Reading Time: 3minutesNot so simple math problem in my opinion
There are a few ways to solve for it. I am aware of 3.
For the problem above, I tried to guess 1st. Because the numbers are easy.
A few years ago I came across the bar model approach from “Math in Focus“, because the school my daughter attends start adopting that math curriculum. Below is another similar word problem and my #barModel solution for it: the total number of adults and kids are 6872, and the number of adults are 2150 more than the number of kids.
3. Use the equation approach. Kids usually started to learn equations from algebra, which in the USA is usually from grade 6, 7 or 8 (again this depends on the school and the kid’s math level).
For the 1st problem: x + y = 1.10 and x -y = 1.00
(add those two equations together) =>
x = 1.05 and y = 0.05
Bonus point: try to solve the 2nd problem using the equation approach.
Bonus problems : try any of the problems in my collection.
Also, here is one more using bar model.
One more problem, solution is shown below. We have 3 boxes
holding total of 4,000 grams of candy
We know the 1st box holds twice as much as the 2nd box, and 3rd box holds the amount of 2nd box plus 60 grams.
A: 2nd box has 985 grams. 1st box has 1,970 grams and 3rd box has 1,055 grams. Bar model is shown below.
One more interesting (hopefully not too hard 🙂 problem, curtesy of PragmaticProgrammers (https://twitter.com/pragprog)
Have fun with math as you solve the integer number for the question mark:
🐂 = 🐟 – 3 🐂 = 🦃 + 2 🐟 = 3 X 🦃 + 3 🦃 + ? = 7
(Update 10-20-2023) I worked with my 4th grader on 2 more word problems. I don’t think they are easy problems for a 4th grader. But at the other hand, I can understand why she whines about those type of problems, and while I don’t appreciate her whining. I will do my part: try to explain my thinking, and hopefully she will get better solving those.
On a separate yet related note, since I just had parent teacher conference with my 8th grader math teacher, and had conversations with my 8th grader, one thing I can say for many parents is: try to hang in there. Try to help the kid so that he/she don’t fall behind too much.
(Update 11-22-2023) I think one of the main competitor for Jack Henry is Fidelity Information Services ($FIS), and it seems something happened in mid 2021, and FIS start underperforming against Jack Henry from that time. See the 20 year stock chart above. It looks like the WorldPay acquisition was the main culprit here (Reuters: FIS takes $17.6 billion hit in merchant unit to be spun off).
(Original 10-2023) I noticed from Twitter (X) that Jack Henry is doing its user (customer) conference tomorrow. I also noticed a few companies are doing exhibits there, think they are an eco system and the vendors (big or small) are participating. This reminds me a while ago (in year 2005?) when eBay was hot, and I looked around for the vendors for eBay, small software that integrates with eBay etc. This is similar. I tried to add them to my Twitter list – but I feel this is not as good as the #JHConnect hash tag.
Also, I saw quite a few jobs at Jack Henry at LinkedIn. I saw dev jobs range from COBOL (mainframe) to Node.js
Also, I just noticed I talked about Jack Henry back in 2007. But I picked the wrong horse. That was the time I just got married and my wife and I were going to the states (I blame my wife for this). Joking. Seriously I only blame myself for my stupid mistake. The other horse Longtop Financial turns out to be a fraud, btw. It’s very important that we invested in a sound / fiscally conservative business, note the fraud or impropriety is quite common in the US based companies too, from Enron to WorldCom, as well as Chesapeake Energy. I didn’t touch the first two, but I paid attention to the Chesapeake and I may traded in its late years. I also recall Chesapeake usually has 1 million or so cash (or even lower) at the end of each quarter. Its’ not a lot money for such a large and glamorous company.
