| Home Sweet Home... Buyers Beware
1/30/2008 8:47:48 AM
In today's real estate market, everyone need to be extremely careful. With TV shows that teach people to flip houses, and greedy real estate agents, when it looks like too good of a deal, walk away.
Just over two years ago, we bought a house. After over 1 year of searching for the right one, this one was in the right location, and in the right condition. At the time, the place had been completely renevated. New carpet throughout the house, new kitchen, new bathrooms, new windows and doors. Everything looked good. Eventhough it was at the top of our budget, we bit the bullet and bought the house. Our thought was if we didn't have to spend the money and take the time to redo any part of the house, it would be money worth spent. Here in California, the purchasing process went throught the standard 3rd party inspector, and agencies. Other than some minor problems, everything checked out. We were happy, and signed the papers.
This winter, we experienced one of the bigger storms in Southern California. All was well until one night, while watching TV, I heard a strange dripping sound from the kitchen. I rushed in to find that our widnow was dripping. That's when things got started.
To make the long story short, not only was the window dripping, the sill was already soaked. The sliding doors, though have not been opened for over two weeks already, had let in enough water to soak up the family room carpet. When I got the water-damage restoration people out, and performed a detailed inspection, we found leaks in 1/2 of the windows in the house. Damages extended from the livingroom, to kitchen, to family room, even into our master bedroom.
All this seems to have been caused by an inproper installation of the windows and sliding doors. There was insufficient water-proffing, or should I say, there was no water-proofing at all. As far as their general contractor could tell, the previous installer just took out the old windows, literally dropped in the new ones, fastened them, and closed up the trims, hoping a small bead of silicone around the outer frame was going to stand up to the elements. On the sliding doors, some cosmetic stucko job was done to cover the joints. In the bottom, the stucko actually blocked the vents where excess water was suppose to drain from the tracks if they got wet. As a result, water was not blocked from the top, and was not allowed to drain in the bottom.
The lesson learned is that be very careful when purchasing a house that was owned by a real estate agent. Be very very careful if it looks like it's either in excellent condition or newly renevated. If considering to have new windows installed, walk away from anyone offering $100-$200 per window for labor cost. You will end up with very good looking windows, and wet walls.
As for our house... demolition starts today. | |
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General
#DailyThanks
| #DailyThanks |
| For years now, one of my New Year resolutions has been “complain less.” Year after year, I found myself making the same resolution. This year, on January 2nd, while driving back from a family reunion, the thought came back again. Instead of making another resolution that I might break again, I was reminded of... That night, I started my first #DailyThanks tweet. |
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Some Things Were Never Me...
| Some Things Were Never Meant for Us to Do Ourselves |
| As a parent of a young boy, one learns life lessons in some odd situations. Case-in-point, I was getting ready to change my son’s soiled diaper today. He started to reach for the Velcro, and attempted to open it. A thought flashed through my mind... |
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The Vegas Sandwich
| The Vegas Sandwich |
| Not long ago, I visited Las Vegas with some friends. We've heard of the sandwich trick before, but never tried it. This time, we decided to give it a shot. Here's what happened... |
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Thankful Perspective
| Thankful Perspective |
| The recent election stirred up a great deal of talk about the state of the country. There’s a good deal of complaint of how this generation is becoming more and more entitled. I am not writing to complain, nor defend this observation. Instead, Thanksgiving gave me a chance to take a step back, and see this whole thing in a different light... |
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Chick-Fil-A and Swimming
| Chick-Fil-A and Swimming |
| In thewake of the recent Chick-Fil-A news wave, I couldn’t help but want to alsovoice my thoughts. While many talk about the legal aspects of Dan Cathy’s FirstAmendment rights, and the LGBT community’s reaction, many misunderstandings andmisdirected emotions are left unaddressed... |
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Rude People Are Not Born ...
| Rude People Are Not Born Rude |
| I don’t think anyone in this world enjoys interacting with rude people. In the same time, none of us would like to be labeled as rude. However, after today, I am convinced that people are not born rude. They are taught... |
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Time for Some Calcium
| Time for Some Calcium |
Follow-up to An Eventful Day.
