Category: Day to day life

Updates on what’s going on with us

Dead Printer

Jason and Alicia had an old all-in-one HP OfficeJet G55xi printer. It was retired because Jason couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t power up.

After inheriting it from Jason, I Googled around and found very little information on it, mainly probably because the printer didn’t really have any issues. The only information I found pointed me to replacing a part on the printer from gray market (and that source was at least a couple of years old).

Not settling with Google search results, I asked Chee-hoi, the electric engineering and DIY wizard, to at least test the power supply so that I could rule out one variable at a time. But it turned out that the power supply was in perfect working condition. He then took apart the printer in hope to identify maybe a faulty component. He said if we could locate what was damaged (most likely the power regulator of some sort), I could’ve bought a replacement chip and have someone solder it back on, and the printer may work just fine. But HP took the precaution of using very tiny specialized screws that Chee-hoi didn’t have the driver for. So we gave up.

I think I am going to post it on Craigslist to see if some other geek wants it for free.

Sorry, Harlows. I tried. 🙁

Chipped Tooth

On the way back from the airport after dropping Chee-hoi off, I wanted to open the door in the back of the car to check on Bryan (Grace took Michelle’s car to drop her friend off at SFO), but I opened the door before my face was out of the way, and WHAM! I heard a crack and felt a splash of my front tooth shattering in my mouth. I looked at the mirror — it was chipped like some yahoo’s tooth.

Some luck I am having this year.

Now I am stuck with a fricking upside down Nike logo in my front tooth. I hope that dentist from 1800-dentist is any good…

Engine Problems

I have been on a streak of bad luck this year. And it hasn’t stopped.

Last night after picking up Grace’s friend (who is a flight attendant stopping over SFO for two days) from her airport hotel, I started to notice the car rattling violently (relatively speaking) as the “check engine” light came on. I said to myself, “GOD! WHAT NOW!“.

Annoyed with fear for bad news, I drove the car to the Precision Tune AutoCare shop I normally go for oil change. But of course, it’s the day before Christmas, it’s closed. Luckily I had one of their coupons and found another one on El Camino (run by an Indian who hired an all-Indian mechanics staff).

After almost two hours of computer diagnostics and testing on the car, they determined it was a “code 51” — fuel injector gone bad. I paid $70 (would have been $90 without the coupon) to find out that I have to pay more to fix it. Later another customer, who was waiting for his oil change, told me that I should’ve brought my car to AAMCO where they do engine diagnostics for, get this, FREE. BASTARDS! The same guy also told me that Jiffy Lube always tops off all of your other fluids when you get your oil and filter changed there. Precision Tune charges for that! ARGH!

Back to the fuel injector… The Indian owner told me it’d take about six hours (a.k.a. whole day) to change the injector. And the break down of the cost is:

Fuel injector: $126.95 (that’s only ONE out of the six cylinders)
Labor: $450 (estimate only)

He also said that Infiniti recommends replacing all 6 injectors, which brings the total up to roughly $1,200 – $1,400!!! ARGH! But he did say most people only replace the malfunctioning one to save some money.

Chinese has a saying: “It will rain for days just when you have a cracked ceiling.” This is certainly true for me this year.

I called AAMCO when I got home. And sure enough, FREE engine diagnostics. A 70-dollar-lesson for me today.

I am taking my poor car in on Wednesday and getting a second opinion on the cost and the repair. Hopefully they won’t find other problems when they open up the engine. Both the Indian owner at Precision Tune and “Rick” at AAMCO told me that fuel injector seems to be a common cause of engine problems on Nissan cars (which Infiniti technically is). The Indian guy went further to state that his shop has never changed a single injector on any Ford, Toyota or Honda cars, but plenty on Nissans and Infinitis.

Guess why Toyota and Honda are among the best selling cars in the world…. ?

This experience reminds me why I became obsessed with certain things, namely computers — it costs for not knowing.

🙁

Inurances in America

Insurance seems to be a big deal in America. The inurance industry makes sure that you understand the consequences of NOT having an insurance (any kind). But seriously, what did people do before the notion of insurance was even conceived?

The insurance industry wants you to have insurance on at least three of the following:

  • life
  • car
  • health
  • home owner’s (or renter’s)
  • business
  • property
  • travel

I am sure I am leaving out a lot more. But the fact is, you don’t really know if that insurance you are paying big bucks for is useful until the day you actually use it. And in America, insurance is sure as hell not cheap. Take for example, health insurance. I paid $500+ a month for Grace and myself at my last job. And that’s after the company paid for half of my own insurance (here’s the math: $125 [me] + $375[Grace]).

In all fairness, hospital visits in the United States are expensive. Having insurance (plus copays) dramatically cuts down the cost those visits would other wise incur on typical visits (just a regular check up costs roughly $700 per visit depending on your doctor, an expensive proposition compared to $25 or so of copyments with healthcare insurance). And that’s not including shots, outpatient visits, toxic waste disposal charges (something like $20 to dispose your saliva, or that needle head the nurse used to poke your arm with).

It’s all a vicious cycle, really. The health insurance wouldn’t be so expensive if the doctor’s visits weren’t so expensive. The doctor’s visits wouldn’t be so expensive if they didn’t have to cough up so much money on their medical (read:malpractice) insurance. And medical/malpractice insurance premiums wouldn’t be so high if there weren’t so many malpractice lawsuits and that if the rewards to those lawsuits werent’ so high (sometimes in millions of dollars). That’s the healthcare industry.