今天我想说说politics on offices(or fights on better cubicles or offices, think bigger cubicles, corner offices and so on 就是大家都想要好的cubicle 或是office). Not the traditional good old office politics. 不是办公室政治，而是关于争抢办公室的故事。
1. Never trying to take back the bone already in a dog’s mouth. 英语里的谚语，从巴菲特的伙伴查理芒哥那里听来的，不要在狗的嘴巴里试着去拿回已在她嘴里的骨头（英文原话：The one way, the only way to get that dog to bite you was to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there.）。
我做码工的地方我好像基本上没有独立的办公室。上面提到的煤炭公司算是有一些办公室，当然也有工位cubicles，也就是我等小不拉子们坐的位置。煤炭公司(Arch Coal, now Arch Resources post the bankrupcy and re-org)其实一开始我有个semi-private 办公室。我老板把我安排到一个角落里的办公室，那里原来是一个美国小伙，desktop technician 如果我没记错。我一次，我才刚去不久，我有点咳嗽，他好像很不开心。
我以前去过微软，应该是2002年，我有朋友在那里上班。我去有西雅图时去了他办公室，一个人一间，没有窗户。他说他们一般是赶进程的时候才会去办公室。微软在Richmond, WA 的园区很像一个大学校园，有树有湖。他说有个湖叫 Lake Bill, 据说是有一回庆功，大家一高兴，把比尔盖茨 (Bill Gates) 扔到湖里去了。我记得有两个车位是有名字的(Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer 当时微软的CEO)，其它位置随便停。这一点我觉得很不错。后来我去了一些地方，等级分明，停车位也有很多各种讲究。其实也是公司/单位文化的一个反映。
我自从上班以来好像就没有办公室。我在罗拉读研究生的时候有。有时候还只是一两个人的办公室（semi-private). 但是也有坏处，我刚来美国不久，我常去一个TA的办公室，我在我的桌子上放了一个数码相机，后来我发现我的相机不见了。这个办公室旁边有一个Lounge, Soda machine, 等等。我走开一下，很多时候会把门开着，可能是有人在那里顺走的。或者是有办公室钥匙的人。后来我有了一个更好(privacy)的办公室，我捡到一个可以折叠的沙发（可以睡觉）：有一次有一两个晚上因为要赶RA的工作，就在在办公室里睡觉（这个好像跟微软的部分员工，在开发Windows NT的时候，为赶进度，在办公室门板上睡觉一下（我是从网上和从我的朋友那里听来的）。另外一次，我捡到一个旧冰箱。就差一个微波炉了。
First Job
言归正传。我的第一个东家是Unigraphics Solutions (后来的名字有EDS PLM Solutions，UGS，Siemens PLM Software 等）。最早的办公室是在村里西北脚的Earth City (Riverport Drive)最高的办公楼：我在这里不详述Earth City 和Riverport Drive了：有段时间我经常去星巴克，当时我很想附近就有：最近的星巴克是在旁边的270和St. Charles Rock Road (印象中这一家开开关关，现在是开的）, 靠谱的一直有的星巴克在270和Page交界的West Port。现在这个办公楼是被本地较大cable/internet 公司租用。几年前（大概是）2019年初的时候我找工作，又去过那个楼。那个地方其实离村里的机场很近。我第一年在公司上班的时候，也住在附近的公寓。2001年九月十一那天，（我们应该都知道那天发生了什么），之后有几天，所有民航飞机停飞，感觉天空有平时没有的宁静。
我记得有一次，有个其他部门的同事工作三十周年庆祝。我当时的老板（美国人）私下里跟我们说，三十年前坐cubicle，三十年后还是坐cubicle。他说的是有点道理的。Sad but true. 当然我也记得我们的manager 和大老板的靠窗的corner cubicle 要大一些，大老板的cubicle好像还多一个挡板（better privacy）。
WFH
我的第二份工作AutoDesk是在家上班。那是2008年十一月份。公司有一些关于在家里上班必须有的一些条件，具体忘了，好像是说要有一定的空间。2020年因为疫情很多人开始在家上班，很多夫妻一起在家上班。我的建议是让老婆（boss）先挑办公室。 我有时候不喜欢总在家里呆着，就带上笔记本电脑去外面，当时一年多我去了 Barnes Nobel（书店）, Borders（这个书店现在已经没有了）, Bread Co and Starbucks. 可能去的最多的还是面包店。我去那一家面包店有十八年了，有一个我喜欢的位置。
AutoDesk 的工作可以在家工作（在当时不算多），但是也有一些坏处，比如说要差：有时候要坐小飞机。我记得大概是2009年春节我去了密西根一个小镇。坐小飞机不是很安全，那时真好出了一件事：Colgan Air Flight 3407。PBS有个相关的纪录片。
换工作 and Hearsay听说的故事
