Month: March 2011

Categories
Life Tips

Furnace, hot water heater and car battery

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last Updated on March 16, 2011 by stlplace

First I want to express sympathy to the Japanese people affected by the natural disaster/nuclear reactor problem. Being Chinese, I’m conscious of the long history (some good, some bad) between the two countries and two people. But on this biggest crisis for Japan since world war II, I felt sorry for the people, and doing my part to help.

In last few days, personally I have also had some minor problem at my house. Nothing as bad as things happened in Japan, but still inconvenient as (you can see) I am spoiled in the USA.

Minor scare
Last Thursday, at about 11:30 am, my wife called me at work saying there is unknown source of smoke in our condo. I told her turn off heat (electrical furnace), open the door, dress up the baby, and get out the house if needed. Meanwhile I drove home quickly. After got home, I could smell the burning but could not find the source either. I called 911.

Police came, he think it’s the “hibernating” old laptop causing the smoke. Fire fighters came, look around a little bit, asked where is the furnace. I told him, and he opened, that’s it: the connection piece of duct is made of plastic/cotton, and is burning!

Hot water heater
We called Kevin Schaffer of Cool Running AC and Heating, he came quickly and fixed the furnace. He put new sheet-metal to replace the old connection piece.

Thursday evening, after we gave the baby a bath and hair wash, we ran out of hot water. Called my friend who had similar problem recently, opened the control panel of the electrical hot water heater, reset, did not help. Flip the switch at electric panel, nothing. Tried to drain the water heater, no hot water came out. Called an authorized dealer of the hot water heater brand I have (Rheem, Ruudglas PE52-2), and the technician came in the afternoon. He said there is no power at the water heater, suggested replace the corresponding breaker at electric panel. Called electrician appointment the earliest I can get is Monday morning.

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Categories
iPhone app

A bit help for Japan disaster relief

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last Updated on March 13, 2011 by omaha

All proceeds from the sales of the myNestEgg and collegeFund (CF is free this week) apps between March 13th and March 27th will be donated to the Saving the Children for the disaster relief efforts in Japan.

If you prefer to make a direct donation to the relief efforts (you can probably get more bang from your bucks that way), Apple has set up a way for you to do it via iTunes here.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance Business

Top Ten Mistakes Made by Financial Agents and How to Prevent Them

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on March 13, 2011 by stlplace

The following is a guest post created by Ashley B. Mulvey who writes for financial advisor career advice , her interest blog she uses to share her knowledge to assist people cope with the facets of economic advisory.

Financial Advisers can have great careers and be real assets to their communities, but they can fall prey to avoidable faults. Mistakes 1 through 6 cover ethical concerns and 7 through 10 cover business strategy and personal concerns.

1) Making uninformed choices.
In order to prevent mistakes, be sure to double check proper rates and information about the product(s) you are offering.

2) Fraud
In order to stop fraud, go into your consultations with the attitude that you are going to do what is ideal for the customer whether or not you make the sale.

3) Signing an application with fields left blank.
Make sure that the application is fully filled out before signing it.

4) Asking for a check in the adviser’s name.
This should never be done, because premiums or payments from clients belong to the company under which the adviser is employed and should never be intermingled with the adviser’s personal records.

5) Putting unwanted pressure on the client.
Good salespeople can close a sale without using coercion. Always look out for the client’s best interest.

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Categories
Life

Baby is one year old

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last Updated on May 9, 2011 by stlplace

Serenity birthday cake
Serenity birthday cake

Quite a few changes lately. The most obvious one, is she likes to talk, which is opposite to her parents (we both don’t talk much). The most common words out of her mouth is “ma ma”, “ba ba” (Chinese words for dad), and more recently something like “done”.

She started to pull up to stand a few months ago, more recently she can move around a table or sofa (where she can finds support). Still, when we put her in the middle of nowhere, she will drop to ground, almost immediately. Maybe we should teach her to work a bit harder 🙂

Learned quite a bit from the past year, some important ones include:
1) Be patient: obviously baby sometimes could be unpredictable, for instance, they cry for no apparent reason sometimes. From my experience, baby cries for reason most of the time, if parents are patient enough, they can find out reason (hungry, want to sleep, baby did not get the thing he/she wants, last but not least got sick).

2) Be happy, don’t worry too much. When I am saying this, I think sometimes I worried too much too. My wife is a typical worried-too-much mom. In recent days she was worried baby’s right eye looks smaller than the left eye, after her eye lid got hit by car door slightly. The doctor did not see any problem during annual exam, and luckily today everything looks normal now, and my wife is happy. BTW, I think my wife spent 10 times effort on baby in last year compared to my effort.

3) Sleep and weight. Baby still prefers be with mommy in the night, she will cry if she cannot see mom and it’s harder for her to fall asleep. This changed a bit in last 2, 3 days as she can fall asleep on her own (not crying for mom all the time).

Weight is a bigger headache, ever since the initial birth weight of 7 lbs (50%), she went as high as 79% in first 2 months, then starts to drop, 35% at 9 month exam, and 23% at one year exam. We probably need to pay more attention on her food and eating habits.