Two weeks after the eventful day, I feel much better. My knees don't feel weak. I don't feel any pain. I was ready to get off my wheel chair, and even slowly, stop using my crutches. I was thinking to myself, maybe I can just throw on a pair of knee braces, and off I go. I was ready for the doctor to tell me the same thing. So I thought... |
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Cat Lovers Beware! The Re...
| Cat Lovers Beware! The Real Tom and Jerry Show. |
| Many people know that I am not particularly a cat lover. In fact, I am allergic to cats. However, this entry has nothing to do with my personal feelings towards them. This was a merely a witness to an event... |
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An Eventful Day
| An Eventful Day |
| Yesterday, I, along with some friends joined a 5K race at the Long Beach International Marathon. It started being an exciting morning. We carpooled there. After arrival we saw a huge crowd. We all felt great... |
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Making Iced Coffee
| Making Iced Coffee |
Since summer is here, I decided to change up some of my daily coffee dosage intake...
I used to use my trusty Ikea espresso maker. The problem with that is I start with boiling hot coffee, which I then dilute with tons of ice. That didn't make too much sense.
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Brakes are underrated
| Brakes are underrated |
| Had to have brakes serviced recently. That got me thinking. When it comes to driving, there is no doubt that everyone can appreciate the importance of brakes. In fact, Mercedes Benz recently launched a series of ads featuring their new advanced braking system. |
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Perpetual Victim
| Perpetual Victim |
I am quite fed up with people calling themselves victims...
However, what I do not get is why do some people confuse consequence with victimization...
Last night, during one of our visits to California Adventure, we were faced with a scene that got me really worked up... |
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Cellphones and The Cancer...
| Cellphones and The Cancer They Are Suppose to Cause |
Just read this article this morning. Needless to say, it got me upset enough to rant about it.
Why is it that since there has not been conclusive evidence linking cellphone usage to cancer that people are still so wrapped up about it?
The reality is that regardless of whether or not one uses a cellphone at all, we are all exposed to tons of radiation as is. |
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Smoke and Mirrors
| Smoke and Mirrors |
If you ask me, I am quite fed up with people putting on a show. If you are selling entertainment, be upfront about it, and call it for what it is.
I can't stand it when they try to talk other's talk but can't walk other's walk. |
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How to put a gash on the ...
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How does one spot the ice...
| How does one spot the iceberg from the Titanic? |
How does one spot the iceberg from the Titanic? To answer this question, maybe it's easier to ask another. How does one not spot the iceberg from the Titanic?
Titanic will never sink!
Titanic is the ultimate party boat.
Stay on course!
All these great things helped the Titanic to arrive at the iceberg, not see it. |
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Saddest Day At The Happie...
| Saddest Day At The Happiest Place On Earth |
| The other night, a friend asked for us to babysit their kids. We decided that it would be fine. We can just take the kids to Disneyland. After all, we have annual passes. They also frequent the park. It would be a more familiar place for them... |
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Awesome Grape Candy From ...
| Awesome Grape Candy From Taiwan |
| Last time I was in Taiwan, I was introduced to this grape candy. I didn't get to have any until I returned. It's probably the best candy I've ever had. I decided to write something down, not only to share this find, but that it will serve as a reminder for me the next time I go so I remember what to buy... |
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Recommended Vendor for Ca...
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Trying To Figure Out If A...
| Trying To Figure Out If Aluminum Burns |
As long as I can remember, we've been using aluminum foil for grilling. All is well. Food tastes ok. Last summer, when I got my grill, a warning memo came with it It said never to put aluminum foil in the grill because it can burn.
I am not going to throw any aluminum into my grill anytime soon.
I would be interested to hear from anyone out there with support of why not to put aluminum into the grill. |
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Last Showing of Disneylan...
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Free HotSpot Wifi Interne...
| Free HotSpot Wifi Internet Access at Starbucks |
For a while now, T-Mobile has been offering HotSpot Wifi Internet access at Starbucks. The problem for most is how much we all end up having to pay for it. So many places are offering free internet access now. It's surprising that 1, At&T will take over this service, and 2, they still want to charge people for it.
Well, AT&T/Starbucks is now offering something, which is essentially free internet access...