2010年初，我的老大快要出生，我也换了个在办公室（工位）上班的正常工作。但是我很快发现这个小公司我可能呆不久。美国大公司（大锅饭）和小公司很不一样。这个小公司大概是两个人合开的。理论上我们有一个小组都是Union Pacific(UP) 的合同工, 两个老板（President and VP）以前帮UP做过事，现在他们帮UP维护两个系统：系统是关于运输和财务会计方面的(Accounts Receiveable and Revenue Integration Systems)。那一天（大概是2010年2月中的某一天）我们有三个人一起开始（这是其中的一个同事）。老板不直接管我，他们让两个project leader （相当于tech lead)管我们。我想有两个理由他们不喜欢我。一个是我不能提供剩余价值。什么意思呢：就是我发现我的两个华人朋友（老员工）除了做UP的事意外呢，还帮老板他们做其它的项目（比如说一个户外活动商品的网站等等）。还有一件事，我是后知后觉，我发现他们对我下午三点多的时候出去走15分钟很有意见。类似的问题，我大概每天九点左右到，四点多走，他们也有意见。
我大概做了半年多意识到这个问题，开始努力找工作。我问了我自己的朋友，也问了我的华人同事，感觉我除了找新工作没有其他好的办法。因为老板们会听project leader的话，而我没有多少说话的机会。在美国公司上班久了可能大家会知道公司内部等级是非常森严的。但是我找工作的速度没有赶上他们的速度。其实这个也是因为大公司和小公司的差别，大公司吃大锅饭，老板不会斤斤计较，小公司就相反 – 我当时还没有意识到。有一次，我太太告诉我家里有不明的烟 (look for “minor scare”)，这个火可不是开玩笑的。我马上就离开公司到家里，没有跟同事打招呼事后也没说。我事后听说对我不满的project leader 以前曾经跟另外一个同事以拳相向，同事之间动手在美国是比较少见的事情。不过我想那个家伙也不奇怪。
关于美国上班地方的一些暴力的统计：Workplace violence: homicides and nonfatal intentional injuries by another person in 2020. There were 392 workplace homicides in 2020. There were also 37,060 nonfatal injuries in the workplace resulting from an intentional injury by another person.
*** 以下我会慢慢更新 I will clean up below soon， may start a new story as this one kinda getting long ***
More cubicles
Arch coal: my cubicle moves (small shared corner office, cubicle near CTO, the cubicle near the “office fight”); and the girl who “lost” office. For that matter, heard from coworker helping set up CNN cable for ACI CEO, and oh, she helped the Outlook password change (same time on laptop and iPhone), this used to be an issue for me (one best practice is change it in one place 1st, let it sync in, before opening another app. 环保分子抗议。
EHI (2013): I left too many Panera bags there (quote my friend)…
MC: I found out I no longer have a cubicle: after open office remodeling and back to work. Nobody told me (some may know).
Standing desk and Open Space? Hype or doing actual good?
Asc: Edmundson, Cortex (big boss has better cubicles, just tables; open office remodeling – phone room).
I maytalk about job searches, interviews (both from job search and from the hiring point of views), and hardware next, using my own stories, so stay tuned (hint: hardware itself is not the most important). 大家有什么想法意见，也可以在下面留言，或发email到：minjie.xu@gmail.com 🙂
Reading Time: 3minutesPenFed Credit Union is asking me to lobby the congress on rewards Credit Cards
Or rewards credit cards. Today I received an email from PenFed Credit Union and they are asking me to lobby the congress on rewards Credit Cards. I no longer have their credit cards, I used to have their reward cards, and earned quite a bit gift cards from them. Basically I redeemed the points for various gift cards.
