Roulette, the card game of Baccarat, and the dice games of Sic Bo and Craps are based more on luck, while the card games such as Poker and Blackjack offer better chances of winning through strategic play and practice. • Random number games: These are the games like keno and bingo, which use random number generators to select numbers that are matched with the players’ numbers to decide the winners. These games cannot be played with any strategy and are based purely on luck. Besides the above-mentioned games, there are certain unique games like scratch cards also that are available in online casinos Be cautious about few facts There are certain things that you need to come over with some odds so that you can win more and more. To deal with your all odds is the basic criteria to make money and be profitable. The emphasis on this factor became huge while you are dealing with video poker. Maximum profits of the best poker come through the video gaming and poker is an important part of it. Most of the people do not have any idea about this and they become an important part of this profit making. They involve more and more with such video gaming and falls into the grip of such casinos with the odds. If you are a lover of video poker then you must be aware of certain facts so that nobody can make you fool and make huge money out of your odds. You may prefer to play offline at real casinos or you may prefer to involve in any online game playing. But you have to conscious in all situations. Better to be conscious a little more as casinos can change the payoffs and you never can get the trick. The casinos give the impression on the people that video poker play is a random game where people get the chance to make money. The odds completely provide all benefits in favour of casinos. It is recommended to know the strategy first so that you can have a complete procedure to manage your money. The player has to develop the strategy accordingly so that the player can also make profits. If you hear someone saying tightening the machines then take this to mean a number of things. Casinos can adjust the program inside the machine so that the player can not win more. A machine that is not being in use for a long time can also slow down the cycles and can hamper your money making.

[borduur-blog]

A Guide to Writing Your Resume

I recently took a very helpful youth professional development course and learned some great things I’d love to share with everyone. This post will be especially helpful for first time resume writers, but there might be something in it for everyone. 

1. What is a Resume? 

A resume is a brief summary of your abilities, experience, and skills. It’s essentially a personal advertisement for your professional career, an opportunity to convince the employer that you are worth interviewing. 

The average employer will only take about 15-20 seconds to read your resume.

It’s important that your resume is neat so the reader can find important information quickly. 

Limit the resume to one page. 

Standard font size is 11-12, but you can play with the font or margins to fit everything. 

2. Headings 

Start with your personal information at the top of the first page (name, address, phone number, and email address). 

Keep the header centered and your name on top in BIG LETTERS.

3. Education 

If you are still in school or have little professional experience, this will likely be the first section in your resume. 

Document your education and graduation year.

Include the location (city, state), but do not include the school address. 

If you attend a school with a College Preparatory Curriculum, you may list that as a bullet underneath. If you are taking Honors or AP classes (or an international equivalent), feel free to list that as well. 

4. Professional Experience 

List your work experience in reverse chronological order - start with your most recent experience, and work backwards. 

Include the employer name, city, state, and position title for each. Again, no addresses.

Record your dates of employment consistently, using a format like June 2016 - August 2015, or 6/15 - 8/15. Staying consistent will make your resume professional. 

Place current jobs in the present tense, past jobs in the past tense. 

Write short phrases, not full sentences (”performed experiments”, not “I performed experiments”). Start each description with an action word that describes your skills, responsibilities, or accomplishments. 

Make sure you are specific about your responsibilities and don’t undersell yourself!

5. Skills 

Most commonly listed skills are computer programs and softwares you are comfortable with, and languages you are fluent/proficient in. 

Be honest! If you say you’re fluent in Spanish and you’re not, but your employer hires you for your Spanish abilities…. someone isn’t going to be pleased. 

List skills that are relevant to your job - patience might be a good skill for working with children, while organized might be more suitable for an office setting. 

6. Honors & Awards/Extracurriculars

List any honors or awards you have earned, including a brief explanation if the nature of the award is unclear. 

List any activities that you have been involved in, making sure to include years of participation (again, be consistent with formatting). These can be in-school or outside-of-school activities.

7. General & Miscellaneous

Some safe fonts: Times New Roman, Garamond, Calibri, or Book Antiqua.

Make sure your email is professional! This has been repeated to death but it’s so, so, so important. 

Likewise, if you list your personal cellphone number, make sure your voicemail message is appropriate. When in doubt, just revert back to the standard voicemail greeting. 

I hope this was helpful for anyone just starting out with their resume. Please share this for those who need it. Best of luck! 

