Category: Uncategorized

So back in January (or was it February), anyways, during the snow storm, I was clumsy and slipped and fell. I guess you could say I landed incorrectly by landing on my left hand, mostly on the thumb. Initially, there was pain and bruising, but the bruises went away after a few days of ice. I also took some Tylenol to counter the pain.

Anyway, 2 months later, my wrist still hurts when I apply pressure to it (i.e. doing push-ups), so I decided to go get it check. Regular hand/wrist usage works fine with no pain (i.e. typing). Having no idea how to go about this (since I didn’t even have a general physician around here – never really needed to see one), I decided to ask around and Vani recommended Dr. Norman Leou. I was able to get an appointment the following day and they took some X-rays, but he wasn’t able to see any type of fracture. He diagnosed it a bit further and suggested that I may have hurt my tendon during the fall. He said they generally heal in about a month and it’s rare that it’s taken over 2 months and still not healed yet. He referred me to Pacific Handworks in Bellevue for physical therapy and suggested I get a splint.

I didn’t really know what a splint nor had any idea what type of physical therapy I was getting. I kept imagining people who hurt their spine and need to relearn how to walk. Anyway, I set up an appointment with Pacific Handiworks and I found out what a splint is:

Anyway, according to the physician, when I fell, I damaged my tendon that controls my thumb and the my body sent a whole bunch of gunk to heal it. However, the body doesn’t really know how to clean out that gunk so whenever I use my thumb, the tendon grinds against those gunk and wounding it again. So now I have a splint that keeps my thumb immobile most of the time. I also have some wrist stretches and tendon gliding exercise I do 4-5x a day. Then there’s the hot and cold water switcheroo where I stick my hand in hot water for 2 mins, then in cold water, and repeat a couple times. Supposedly helps push the gunk back out. Time to recover is expected to be 2-3 weeks and I shouldn’t need to come in anymore. However, if it still hurts after 3 weeks, I should come back in.

I personally have a bunch of keychain membership cards (which I’m referring to all those club cards, reward cards, etc). Usually with such cards, you get a regular size card (same size as credit card) and 2 smaller ones which fit on on your keychain. Since my wallet is packed with other cards which are more important (credit cards, atm cards, driver license, medical cards, etc), my wallet became extremely packed. Safeway for some reason doesn’t distribute a keychain size card, so for some time, I was carrying the big Safeway club card around for some time. Now, I just enter my phone number so I don’t have to carry that big card around.

Anyway, last night when I was purchasing some game at BestBuy.com, I wanted to enter my BestBuy Reward Zone number, but here’s what I saw:

A couple of my other cards have also began to fade away. Maybe that’s why the give you 2 keychain cards because they know that it’ll eventually rub away due to the constant friction against your keys and clothing.

Anyway, I decided to “laminate” my keychain cards, which I’m not sure why they didn’t do it in the first place. By “laminate”, I mean to just use tape and cover the barcode area. I use clear packaging tape which is typically stronger than regular scotch tape, but even regular scotch tape or “invisible” tape should work fine. Afterwards just take a scissor and cut off the protruding tape. I found it easier to just push the scissor than to actually cut. The sharp edges just made it slice the tape rather easy.

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I had another interesting digital camera experience taking the above pictures. After my first shot, my Canon PowerShot S400 camera reported a “memory card error”. I turned off, gave it a few smacks and turned it on again and took the next few pictures without any problems. After sticking my CF card into USB reader, I noticed a couple pictures that was previously taken was now corrupted. Oh well. I was actually going to jump on that Dell deal where the Canon PowerShot SD600 was for $150, but I waited too long. I wanted to go home and use my $40 VISA gift card (since Dell can take 2 credit cards as payment), but I guess I snooze I lose.

I got this form a MS newsgroup and thought it’d be interesting to share:

I had a wonderful morning – the heating unit went out on my dryer! Why does everything seem to fall apart this time of year!??? The guy that fixes things went in to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. We always clean the lint from the filter after every load of clothes. He told us that he wanted to show us something. He took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. Now, the lint filter is made of a mesh material – I’m sure you know what your dryer’s lint filter looks like.

