Author: stlplace

Categories
Life Politics

Muskrat, the higher ups’ kids are more precious

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Tom Krause – CEO, Cloud Software Group – finance guy – Princeton U alumni – Now you know not all ivies have high moral standards, because Tom is obviously a #muskrat or a fat cat in the corporate world (ABS News). Quote the ABC news article a bit:

One former Cloud Software Group employee said she hid her pregnancy for fear it could make her a target of layoffs. An ex-manager said they dreaded filing performance reviews of subordinates, knowing some workers may fall victim to the next cycle of cuts. Another former employee said they avoided expressing unease in company emails or in the messaging app Slack out of concern that it could jeopardize their job.

Oligarchs and ordinary people

When I was watching the “Surviving Black Hawk Down” on Netflix last night, I just realized all the US presidents (since I came to the USA) and all the billionaires in America never sent their own kids to the war zone. John McCain is an exception, but he was a multimillionaire.

Meanwhile, how many regular folks’ husband, wife, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters etc. died in Afghanistan and Iraq (thousands, refer to US casualty in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War). As I say this from time to time, the loss of one soldier usually impacts more than one person: because the fallen solider could have parents, wife, kids, siblings, and so on.

This sounds like today’s Russia: obviously they have even higher casualty in the Russia Ukraine war. In the case of Russia, they are so short of soldiers in the now: because they cannot incentive people in the Moscow and St. Peterburg area to fight, so they are getting all the young folks from less developed areas, such as Chechen and Syberia, plus North Korea. Just like the US sent soldiers from Missouri to Afghanistan. I recall in year 2021 a young marine from St. Charles County died during the fanatic Kabul Airport withdrawal. In total 13 marines died in that suicide attack: there are very little mentioning in the US news media 2021 Kabul airport attack – Wikipedia.

PS: I wrote a bluesky thread on the topic above too.

Categories
Stocks

WeChat stock group chat 橄榄村美股群

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Not financial advice. This is the most important thing you need to know.

Your money your decision. Try not to be forever diver 不要做永远♾️的潜水员. 

11-15-2025

I maintained a page for Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I understand I need to clean up the page a bit. But the two thanksgiving letters from Warren Buffett are worth to read.

10-31-2025

My personal portfolio allocation: S&P 500 index fund or similar stock funds about 80%, Berkshire Hathaway B share, about 10%, the rest about 10% are other stocks for fun (bigger players include $KO and $OXY).

Also, please note your peace of mind is the most important thing, and it will impact your portfolio performance too.

09-17-2025

一般情况下不要去short 股票，比如S&P 500 index fund, 或者MAG 7的股票。原因主要是the upper side of shorting stocks is limited (100%), while the downside could be unlimited. 打个比方说，最近热炒的 $OPEN (Opendoor Technologies), 如果你在五块钱的时候 （8/22）去short 它，今天 9/17 收盘价 $10.21, 不到一个月就已经亏了100%了（total loss）。如果你不想认输，等它到$15, 就会亏200%。以此类推。反过来说公司股票要清零（公司破产）一般来说没这么快：我看到我家门口的骗子公司Benson Hill 大概最后也花了一年时间破产。

02-21-2025

每个人都可以自己的炒股风格：但是归根结底，不管黑猫白猫，会抓老鼠🐭的猫才是好猫。

要做好风险控制：拿每个人可以接受的钱去炒股票，一般不能all in. 尽量留一部份现金等等。

02-15-2025

1. Be happy; 2. 赚钱是王道：don’t lose money; 3. Refer to rule 1 and 2. 

01-16-2025

My top 3 stock positions (excluding the stocks indirectly hold in various S&P 500 index funds): brk/b, KO and OX. 

Some learning resource: 活到老学到老：这一点也很重要，沃伦巴菲特和查理芒格都是学习机器。

他俩主要的学习手段是读书，读年报，再加上自己独立思考。

Warren Buffett reads a lot of company’s annual reports: mostly to learn. 

