Category Archives: Tips

Landlording, Tips

Old Zinsco Circuit Breaker Couldn’t Take Any Load

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My tenant complained that the outlet for the refrigerator didn’t have power and he had to move to a different outlet to get power. The same problem happened to a couple of outlets around the kitchen.

I immediately suspected that the circuit breaker was tripped. But the tenant insisted that he played with the circuit breaker already without success. Then I got worried. Something is shorted and it’s not easy to find the shorts if they are internal.

When I got there, I waved my magic touchless electrical sensor and found that outlets were not hot (no power). So played with the circuit breakers and found that the outlets could be hot if there was no load. But as soon I plugged something in, the power went out. This is actually good news. Because it pointed to the circuit breaker couldn’t take the load – no shorts.

The circuit breakers are of the Zinsco type, manufactured by Connecticut Electrics. They are expensive ~ $50 each, a cash cow business for the company as the parts are no longer used in new homes. But they were installed in so many old homes including my apartment. Fortunately, I was able to buy it at my local Lowe’s Store. Home Depot had them too but more expensive – unusual that it’s more expensive at Home Depot than Lowe’s.

I was able to replace the 20A breaker and fixed the problem. In fact, I replaced one of the 40A oven breaker too as it was pretty loose – didn’t want to do this again. It took some maneuvering to remove the old breakers but the new breakers took care of the problem.

The lesson learned is that the circuit breaker can have a failure mode of tripping on very low load. This is good actually because it prevents the more sever failure mode of not tripping when it should be.

Tips

Stopping annoying Instant SMS messages from 270-00

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I’ve been receiving annoying instant SMS messages from 270-00 on a weekly basis. The messages were usually trivia like “Jupiter is 11 times the diameters of earth and is the largest planet in the solar system,” or “In 1607 English settlers arrived on the coast of Virginia, they called in Jamestown. Many of the people did not survive the first winder.” Very “interesting” trivia!

Based on my google search, I replied a “Stop” message and several minutes later an another SMS came back stating “U have been unsubscribed from 2Minute IQ Mobile Quiz Club subs. U will no longer receive any messages or charges. 8002357105.” Hopefully, this really stopped annoying weekly trivia SMS message.

Tips

Set up Windows Vista to display Chinese Fonts in the filenames

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I had an annoying problem on my Vista machine. I couldn’t open up (Word, pdf, Excel, OpenOffice) files with Chinese file names as email attachment. Every time I double-click on the attachment, the application software fails to open the file. Even when I save them first, the file names would get converted to “_” where the Chinese character is.

Thanks to Google, I was able to find the solution to my problem: Set the System Locale to “Chinese.” The detailed steps for Vista are as follows:

Click Start->Setting->”Control Panel” and double click on “Regions and Languages”.
Select Administration Tab
Changed the “System Locale” to “Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan)” and click Apply
Reboot the system

That’s all. You should be able to double-click on any attachments (with or without Chinese filenames) and open them up in your applications.

Tips

“10 Keys to Personal Power” video by Brian Tracy

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1. Clarity (of thinking):
a. Ability to focus: to know what he/she wants to accomplish in life, decide what it is you want to be.
b. Be decisive.
c. Have a vision – dream big dreams.
d. Focus on results, not activites.
e. Write out goals – specifically and clearly.
f. Review your goals often.
g. Speak with clarity.

2. Competence: commitment to competence.
a. Excellence yields opportunities – it is a journey – the whole world opens up to you. Always strive to do better. Ask yourself. “How many offers are you getting this month?”
b. Hard work yields improvement: The harder you work the better you get. Anything more than 8 hours (for survival) is an investment in your future; it will pay off.
c. The market pays for excellence.

3. Concentration: Key to effectiveness
a. Best use of time: ask constantly, “What’s the best use of my time?”
b. Develop sense of urgency. Do it now.
c. Completion of each task.

4. Common Sense:
a. Train your mind:
b. think things through: action without thinking is a common cause of failure.
c. Listen to your intuition
d. Learn from setbacks. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

5. Creativity: The hallmark of creativity is curiosity. 80% of what we use in five years will be different.
a. Tap creative potential: You need an idea that’s only 10% to start a fortune.
b. Look for better ways: keep your mind open for new ideas.
c. Be flexible.
d. Ask questions
e. Have one new idea

6. Consideration:
a. The quality of your relationship with other people will determine your success in life.
b. people skill
c. Golden rule.
d. learn to listen
e. Have a big vocabulary: learn a new word every day.
f. Firings usually caused by not getting along: Low self esteem is the biggest cause of not able to get along with others.

7. Consistency:
a. Dependable/predictable work is superior: always be more successful than flashes.
b. consistency in relationships: Be consistent with family and boss. Law of accumulation: Even if you do hundreds or thousands things you don’t see, eventually they accumulate and gather forces of their own. The biggest accomplishments in life are the results of the thousands of small accomplishments that no one see.
c. Guard your integrity – as the sacred thing – never compromise your peace of mind.
d. consistency in personal development

8. Commitment:
a. no success is possible without commitment (to your company, boss, job).
b. To your family, friends: Find the work and relationship you can commit yourself to.
c. to yourself, career and success: More failures in work are due to lack of loyalty/commitment to company and boss.
d. to your goals.