Some background
On the Credit Card rewards, and the legislations to eliminate rewards Credit Card:
Honestly at this stage of my life I have got “free” iPhone from the credit card rewards, and I got free stay at the Park Hyatt at Shanghai Pudong. But I am ready to give up those perks for the common good. 1% cash back from discover debit sounds good enough for me (see below screenshot). I understand I may be a bit superficial in the sense, that I received quite a bit benefits from the credit card rewards and now I don’t care. I think I am not taking sides on this: it’s a good position to be. I do understand the impact of credit card fees on the smaller retailers. Here in St. Louis, we have a Chinese grocery store that used to accept only cash, and debit cards, somewhat like Aldi did until a few years ago. Grocers have quite low profit margin and the 2 or 3% credit card swiping fee (processing fee) is meaningful or significant for them.
Who wants the free cup from my new dental office, btw?
This is a free cup given to me by the new dental office – as a good well gesture I guess. But I really don’t need it. Recently I am in the mode of declutter, and hope to clean up the house a bit so that we have more real living space 🙂 In a way rewards credit card is the same thing, basically it encourages or nudges the cardholder to spend more, I heard one research is credit card users will in general spend 15% than the consumer who uses cash only. I noticed this cup is from a company I know (Ariel Premium Supply) and I know a few people working there. Compared to the credit card companies, Ariel makes not a lot of money, but I think Ariel is in the rewards business too.
Full disclosure: a few years ago I worked in the loyalty and rewards platform for a major Credit Card co. and once I spent 2 hours trying to give a Card Holder (CH) 13 cents worth of points.
Yesterday at a WeChat group, I wrote 昨天在一个微信群里我写到: 我（My LinkedIn Profile 我的领英链接）在美国工作23年迄今呆过十个庙。。。 话说完后我想起来十个庙，与多数码工相比，也真是不少了，平均2.3年（2年4个月）换一个工作。还好只是换工作😂
又想起在罗拉时，有一回是参加大公司招新的大学毕业生的介绍会（一般会有免费的比萨🍕饼，对我这样的穷学生来说诱惑力还可以）。有一次好像是听Honeywell公司的老总(possiably Michael Bonsignore)：你们这些年轻人（当时我还不是大叔），从大学毕业到退休，大概平均会有七个工作。这个与他们那一代人一辈子，大概三十四十年的打工生涯，大多为一家公司打工的情况大为不同。
是在学校找的。我当时是博士生，但是我感觉我的基础太差，最主要我当时很想出去工作了（我觉得做很多事兴趣还是相当重要的）。2000年，正好也是美国纳斯达克的最高点 （“The dot-com bubble burst in March 2000, with the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaking at 5,048.62 on March 10 (5,132.52 intraday), more than double its value just a year before. By 2001, the bubble’s deflation was running full speed.”），我记得我在3月20日面试一家软件公司，并拿到Offer。我记得大概是1999年夏天，学校有不少研究生同学在圣路易斯找到软件开发的工作。记得九九年时的起步年薪大概是五万美元（或稍多一些）。我2000年三月开了五万五，老板挺爽快，给了我五万六。一方面是中大型软件公司，另一方面当时市场也不错。十年以后，我发现在圣村，软件工程师起步的薪水大概是六万的样子。当然2000年到2010年美国的通胀不算严重。
读音乐专业后来成为高级码工的人我见过一个，在2000年秋天在罗拉的UMSL extension 一起上过面向对象的设计课程的一个美国人。面向对象是什么其实不是那么重要。你就把它当成2000年的dot com frenzy (internet bubbles), 或者相当于现在的AI, chatgpt 就可以了。那些新的东西是有用的。但是同时我们必须认识到good old human intelligence, good old 4th grade math are probably more useful and long lasting. 说到那个音乐系的哥们，他后来是村里还不错的咨询公司的Principal Software Engineer. 记得他当时开个宝马三系，还有点拉风的- 基本上相当于现在的特斯拉(3/Y系)吧。我当时开的是91年丰田卡罗拉的手动。我自己是罗拉机械工程硕士，在读研期间上了几门计算机课。我在国内自学过一些计算机，考过国内计算机程序员水平考试（复旦大学负责主办的）。但是我的编程水平真正提高应该是我的第一个东家。
我昨天在油管上看到一个华人小老弟的一个关于找码工工作的视频，觉得不错，先放在这里。还有这一个，好像是亚裔的小妹（HOW I BECAME A SOFTWARE ENGINEER | no CS Degree, career change + advice. I agree with her on the part that money is not everything, which is pretty relevant for me at this time of my career. I guess it’s harder to say for her at her stage of career as she just got started, nonetheless it’s even more impressive when I think about it.）。 这两个视频都是英文。正好可以练一下英文，至少在我所在的美国中西部，面试一般还是英文。Btw, I found Travis Media has this video on interview and job search that’s very good.
