MOODSTRControl Your Mood – Control Your Life

Description

What kind of first impression do you make? A first impression is the most important impression you’ll ever make—and you get only one chance to make it. Business deals can be made or broken, first dates become second dates or not, friendships are created or fail to form; everything hinges on that all-important initial encounter. And yet most of us don’t know how we’re really seen by others. Many of us don’t know how to make a good impression.Wouldn’t you like others to see you as confident, interesting, attractive, and sincere? Ann Demarais, Ph.D., and Valerie White, Ph.D., consultants to many Fortune 100 companies as well as creators of First Impressions, Inc., a New York–based dating and consulting firm, offer you the keys to putting your best self forward in any new situation, whether you want to strike up a conversation at a party or are meeting a blind date or a new business client. You’ll learn to see yourself as others see you, and how to tweak your style to create the impression that reflects the real you. Breaking down a successful first impression into its seven fundamentals, the authors show you how to master these principles so that you can make the best first impression. They also show how to avoid common misunderstandings that leave others with a bad impression, how to reveal the four universal social gifts, and they outline practical steps you can take to enhance your personal charm. Informative and filled with enlightening research studies, do-it-yourself checklist reviews, and dozens of helpful case histories, First Impressions is a fun, groundbreaking, and long-overdue guide to the most important moment of virtually any relationship: the first.

Description

At this very moment, you are surrounded by sound. Pause for a minute and try to listen to it all: the chatter of a passing conversation, the gentle whoosh of air vents, noise from a nearby street, someone turning the pages of a book, birds chirping in the trees. We rarely pay attention to everything we hear, but every noise in our environment has the ability to change our mood, decrease our productivity, even affect our health. While sound can heal, both emotionally and physically, it can also hurt us. In this engaging book, bestselling author and music expert Don Campbell (The Mozart Effect®) teams up with Alex Doman, a specialist in the practical application of sound, to show how we can use music and silence throughout our day to not only change how we feel but alter how we physically function. The authors delve into more than a decades’ worth of research, from studies on aging to groundbreaking brain science, in order to illustrate how noise affects us for better and for worse. Walking readers through every aspect of their daily lives — from the morning commute to getting a restful night’s sleep — Don and Alex provide practical advice and exercises so you can create perfect soundtracks for every task, combining music you already love with new favorites. In addition, the authors share nearly one hundred active links to music, video, and downloads in the book that help support their advice and show how others use the inspiring force of music to improve their lives. Combining the joy of music with the strength of science, Healing at the Speed of Sound™ will set you on the path to a full, rich, and truly harmonious life.

Description

The Sims: Deluxe Edition combines The Sims, the most popular PC game of all time, and the top-selling Livin' Large expansion pack in one box with a host of all-new exclusive features and content. In this box you'll find: The Sims: Create an entire neighborhood of Sims and run or ruin their lives with the full version of the bestselling PC game of all time. Help your Sims pursue careers, make friends, and find romance--or make a complete mess of things! Open-ended gameplay gives you the freedom to set your own goals as you chart your Sims' destiny. The Sims: Livin' Large: With over 125 additional items, five additional career tracks with 50 additional jobs, and a cast of wild characters like the Grim Reaper and the Genie, this bestselling expansion pack puts your Sims into outrageous situations and settings. The Sims Creator: Create any Sim you can imagine with this powerful new tool that allows even novice users to customize every detail of how their Sims look. Choose their clothing or create your own. Select from a variety of details like ties, jewelry, and tattoos. Players can even put their own face in The Sims with this easy-to-use tool. 25+ Exclusive Objects: Furnish your Sims' homes with two completely new design sets with over 25 objects exclusive to The Sims: Deluxe Edition. 50+ New Clothing Choices: A selection of modern and extreme fashion choices await your Sims.