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Bribing The Mexican Polic...
| Bribing The Mexican Police Officer |
| Finally, I can join the club of having bribed a Mexican police officer. I can finally hang up the hat and say my experience of Mexico is complete. |
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Vacation? Go fly a kite
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Common Courtesy
| Common Courtesy |
| What ever happen to common courtesy? I was on a flight today. During a stop through Austin, the few of us heading towards Orlando did not deplane. As we waited, we noticed that people started to board. After the pre-board of groups with children and seniors, a mid-age couple made it as the first couple on the plane. They sat down behind us. The first thing that happened, even before the lady sat down, she started to complain about a ringing sound... |
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Facebook Site with Google...
| Facebook Site with Google Thumbnail? |
 | | Where did this come from? I was just Facebooking, and noticed something strange... I thought there was something wrong with my IE when I noticed that facebook.com had a Google icon. It wasn't that long ago when they had their disagreements. Was this a prank? Did something happen between facebook and Google that we should know about? |
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Water Damage Phase 5 - Fu...
| Water Damage Phase 5 - Furniture Is Back! |
Been quite busy lately, so I haven't had a chance to update everyone. About 2 weeks ago, we got our furniture back! Yeah!!! It's not completely done yet. As we refused to have the contractors finish the job, they deducted some money from the originally agreed amount. We now have to finish the projects.
It's not going to be quick. However, it's just a great feeling to be able to kick-back on the sofa again.  |
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Water Damage Phase 4-Furn...
| Water Damage Phase 4-Furnitureless |
It's been over four weeks since the last time we saw the contractors. It's been almost 3 months since we've seen our furniture.
This will be the last chance for them. For now, I will not make public of their company name. However, if anyone is doing research on contractors in the Southern California area, and would like more info on this company, pleasse contact me. I will share the information offline. All I can say at this point is beware of trusting everything a contractor is claiming. Never let them "store" your furniture for you. |
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Water Damage Phase 3
| Water Damage Phase 3 |
Things are quite messy but progress is on its way. As work continue, we've had to move out more. Since the first set of pictures, we've now emptied our master bedroom, office, and partially emptied the spare bedroom/storage room. The remaining furniture is all piled up in the garage. I've also setup a temporary office in the garage. As the workers work, my work still needs to continue...
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Water Damage Phase 2
| Water Damage Phase 2 |
Finally, after some patient waiting, and complaints to the insurance company, things are finally on their way. In addition to the reconstruction, we've opted to hire the same contractors to do the repairs that got us here in the first place. It was quite shocking what they've found after they got started...
(Video included...) |
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Water Damage Phase 1
| Water Damage Phase 1 |
Restoration is on its way...
That's the good news...
Thank God for these guys. They are real pros... It's really comforting to see people willing to take care of their customers...
The bad news...
Insurance... |
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Where Is America Going?
| Where Is America Going? |
| This morning, on the radio, Dr. James Dobson of Focus On the Family came on, and read a quote from Ben Stein. This is a quote from Ben Stein back in 12/18/2005 on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary... |
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Taiwan, One Of The Jewels...
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What's With These "Social...
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Why Am I Still Up At This...
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The Reason For The Season
| The Reason For The Season |
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Received an email today. It took me to this.
In this holiday season, let's not forget the reason... |
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Generation Of Mediocrity
| Generation Of Mediocrity |
 Few days ago, I got an email from a friend about the "Chintendo Vii" from China.
At a quick glance, it's an obvious knock-off of the ever popular Nintendo Wii. Several months ago, the hot item on the tech community was the "ifone," an alternative to the iPhone from Apple... |
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One of the Strongest Typh...
| One of the Strongest Typhoons in Taiwan |
 It's definitely an experience... I have not experienced a typhoon in ages. These years in US, when I hear about typhoons in Taiwan, all I think about is just strong winds and rain. This time, being in Taiwan, it definitely feels different...
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Pouring Buckets
| Pouring Buckets |
Today, I woke up at 6:30am. Due to the jet lag, I am still a bit dizzy and zoned out. In addition to the lingering stickiness, we were welcomed by a huge down-pour... |
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Familiar Sticky Feeling
| Familiar Sticky Feeling |
We arrived in Taiwan yesterday morning. For the most part, we had a pretty sunny day. Regardless of the weather, we were quickly reminded of the humidity here... |
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Whatever Happened To Cust...
| Whatever Happened To Customer Service? |
Recently, maybe due to the mass power outages in the greater LA area, my cable internet service has not been performing at its norm. Tonight, it was crawling at best. Even the simple Google basic home page took some time to come in. As a result, I decided to call my service provider, Time Warner Cable... |
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Software and Medicine
| Software and Medicine |
When we are sick, it's natural that we either go to the doctors or reach for the next OTC medicine. In the back of our minds, we know that the doctors have been through years of training... |
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Lifetime Student...
| Lifetime Student... |
I believe, in life, we continue to be students, whether it be life lessons, or job skills required at hand... |
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All is well
| All is well |
Just a bit of follow-up from the previous message...