I found listening to companies’ Earning call to be educational sometimes – 

EARNMOAR – YouTube 

Fyfull – YouTube  

奶头乐级别: “NaNa 说美股” 每天市场评述，mainly entertainment value –  ; 

“小lin说” various topics, mainly entertainment and education value –  个人感觉小林讲的一般不深奥，主要是入门知识，但是她讲的还是有干货的；

美国年轻人Joseph Carlson Show and Joseph Carlson After Hours 他好像有两个频道 – stocks, food for thought – 比如这个油管视频： 

 Please note one goal for many content creators including YouTubers is getting eyeballs 👀 👁️ and making💰. So keep this in my mind when you consume the online content. 

我又想了一下。我觉得网上多数视频包括CNBC Jim Cramer 的mad money，包括Nana 的油管每天更新，还有其它很多，教育或有启发的东西不是很多。娱乐的成分倒是不少。可能有点这个短视频的”奶头乐”的味道吧。或者相当于麦当劳🍔的快餐。光吃那个或天天吃那个可能不是最健康：因为营养成分不够丰富。还是要自己做饭，或吃一些更健康的食品（少吃垃圾食品，少喝可乐等等）[捂脸][呲牙] 

Together let’s share some 💡 and make some 💰. 

We try to keep the America (US) politics at a minimum here. 

I believe everyone is entitled to her or his opinion including political views and affiliation. 

But those are best kept to yourself. Probably religion too. 

I recall 20+ years ago one golden rule is not to talk politics and religion at work. 

Also, we will try to keep out many fake stuffs on Internet or from social medias.

PS:

Hard core MAGAs may find it hard to stay there sometimes because I am “woke”, or Hua Zuo if you will (I may 🙂

Not directly related to this: but I managed to clean up WeChat contacts today (from 321 to 250). I recall research saying that a person can have meaningful relationship with 150 people – so probably I need to further cut down that number, because this is just my Chinse friends. Most people on WeChat are Chinese, which is not a secret.

Previously like I said on the top, if I join a group, my intension is to learn by joining the discussion. If I feel I cannot contribute or if the vibe in a group is totally out of my comfort zone, I leave 🙂

Categories
advice and tips Career Life Tips Software development

Layoff and other forms of rejections in life are not the end of the world

Reading Time: < 1 minute

What doesn’t kill us can only made us stronger — German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — his original words are: “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”

Five years ago today, 01-23-2019, Wednesday, I was laid off from the company I worked for about 3 and half years. I saved the below email in my Gmail account.

Hi Minjie,

You mentioned to me this morning that you had a work computer at your home. I wanted to let you know we’ll be sending you a pre-paid box for you to send it back in.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks!

…………

That being said, if you were working for the federal government and recently got laid off because of Elon Musk’s DOGE’s purge, and if you like to talk to someone – I am available.

Potentially I can provide some advice re: how to get back to your feet quick. I can buy you coffee, do mock interview during lunch (I will pay), and pay your Uber ride fee, if you have an onsite interview and need Uber/Lyft.

In my career, I navigated layoff situations a few times, and I was able to find something relatively quick mainly in the area of software development. I understand right now it’s a very tough job market in the USA. But it’s still possible to find something. I am a strong believer of 树挪死人挪活。I believe layoffs are usually blessings disguised in curses. Somewhat like divorce during a truly horrendous marriage.

Reference: I talked about more about layoffs here in my 2023 blog post.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance uber-and-side-hustle

Turbo Tax Desktop and doing tax for eBay and Uber

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Chinese version (translated by Google) is here: 谷歌翻译的中文版在这里。

Turbo Tax web vs Desktop

I switched from Turbo Tax Web version to Desktop version in last 4 years. The main reason is the latter is cheaper (if we consider both the state and tax). It’s probably $40 to $50 cheaper. Before the switch I used the web version for 20 years. I was happy with the web version for the most part: had one or two minor glitches during 20 years journey. One glitch was on me: it was quite a few years ago, 15 to 20 years ago, when I was working for my 1st employer then. That year I purchased the Turbo Tax state (online version) too, and I also purchased the audit defense. But the stupid program allowed me to put in a negative number for the income in the state tax form, and state rejected the tax filing out of box. It was not too difficult to fix that – zero out the number did the trick if my memory is correct. But after that I decided for the state filing I would just use the online PDF form (with calculation capability), and mail in the tax form to the Jeff City instead.