Career Ladder
Title for (application or software) programmer or 码工，software engineer, application or software developer. Or just a coder at informal settings. 我可能以后会讲一下升职和常见的career ladder. 比如说奈飞的L5 是相当于谷歌的L多少。我想我们华人除了比小孩爬藤以外，在硅谷的华人码工不少会在意这个级别，因为级别与工资奖金💰是挂钩的。当然我现在的观点，钱不是最重要的因素，但是多刚刚起步的码工来说，一般因为家庭和职业的原题，这个还是比较看重的。我印象中有些老板也同意或说过类似的说法。
People who have impact on my career (not a complete list yet)
Reading Time: 3minutes杏花楼广式月饼 and 稻香村苏式月饼 from 亚米网
And eat some moon cakes. I just realized I wrote something about mid autumn festival way back in year 2007. I believe I was in Shanghai when I wrote this, and it was after we had honeymoon in San’ya, Hainan, China.
Time flies. Now we have 2 kids, and I don’t see any special mid-autumn festival logos on Baidu or Google home pages. But I saw one at Google Vietnam page. I did see this (浓情迎中秋) at Baidu 热搜。
For me this year, I bought some 杏花楼广式月饼 and 稻香村苏式月饼 from 亚米网 (yamibuy.com). We bought moon cakes at Costco in the past: not a big fan of those。我们以前经常在百利买加州的生计月饼（Sheng Kee bakery，我记得去过一次她家的Milpitas 分店. As the name suggests, this is a Hong Kong/Cantonese style, and I visited their bakery at Milpitas CA once many years ago）。今年百利可能卖完了，好像没看到生计月饼。
Local Bakeries in the STL area
I think when I was new to the US and studied at Rolla. The fresh baked mooncakes at the WeiHong Bakery (味香饼家) was a treat. Now it seems there are other choices (not mooncake), such as The Foundry Bakery: and recently I added it to my Authentic Asian Food In The STL Area post. I just heard from an Indian friend that their Naisu Milk Bun 奶酥面包 is fantastic. Before pandemic I go to a Korean bakery near Olive and 141 once a while too. Last but not least, the La Boone Bouche at Olive and Tempo drive is so busy nowadays.
A meme on mooncake
The Mooncakes Cometh!
(Who knew the alien invasion would start this way?)
Baidu Zhidao: 上海面包店有哪些牌子 Note many bakeries in Shanghai makes and sells mooncakes (a mostly seasonal item). Below are the list.
克莉丝汀 – I remember once I got 美式咖啡 from there, there are quite a lot Christen’s Bakeries in Shanghai. About 10 years ago, I found when I visit China, it’s hard to get black coffee (not instant coffee). I am a coffee drinker, and I found the places that I can always get good or decent American black coffee (pot coffee, basically we make them via grounded coffee at many American homes), is McDonald’s and Starbucks (not many small cities have McDonald’s and Starbucks). And add the Christen’s Bakery in Shanghai too.