All is well with my friend's daughter and family. The little one is recovering very nicely. |
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Father's Love
| Father's Love |
The most common question a man gets asked when he is about to have his first child is "are you ready to be a dad?" No one is ever ready. Our lives do not ccome with instruction manuals like the products we buy in the stores. This new life that is given, comes with responsibilites so great that would cause many to back away. Yet, there is just something about this little life that turns a boy into a man... |
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Old Friends
| Old Friends |
Ran into some old friends today. Actually, they ran into us. These unexpected encounters are a lot of fun. It's been over a year since we saw each other... |
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Ant Problems (Round 3)...
| Ant Problems (Round 3)... |
Frustrating problems... Not only are these bus climbing patios, bypassing bug spray, they are now clawing under stucco, through the walls, and into the house. Just yesterday, I discovered a trail of ants marching through my livingroom... |
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Getting old...
| Getting old... |
How do you know when you are getting old? When you start to think about how things were when you were younger. "...I remembered gas used to cost so much per gallon..." The dead give-away is... |
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Ant Problems (Round 2)...
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Ant Problems...
| Ant Problems... |
I used to think having a swarm of ants is a big problem. About a year ago, we had a sudden infestation. There were trails of ants in several places around the house... |
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Technology
Da Vinci 1.0 Stepper Moto...
| Da Vinci 1.0 Stepper Motor Driver Replacement |
| Recently, after about 5 months of using my Da Vinci 1.0, I started to run into some problems printing. The carriage seems to skip about 5mm or so in the X-Axis from time to time during printing. Sometimes this happens within the first few layers of print, which was not too bad. Sometimes it happens hours into the print. When this happens, a loud rattling sound comes out of the stepper motor. For stock firmware printers, you might see error code 0030. Perhaps I will continue this story in another post... |
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The Infinite Wisdom of We...
| The Infinite Wisdom of Western Digital |
At around Christmas time, I bought 2 Western Digital 3TB My Book USB 3.0 drives from Target...
My intention was to use the WD software, and backup the first drive onto my second drive. I tried and tried, but was not able to get the server to recognize the second drive. |
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Android 4.2 Battery Drain
| Android 4.2 Battery Drain |
Just like many Galaxy Nexus owners, I got my update to 4.2 ten days ago. My initial assessment was very good. I liked the changes. However, after a couple of days using it, I noticed that I wasn’t getting through a full day on one full charge. I first attributed it to how much I was playing with Photo Sphere. It turned out that wasn’t the case. After some searching, and testing, I determined it was some combination of four things, display brightness, Exchange, location services, and cards… |
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VPN Using Cisco SOHO Rout...
| VPN Using Cisco SOHO Routers |
| Recently, I’ve been looking for a way to setup a simple VPN connection between two points. I was looking for an inexpensive, off-the-shelf solution. I already had a Linksys/Cisco RVS 4000. For the other end of the tunnel, I was looking to purchase another home office router, like the Cisco RV110W. I looked everywhere, but have not been successful determining if this was possible or not. As a result, I had to try on my own... |
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Chinese IME for Android
| Chinese IME for Android |
| I recently got a new Asus Eee Pad Transformer. I have to admit that I am enjoying it quite a bit. One thing that I had been struggling with has been the Chinese input. I had gotten too used to the HTC keyboard on my phone. One thing that got me somewhat upset is that Asus actually has a great Chinese keyboard that ships with the device. Unfortunately, it's only visible if the UI is set to Chinese. I need my English UI. Typing Chinese is a secondary, but required function. That's when I decided to go on a quest. |
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Two Excel Documents Side-...
| Two Excel Documents Side-by-side |
| I have been using Microsoft Excel for white a while now. One thing I have always been able to do was to open two Excel documents, lay them side-by-side, and leverage date from one to the other. Ever since I started to use Office 2007, I have missed that ability. Well, I found out how to do it yesterday! It's quite easy actually! |
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ASP.net Calling passing p...
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Facebook "Like" Button
| Facebook "Like" Button |
Recently, Facebook opened its doors to give people the ability to add what they call "Social Plugins" to their sites.
