stlplaceAfter I changed the battery (2 AA batteries) it seems it got stuck in the “starting soon” and I did a google Emerson thermostat starting soon reset
It eventually restarted after I flip the power switch (downstairs) and reset the controllers (the thermostat) couple times.
References:
I think it should be now.
Joking 🙂 I was thinking doing it until 60. But the other day, my piano teacher, who is probably 20 years older than me, told me he is still doing yard work. I am 54 btw. My younger daughter’s violin teacher who is 13 years senior than me, does yard work too. So music makes one younger – that’s one motivation factor that I am leaning music now 🙂
This morning (Saturday 2025-11-15) I cleaned up about half of the leaves 🍁 in the backyard. My joke of the day is: 前人种树，后人捡树枝和树叶🍂。
Btw, I do mow my own lawn since August 2019. I guess I will do the yard work until I feel not physically able to do as I age, or I really hate it. Hopefully I can do it for a while, at least. Right now, it’s still not too bad.
Cost associated with trees
Btw, over the years I realized there are potentially two risks involved with trees near the house.
One is the tree could fall, and it could hit the house or people. In fact, this happened to me (my house) twice. Once, a few years ago, in a summer, neighbor’s tree fell on our fence, in the process it broke the electricity wires, and knock off the power. Another time, a branch fell on our roof – for that one, I was sort of expecting it, but I was not proactive enough, to remove the dangling tree branch on the big, sweet gum tree in the backyard. One day, my neighbor emailed me and said you have a tree branch sticking into your roof. I immediately realized what happened. Btw, it’s the same neighbor – the first and the second incidents.
I consider the safety of human beings the top priority. That brings another point or cost associated with tree maintenance – removal of the dead tree. That’s not cheap either, especially when the tree is big. I had experience on this too: a few years ago, I had to call tree company to remove a dead oak tree, that tree is probably almost 60 years old, and was infected with some sort of galls – caused by gall wasps or more specifically Andricus kollari. The bill was about $2,200 (in summer 2022, to put things in perspective).
Learned the tip here (YT video) – the nuts for the windshield wiper arm could become loose over the time (it’s quite rare, I don’t recall anything like this happened to me during my driving since Spring 1998). But it happened to me yesterday evening. The two wiper arms started clashing with each other (because one was loose). I just reset the angle and tightened the nut (the screw) this afternoon. I may have saved a trip to the car shop 🙂
Now I recall, probably 20 years ago, in a snow day, similar thing happened, the snow/ice froze the wiper arm base. Had to clean up the snow and ice to make it work again. So, I guess twice total, so far.
If you just want to look at the contractor list, it’s here.
Basic Knowledge
Living in the USA usually also means driving and owning a home. And we need some knowledge about the cars and the house. Even if we live in condo or apartments – in those cases we typically don’t need to mow the lawns and in the case of apartment, the leasing or the management company usually is responsible for things such as refrigerator, HVAC (AC and furnace), cooking stove, built-in microwave, windows and doors. And sometimes carpets too: if it’s worn out. We need to know basics such as the AC is usually for summer, heat is for winter; windows usually has a screen, lock the dead bolt for the main door over the night – in the good old days, I left the keys in the door overnight a few times, with family, kids and so on, I am more careful on those type of things.
Once, the furnace at my condo had issues, as you can read from this blog post (search “minor scare”). After that I learned a bit more about how the heat is generated in our home in winter. Note there are two main energy sources for the furnace: electricity – which is the one at my old condo, and the gas – which is more common in the Single Family Homes in the area.
Single Family Home (SFH)
If one owns a home, it will need more knowledge and work. For example, the home owners are usually responsible for the trees in the front and back yard. The tree requires quite a bit of work, in addition to picking up the broken limbs, branches, the leaves and sometimes the sweet gums (or other nuts) if the tree produces lots of nuts such as acorn.
Sometimes broken tree branches hang on the tree. I think it’s best to remove them, because it could potentially fall, and hit someone or something. It actually happened to me once: the broken branch hit my roof, and caused a small damage. I knew the branch was there, and I was hoping it didn’t fall. Hoping is never a strategy, btw. Recently when this sort thing happened again, I contacted the tree company and asked them to take out the dead tree branch, in addition to trimming the branches. Trimming is a common task too, especially when the branch is approaching a electric wire, or the roof.
Sometimes, when the temperature is extremely low, such as this week, I found the garage door cannot automatically close. It seems the door needs some lubrication. I think I probably need to do some research on YouTube and do it. The door worked fine when the temperature bounced.
