General

Easter Egg Hunt

By on Monday, April 9, 2012

Easter is not complete without an Easter egg hunt especially for the kiddies Ioan, Viela, and Jeanne. My mom and dad bought eggs and Edong, Elanor, James, Michelle, and I spent the night before Easter painting eggs. Michelle slept at 3AM!

The next day, we brought the eggs to the beach thinking we can have the egg hunt there. However, it turned out that there were other people also there. So we decided to postpone and have it at home instead. Unfortunately, it was raining when we got there.

We were not about to let rain spoil our egg hunt. We decided to have it indoors. We hid the eggs throughout the den and then let the kiddies loose. It was a riot and everyone, kiddies and kiddies-at-heart included, had a fun and enjoyable egg hunt.

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General

LG Optimus Black Blues

By on Sunday, April 1, 2012

I was really bored and couldn’t sleep so I figured, why not try the recently released Temple Run for Android on  my test Android phone, a SIM-less LG Optimus Black. So I booted up, joined my home WiFi network, opened Android Market Google Play, and searched for “Temple Run”. No connection. I retried. Still no connection. I checked the browser and other network apps and they seemed to be working fine. Only Google Play was not working. It seems it requires a data connection even if I’m already on WiFi.

I figured, maybe it’s an Android 2.2 Frozen Yogurt problem. The Android 2.3 Gingerbread update has supposedly been made available by LG so I figured maybe it’s time I should upgrade. I went to the LG website and found out that there is an unspecified, hopefully Android 2.3, update available. But I needed to download a Windows USB driver and a Windows update manager. Unfortunately, I have no Windows machine. Dead end. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining about the iPhone being reliant on iTunes :P

UPDATE: Turns out it’s the time and date. I just set it to current and Google Play worked. Go figure.

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General

Buffalo MiniStation Stealth

By on Monday, March 26, 2012

For file transport duties, far I was able to make do with my not-so-portable Buffalo DriveStation. However, I recently hooked up the Drivestation to my LinkStation Live as storage expansion so I need another portable drive for file transport duties. But I don’t usually transport files much since the advent of, you know, the Internet. But it so happened that Michelle also needed to backup her files since she’s going to be getting a new laptop. So we got a Buffalo MiniStation Stealth. It’s nothing unusual, just your run-of-the-mill 1TB USB 3.0 portable hard drive. The interesting thing, at least to me, is that this is my 4th (5th if you count the now-replaced LinkStation Pro) Buffalo product to date. I even jokingly asked the sales clerk if they have a loyalty card for Buffalo.

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General

Ignition Coil Problem and Others

By on Saturday, March 24, 2012

Michelle asked me to get the car checked as the vibrations were getting worse. I’ve previously ruled out the engine as the source of the vibration. I know that it’s because of the rubber hood stoppers (or the lack of) and the radiator fan. But I also needed to have the engine oil pan resealed due to a leak. Plus it’s due time for an engine oil change.

Deciding to do everything one time, I headed to my favorite Shell quick lube shop.  Unfortunately, when I got there, I learned that they don’t do oil pan resealing. Since resealing requires the removal of the engine oil, it makes sense to do the resealing and the oil change together. So I headed out, this time towards Fusion R, my favorite car repair shop.

On the way, I kept watch for an auto supply shop where I can by rubber hood stoppers. I found one that had an available parking. I turned in, parked, and bought two stoppers for P75 each. The staff was helpful and they even installed them. No more hood vibrations!

I got back in the car and started the engine. Engine won’t crank. Thinking it’s the upward inclination of the parking, I neutraled down and tried starting again. Still won’t. I asked for the help of the staff and they pushed the car up the incline and back to where I was just a minute before.

The shop owner came out, later followed by the mechanic, and they diagnosed the problem to be the ignition coil. They replaced it. They also noticed the radiator fan problem and diagnosed it to be the motor. Since I knew that it has a problem already, I agreed and they replaced it too. Since I was there, I also had my oil change. My bill quickly ran up to P5,270. Ouch! But there certainly was a huge improvement in the noise and vibration levels.

Forgot about the oil pan resealing.

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