静安面包房
85度C: this is a chain started in Taiwan. I recall visited their store in one of those places (Lan’xi or Quan’zhou). They are in California too.
苹果园
香特莉
季诺
可颂坊 (the link is their mobile website): I recall seen or being there before 1997. Baike 百度百科 link here.
元祖 (Wikipedia): another chain started in Taiwan. I went there once, and it surprised me that their products are quite expensive.
Last but not least, a bit explanation on the Mid Autumn Festival on Wikipedia. Since I left home for college, I rarely had opportunity to be back to my parents home on those holidays, though. Again 2007 was probably one of the years that I was in China for the holiday. For that matter, it’s the only year since 1998 that I spent significant amount of time in Shanghai (and China), and I wrote quite a bit on my observations on my blog. This is just one example.
Reading Time: 4minutesSinking hole in our neighborhood main street? We try to find the root cause.
Back to coding. When working on the same file at the same time, the old joke is try to check in your code change before the other girl (guy) does. This way you don’t have to worry about the merge (meaning, put in your code change while keeping the other person’s code changes). In this day and age though, when working in a team, with the code review process, etc., we cannot count on we always be the 1st one to check in code changes. Thus, comes the “merge hell”. And I thought I was in that for a moment last few days, as I didn’t know a lot code has been changed for the repo (feature branch) I was reviewing and tried to merge. But it didn’t turn out as bad as I thought.
Some observations I have. Some are well known: one is don’t keep the feature branch for too long. I think the recommendation is a day or 2 (source 1, source 2). But we kept it much longer than that. To add to the complexity, I saw meaningful amount of refactoring being done in another branch (which I need to keep as well, at the same time it complicated my feature branch merges).
The approach I took eventually: initially I accepted everything in my feature branch, and I quickly realized that won’t work. So I took the opposite approach, I accepted everything in the dev branch (after the other feature branch is merged), and then I pick and choose my feature branch changes, and put in those changes. Ran local build and tests.
Btw, on testing front, I observed a locally hosted (localhost) Web Service (WS) calling another WS locally vs calling the WS hosted on #AWS #K8 has performance impact: roughly 15 sec vs 45 sec. I yet to test the scenario of caller WS on AWS.
My good old days
I cut my teeth on “code merge” about 20 years ago, when I was working for a software company. We didn’t have agile and all the jazz. But we were doing the modern day agile and did software dev in an increment way. Every 2 weeks different dev branches (teams) of the company merge our code changes to the central repo, and we call it integration. Since we have annual release of our software, we pretty much do about 20 phases (2 weeks x 20 = 40 weeks) for a release. Each team has a person that is responsible for the build and integrate the code to the central repo (not full time job, just once every 2 weeks, and the total time spent is about 8 hours the most for every 2 weeks). And yours truly was the integrator. And I had to resolve the merge conflict sometimes. And in some cases I need to get other teams involved to make sure my merge is good. I recall we used PerForce for source control, and KDiff3 at the time.
SpotBugs
Just as I thought I was close to be done. I encountered a few SpotBugs issues. Mainly there are 3 types, as shown below.
2. The default getter and setter generated by Lombok has a potential security issue. The solution is to make a deep copy. Refer to this SO thread 1, thread 2 and thread 3. For me I found out I need to do a null check in the setter (we don’t want to set something to null, it throws null point exception too).
3. And last but not least, it didn’t like multiple instances of hard coded strings being created in the same file. This is a low hanging fruit – just create a string variable for that.
I think one common question may come up is how SpotBugs compares to Sonar Qube. My impression is SpotBugs can be run locally, and per the “fail earlier, fail faster” motto in the Agile development, this is excellent. As for Sonar (or Sonar Qube) my recollection is we usually configure it with a CI tool such as Jenkins, and we usually need to proactively look at the results ourselves: we likely can configure it so that at least it can email us the failures in a CI build. But either way it seems local build capability is either not there or hard to achieve.
