Eddie On Everything » tips

Using Too Much Laundry Detergent Can Ruin a Front-Loading Washing Machine

eddie — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:48:15 +0000

And a top-loading washer, too.

Who knew?

I had no idea.

According to this article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, detergent manufacturers have been encouraging people to use too much detergent for years. The extra detergent use had few negative side effects on top-loading models, but newer, front-loading machines aren’t quite so lucky.

Paul Flynn of Savage used to see the effects of too much soap every day when he was an appliance repairman. He’d get calls from customers who had foul smelling front-loading washing machines. The build-up of mold and mildew inside the tub is created when too much liquid detergent is used, creating a food source for bacteria. “The whole reason this problem exists is the fault of detergent manufacturers,” Flynn said. “They tell us to use too much detergent.”

“The soap residue coats your machine, the excess suds wreck the spin bearing, and pretty soon you’ve got a $400 repair bill.”

As is often typical, pending lawsuits and negative publicity have forced the manufacturers to take action. Class action lawsuits have already been filed against manufacturers such as Whirlpool, LG and Maytag, alleging mold and mildew problems in front-loading washers.

So what to do if you have a front loading washer with a mildew problem already? Here are some tips.

Whirlpool sells a product called Affresh that eliminates odors caused by mildew.
Paul Flynn’s current business sells SmellyWasher, a citrus-based product similar to Affresh, available at www.smellywasher.com.
Flynn recommends using one quarter to one half of the amount that the detergent makers suggest.
Flynn suggests that people switch to a powdered detergent to minimize suds.

Searching your Facebook page for “Automation Log” does not show you people who have “Hacked’ your account

eddie — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:53:59 +0000

A recent Facebook hoax reads like this:

IMPORTANT No joke! Apparently multiple people have had a hacker. I tried this and yes he was listed on mine too. The way to find them is to go into your settings, privacy settings, block list, and in the “person” box, type “automation log.” If someone pops up, block them because it seems they’re the hacker. I had 3 names in my block list show up!!!!

The problem is, this is entirely false.

Here’s what’s happening: When you search for “automation log” you are searching for all people with the words “automation log” listed as their employer. It’s as if you were searching for the term “Microsoft,” or “Comcast.” What you are seeing is a list of people who have written that word in their profile, not a list of people who have hacked your account.

As an experiment, I changed my Facebook page to contain the magic words “Automation lab.” Within 10 minutes I had received a couple dozen hate emails. A sampling:

“get a life dude. stop hacking my sh*t”

How the F*CK did you get into my friend’s list?
“I just reported you – LOSER”

“you fu*in freak get a job you fat fu**er specky tw*t!!!!!!!!”

FU* YOU AR** HOLE

“u bin tryin 2 hack me pu**yole?”

“okay so I have to ask you … there is this going aroung on fb. it’s saying there’s hackers…are you a hacker automation log. is what I was told on how to find you?”

You just pissed off the wrong people…

Wow, harsh! Hey guys (and gals), I’m only trying to help!

To be fair, I did receive a number of thoughtful inquiries as well. So the world isn’t all bad. :) One person even wanted to save my soul!

“They say y’all are hackers, and I don’t care what you are doing Eddie even if you are stealing information. I am worried about your eternal soul. did you know that you are on your way to hell unless you have asked Jesus Christ to save you? Eddie you should stop whatever you are doing right now and get on your knees and ask and beg the LORD Jesus to forgive you through His Blood. I am going to report you to Facebook and block you from my profile, but you can still contact God. I am truly concerned for you and where you will spend eternity. Please ask him to forgive you!”

How To Delete A File That Is In Use By Another Person Or Program

eddie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:18:42 +0000

Ah, the joys of Windows XP. Ever go to delete a file, only to be met with the annoying error message, “Cannot delete It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.” ?

This behavior is meant to prevent you from hosing things up by deleting files that shouldn’t be deleted. Unfortunately, while the safeguards work most of the time, there are sometimes glitches, particularly with network files and background applications. Sometimes, you are not able to delete a file, even though no other program is actually using it. In other cases, you don’t really care whether another program is using the file, you just want the file gone!