Also, once I made a bad mistake. I installed the desktop version on my personal laptop MacBook Pro 16 inch Intel. And it crashed on me, and I didn’t have backup copy for the Turbo Tax filing file after filing. I recall from my past experience, Turbo Tax usually started from last year’s return, and at one time I was quite worried. Later luckily I was able to find out the actual e-filing from Uncle Sam’s website. Nowadays I store the Turbo Tax filing file on the cloud – feel a bit safer than my local desktop or laptop 🙂

Last tip for Turbo Tax Web: one can always use it for free (without filing), so for example, if you do it manually (say on paper, or via Excel), you can still use Turbo Tax Web, solely for calculation, comparison or verification purpose.

Retailer (where I buy the Turbo Tax software)

I think I paid about $82 for premier at Amazon.com this year. Today (02-02-2025) I saw Costco U city has $15 instant rebate on the top of that ($82). So next year I may buy from Costco instead of Amazon. For Amazon I download the software from their website: used to be Amazon, this year it’s Intuit the company behind Turbo Tax. I expect buying from Costco will be similar.

Do we want Audit Defense?

I got it last year – and I plan to continue to get it this year.

Some notes for me this year

eBay sent me a 1099-K. New for me this year. I am in the process of itemize the cost. This is more tedious than I thought initially. Here is some guidelines from Turbo Tax, btw. I may end up doing it as business too (see Uber below).

(Update 02-24-2025) I did more reading, mainly from

A Tax Filing Factsheet for eBay Sellers (Turbo Tax) and What to do with Form 1099-K (IRS). I decided to go with the Schedule C route (Below Uber is similar).

In my personal opinion, this approach is better than the other Form 8949 approach as implicitly suggested by the Turbo Tax.

Uber driving is also new to me. didn’t send me 1099-K as I didn’t meet their income threshold of $5,000. I mainly followed this Turbo Tax knowledge article as well the Turbo Tax Desktop Premier for this. I took the mileage standard deduction: used the online miles. And I used the tax summary from Uber (available in the Uber Driver App go to Account => Tax Doc) for the online mileages. Overall I am quite happy with the milage deduction (business expense, schedule C).

Summary for reporting taxes for eBay and Uber: again this is new to me. I learned two things: 1) Schedule C for business expense, reporting etc; 2) Refer to IRS website and their document as needed. In the past I mostly rely on Turbo Tax, or google. This time around I still use google, but Google pointed me to the IRS website. It’s good.

Keep things in perspective on Uber driving: the number one priority is always your (driver) safety, passenger safety and overall happiness. Money or tax saving for that matter, should not be a priority compared to the things I just mentioned. It’s more like icing on the cake. The cake itself better to be good – otherwise say if there are too many lemons among passengers, I will quit. This should be applicable to many things in life too, your day job, your other side gigs, and so on. I know I probably say it from somewhat privileged view point – as I do have some savings that allow to me “don’t have to work” for a while, if needed. Again keep things in perspective, I have worked in the USA for almost 25 years. I am at a stage of winding down my day job (career for some more career minded people, no judgement from yours truly here). At the same time, I am thinking about what I want to do after my retirement from my day job. Hint: I posted some plan here. But again, this is subject to change without any notice – the main stakeholders I need to notify is my wife and kids. I want to make sure they are comfortable, and can still splurge as they choose so.

Stocks: one of my favorite topics :-). For my 2 small regular brokerage accounts anyway: one again I traded too much and don’t have much gain to show for. So that’s my main lesson – I need to stick to the winners and hopefully stay away from the losers all together 🙂 Majority of my money (401k, HSA and 529 plans) are in S&P 500 index funds or equivalent. I do have two IRA accounts too: and I trade stocks there, and I am very pleased to announce that my luck there is better than the “2 small regular brokerage accounts” 🙂

State filing is included in the Turbo Tax desktop. One thing I noticed is 529 plan can save some state income taxes. (02-25-2025) Just realized the e-filing for the state is $25 or $40 extra. I decided to file via paper to save that money. (Update 03-04-2025) I sent the state filing tax via USPS mail. The postage is about $3.43 + printing cost which is about 8 cents x 42 pages = $3.36. Total is about $6.79 which is a bit cheaper than about $20 e-filing via Turbo Tax ($25 plus $5 off offer from couple of my Chase CC).