- Ellie 

[borduur-blog]

Working less might  make you more productive

Could working fewer hours make you a better worker? That’s one theory from a new paper studying the effect of shorter workdays on a group of Swedish nurses, reported by Bloomberg.

About two years ago, nurses at a facility in Gothenburg switched to a six-hour workday, with 17 extra staff coming in to help pick up the slack.

The program ended this February, as the city had budgeted only enough to hire the extra workers for two years.

But a missing factor in the experiment, the new study found, was that there were actually long-term financial savings.

That’s because the nurses experienced improved well-being from the shorter workweek — and workers with fewer daily hours needed less time off, Bengt Lorentzon, a researcher on the project, told Bloomberg. Read more (4/17/17)

follow @the-future-now

[borduur-blog]

The nine cities above not only boast relatively healthy salaries and homeownership rates for millennials — but they are also great places if you’re hunting for a new job. Read more about the top spots

[borduur-blog]

Tips to Improve Reading and Enhance Comprehension

Read. Read More. Repeat.

It can't be said enough: Reading to your child during these formative years is perhaps the most important learning activity you'll ever share with them. So do it often!

Reading expands your child's vocabulary... ignites your child's imagination... teaches proper grammar and syntax... and helps your child excel in every subject.

Tips to improve reading and enhance comprehension

Teach your child the letters of the alphabet from pre-school.

Read out loud to your child ? or have your child read out loud to you - for 15 minutes every night.

As your child reaches kindergarten, continue reading aloud and play rhyming games to enhance his or her awareness of phonics.

You can also help your toddler and pre-K child develop motor skills - which will make learning to write later on much easier - by having them play with clay, paint and scissors, etc.

For Kindergarteners and up, be sure to check their comprehension after they've finished reading.

Some children are able to "read" the words very well, but don't truly understand what they're reading.

Asking "Why" questions is a good starting point, i.e., 'Why was the girl happy? Why was the boy embarrassed?'

Don't be afraid to let your child "guess" about what's going on in the story. While your child should sound out, and not simply guess at, any unknown words, don't discourage him or her from guessing where the story's going. Let them look at the pictures and think about what's happening. That's a natural part of reading and comprehension - and shows a healthy and active imagination.

Bottom line: Everybody loves a good story. If your child is refusing or struggling to read, visit the library, bookstore, or Internet to find a book or story about a topic of interest to him or her. And if you can't find one, why not make one up together? You can even print it out and have your child draw pictures to make their first published work!

Over all, the parent should teach these skills: 1. Increase child's vocabulary 2. Teach him/her using pictures 3. Do it through repetitions 4. Use phonemics: develop their reading skill through rhymes 5. Utilize imagination and intrigue their curiosity

All this will better your child's reading performance in school.

[borduur-blog]

What are you doing, right now?

I used to work for a micro manager of the very worst kind.

 It was my first real job after leaving university, and I was a trainee recruitment consultant. There wasn’t much recruiting as I recall, but there was an awful lot of cold calling. 80 calls a day was my target. And my manager was very involved in every single one of them, and every other thing that I did too. She would stand over me, lean over my shoulder to read what I was writing, critique my calls while I was in the middle of making them.

Several times a day, she would get up a little too close and ask me, ‘what are you doing, right now?’ One day, the answer was ‘resigning’.

But as much as I hated being managed in that way, something about that ‘what are you doing right now thing’ stuck with me. On my desk, I sit my coffee cup on a coaster with a message on it that reads ‘is what I am doing now critical to my success?’ It’s a promotional thing I picked up somewhere along the line, probably at a conference, but I have kept it close. It serves as a reminder to me to focus, when the day is full of distractions.

The emails, the phone calls, the instant messages, the tweets, the DMs, the LinkedIn invitations. There is something to distract us everywhere, every when. Twenty four hours a day, we are constantly connected. 

There is always something ready to make us take our eye off the ball, stop focusing on what is really important.

So, I’m going to ask you. What are you doing right now, that is critical to your success? What have you done today that supports your own learning and development? What have you done for your career?

When did you last think about this stuff? And I mean really think about it? Because if you are not taking action over your own self, your own development, your own future, you can be sure that no one else will do it for you.

The days go by, and we put things off until the magical mystical tomorrow that never comes. We think about reading books, going on a course, listening to a webinar. We think that we will take a proper lunch hour, leave on time, find some time.