“Reviewers felt that SonarQube meets the needs of their business better than FindBugs. When comparing quality of ongoing product support, reviewers felt that FindBugs is the preferred option. For feature updates and roadmaps, our reviewers preferred the direction of FindBugs over SonarQube.”
Bonus Advice
I probably solved more coding problems by stepping away and taking a walk… or driving on the way to home after work. Once I couldn’t resist the temptation to try it out so I turned around 😂 #walking#driving#coding (warning: always pay attention to the surroundings while drive or walk, the physical safety of you yourself and those around the you are the most important).
(Update 01-Nov-2023) I found an issue with “merge commit”. I did not do the rebase or at least I did not use the git rebase command. What I did: I go to the “target branch” in my local, do a git pull (get the latest code), then go back to the “from branch”, do a git merge target_branch, now the “from branch” is updated with the “target branch” most recent code change, and I would no longer have “merge commit” in my Pull Request (from merge branch to target branch). Note the code change was pushed into the merge branch using the command “git merge feature_branch”. Note this is a 3 way kind of merge, from “my feature branch” to “from branch or merge branch”, and the code change eventually goes to “target branch”. We like to have only the relevant code changes (commits) from the “merge branch” to “target branch”. Read this doc if you like to learn more about advanced merge.
(Update 11-Dec-2023) Thought this one is funny. The gradle build on my local worked fine, but SpotBugs test failed on the CI (Continuous Integration) build. I don’t have access to the CI server. And I guessed it’s the unused variables I just added. So I added a bit loggings for the two new variables I just introduced. And it worked: now the CI build is good.
Reading Time: 2minutesYours Truly at West Virginal surface coal mine (Coal-Mac Mine) 11 years ago (year 2012)
今天09/26/23 礼拜二美国总统拜登成为第一个在任总统正式加入美国汽车工人工会(UAW)的举牌子走路活动。但是凭我在美二十多年的观察，美国工会包括UAW的力量比克林顿当总统时应该是变弱了。美国的工会在历史上对劳苦大众的工资待遇是有帮助的：比如说煤矿的工会。我自己大概十一年前在煤炭公司上过班，我是白领，有一回我去参观了地下煤矿，据说这个是在美国算是非常先进的地下煤矿了，但是在地下总的感觉是非常不好。我想到工人他们在地下吃中饭，我们所谓的管理人员在办公室吃 Director of Business Process Improvement 让秘书准备的 Chicken Salad Sandwich. If you are curious about the daily lives in West Virginia and the coal mines there, there are quite a few videos on YT such as this one.
记得大概20年前，村里grocery store 的packers and cashiers 也举牌子走路。我也支持她们，not crossing picket line. 就去中国店或是Aldi 买菜。我个人印象较深的是有一回美国UPS 工人罢工，那次好像影响较广。好像也是我刚来美国不久，August 1st – August 19, 1997 (26 years ago)，可能也觉得较新鲜，看了些电视。我记得黛安娜王妃也是在那个时候出车祸去世，电视上也是有很多报道。
我刚来美国的时候，留学生里面有个说法，东方不败，指的是丰田佳美，花冠，本田雅阁，思域。Toyota Camry, Corolla, Honda Accord and Civic. 很多年过去了，韩国车有很大进步，但是在不少人眼里，包括美国本地出生的人，和新移民，这两个牌子还是质量和可靠性的保证。比如这个油管视频-People Say I’m Full of Crap About Hondas, Well Watch This。著名油管主Scotty Kilmer 就讲到日本车每年就提高一点点。其实苹果不也是这样吗？革命性的创新是很难的。中国以前有愚公移山和只要功夫深，铁杵磨成针 （perseverance will prevail）的故事。我感觉到日本汽车公司，尤其是丰田本田的这个努力提高的精神。On totally different topic, I like Scotty Kilmer’s YT on cheaper cars (I am cheap too, I drive a 2012 Toyota Sienna LE 🙂 || On a related topic, if you were in the US before 2010, you may notice the Toyota gas pedal investigation and the lawsuit (ABC News, the Atlantic). Personally I tend to agree with the Atlantic article, it was mostly the US domestic politics: remember in those years the US government (yes the Uncle Sam) actually owns a piece of Chrysler and GM after the government rescues of the two automakers in 2008/9 financial crisis.