Some Odds and Ends

Probably more than 20 years ago, I recall my big boss has an Excel spreadsheet for tax filing, and he offered to co-workers. I didn’t take the offer. I think it may be a cheaper and better option, but I already fell into the Turbo Tax rabbit hole.

There is a common American saying: only death and taxes are certain 🙂

Other Choices

FreeTaxUSA.com

HR Block

TaxSlayer

Full Disclosure:

Not tax advice. Please consult a professorial tax advisor (an accountant, or a CPA) as needed.

I don’t receive any compensation from Turbo Tax. And I don’t have Inuit $INTU individual stock right now (02-26-2025). The reason I say individual stock is I do have S&P 500 index fund, and I assume $INTU is in the S&P 500.

(Update 03-04-2025) YT: Mass IRS Layoffs — How It Affects Your Tax Refund & Audits! by ClearValue Tax

(Update 03-05-2025) The Tennessean: 2025 tax season off to slow start amid federal layoffs, hiring freeze. Will refunds be affected? What to know

(Update 03-11-2025) Filed and accepted on Tue, Feb 25 – I just saw refund money hit the bank via DD 🙂 Total is about 2 weeks.

Categories
advice and tips Life Life Tips

Don’t always dwelling on the past 不要总是留恋过去

Reading Time: < 1 minute

对过去的留恋可能是人之常情，尤其是对上了年纪的人（大概过了50岁的人可以说是上了年纪？），还有一些曾经辉煌，现在落魄的人。

有一个例子是鲁迅笔下的祥林嫂。实际生活中其实这种情况不少。我感觉我自己有时候也会说/想：想当年，我年轻的时候，blah blah blah.

最近 formerly executive assistant at square, sorry I could not find her profile on LinkedIn now, as I unfollowed her recently. Due to LinkedIn’s algorithm (or AI), it seems quite hard for me to find her again (refer to my recent blog post re: LinkedIn’s search-ability).

PS (02-09-2025) I gave it more thought: I think self pity (e.g., 祥林嫂) and similarly self victimization are probably traits or characteristics of narcism. I didn’t read the psychology behind it. Pure guess on my part.

(Update 10-28-2025) Self pity is the trait Charlie Munger talked about quite a bit, and he thinks that’s one of the most destructive traits.

Value Trap

This just reminded me of one thing or one phenomenon in the stock market or stock trading: value trap. Sometimes I got into it. The past price of stock just reflects the past. Nothing more. But sometimes, people think it a stock drops suddenly and drops a lot, they will think it’s a deal, and rush to buy it. And I have done that many times too, like today I bought some PayPal stocks. And I quickly realized it could be value trap, just like the Polaris Inc stock that I traded a while ago.

Categories
gadgets

Set Up Linksys Velop Mesh Home WiFi System

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 11-16-2025) Last few days I have encountered some intermittent issues on this Velop Wifi. And unplugging followed by plugging back in didn’t do the trick this time. So I did a reset, basically I factory reset every node to factory setting, and setup the Wifi network again. It seems now the WiFi is working as expected. A bonus point is this time I was able to add the 2nd child node successfully.

I also updated the firmware for one of the nodes. Now I feel like a network engineer 🙂

I also noticed that sometimes the LinkSys app will hang, and my workaround is to delete the app, and installed the app again. It seems did the trick. I did tried to close and re-open a few times. Sometimes that would work too. But “delete and re-install” did solve one hanging issue for me. I know it’s a bit extreme. Overall the app is not the best quality, let me add.

(Original 02-25-2025) I bought the system a while ago from Woot: it’s a refurbished product. Today I decided to set it up.