Of course, the first thing you should do is make sure you know what you’re doing. If you are sure that the file you want to nuke is not an important system file, or an important part of some software package, you have a couple of options.

One method of deleting locked files is to reboot your computer. When you restart your computer, you are killing all processes that might be using the file. This usually works. But not always. The downside of this method is that it can be annoying and time consuming to reboot your workstation.

Another method is to kill Windows XP’s “explorer.exe” process, delete the file, then restart explorer. To do this, hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE to bring up Task Manager, then highlight “explorer.exe” and choose “End Process.” However, this method is not recommended: when explorer starts back up, your computer may not be in the exact state in which you left it. (For instance, you may notice that some icons are missing from your system tray.)

Fortunately, there is another way.

Unlocker will remove a file’s access restrictions that prevent your from moving, deleting, or renaming a file. The way it works is this: You install the program, and it runs in your system tray. Whenever you encounter the dreaded File is in use by another person or program message, Unlocker Assistant will pop up and ask you if you want to break the hold that some other application has on your file. You simply highlight the file you want to delete, hit “unlock,” and voila, problem solved.

How To Fix Your Kindle 2 When It Won’t Charge

eddie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:30:06 +0000

Egad! My Kindle stopped charging!

I settled in to bed the other night and grabbed my Amazon Kindle, looking to pick up where I left off in The Hades Factor. I was met with a familiar “Your battery is running low” message, so I plugged the Kindle in to the charger for the night and instead settled in with an old-fashioned, low-tech, printed-on-dead-trees style book.

The next morning, I unplugged my should-have-been-fully-charged Kindle & sat down to read the morning paper, only to be met with the “your battery is CRITICAL error!” Zoinks! For some reason, despite being plugged in all night, my Kindle had not charged!

I quickly ran to my computer & attached the Kindle. My Windows XP PC popped up that dreaded “USB Device Not Recognized” balloon. “It’s OK,” I thought. “It’ll be OK. I’ll just power the Kindle off by holding the power on/off slider for 15 seconds, and I’ll check back later.”

I returned later and … No dice! The Kindle was still not charging!

Thankfully, I was able to find a solution to this problem. (Whew!) After searching for things like “Kindle reset,” “Kindle hard reset,” and “Kindle soft reset,” I learned that while the Kindle 1 can be reset with a paper clip, or by using the Shift-Alt-R trick, these methods didn’t work on the Kindle 2.

I eventually came across a page that relayed a tip by Amazon Kindle Tech Support. I followed these steps, and within a couple of hours, I was back in action.

How to reset your Kindle when it won’t charge

1. Slide the power button and hold it for 30 sec.

2. Release and wait for 20 sec until the screen begins to flash.

3. As soon as it does, plug in the power and keep it connected for 2 hours.

Big thanks to The Epistemist for pointing me in the right direction. Now, back to my Robert Ludlum book…

Make Sure the Airlines Don’t Lose Your Bags – Fly With a Gun

eddie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:34:19 +0000

You read that right – if you want to make sure that an airline doesn’t lose your bags, or that TSA staff doesn’t steal things out of your bag, you should pack a gun in each bag that you check. It doesn’t even have to be a real gun – a simple, totally-legal-in-all-50-states starter pistol will do.

Boing Boing and security expert Bruce Schneier have more:

A “weapons” is defined as a rifle, shotgun, pistol, airgun, and STARTER PISTOL. Yes, starter pistols – those little guns that fire blanks at track and swim meets – are considered weapons…and do NOT have to be registered in any state in the United States.
I have a starter pistol for all my cases. All I have to do upon check-in is tell the airline ticket agent that I have a weapon to declare…I’m given a little card to sign, the card is put in the case, the case is given to a TSA official who takes my key and locks the case, and gives my key back to me.

That’s the procedure. The case is extra-tracked…TSA does not want to lose a weapons case. This reduces the chance of the case being lost to virtually zero.