The Major’s Contractor List
The Google sheet view only is here. If you like to contribute or participate as an editor, please email me: minjie DOT xu AT gmail DOT com, and we can go from there. I did think about post it on GitHub, so that we can have some version history etc. But I haven’t decided it yet.
I have a view only link to google sheet that’s maintained by a realtor in St. Louis.
Last but not least, note the Ramit’s video below: Ramit recently launched a Netflix personal finance series How to Get Rich, personally I like him and his show.
I thought about this for a while. The last time I planned to switch, was a few years ago, at our previous home (condo), for some reason the AT&T technician could not find a port for the broadband, per my wife (I was likely working at the credit card company at the time). And the technician gave up. I vaguely recall the reason for the switch was to reduce the monthly bill. Internet providers usually gave a good introductory price for one year, before jacking up the prices. And in the case of Charter, they jack up prices almost every year. Once I called them, and said I wanted to switch, and then they lowered the price by $10 a month. Basically switching providers or phone calls are two ways I know to lower the broadband bill.
I didn’t think of switching during the move – partially due to the unpleasant experience I had with $T (AT&T, T is their stock ticker symbol). Partially because Charter/Spectrum gave a good intro price for a year for new customers (here new as a new address, or a new account). I recall it took me some effort to figure out which cable to plug into my cable modem (the broadband modern for Charter), set up the Wifi router, and my IP phone (iTalkBB, refer to this old blog post here, time flies. Probably time to cancel iTalkBB now.) and I didn’t bother to switch to AT&T until very recently. I did recall about 2 summers ago, we had a power outage, and Charter Internet came back as soon as the power is back (both the cable modem and wifi router needed electricity). But the communication lines were damaged especially the AT&T cables, if my memory is correct, and it seems today during my AT&T install, another outside technician needs to come to the outside terminal and do some work – likely a fallout from 2 years ago. Again back to the topic.
Recently I had some intermittent issues with the Charter/Spectrum internet so I decided to switch. The intermittent/reliability issue is both from my observation and from informal surveys among friends (thank you friends 🙂
I placed the installation order last week, and a technician came today. I did some surveys before today. So I pointed out the outside and inside cables. Installation took a few hours. The setup is relatively straightforward, I mean the embedded Wifi router. It’s done via an app called Smart Home Manager. The technician is friendly and helpful too. In addition to pointing out the app, as well as showing me how to get to it, he told me to switch off Charter shortly to avoid a new monthly bill.
I did a speed test just now, it seems Charter still has a faster download speed, but the upload speed is comparable. I will update this post as time goes on.
PS: I recall The Sound of dial-up Internet both in China and in the US. It’s a bit funny when I was applying for US graduate schools in the fall of 1996, I borrowed the email and computer access card from my friend in Fudan U. The professor in Rolla thought I was a graduate student in Fudan: which probably helped my application a bit as they are more prestigious than my graduate school 🙂 I still remember those days when I wrote emails on a terminal of a UNIX machine. Copy, paste, and save information or write information to a disk seems like a century ago, in today’s smartphone, and ubiquitous Internet world. Also, just came across this post back in 2014 when I had to do some magic or hack to make the iPad work with Wifi at home.
PS2: the monthly cost, was $80 per month for Charter, vs $50 a month for AT&T. AT&T has a slightly slower download speed, from the speed test. Also, some offers one may be able to use. Rakuten (eBates): I used it and I saw $112.50 cash in my account (this will cover the $99 installation cost, btw). Some Chase credit cards may offer cash back for AT&T fiber (I think they all broadband will likely work): I plan to use my Amazon Chase card as it has a $50 offer. Last but not least, I had a twitter poll for this.
Update 01-28-2024: I used offer from Amex Gold too. Also it seems Dosh App gave me cash back on the top of the Amex offer. Now we are talking about double dipping 🙂 Last but not least, I realized that I used the link at ebates (now rakuten) and I received $112.50 cash back from them as well (on 08-15-2023). So in summary, at least for now, the AT&T service (about $55 a month) is mostly free for me/my family at this time. I do expect to use fewer offer from now on. And I don’t plan to switch back to Charter soon as their service seems still spotty from time to time.
I am trying to fix small things myself these days, this is probably true for many other people too.