It’s done mostly via the Linksys app (iOS, android). I only have iOS so I can only comment on iOS: I think it’s good. It prompt me for the 1st node I just plugged in, and the node was also connected to the Internet (via the modem). Mainly I just tap and follow along.

The tricky part is add the 2nd node, my refurbished pack has 2 nodes total. Initially the app cannot find the child node (the 2nd node). Took me a while to realize I need to move this node closer to the parent node, and I did. After that I can see the 2nd node had the “Solid Purple” which means Node is ready for setup: and the rest is the history. Here are the explanations for the different colors.

After the successful pairing I can move the child node upstairs: and hopefully it can make the overall WiFi situation better at my home. Earlier I did try the “repeater mode” for my older Linksys WiFi router but it had some issues.

PS: I found out by default wordpress will use a very old timestamp for my post – it was year 2013 because I just reused it here. Then I updated it by just updating the timestamp.

PS (02-03-2025) I decided to get another Linksys VLP01 unit from eBay as I think it may improve the coverage when I work at front yard.

Categories
advice and tips Chinese articles video

A list of Chinese YouTubers

Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Chinese I meant Mandarin Chinese. First, please note in this list I am not going to comment on those 键政 (literally translation: keyboard politicking, or discuss politics via keyboard, link here is from Wikipedia). Not a complete list. Will be updated from time to time. There are a few special topics such as finance and cooking, and I may add below or create separate post.

Good

(Update 05-25-2025) 行者东谈西说。Here he talked about when/how/why he started the YouTube channel (自媒体). My impression is he is based in SH, and he is very much grounded re: his content. He has background in media and design, and he wanted to create good documentaries.

Jeff科技视角: he talks a lot on technology, and sometimes he touches stocks too: such as this recent one on NVDA, and PDD. I believe Jeff is a Chinese guy who lives in Canada, and he has direct experience in the IT industry. In fact IT is probably still his day job. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he said: such as this one on AAPL (Apple Inc). He touches some interesting topic such as this one – 【第284期】从内地“奋斗逼”整顿香港职场说起

Teacher Mike 麦克老师: I noticed him during pandemic (the lockdown). He is American, and he married a girl from Shanghai, they lived in Shanghai then. They came back to the USA in year 2023. He is a YouTuber and he talks English to ESL learners. His mandarin is also very good.

This is his most recent video – I decided to go back to Shanghai – he has a nice tip on the Saily app (a cheap/economy international data roaming app by NordVPN, available on App store).

刘伟元的旅行: he is actually from my hometown (Ningbo, Zhejiang province, China). He is a travel vlogger (video blogger). This is his self intro: 大家好，我是刘伟元（旅行频道）单人单车骑行中国，自己拍摄视频，自己手机剪辑视频
无团队，无签约，希望大家能够喜欢，不要忘记订阅我喔每天中午更新旅行日常（我们视频中见哦）. He has strong Ningbo accent in his mandarin – which reminds me of my old friends in Ningbo. His recent 冬季騎行川藏中線 trip is extremely difficult. Personally, I’ve never been to Tibet. I have been to Jiuzaigou (Si’Chuan province) once about 20 years ago. This is one video – 冬季騎行川藏中線，道路結冰天黑被困雪山山頂，半夜被狼聲嚇醒 – YouTube

Since I am on the travel, I recall seeing videos from 阿軻在路上AKe on the road and this one left me impressions – 古巴最后的华人，曾经10万华人为何只剩下不到100人，发生了什么？【Last Chinese in Cuba. And I haven’t watched a lot of new videos from his channel since then though. I could watched his video on a south America country (not very well developed) but could not find the video though.

北美天馬行: a Chinese couple, who are a few years older than me, retired and are traveling full time now. They also make some money from YouTube.

TheDerekShow: I like Derek. Derek is from Tian’jin, and he talked about common topics among Asian/Chinese Americans. Sometimes he will share stories from the audience (with permission and privacy). Here is one – 作为亚裔美国人，怎么看待DEI 多元化？平权行动会变成少数人的特权吗

20岁了还没去过星巴克: I used to watch his YT videos quite a bit, especially during pandemic. I watched less recently. Don’t know why. Here is one taken in Australia.

