Archive for the ‘General’ Category.

Please Choose a Secure Password

(Originally posted May 26, reposted because it’s annoyingly relevant)

In the last 6 months, 12 18 22 25 of my friends have had their email accounts hacked. Either that, or all my friends are jumping on the Make.Money.Fast bandwagon by sending me junk email. If someone hacked your email account, what evil could they wrack upon you and your friends?

Here is a little article showing how you can make an easy-to-remember and (hopefully!) impossible-to-hack password. Please use this advice: Click me! Click! Clickie-poo! Clickie-kins!! Click-er-doodle!

Almost all of my hacked friends are on Yahoo. If you use Yahoo mail, please change your password to be secure!

Fixing 16th Street and 24th Street BART Station Signage

After 6+ years of riding BART, I still can’t tell when I’m at 16th Street Station or 24th Street Station. Can you? Go ahead and click on the images to look closer.

How long did it take you to tell the two stations apart? Just so you know, those are the best photos I could get of the stations from inside the train after several attempts. Most of my photos look more like this. I’ve got a lot of these shots on my camera:

Can you tell which shots are of 16th Street Station and which are of 24th Street Station? No, I can’t either. And yes, every photo has the sign pretty much in the middle of the shot; I really tried to get good photos.

For comparison, here are some shots of other stations. Same camera, same angles.

The other stations are all much easier to identify. Different architecture, different color schemes, and visible signs.

Fixing this isn’t hard. The signs at 16th and 24th just need to have some light cast on them.

Health Insurance

A couple of friends have asked about health insurance they might get. Here is my current solution. Feel free to write me if you have a better solution!

I have ClearProtection Plus 5000 from Anthem Blue Cross http://anthem.com/ca
$190/month for “very good insurance after a $5k deductable” for this 42 year old man living in California.

ehealthinsurance.com is a good site to price out plans. It gets confusing and frustrating quickly thought because well, insurance is confusing and frustrating. It’s likely that my plan will come out the least expensive of the plans that actually cover anything. Cheaper plans are available but I noticed that they always only cover something like 50% after the deductible. So your $100k heart attack might cost you $50k :-(

OK Go at Stern Grove

Megan and I went to the last concert of the summer at Stern Grove. OK Go headlined and The Family Crest opened. It was totally fun and picnicy!

Ok, I guess we couldn’t see the stage very well, but that wasn’t the important part!
Oh and did I mention that our parking karma was amazing? We showed up at like 2:20 and drove around to the “back” of the park just in time for them to open up the parking spaces at the entrance to the park :-)

Do Car Alarms Deter Theft?

From an article in Via, the Magazine of the American Automobile Association (AAA).

Short form: No, traditional blaring car alarms do not work. They are just a PITA for you and piss off your neighbors.

(via)

Research suggests that an audible alarm is less effective than car recovery devices, such as OnStar, and immobilizers when protecting your vehicle against robbery.

The quick answer: no. After surveying insurance claims for 73 million vehicles in 1997, the nonprofit  Highway Loss Data Institute  found “no overall reduction in theft losses” for cars with traditional audible alarms. That’s because blaring alarms rarely indicate theft. So frequent are false alarms that people are conditioned to ignore them.
Many cars come with an immobilizer, a device that prevents the engine from starting unless it detects a computer chip in your key fob. It isn’t foolproof and it won’t get you a discount, but it’s harder to crack than a standard alarm–and it won’t wake the neighbors every time a garbage truck rumbles past.

How to open a Kidde AccessPoint KeySafe

Here I quickly show you how to unlock and lock a Kiddee AccessPoint Portable Keysafe Original. This is the same mechanism as the GE Supra C3 Keysafe. This is a lockbox often used by a realtor to lock a key to a door in real-estate.

Obligatory Physiology Money Shot

How I know I have O+ blood:

One section of taking Physiology over the summer was on blood. I gotta say that pricking myself with that lancet by hand totally sucked. I’ve got to get better at that.

(Previously: Chemistry Money Shot)

How To Spend My Odd Denomination Gift Card

I got a gift card a while back. I ended up having $58.02 left on it. It’s a bother to try and spend EXACTLY $57.02 and some retail clerks don’t know how to ring up a multi-credit card purchase. I was able to apply the money to my Amazon.com account without any fees and a minimum of  hassle.

I used my non-reloadable card to buy an Amazon Gift Card. Then I applied that Gift Card to my Amazon account so I can spend it. The beauty is that Amazon will let me purchase a gift card in any amount, in my case I bought a $57.02 gift card and applied it to my Amazon.com account, finishing off my non-reloadable card. You might have to look around on the Amazon site to find the “arbitrary denomination” cards. Here is the current link to it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/gc/ref=topnav_giftcert

What I Want for Xmas: SRL Show at my Apartment

If you really loved me, you’d get me this for Xmas
(on eBay)

(right-click and open in a new window to enlarge)

What Madness Is This?

A parachute delivered, rocket powered skycrane? On Mars? Seriously? Seriously Awesome!

local version:

If I were a martian and I saw this thing descending, I’d be seriously freaked out. Once again, truth > fiction!