WELL…..the hot water just sat on top of the mesh!!! It didn’t go through it at all!!! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over the mesh, that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film, but it’s there. This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time & to keep your electric bill lower is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that???!!!! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn’t know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I’d share!

Note: I tested my dryer screen by running water on it. The water ran thru a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush & I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn’t any puddle of water at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

Sounds interesting… I for one use fabric softener sheet for every load of clothes I dump into the dryer and this would be helpful to take care of my new dryer.

After each time I fill up my tank of gas on my 2001 Honda Civic, I’ve been recording 3 4 bits of information: total cost, miles traveled, gallons pumped, and the date. I’ve also recorded which brand of gasoline I used, but that’s not important in this case. I’ve been meaning to post statistics of it and finally got around to it.

I’ve made some pretty charts:

Cost Per Gallon:

Min: $2.03 (1/4/06)
Max: $3.32 (6/30/06)
Average: $2.70

Miles Per Gallon:

Min: 38.7MPG (6/30/06)
Max: 21.2MPG (2/19/06)
Average: 27.6MPG

Miles Per Dollar:

Min: 7.4mi (5/30/06)
Max: 14.0mi (1/7/06)
Average: 10.2mi

The following I made 2 charts of each because there was some data that really skewed it (my trip down to Mt. Shasta)

Cost Per Day:

Min: $0.80 (1/4/06)
Max: $137.24 (6/30/06)
Average: $2.00

Miles Per Day:

Min: 8.2mi (5/30/06)
Max: 606.4mi (6/30/06)
Average: 20.5mi

Totals of 2006:
Miles Traveled: 7598.8mi
Cost of Gasoline: $743.42
Gallons of Gasoline: 275.065 gallons

I did move farther away from my work (3mi to 10mi) in late July after I purchased my new home. That probably has contributed to the number of miles I drive a day and increased my gasoline mileage a bit as now my car can reach the optimal temperature and condition before arriving at work.

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There was also this interesting message in one of the MS newsgroups:

So I used to work for a fuels additive company (Read: makes the stuff that goes in your gas to make them run better) and I asked an expert on fuel economy there. Here is his reply:

Several things could be going on. First the altitude should not make much difference in fuel economy. Cars are now equipped with oxygen sensors in the exhaust that determine if the air fuel mixture is correct. If anything the car may seem to be underpowered a little bit at higher elevations.

Other things that can effect fuel consumption. More stop and go driving like you have in Redmond consumes a lot more gasoline. That is the difference between city and highway mileage the EPA requires to be provided for all cars. Another thing is the Seattle area uses reformulated gasoline (RFG) which is made with ethanol and has a lower energy content. That will cost you about 3% fuel economy compared to gasoline purchased in Texas. California has been using “special” low emissions gasoline for years which would have a little bit lower mileage than Texas, but not as bad as Seattle’s RFG. Another thing that impacts fuel economy is colder weather. It takes cars longer to reach operating temperature so the engine feeds in extra gasoline to make it heat up quicker. EPA requires this to get the catalytic converters up to operating temperature earlier. Also gasoline is refined differently by different refiners and the refineries in Northern Washington might be making gasoline with a lower BTU(energy) content. Letting the vehicle idle consumes a lot of fuel. It is best just to get into the car, start the engine and drive off.

Lastly, the type of engine oil can make a difference. In warmer areas cars use higher viscosity oils so that the do not get to thin when they get hot. That same oil in colder climates stays too thick and can cause the engine to have to work harder to run.

Add it all up and you might see 30% difference in fuel consumption, but most of it would have to come from changes in driving habits.

I’m currently on a family plan with T-Mobile. Each year, our yearly contract ends and my father signs up with a new contract (usually with a different member of the family, since you have to be a non-customer for over 60 days or something to take advantage of the new customer deals). We tend to stick with T-Mobile because it generally has the best cell phone plans for family. We don’t bother trying to haggle with customer service, as renewing a contract never really ever has the same perks of signing up for a new contract. I’ve complained about this numerous times, and even blogged about it. I hardly use my cell phone, given that I don’t have a girlfriend/wife or kids. I get the seldom call from my parents, which I’ve trained them to call my VoIP phone number instead, and sometimes use it to call some friends or co-workers. Once in awhile, I have an emergency for it, but overall I probably use at most 200 minutes a month. I don’t care about internet connectivity or getting email on my cell phone.