Okay

罗小曼在西安One day in Xi’an: this is actually one of the first China YouTubers I watched (also during pandemic), but I got tired of them for two things: 1) They talked a lot about going aboard, but they never did (not even for a visit), it seems to me they are just talking about it; 2) They started to monetize via selling product in the video. The products are somewhat like “snake oil”.

Bad

Mike是麦克 : initially I found out he has some decent knowledge on China car industry (he used to be a technical od engineer in the Internal Combustion Engine powered car industry. It seems his original business is in the investors immigration arena. I understand there are many rich Chinese people want to get the US green card: demand is not an issue. The main thing here is not actually providing best service (this is similar to the financial service, or financial advisory sector), but on sales and marketing, in other words persuade potential customers so that they would believe his company (or himself) is most experienced or qualified to providing immigration consulting.

The main reason I realized his YouTube channel is bad: it seems to me he has no moral ground when he pumps cryptos (this video) and/or betting on Nvidia earnings.

If you know me in person, or if you are in my WeChat stock group chat, you may know both are big no-no for me.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance Politics

America poverty issue – series I

Reading Time: 2 minutes

My 1st impression on America

In summer 1997 when I 1st came to the USA, I noticed the street at Rolla (middle of Missouri) was quite clean. It’s just I was in a honeymoon period with America and I didn’t notice.

In recent years I saw more panhandlers at intersections (also seeing panhandlers playing fake violin too); this is not entirely new. But it’s getting worse nowadays.

At Louisiana, people got crazy at Walmart, old story (I wrote this a while ago):

The food stamp program, we all learned a few months ago, the madness at Louisiana Walmart store, basically when the food stamp recipients got opportunity to shop “unlimited”, they don’t have much self control.

Recent I had opportunity to have a new neighbor: sometimes things made me to think “Is poverty is a habit or a mindset”. Some of the things I think they can potentially improve on – less eat out or door dash delivery; in addition to cook more, be more self-sufficient overall, for example clean up their own snow on driveway, walk to the grocery store or gas station and so on.

I recall when I was new to the US, I shop at Aldi and discount store near Rolla. I also lived in dirt cheap or government subsidized apartment and drove old car. I recall the rent for the 1st apartment was about $70 a month back in 1997. It doesn’t have air conditioning for summer.

At my 1st real job in St. Louis: I noticed cleaning lady always brought a brown bag when came in the pm cleaning duty. But I cannot say for sure that she brought that brown bag, or she bought food from nearby Burger King every time. If it’s the latter, it would probably cost her at least one hour of the custodian work for that fast food. Adding up bus fees, I don’t think she has much left for her 2 to 3 hours office cleaning part time work.

Things we can do or have some control

Be kind to others.

Also, trust but verify. Refer to my old car accident: 最倒霉的一次, 过绿灯时车被一个黑人撞了(估计是急着去上班). 跟她说好大家把车都停到加油站, 结果她趁机跑掉. 第二天自己当了一回侦探把她抓到, 她又没有买保险.

Resiliency

Teach our kids right: to be expanded

YouTube Videos

Or those problems may have existed 27 years ago? Look at the PBS documentary by Bill Moyer Two American Families: 1991-2024 (full documentary) | FRONTLINE below.

Also another one The Working Poor | The Price of the American Dream | ENDEVR Documentary made by ENDEVRDocs. This reminds me of the Movie The_Florida_Project that I watched a while ago.

To be watched for me: PBS Left Behind

What’s Being Hidden: Questions persist in deadly Amazon warehouse tornado investigation

Why I am living in my car/suv

Last but not least: today’s YT video I took when I was doing morning walk at the Stacy Park

Odds and Ends

A while back, I do some travel for work. And also, it was post 9-11, airlines were trying to charge people for checking in luggage. So, what happens is people check in the luggage at the gate, because for smaller airplanes, we cannot carry on large carry on or luggage anyway, note that doesn’t cost money. For a while, especially in cold winter, when we got off the airplane, and waited there for the luggage. I would think: are we at a developing country? Somehow that left me impression.