Ah, but look! Another email has come in that simply must be responded to. We do lots of things in the working day that aren’t a bit critical to our success, but we do them all the same. Right now you are reading a blog. What is the one thing that you could do, straight after reading it? What can you do in the next 24-hours that your future work self will thank you for?

There is never a better time to do something for your own development than right now. So what’s stopping you?

[borduur-blog]

I can’t leave my job because

Have you ever met someone who doesn’t like their job?

I know I have.

They complain about the job, the boss, the work, the people, the pay, the location, even the colour of the chairs.

The obvious comment occurs. If you don’t like it, leave.

So why don’t they? What is it that makes people dislike a job but stay there anyway?

The reasons on the top are many. Scratch the surface and underneath they are all the same.

It is because somehow, they are stuck.

That unhappy person tells themselves many stories. I can’t leave because… The money is good.

There are no jobs out there anyway.

I need the security / the company car / the pension contribution [add perk of your choice in here]. I’m not very good at interviews. I don’t know what I really want to do. The other place will probably be worse. It’s not the right time with the economy like it is.

Change can be scary. We know that. Job related change especially so. Even if we don’t like the place all that much, we know it. We spend hours and hours every day there. Often more time than we do with our friends and family, or doing the things that we really love. We know our way around the people and the politics. We know what the boss is like. We know how long the commute takes and the code for the front door. We know where the toilets are. We know the rules. It is safe. 

The pay cheque is coming.

A new job on the other hand, is a risk. New people, new processes, new places. It means putting yourself out there, opening yourself up to rejection. Writing the CV. Drafting the cover letter. Scouring the job boards. Competency questions. Company research. Psychometric tests. Presentations. So tell me, why do you want to work here?

There are lots of reasons that people get stuck, stuck in jobs they don’t really care for.

Sometimes it is fear. Fear of the unknown. Sometimes it is habit. We have been doing the same thing for so long, the neural pathways are wide.

Sometimes a little learned helplessness is going on. The situation they are in right now has been so bad for so long, that even when an opportunity to move on presents itself, the unhappy employee does not take any action as they feel helpless to change things.

Sometimes we have told ourselves the same stories for so long we have come to believe them.

So here are my questions to you.

Are you happy in your job? I mean really happy?

Are you, in any way, one of these employees that complains about their job, but does nothing about it?

Are you stuck?

Are you telling yourself stories about why you can’t leave?

Because life is short and working hours are long. So if you aren’t happy, or aren’t happy enough, what are you going to do about it?

[borduur-blog]

Do I stay or do I go?

So you got the job offer. Well done you.

And now for the really important bit. Do you say yes?

Here are a few things to think about from me, before you hand in your resignation.

Hygiene stuff. Let’s put first things first (or to take a Maslow perspective, let’s put the bottom of the triangle first). Is the package right? If it isn’t, then proceed with extreme caution. Because it will just become a major irritant for you in the (near) future.

The second most important question: what’s the boss like? You know the old saying. People don’t leave jobs they leave managers. It isn’t entirely true, but there is something in it all the same. After all, it is probably the most important relationship you will have wherever you are. That is the person from whom you will get direction, who decides if you pass the probationary period, that will hopefully help you develop your career. If you are not sure about the boss, then think hard.

It isn’t just the job you have been offered right now, it’s all about the long term too. What does this role, this company, add to your career? What are the prospects for development, for promotion, for the future. Be comfortable with that answer.

Don’t fall for any gimmicks. 

Ooohh look, there is a foosball table in the canteen. This must be a super funky fun place to work mustn’t it? Maybe, and maybe not. See the next point….

What’s the culture like? Not what they say it is like website, but what is it really like? You might have only spent a little time there, but there will have been plenty of culture clues for you to look out for all the same. 

Did you go into your interview on time? Did they treat you well as a candidate?

 What are the offices like? Does the physical side of the building suggest that people matter? Did they give you a proper tour so you could see all around the place? What was the receptionist like? What are people wearing? What was the tone of any documents they have sent you? Think about all of the people that you met through the process. Were they smiling? It is the little things that make up a culture. Heed any warning signs carefully.

And finally. Remember why you went out to the job market in the first place. What made you look outside. 

Something prompted you. 

Whether it was the lack of development, a desire for more promotion prospects or the lousy pay packet, something prompted you to put yourself out there. 

So before you sign the contract, just make sure this job ticks those boxes too. If you do decide to go for it, then I wish you the very best of luck.