PS: overall, the union membership is in decline in America (PDF file from BLS) in recent years: scroll to page 13, we can see “Chart 1. Union membership rates by state, 2022 annual averages” #unionMembership #decline || I’m also interested to see union demographic change such as age, gender etc. Here in Missouri the union membership is not that great. A lot southern states where foreign brand car makers manufacture cars, BMW, MB, Hyundai, maybe Toyota etc., too, and they don’t have unions.
Sorry for the long subject or title for this blog post. Next time I will try to be more concise 🙂
I just found a way to turn off the Lane Departure Alert feature on my 2020 Camry, thanks to famous mechanic and YouTuber Scott Kilmer: refer to his video “3 New Vehicles You Should Buy” at the 8’50” mark. The work around is turn on the left turn signal. This is handy when I had to dodge (or make room) for the bike that is on the right side of the road: in a two lane situation. But another thing to keep in mind, this is almost like passing a vehicle in a two lane road, and we need to make sure we don’t collide with the incoming traffic. I recall once near the Yellow Stone north exit, I got into this scary situation.
Over last week or two I realized that the driver side sliding door no longer open, even in the manual mode. I vaguely recall in the past, if I cannot open automatically, the manual mode usually still works. And this time it seems there is a block there. I looked around the YouTube, and found axllebeer has a video Toyota Sienna 2014 driver side sliding door malfunctioning. Incidentally a while ago I was thinking about how to fix the gap cap hinge. And there was a YouTube video on how to fix it too.
All 3 above are fairly simple one cause – one issue type of problem.
Last but not least, I did the larger maintenance item for Sienna at the 125 k mark recently: oil change, coolant and transmission fluid change, engine spark plugs, tire 🛞 rotation and a minor cable repair (rodent or squirrel 🐿️ caused). Regarding the oil change (change at every 5 k or 10 k miles), and transmission fluid, I slowly converted into the “TheCarCareNut” and Mr. Kilmer’s camp: that is change oil at every 5 k, also change the transmission fluid when applicable. There is no life time transmission fluid (there was a joking comment under Mr. Kilmer’s video).
This was actually the second dental office I visited in the US, it’s at Bridgeton near the #STL airport. The 1st one was near the apartment I was living at the time (River Des Peres and Chippewa Street, year 2004 or early year 2005). But the hygienist was quite judgmental to my dental hygiene or overall dental health. See, I came from China and we didn’t have proper dental care when I grew up. Also, I probably had too much candy (and sugar) when I grew up, and didn’t brush teeth properly. I did go to hospital (or dental office) at Chuan’shan (Ningbo, my hometown) a few times, to pull out the baby teeth or to fix some issues.
I am changing my dentist and the dental office I went to probably since year 2005. I have seen a few dentists in that office, but since this year, it seems they cannot get hygienist (this seems related to the labor shortage post pandemic, as explained here, and here. Btw, both articles are interesting to me.), also the dentist I was seeing in last few years is retiring. And last but not least, it seems the ownership (and the office name) changed as well. I still tried to call them twice in last few weeks, but they never returned my phone. And I think it’s time for a change.
I did my 1st root canal in the dental office I visited for long time here in the US. I did twice (the second time was at the recommendation of my dentist). I also saw a periodontist in last 2 years (again at recommendation of my dentist): I talked about this last year. It was basically a deep scaling.
Today I found a new dentist and dental office. It’s more close to where I live. And I saw them when I visited the St. Louis Kolache next door. And my 1st experience was good too. It just happened the hygienist and I both know a couple (my former colleagues).