Anyway, that time is coming up and the worse part of all this is that if we stick with T-Mobile, we will all get new numbers and I have to tell everyone what my new number is. Sometimes I miss a few people, and they get mad at me. Anyway, I now there’s that law that allows you to port your cell number to a different carrier, but nothing that really says much about keeping your cell number with the same mobile phone carrier.

A few years back, I thought about this scheme, but didn’t really research much into it. I was thinking, I can port my number to a temporary mobile phone carrier, and then immediately port it back to whatever company that I wanted. I mean if I was a small mobile phone carrier, I can make money off this by charging a service fee of lets say $35 + any additional charges to get it to work. Ungsunghero then suggested instead I could just sign up for some random plan and I have 30 days to cancel it if I don’t like it, even if I sign up for a 1 year contract.

I emailed MyRatePlan, asking:

I understand how number porting works. I was wondering if there’s an median service which I could port my number to and then port my number back onto a different plan.

For example, let’s say I’m a Verizon customer. My contract has ended and I want to take advantage of a new contract. The only problem is that number portability doesn’t work within the same carrier.

Is it possible to port my number to say a small carrier which provides the service of temporarily holding cell numbers and the port it back to Verizon on my new contract.

If that is possible, does such carriers exist today? If so, would you please kindly tell me about them.

Thank you.

Their reply was short and to the point:

Thanks for writing. Creative idea, but it won’t work. Even if you ported to a prepaid carrier (ie, one with no contract) then tried to port back, you would get flagged as an existing customer for about 6 months and your application would be rejected.

Verizon does offer some discounts on phones to those that renew their contract. Not as much as for new customers, but if you want to stay with them and keep your number as well as get a new phone, that is probably your best option.

Ungsunghero confirmed that there was a 6 month period where the mobile phone carrier is allowed to not take back the number that was ported away from it. Darn. All that scheming gone to waste. Ungsunghero suggested that I should just sign up for a new plan on a different carrier on my own, but that’s really not the point here. Let’s say I switch to Verizon or Cingular or even Sprint PCS, a year later when the contract expires, that means I have to once again switch to another carrier even if I liked the service I’ve been getting. Oh well.

Yay?

The weather’s been crazy this winter here in Seattle (or so I’ve been told). It’s snowing here again, a day later than what the original forecast was. Tekman and Xyon left like way early to avoid it. Derek and I stuck around and had dinner and left around 10 to avoid the horrendous traffic that the maps were showing.

Although, not all is bad.

I first took West Lake Sammamish and that road although a bit windy, was very nice to drive all. Due to the traffic I guess, there was basically no snow on the road, only a few cars all going about 30MPH (vs 5MPH on 148th which I initially took and then pulled a U-turn and drove towards West Lake Sammamish). It was like driving on a rainy day, where people were just a bit more careful than normal. Oh yah, I had also filled up my tank with gas as I had less than an 1/8th left and I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, when I got out of West Lake Sammamish and passed the 90, the hill was blockaded. There were little red cones and a police car parked there stopping people from continuing onto Lakemont. I had my GPS system so I turned left and continued hoping for it to find another route. It did and it seems to connect right back onto Lakemont on top of the hill. I decided to try it. However, this route was less taken, so there was more snow and ice on the road. I got to a point where my card would just not go up anymore. Do note, there have been cars parked on the side of the road all around this area. I guess they just wanted to go home and didn’t want to go through the crazy traffic. However, looking at my GPS system, it was going to be about a 2mi walk which I decided to give the west entrance a try. The Lakemont entrance I was trying was from the north.

I got on to the freeway 90W which was pretty clear and merged onto 405S and took the Coral Creek exit. Once off the freeway, there was a long line continuing onto Coral Creek. I decided to try to take a detour, however it turned out to be 30 minute mistake. Though I’m not sure if that was a good thing or not. I’m still not sure what caused all that traffic on Coral Creek. I’m guessing people were having problems getting into that part of Issaquah? At first I thought it was because everyone was trying to get onto Forest/Lakemont because all the other exits were closed, but the turn lane into Forest/Lakemont only had a few cars.