Now apply similar logic to the other insurance types, except maybe replace “lawsuits” with something more relevant, like, highly paid skill workers (in the case of auto shops).

Whoever said insurance is for the rainy days probably didn’t expect the insurance company to give you the round-arounds when you call them. I have had the unfortunate “blessing” to test almost every one of companies I have insured with thus far. And clearly, all insurance companies are not created equal.

For car insurance in the California San Francisco Bay Area, I personally would avoid insuring with Mercury Insurance or Century 21, who make themselves known for saving their customers most money. Yeah, but at what cost? With Mercury, we have had to deal with rude and inefficient case agents in such a way that I even started an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of call logs so that I could later have proof on just how awful its agents were. As for Century 21, it was also pretty taxing on the time and efforts it took to communicate with them. Just the constant repeat of information call after call. It gets to your nerves about the 3rd time you are asked exactly the same question to which you already gave very detailed answers to two times before. I had to do that several times with both companies. It made me feel they were extremely disorganized. Granted each case agent has more than a few cases to handle at any given time, but there’s no excuse in not calling your customers back when you promised to, or that you don’t keep your customers in the loop on what’s going on with your case if more than a couple of days have lapsed. Common sense.

In contrast, when I had to call on Progressive back in Savannah, Georgia for my car problems, they responded immediately. The general feeling was that my case agent was ALWAYS ahead of me on every aspect of my case. I couldn’t vouch that for Mercury or Century 21. The lesson is, cheaper is not always better. Being cheap could cost you more in the end.

Shopping for insurance, especially car insurance, can also be a pain. Companies like Progressive makes the process a little simpler by offering cross-company comparisons for you right from their website. When we had to change insurance companies, Grace called almost all the places and finally narrowed down to between All State and AAA — both very reputable companies. We ended up going with AAA because of the extra perks we get for being AAA members.

Apple Address Book Woes

I have always been a big advocate for Apple’s technologies. But one thing has really annoyed me about Apple’s Address Book. Its import and export utility is simply not well written to import from popular address books used by other companies.

When I was working on PCs, I have always used Yahoo’s Intellisync utility to synchronize contacts between Microsoft Outlook and my address book on Yahoo. The utility works so seamlessly that I’d be happy to pay an annual subscription fee just for that feature. But when I completed dumped Windows and started using my PowerBook full time, I started to experience nightmares trying to keep address books in sync between my cell phone, Yahoo address book and Apple Address Book.

For starters, I’ve always used Yahoo as my master calendar and address book center. Whatever updates I make, I always make it on the master list first. but there are times when I just don’t have access to the web! That’s when things start to get out of sync. To Yahoo’s credit, it exports to several different formats no problem (except when dealing with Chinese characters, which is a complete mess). The problem starts when Apple’s Address Book import utility falls short on its promise.

When importing LDIF files that was exported from Yahoo (which is the most perfect format in that I can finesse the Chinese characters so that they show up correctly), Apple gets it almost right except that it labeled everything as “work” by default. I simply can’t find a way to change that default setting. It’s annoying as hell.

As for importing csv files, first of all, Yahoo messes up the export with garbage Chinese characters. Then upon importing to Address Book, Apple messes up the field mappings, making only a few things match up. I tried once correcting all the mappings, and then Address Book crashed. God damn stupid Apple!

The same goes to Apple’s iCal, its own calendaring software. I so wish it can work seamlessly with Yahoo’s calendar, which has been working just the way I want it to. Apple’s iCal, on the other hand, prints awful, lacks some key features I need (which I use all the time with Yahoo calendar) and doesn’t really sync with anything else.

I guess the point of what Apple’s doing is simple — it wants everyone to use its paid subscription .Mac service. It’s a great service except that I already have a great server that meets all my hosting and emailing needs. Plus at $99 a year (or $179 for a family subscription with up to 4 accounts), I can’t really justify using it simply for calendaring and address book syncing.

I guess I should try using Mozilla Foundation’s ThunderBird and see how that really fares. At least with open source software, everything gets updated much faster. It will take another major OS upgrade for Apple to introduce the next major version of Mail and Address Book. And for me, I am getting increasingly frustrated with both apps. Love live open source!

Let the Good Times Roll

We had a good time with Jason and Alicia again tonight. And this time we got to see a picture of Jason that’s totally unrecognizable.

Bryan, for some reason, was not comfortable with them tonight though. He’s seen them before, but he would just blast out crying whenever he sees them being too close to him. That doesn’t really happen when Michelle or Chee-hoi were here. Maybe that was why he cried so hard last time. Maybe Bryan is more used to the plain Asian facial features; their bolder features make his sensitive eyes hurt… Hah hah…

I also got to take out my teapot set today. I have only used that thing maybe 10 times the entire time I’ve owned the set. I oughta use the damn set more often. They cost me a fortune to have them brought over from Taiwan (thanks to J.J.).

It started raining heavily as Jason and Alicia were leaving. I love rain… so long as I don’t have to be soaked in it. I find the dripping sound on the ground soothing. This is the only time I like water (and drinking it, showering in it and toilet flushing with it), other than that, I am with my cats on this one — water sucks… getting wet sucks even more.