9. Courage: Outstanding quality of all leaders.
a. Have the ability and willingness to confront your fear. Not because they’re not afraid but they’ve mastered their fears. Most fears disappear when you confront them.
b. Dare to go forward.
c. Avoid ruts:
d. “There is no security in life, just opportunities.” The more we seek security that less we have it. The more we seek opportunities the more we have security. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all” – Hellen Keller.
e. Be a little afraid. If you are fearing, you’re living too inside your potential.
f. fear of failure begets failures.
g. Be persistent in the face of adversity.
Decide that nothing is going to stop you.

10. Confidence:
a. Self confidence begets great achievement.
b. Self doubt can paralyze.
c. Behave confidently.
Nothing succeed like success.

Dorothy Brand, “Go confidently in the direction of your dream and act as if it’s impossible to fail.” Your true beliefs are always expressed in your actions. Act the part until you feel the part.

Book Reviews, Tips

Book Review: “Act like a lady, Think Like a Man” by Steve Harvey

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I didn’t know this book was intended for women, but after a couple of pages I finally figured it out and finished the book anyway. As a man, I fully agree with author’s depiction of man and man’s motivation. Some of strategies make sense to me.

I have not noticed but it’s true that men will do three things for women they love:
1. Profess: Proclaim “This is my woman” in front of others.
2. Provide: That’s what every man is told to do since childhood.
3. Protect: Man’s instinct to protect his loved ones.

What every man needs:
1. Support
2. Loyalty
3. the Cookie (sex)

How men distinguish between the marrying types (keepers) and the play things (sport fishing).

Why men cheat? 1) Because they can. 2) They think they can get away with it. 3) He hasn’t become who he wants and needs to be or found who he truly wants. 4) There’s always a woman out there willing to cheat with him.

The playbook for women:
1) Men respect standards – get some
2) Ask 5 questions before sleeping with him: 1. What are your short-term goals? 2. What are your long-term goals? 3. What your views on relationships? 4. What do you think about me? 5. How do you feel about me?
3) The 90-day rule – no sex for 90 days of probation period. During this period find out the following: 1. How does he reacts when you tell him you’ve got some problems? 2. How does your man react under pressure? 3. How does he reacts to bad news? 4. How does he react when he’s told “no”?
4) Meet the kids before you decide he’s “the one.”

On how to “get the ring,” ask for a commitment and date. Don’t fear “failures.” Be willing to walk away.

A chapter on FAQ – very intuitive.

Except for some author’s bias on God and religion, I think the author is right on when it comes to how to read a man. Yes, man is a simple creature. Women may have read too much into man.This book ought to be a must-read for women and even teenager girls.

Tips

iPhone woes – Apps Crashing and Lost Data

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Today, I finally encountered for the first time an iPhone bug. All of a sudden, all of my apps were crashing (apps fail to start). All apps except those built into iPhone are affected. I started to panic. I’ve got lots of data stored in those apps. Then googling while walking in the Vasona Park (raising much resentment from my significant other), I tried a few tricks suggested by others, like deleting apps, rebooting, and etc. Then I tried downloading another free app, voila, the problem went away. What a relief!

When I returned home, I decided to “sync” all my apps on iTunes. Boy, what a mistake! iTunes decided to remove all the apps I downloaded from within iPhone. I then realized how fragile iPhone data are. I was used to having all of data backup on Treo by “Backupman.” There is no such a thing existed on iPhone without jailbreaking iphone. (I will keep looking). I lost all of the password data I stored in mSecure App. Little did I know how critical it is for any of the iPhone App to have its down backup/restore solution without relying on iPhone. Unfortunately, mSecure does not yet have mBackup yet (due 1/31/09) and it’s too late for me. After trying Apple’s restore a couple of times, I gave up. It appears the data (>200 records) were gone forever. The other data sets (like Contacts) seem to be intact because I had them sync’ed to Yahoo’s Address.

The lesson learned:
1) Avoid storing data in iPhone or apps that store data in iPhone unless the app has ways to backup/restore the data to a desktop or a server somewhere else.
2) Only download essential apps to iPhone. Remove them if they’re not needed to reduce resource drained on the fragile, fancy, iPhone OS.

Personal, Tips

A Better Contact Search Program (TakePhOne) and Poor Treo 680 Battery Life Probelm

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Last couple of weeks, I downloaded two pieces of software from the net for my Treo 680. The existing phone number search function on Treo 680 is rather pathetic; you’d need to type in the first name initial and then last name to find the contact information. And if you are searching for a specific business name or a specific phrase in the contact database, you’d need to use global search function, an extremely slow function. After some research, I found the software TakePhOne is really cool, you can search on any substring and the search is instantaneous – quite impressive. The launch function to launch any software by scrolling sideway is very nice too. Also, it has a large display of the clock, which practically eliminates the need to wear a watch.

But soon after I downloaded and started using this software, I discovered the battery of Treo drains really fast. I used to be able use the phone whole day without any problem. Then I found the battery wouldn’t last beyond 3pm. Very strange. Is the software consuming all the power? What else could be a problem.

Based on my Google search, I found the solution to the problem from this website. As it turns out, once a while, the battery meter would go out of calibration and need to be reset. This website teaches you how to reset that. Well, it didn’t help.

Upon further Google search, I discovered another problem called “Glen Phenomenon” that would drain your battery really fast. This is triggered by “If I receive (answer) a call, and allow the caller to hang up, doing nothing at my end, my standby battery drain rate increases to 2-3% per hour and stays that way… This problem can be corrected simply by receiving another call. (I did it by calling my TREO from my landline, letting it ring at least once, and hanging up, not even touching the TREO).” This fixed the problem I had.

All is well now. I think I’ll go ahead and purchase the TakePhOne.