It’s a great way to travel with camera gear…I’ve been doing this since Dec 2001 and have had no problems whatsoever.

What a great tip! I have personally had my bags lost 6 times, once with no recovery at all. In that case, I had to go through the arduous process of itemizing everything in my bag (from memory!), watching the airline depreciate the value of everything I owned, only to receive a check a full 2 months later that barely covered half of the replacement costs. Not to mention my out of pocket expense for being on a week-long trip with no clothing, no personal items, nada. Or the time and frustration it took me to get the matter sorted out.

I’ve also had a couple of items come up “missing” from my bags on other occasions. I’m not pointing any fingers here, but they were in there when I packed the bag, and they weren’t when I unpacked it. What *was* there in each instance was a little card notifying me that my bag had been searched. (OK, so I guess I am pointing fingers.) Screw you, TSA.

I’ll be sure to pick up a few starter pistols and pack them with each and every bag that I check.

The More You Know, Unicode Style

eddie — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:32:12 +0000

The More You Know♒★

How To Reveal Stored Passwords in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and IE

eddie — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:56:02 +0000

Nowadays browsers store passwords then auto-populate forms, hiding that stored password behind little dots or asterisks. Guess what? There is a way to reveal the password hidden behind there. This is very handy for when you forget your password but have it stored in the browser.

Reveal Stored Passwords in Mozilla Firefox and Chrome

Navigate to the page where the passwords are stored. Paste this code into the location bar and hit enter. The passwords will be revealed.
javascript: var p=r(); function r(){var g=0;var x=false;var x=z(document.forms);g=g+1;var w=window.frames;for(var k=0;k

Note that the flip-side of this trick is that you probably shouldn’t be storing your password for sensitive websites – anyone with access to your computer could use this trick to reveal your password, write it down, then check your email/bank/cheating-on-your-spouse account from anywhere.

How to remove yourself as a “Fan” on your Facebook profile

eddie — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:25:44 +0000

I’m posting this tip because it took me forever to figure out how to remove myself from being a “Fan” of something or other on Facebook.

Seems that it is really easy to become a fan of something, but when you decide that you no longer want to be a fan, it’s not easy to find out how to become an “un-fan,” or an “ex-fan.”

This is because the link is hidden away at the bottom of the page that you have previously fanned. That is, the link to “remove me” is not grouped with the other links on the page. Instead, it is hidden away at the bottom of the page that you previously became a fan of.

I couldn’t find out how to do it on Facebook, even after looking for over 10 minutes. Fortunately, I found this page from Yahoo Answers where someone reveals the technique.

The solution: Go to the page that you are a fan of then go to the bottom and press ‘Remove me from fans’ and that should do it! Good Luck!

Easy once you know how to do it, eh?

Update
Step by step instructions, courtesy of Warren:

Thanks. If you still cannot find it, the following are the five steps:
1. Click ‘Profile’
2. Click ‘Info’
3. Click the page you want to remove yourself from
4. Go to the bottom of the left hand side column
5. Click ‘Remove Me from Fans’

How to stop your posts from being flagged on Craigslist

eddie — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:45:06 +0000

I’m no Craigslist spammer, and this information isn’t intended to help the Craigslist spammers. On the contrary, I’m sharing this secret to help the many people out there who constantly find their legitimate Craigslist ads flagged simply because a large segment of the population doesn’t understand simple economics.

The Problem: You post an ad on Craigslist to sell a legitimate product or service, but “the community” flags your ad as being “inappropriate” or “prohibited.” Why do they flag these ads, if they are legitimate ads, you ask? Good question. Turns out that a lot of people are of the opinion that all goods should be sold at or below cost.

The Solution: If you find your ad being flagged, simply use the same email that you used to post your ad to edit it every so often. Each time you edit the ad, the “flag counter” is reset, meaning that you need that the small minority of vigilante flaggers has to start at the beginning.

“Social” sites always lead to this sort of thing – a small group of people control the content that everyone else sees. Ain’t democracy grand?

Eddie On Everything » tips

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