Categories
Fun Fun Video

Happy Lunar New Year!

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is a big thing in China and a few other Asian countries, such as Vietnam.

My YT Video today, in Chinese. I talked about 新年快乐 at the end.

Btw, Five Oaks on Warson, the new Olivette community center has two events for the Lunar New Year on Feb 6 and 8.

PS:

Because I have two new years. I can make another new year resolution 🙂

I was thinking about what part time gig I wanted to do, as I am thinking about stopping Uber Driving. I felt the pay is too low, and there may be some unknown risk, and definitely some extra work say if I drive for Uber Health or Uber Care. While I do charity work or give money to charity org sometimes, I don’t want to mix it with my Uber driving. My own happiness and wellbeing are still top priority in all cases.

Right now I am thinking be a part time real estate agent (YT Video How To Become a Real Estate Agent in Missouri)

Categories
gadgets iOS

Bought and setup new iPad for my 10-year-old

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(Original 2025-01-27) Last week, my 10-year-old accidentally broke her old iPad (iPad gen 7th 32gb space gray). My 14-year-old said partial reason was the case was broken and didn’t provide enough projection. I was not upset about it, as this sort of thing is a part of life nowadays. The iPhone and iPad glasses are fragile, and they tend to break, if they land on hard surfaces. Our old daughter made a similar but slightly more costly mistake on my old iPhone XR about 14 months ago. That’s also how I got my new iPhone 15 shortly after, so that I can give my old iPhone 12 to her.

I did offer her (10-year-old) a new iPad recently as her current one is running out of space and cannot update to newer versions of iOS or iPad OS. That caused some issues such as she could not install certain apps 🙁

How we setup her new iPad (iPad 10th gen, we bought the pink one). Mainly we setup her own Apple account this time. In terms of new iPad setup, I used Mac Mini to transfer a backup copy of her old iPad to Mac Mini, then from Mac Mini I transferred that content to her new iPad. We used the USB cables in both instances (which is faster than Wi-Fi).

Setup her own Apple account took some time. It’s a child account and has less privilege than mine. Initially we tried to log into her new iPad, we were not successful. Took a few attempts. As her dad, I can see her account from my iCloud account.

After setting everything setup, I signed out from her new iPad (old iPad was using my iCloud account). And signed in using her own account. After that I need to authorize her to download couple apps or update them. Also, for Roblox, I believe the minimum age is 12, so I chose 12+ in the initial iPad setup. The rest are mostly default, such as Apple Pay (no credit card for now, which means she needs my attention to buy something).

Last but not least, I plan to bring the broken iPad in my upcoming China summer trip: hopefully I can find someone to fix it in a reasonable cost, and I plan to use it myself. It will be my 2nd personal iPad if it works out. Last summer I did bring back the broken iPhone XR and had it repaired, it worked only for a brief period, and I eventually did sell it on eBay – I explicitly listed the conditions and showed the pictures of the phone there. I may do it same if things don’t work out. At least, I don’t want to sell the broken iPad AS IS. (Update: actually I ended up selling the broken iPad as is, just like how I sold my broken iPhone). In both cases I erase everything from the device, and the buyer is likely going to use the device for the parts. Because although the screen is broken, the buyer can use other parts on the device as they are still good.

PS (02-07-2025) Today I learned how to Force Restart the iPad

Update (12-10-2025) I had to force restart my daughter’s school iPad (this time I refreshed my memory by watching this YouTube video). I suspect the hard case probably has something to do with the iPad being locked up like this. I recall last time (Feb 2025, refer to the above comment), the iPad was also in a hard case (it appears Google Gemini disagree with me on this).

“Locking Up” in Error If you mean the iPad becomes completely unresponsive or frozen, this is a technical issue and generally not a direct result of the case material itself (hard plastic or polycarbonate).”

Btw, I added some comments to the above YouTube video:

This is even better than Apple’s own instructions: which I followed but didn’t work. Note we just need to press (release) the volume down button, then press (release) the volume up button, at last hold the main button. Apple’s instructions led me to do an “extra” push and release – we just need a normal push and release on those 2 volume buttons.