Last night, within a couple of hours, I was able to integrate another website with the new "Like" button.
Maybe I will post some simple step-by-step. For now, I hope you "Like" what I have done... |
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VS 2008 TFS TF30177 Error
| VS 2008 TFS TF30177 Error |
Recently, I setup a VS 2008 TFS, mainly to be used as a source control vault. Things have been working. The problem came when I tried to create a new project.
I got a TF30177 error. When searched around, I got many posts about installing SP1. That didn't work for me. |
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Microsoft Updates Killed ...
| Microsoft Updates Killed My Computer |
| For a while now, my Dell Precision M6300 has been having some crashing issues with Windows Explorer on Vista 32-bit Business. I've googled around to try to find a solution, but have not been able to get anything to work. Recently, the crashing became quite frequent I was crashing more than 5 times per day... |
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Host Department No More!
| Host Department No More! |
After being with Host Department for several years, I've decided to move on... The main reason... Price increase on an outdated hosting service...
After these years, this is the first time that I did not enjoy lookingfor a hosting company. Maybe that might be because I got slightlyspoiled with seeing how my site performs on cloud....
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Microsoft Updates Killed ...
| Microsoft Updates Killed My USB |
Dec. 10th, 2008, at 1:27 am PST, I noticed the icon in the tray for updates. I decided to be a good citizen and install the updates. Since it was late, I decided to let Microsoft take its course. This morning, after logging in, I noticed my mouse wasn't working. Good thing the touchpad still worked. After closer inspection, I noticed it killed all USB devices...
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I Am LinkedIN
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Traditional Chinese Suppo...
| Traditional Chinese Support For BlackBerry |
Got hooked up with an old friend. She found out that I have a BlackBerry so she asked if my BlackBerry could read Chinese Characters. This seems to be a very common request for BlackBerry users among the Chinese community. I guess I kinda fit the mold too since that was one of the first things I did...
This has been tested on the BlackBerry 8100, 8120, 8320. It has also failed on the 8330, due to Verizon mods to the OS... |
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BlackBerry Enterprise Ser...
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VMWare Virtual Machine Im...
| VMWare Virtual Machine Image Size Increase For Windows XP |
| I've been using VMWare Workstation for a while now. I use them to simulate customer environments. I've been creating Windows XP images allowing only 5GB of disk space for the OS and application. Recently, I came across the need to extend my image size... |
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URL Rewriter Blocking Res...
| URL Rewriter Blocking Response.Redirect |
A while back, I implemented the URLRewriter mentioned on Scott Gu's Blog. This gave me the ability to create search engine friendly URLs for all my pages and dynamic content. All was well until I started to get a bit fancy...
...with the two URLrewriting going on, my Response.Redirect stopped working... it just hangs... |
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Missing XP Desktop Taskba...
| Missing XP Desktop Taskbar |
| This past weekend, as I rebooted my computer, for some reason, the XP Desktop Taskbar went missing. Normally, I have Google Desktop and a Language toolbar loaded. Typically, they get pushed to the right-hand-side of my XP Taskbar, right next to the application tray... |
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Obout HTML Editor
| Obout HTML Editor |
| Recently, I got fed up with using the FCKEditor. The biggest problem, for some reason I cannot find any resources online, is that it seems to have issues when there is content on the same page loaded after it. Under normal circumstances of a hosted situation, I never run into this problem... |
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Google Web Accelerator?
| Google Web Accelerator? |
Several months ago, I was baited to try the Google Web Accelerator. Having no idea what it is and what it does, I took it at face value. I assued it's suppose to accelerate my web experience... |
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Working with Classes...
| Working with Classes... |
I am a novice when it comes to ASP.net. A few months ago, I took it upon myself to learn it. Since then, I came across quite a few things. One of the topics is working with classes. At first, all of my code resided in the CS page of each of the aspx pages. I quickly noticed that I was recoding many common funcitons. There had to be a better way.. |
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Slow Service... No More!
| Slow Service... No More! |
Hurray!  Went through 1 whole week of transfer. I am glad I waited. The new server is so much better... |
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Slow Service...
| Slow Service... |
Well, I've complained again. This time, they've offered to move my account to another web server. They promise that it will be much better. We shall see... |
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Slow Service...
| Slow Service... |
For the last year or so, I've been hosting my website at Host Department. They are definitely great when it comes to value. However, when it comes to performance... I wish I have better things to say... |
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