The drive up Forest was okay. When it was going uphill, cars went up one at a time. So this is why I said maybe my little 30 minute detour was a good thing. A car got stuck in the middle of the steep hill. Cars one by one went by it. It was my turn and I got stuck around the same area. The guy came up and gave me a push and I managed all the way to the top of the hill. I parked my car and came back down to assist him, but we only managed to go up a couple yards. He decided he was going to just park his car there for the night and I bid farewell. Little did I know, I was stuck again. I just needed a little push to get some inertia and that great guy came to help me again.

The rest of the trip was pretty easy. Going up Cougar Mountain was a bit scary. At times, my wheels would be spinning at 60MPH when I’m really going about 15.

But it appears the HOA of my condo lot paid some snow plow car to plow the snow in our lot. However, there was still snow on my driveway and it took me 3 times ramming up my driveway while trying to avoid crashing into my house before I made it into my garage. I was actually contemplating just parking my car in front of my garage, but looks like my car won’t have to freeze outside tonight.

Looks like I’ll be working from home tomorrow.

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Abandoned cars on frozen roads Slide Show (from MS newsgroup) – You can read the original article here: Abandoned vehicles litter Washington roads

Good to be home. 🙂

So everyone around here has been having blackouts. From Bothell, to Sammamish, and even here in Bellevue. It’s probably due to the high winds and you can hear it pretty well. From Weather.com:

High Wind Warning

/O.CON.KSEW.HW.W.0019.000000T0000Z- 061215T1800Z/ SOUTHWEST INTERIOR-EAST PUGET SOUND LOWLANDS-EVERETT AND VICINITY- SEATTLE/BREMERTON AREA- TACOMA AREA-HOOD CANAL AREA- LOWER CHEHALIS VALLEY AREA- 706 PM PST THU DEC 14 2006

…HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 AM PST FRIDAY…

STRONG SOUTH WINDS OF 30 TO 40 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 55 MPH HAVE BEEN OCCURRING THIS EVENING. AT 6 PM EVERETT WAS REPORTING A SOUTH WIND OF 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 52 MPH. WINDS MAY BRIEFLY DECREASE AT TIMES THROUGH ABOUT 9 PM. BUT WIND WILL SHIFT TO THE SOUTHWEST AND INCREASE LATER THIS EVENING AS A STRONG LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM MOVES ACROSS THE AREA. SOUTHWEST WINDS WILL RISE TO 50 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 80 MPH IN THE CHEHALIS GAP FROM SHELTON WESTWARD. SOUTHWEST WINDS WILL RISE TO 40 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 65 MPH ELSEWHERE…BEGINNING AROUND 9 PM IN OLYMPIA AND SPREADING NORTH THROUGH THE SEATTLE AND EVERETT AREAS BETWEEN 10 AND 11 PM.

My first long blackout occurred while I was at work. My UPS gives about 30 mins of backup time and has an auto clock to turn off my computer when there is about 5 mins left on the battery and my connection died sometime around 5:30pm. I didn’t have my computer set to auto-boot when the power came back on. But when I came back, the power had already returned and my computers were up in no time.

Throughout the night, my power’s been flaky, however, most times, not enough to reset the clocks. Here’s what my APC Back-UPS XS800 performance shows:

Unfortunately, the lowest denominator was for the past week, but 95% of the statistics should be today’s.

Thank god for UPS though, or else my computer would’ve been rebooting over and over again. I have one UPS for each computer, but I’ve realized I need one for my router, switch and cable modem. When the power flickers, most of the time they stay online, but when the flicker takes longer than half a second, they reset, sometimes forcing me to power them off and back on to get them working.

I haven’t seen too many folks online, so I’m guessing they’re not having as much luck as I am. The longest blackout so far (that I’ve been in today) lasted about 2 minutes.

What does get annoying is the fact that whenever the power goes off and back on, APC PowerChute pops up a notification balloon telling me the power has resumed to use AC power. I tried turning off all notifications and sounds, but it still shows up. Who knows.