Replace the cell battery for the car keys
For example, recently I found out the new Car key (new to me anyway, it’s a used 2020 Toyota Camry key, so a few years old in reality), may have some issues, as sometimes although I put it in my pocket or in the car seat, the dashboard will say something like “key not found“. Note this is an electronic key now, basically as long as I have the key in my pocket or nearby, it should do its thing: meaning, I can open the front doors, and when I step on the break, and push the ignition button, the car should start. And if I don’t step on the break and just push the ignition button, the accessories should start (audio, etc). When the battery is low, some of those functions will stop working too. For example, on Mother’s Day evening, it started to rain, in the parking lot, I tried to open the car door via remote, but no luck at first. I tried to open the trunk first, then I was able to open the 1st front door. After I came home, I googled and followed this YouTube video to replace the battery in the remote. For the battery itself, I have some in stock, Amazon Basics 10-Pack CR2032 Lithium Coin Cell Battery, 3 Volt, Long Lasting Power, Mercury-Free*. Before this, I did similar replacements myself for my 2012 Camry and Sienna remote in the past too. The main difference is for newer car keys, we need to use them to start the car indirectly. But It’s done via pressing the button, in other words, if the remote is truly out of battery, we may not be able to start the car (which is a bit like a strand situation, and it’s ideal – update 11-20-2024, I found on YT there is a manual way to do this too).
Headlight in Toyota Sienna
PHILIPS – 12362B2 H11 Standard Halogen Replacement Headlight Bulb, 2 Pack || Youtube: How to change #Headlight #bulbs in #Toyota #Sienna (btw, always keep your car in top condition that you can afford, this includes the battery, tires and other misc things) || (Update 11-20-2024) I may need to rewrite this part as it’s on Twitter/X, and I no longer actively update on X. Also, the search functionality on X is horrendous.
MacBook Pro right arrow key
Recently I also bought a MacBook right arrow key* and my 13 year old daughter was able to follow along a YouTube video and replace it. She broke the original key first though. She was bored.
Garage Door sensor
Last year or so, I was able to buy the Genie GSTB-R STB-BL Replacement Safety Beams, Black, 2 Pack, Black, one size (GSTB-R)*, and replaced one broken safety beam. I think I got idea from the YouTube as well. This is relatively straightforward for me. I did hire a professional garage door person install the system for me originally, as it was above my head and hands.
GE Refrigerator Ice Maker not working
Ongoing (05-18-2023): the issue was something like this as described in this GE article. I think I am going to replace the ice maker on the fridge. Ordered the aftermarket part* from amazon just now, $55 before tax, it got high ratings and good reviews at Amazon. And here is the YouTube video by “DIY Repairs Now“. I watched it a few times, and I bought the replacement part using the author’s Amazon Associates (update 02-24-2024, all links to normal links now, Amazon invalided my Associates account because I didn’t bring in enough leads in a given duration. They are pretty ruthless, if I may) link as well. The author posted the OEM part in the description for the video too. I compared the price, delivery date and the reviews, and decided to go with the cheaper aftermarket part.
This is a GE 25.6 cu ft refrigerator made in 2007 (model number – PSS26MSWASS). The replacement (a Samsung 27.4 cu ft side by side) starts at about $1,149 at Costco. (Update 05-20-2023) I replaced the old ice maker with the new after market one that I bought from Amazon, and it worked (my wife is happy). The most difficult part is trying to unplug and plug in the electronic cable. I got some ideas from the YouTube video above, at about 1 min 10 seconds (unplug, use a tool, use hand solely was really hard) and 4 minutes 40 seconds mark (plug in). I realized those cables’ ends (6 pins, some are round, some are semi rounds) are not identical, which means we can only plugin via proper directions. Other useful resources: REFRIGERATOR – ICEMAKER DOES NOT FILL WITH WATER (GE again). Please note, I unplugged the electricity during the repair. I did not turn off water as I didn’t know how to do it for the refrigerator.
Note I do have one remaining task, that is to fix the ice dispenser. For that I found a video here: Refrigerator Won’t Dispense Ice – Top 6 Reasons & Fixes – Kenmore, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, GE & more. This is not as straightforward as I need to troubleshoot and determine which part is broken.
*The Amazon links are my own Amazon Associates links. I may earn a small fee but your price at Amazon should be the same regardless you use this link or go directly to Amazon.
(Update 11-26-2023) It seems the GE fridge is giving up today (it gave up probably 2 or 3 days ago, but we realized it today). And we decided to get a new one.
Ironically, I recall Amazon the company has its humble beginning including makes its own desk “How to build your own Amazon door desk“; From Scrappy DIY Desk to Amazon Icon | Amazon News – YouTube.
(Update 02-24-2024) How to replace the battery on a Dyson D8 (YouTube Video). New battery bought on Last purchased Jun 14, 2020 (Amazon). And on Nov 28, 2023 again Amazon. I just put this on thanks to the YT video. I don’t recall last time (around June 2020) how I replaced it, which video I watched etc.