The Sims: Deluxe Edition combines The Sims, the most popular PC game of all time, and the top-selling Livin' Large expansion pack in one box with a host of all-new exclusive features and content. In this box you'll find: The Sims: Create an entire neighborhood of Sims and run or ruin their lives with the full version of the bestselling PC game of all time. Help your Sims pursue careers, make friends, and find romance--or make a complete mess of things! Open-ended gameplay gives you the freedom to set your own goals as you chart your Sims' destiny. The Sims: Livin' Large: With over 125 additional items, five additional career tracks with 50 additional jobs, and a cast of wild characters like the Grim Reaper and the Genie, this bestselling expansion pack puts your Sims into outrageous situations and settings. The Sims Creator: Create any Sim you can imagine with this powerful new tool that allows even novice users to customize every detail of how their Sims look. Choose their clothing or create your own. Select from a variety of details like ties, jewelry, and tattoos. Players can even put their own face in The Sims with this easy-to-use tool. 25+ Exclusive Objects: Furnish your Sims' homes with two completely new design sets with over 25 objects exclusive to The Sims: Deluxe Edition. 50+ New Clothing Choices: A selection of modern and extreme fashion choices await your Sims. The ultimate goal of life is to achieve happiness, and the way to achieve happiness is to buy stuff. So says The Sims, a game that lets you create, direct, and manage the lives of SimCity's residents. The game begins with the creation of your simulated people: pick a name and a gender, decide on personality/astrological sign, and then choose a look from a variety of heads, bodies, and skin tones. Name, gender, and appearance don't affect gameplay much, but personality determines how your Sim plays with others. A serious, neat Sim might go crazy living with a sloppy party animal--or opposites might attract, and the two could end up falling in love. After creation, the next step is to find a place to live. Again, the player can choose from among the empty houses in the neighborhood or decide to buy some land and design a dream house. Building houses is a blast, and the easy-to-use house design interface could almost be its own game: players design the floor plan, put up walls, pick carpet, wallpaper, and siding, and fill the house with furniture, decorations, fixtures, and appliances. You're limited only by your imagination--and your Sims' pocketbook. But the choices you make in designing and decorating your Sims' house are vital. A good general rule is that the more expensive the object, the better its ability to satisfy Sim needs. Each little Sim person has needs (Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social, and Room) which can be satisfied by interaction with other Sims or purchased objects: throw a party with the help of a rockin' stereo system, and watch your Sims' Social and Fun ratings improve. Have one of your Sims whip up some food from the refrigerator, and you'll satisfy the Hunger needs of your guests. Or have your Sim engage another Sim in a game of chess: not only will their Fun and Social moods improve, both Sims will gain some points in their Logic skill rating--which might help on the job. One gameplay goal is to improve your Sim so he or she can climb a career ladder, which nets him or her more money, which allows the purchase of higher quality stuff, which lets you improve your Sim even more. With proper care, your Sim can have a mate, kids, and a mansion with an indoor pool. Mismanage your new, simulated family, and you'll be faced with the worst of MTV's The Real World: jealousies will ignite, fights will break out, jobs will be lost, and the house will fall apart. Bringing about such a calamity is almost as much fun as guiding your Sims to material paradise, and takes considerably less time. Triumph or tragedy, each significant event in a Sim's life is captured in a snapshot and saved in a photo album for later viewing. Players can also take photos any time they wish. The photo album feature is cool by itself, but the best part is that you can upload the album to www.thesims.com and share your Sims' sagas with the world. Entire families can also be uploaded and downloaded, as can houses. Want to re-create and manage your own version of Friends? Download the free face and body editor and make Sim clones of the Ross, Rachel, and the rest. Want to perfectly re-create the set? Snag the free wall and floor texture editor. Feeling a little silly? Add Darth Vader to the family and see what happens. With The Sims, you can create whatever--and whomever--you desire. Toying with the lives, successes, and emotional states of dozens of little Sims is undeniably fun. In the same way that SimCity players develop a condescending attitude toward real-world city planners, The Sims players will begin to see life as a series of needs-satisfying challenges; the game gets in your head. But that's OK: limitless gameplay, endless variety, imaginative Internet features, and the ability to play matchmaker/landlord/counselor/God makes The Sims a great way to increase your own Fun score. --Mike Fehlauer Pros: Unique, addictive, fun gameplay Included photo album feature records triumphs and tragedies Free uploads and downloads expand the game and allow swapping with other players Sims are smart--it's sometimes best to just let them act on their own Cons: Addictive gameplay may cause loss of sleep, job Complex behavioral modeling program--requires serious computing power No pets other than fish Sex and aliens. That's really all that was missing from the amazing original edition of The Sims, and the expansion Livin' Large delivers these new treats to liven up your beloved Sims existence. New characters (including a gladiator and Xena-like warriors), and, more impressively, new decorations are the reasons to buy this game. The furnishings are mostly grouped by theme, with the medieval dungeon option the most authoritative of the bunch. (Little Cassandra Goth has been longing to read by torch light all along.) Our personal favorite is the futuristic theme, with an optional, but expensive, maid/gardener robot to take care of the fabulous modern furnishings. Clearly the Sims team has been doing its research over at Herman Miller, and you'll have a bright red, flowing-foam sofa to show for it. But it wouldn't be The Sims if only good taste prevailed. Bring on the mai tais with a tiki-heavy islander theme. There's also a startling collection of carpeting and objects best grouped under the design ideal we call "demented clown." The attention-getting rarities include: a lame fortune-telling ball (our advice mostly centered around hiring a maid), a voodoo doll for hexing roommates, and a genie who delivers as much bad as good (dead plants, anyone?). And, yes, there's a vibrating bed to give your Sims the spice they've been missing. While the expansion didn't blow us away, it did provide more of the humor and novelty true Sims die-hards will appreciate. With even more attention to detail than the original offering, EA deserves Sims-like applause for this edition. --Jennifer Buckendorff

Features

• Start out with the original Sims -- a hilarious game where you actually have to control a person's life from start to finish!
• Give them a look, find them a job, keep them happy and get them a nice place to live -- if you do, you'll be rewarded with some of the comical game scenes around!
• Once you've done that try out the great expansion pack, Livin' Large. where you have to give your Sims the high life, and help them keep it
• There's also new objects, all-new skins, new designs for walls and floors, and two new themes - Roman and Science Fiction
• You can even create the perfect Sim for yourself using the amazing new Creator tool!