NobodysGirl IMed me earlier tonight and ask how the flood was, but I didn’t really noticed any flood. However, there is a flood warning on Weather.com:

/X.NEW.KSEW.FL.W.0059.061215T1645Z- 061217T0135Z/ /CRNW1.1.ER.061215T1645Z. 061216T0000Z.061216T1335Z.NO/ 922 PM PST THU DEC 14 2006

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SEATTLE HAS ISSUED A

* FLOOD WARNING FOR THE SNOQUALMIE RIVER NEAR CARNATION * FROM FRIDAY MORNING TO SATURDAY MORNING. * AT 9:00 PM THURSDAY THE STAGE WAS 49.7 FEET. * FLOOD STAGE IS 54.0 FEET. * MINOR FLOODING IS FORECAST. * FORECAST… RISE ABOVE FLOOD STAGE AROUND 9 AM FRIDAY AND CONTINUE TO RISE TO NEAR 55.0 FEET BY LATE TOMORROW AFTERNOON. THE RIVER WILL FALL BELOW FLOOD STAGE BY SATURDAY MORNING. * AT 54.0 FEET…THE SNOQUALMIE RIVER WILL FLOOD MUCH OF THE FARM LAND AND SEVERAL ROADS FROM FALL CITY DOWNSTREAM THROUGH CARNATION AND DUVALL.

I’m actually curious what those colored balls underneath “Severe Weather Alerts for Bellevue, WA (98006)” mean. I’m guessing red is bad, and orange is bad, but not as bad as red. Anything with the word severe weather can’t be good.

Got this from a MS newsgroup:

Sigmund Freud’s Priorities. Take a test for yourself…. ……… .

Five things are happening in your house at the same time. In which sequence would you solve them?

1. The telephone is ringing!
2. The baby is crying!
3. Someone’s knocking or calling you from the front door!
4. You hung the clothes out to dry and it is beginning to rain!
5. You left the tap on in the kitchen and the water is already overflowing!

In which sequence would you solve these problems? Write the sequence and check below how your decisions were made.

BUT BE HONEST, THE FINDINGS ARE EXCITING.

First write YOUR sequence from 1 to 5
Only then scroll below and read

Answer: (Show)

Every individual point represents something in your life.

On the list you can see which meaning every point has:

1. Telephone represents Work
2. Baby represents Family
3. Door represents Friends
4. Clothes represent Money
5. Tap represents Love Life

Your chosen sequence determines the priorities in your life.

My results: (Show)

1. tap – love
2. baby – family
3. door – friends
4. telephone – work
5. clothes – money

Haha! I’m not sure if that’s truly what it means. Here’s my justification:

Water tap is first because it’s overflowing and if I don’t stop it now, I’ll have a mess to clean up later.

Baby is crying… well, I hate the sound of baby crying and with them crying, I can’t concentrate and will be annoyed at every little thing that goes wrong.

Door usually means I have a package! I don’t get much friends or visitors at my place and most rings are a good sign: NEW TOY!

Telephone… I’m not sure really why I dislike the telephone. I guess it involves almost direct contact which I don’t usually like. Plus most phone calls I usually want to end as soon as possible. Give me an IM conversation and I can chat for hours.

Finally the clothes. Who cares if the clothes get wet. I can dry them again later. There’s no urgency in that.

The MAN Rules (from MS newsgroup)

Finally, the guys’ side of the story.
We always hear “the rules”
From the female side.

Now here are the rules from the male side.
These are our rules!
Please note.. these are all numbered “1”
ON PURPOSE!

1. Men are NOT mind readers.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat.
You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down.
We need it up, you need it down.
You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports It’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides.
Let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport.
And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want.
Let us be clear on this one:
Subtle hints do not work!
Strong hints do not work!
Obvious hints do not work!
Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s what we do.
Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a Problem.
See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument.
In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 Days.

1. If you won’t dress like the Victoria ‘s Secret girls, don’t Expect us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are.
Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one

1. You can either ask us to do something
Or tell us how you want it done.
Not both.
If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings.
Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched.
We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say “nothing,” We will act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, Expect an answer you don’t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine…Really.

1. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or golf.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round Is a shape!

Thank you for reading this.
Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight;

But did you know men really don’t mind that? It’s like camping.

Pass this to as many men as you can –
to give them a laugh.

Pass this to as many women as you can –
to give them a bigger laugh