Description

Get the best-selling PC game of all time and all seven of its expansion packs! / Rated T: Teen With The Sims - Unleashed you'll add a furry friend to your Sims family. Housebreak your pets, train them to do tricks, buy them toys, and do your best to keep them from destroying the house! The Sims - Superstar lets you experience the lifestyles of the rich and famous and guide your Sims to superstardom. Become a movie star, rocker, or supermodel and spend your cash on extravagant new items for your home. In The Sims - Makin' Magic you'll cast spells, hypnotize friends, and even turn a neighbor into a frog. But watch out, spells can go haywire if you're not careful. The neighborhood will never be the same!

The ultimate goal of life is to achieve happiness, and the way to achieve happiness is to buy stuff. So says The Sims, a game that lets you create, direct, and manage the lives of SimCity's residents. The game begins with the creation of your simulated people: pick a name and a gender, decide on personality/astrological sign, and then choose a look from a variety of heads, bodies, and skin tones. Name, gender, and appearance don't affect gameplay much, but personality determines how your Sim plays with others. A serious, neat Sim might go crazy living with a sloppy party animal--or opposites might attract, and the two could end up falling in love. After creation, the next step is to find a place to live. Again, the player can choose from among the empty houses in the neighborhood or decide to buy some land and design a dream house. Building houses is a blast, and the easy-to-use house design interface could almost be its own game: players design the floor plan, put up walls, pick carpet, wallpaper, and siding, and fill the house with furniture, decorations, fixtures, and appliances. You're limited only by your imagination--and your Sims' pocketbook. But the choices you make in designing and decorating your Sims' house are vital. A good general rule is that the more expensive the object, the better its ability to satisfy Sim needs. Each little Sim person has needs (Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social, and Room) which can be satisfied by interaction with other Sims or purchased objects: throw a party with the help of a rockin' stereo system, and watch your Sims' Social and Fun ratings improve. Have one of your Sims whip up some food from the refrigerator, and you'll satisfy the Hunger needs of your guests. Or have your Sim engage another Sim in a game of chess: not only will their Fun and Social moods improve, both Sims will gain some points in their Logic skill rating--which might help on the job. One gameplay goal is to improve your Sim so he or she can climb a career ladder, which nets him or her more money, which allows the purchase of higher quality stuff, which lets you improve your Sim even more. With proper care, your Sim can have a mate, kids, and a mansion with an indoor pool. Mismanage your new, simulated family, and you'll be faced with the worst of MTV's The Real World: jealousies will ignite, fights will break out, jobs will be lost, and the house will fall apart. Bringing about such a calamity is almost as much fun as guiding your Sims to material paradise, and takes considerably less time. Triumph or tragedy, each significant event in a Sim's life is captured in a snapshot and saved in a photo album for later viewing. Players can also take photos any time they wish. The photo album feature is cool by itself, but the best part is that you can upload the album to www.thesims.com and share your Sims' sagas with the world. Entire families can also be uploaded and downloaded, as can houses. Want to re-create and manage your own version of Friends? Download the free face and body editor and make Sim clones of the Ross, Rachel, and the rest. Want to perfectly re-create the set? Snag the free wall and floor texture editor. Feeling a little silly? Add Darth Vader to the family and see what happens. With The Sims, you can create whatever--and whomever--you desire. Toying with the lives, successes, and emotional states of dozens of little Sims is undeniably fun. In the same way that SimCity players develop a condescending attitude toward real-world city planners, The Sims players will begin to see life as a series of needs-satisfying challenges; the game gets in your head. But that's OK: limitless gameplay, endless variety, imaginative Internet features, and the ability to play matchmaker/landlord/counselor/God makes The Sims a great way to increase your own Fun score. --Mike Fehlauer Pros: Unique, addictive, fun gameplay Included photo album feature records triumphs and tragedies Free uploads and downloads expand the game and allow swapping with other players Sims are smart--it's sometimes best to just let them act on their own Cons: Addictive gameplay may cause loss of sleep, job Complex behavioral modeling program--requires serious computing power No pets other than fish

From Will Wright, the creator of SimCity, comes a strategy game that hits close to home. You are in charge of a neighborhood of Sims, and it is up to you to show them that they're living in your world now! Force them into a life of crime or help them live life in the fast lane. Build them a sprawling mansion or dump them into a dilapidated shack. Let them party like swinging singles or fall in love, get married, and raise a family. They can live out your wildest dreams or experience your worst nightmares. It is up to you to decide--their fate is in your hands.

Features

• The Sims is a strategic life-simulation computer game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. It was created by game designer Will Wright, also known for developing SimCity. It is a simulation of the daily activities of one or more virtual persons ("Sims") in a suburban household near SimCity.