Wow, it took me a lot longer to load some pictures on some digital photo frames than it should have. We have two digital photo frames - one that someone gave us and one that we just bought. The one someone gave us is a few (??) years old. It had a 2 GB SD card in it with 172 photos. I just wanted to add 100 photos and be done. No problem!
Turns out I could only add about 20 more before I got an error: "The root of drive F:\ is formatted with FAT file system and can only store a limited number of items, store in a sub-folder or reformat the drive using NTFS file system ". After doing some reading online, only the oldest FAT format has this limitation, but FAT32 does not. And since I wasn't positive that the frame supported NTFS. I decided to format the SD card as FAT32 (after backing up all the files of course).
I formatted the SD card as FAT32, was able to add back all 272 files, and view them all on the older frame. That was great, but I wanted to see how much better they would look on the new frame. So I took the SD card out of the old frame and put it in the new frame. Hmmmm..... the new frame is not recognizing the SD card. Well, since the frame is new and FAT is an old file system format, I figured maybe I need to format the card as NTFS for the new frame.
Now I formatted the SD card as NTFS and added back all 272 pictures a second time. Put it back in the new frame....still not recognized. I pressed every button on the thing trying to get it to read from the SD card instead of internal memory. No luck. It was reading pics from internal memory just fine though. So I figure at least I can copy them to internal memory and it will work.
I copy all 272 files (third time) to the internal memory of the frame. Now the new frame is showing the photos and looks great. My wife tells me that someone else she knew had the same problem with an older memory card. Sounds like the new frames don't recognize old SD cards, no matter what their file system is.
Since the new frame can't use the SD card, I figure I might as well put the card back with the old frame. Oh, guess what? Now the SD card is formatted as NTFS and the old frame doesn't recognize it. So I reformat the SD card (third formatting) back to FAT32 and copy the 272 files (fourth copying) back to the card, put it into the old frame, and now we have two frames showing the same 272 pictures. Hooray!
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Get in line with text messages at Olathe DMV
DMV's always get a bad rap. I had a great experience at the Olathe DMV today, so thought I should give them some credit. They use a system that allows you to start getting in line before you're even there by sending them a text message. It puts you in line and tells you your estimated wait time. That way you can schedule it to show up right before you're up, so its almost like having an appointment.
I had to go get a license today, so I used the system. Turns out they didn't even have a wait anyway! First I got in line and it said I was up in 10 minutes. I wasn't planning to be there for half an hour or more, so I cancelled that one. When I was ready to leave, there was only a 1 minute wait! Another nice feature is if your turn comes up and you're not there, you can still push yourself to the front of the line if you show up anytime in the next 30 minutes. So that's what I did when I got there, even though the line was only one person long.
The system is developed by QLess. Here's a text message transcript of my texts this morning. You start the queueing process by texting them "Olathe DL"
I had to go get a license today, so I used the system. Turns out they didn't even have a wait anyway! First I got in line and it said I was up in 10 minutes. I wasn't planning to be there for half an hour or more, so I cancelled that one. When I was ready to leave, there was only a 1 minute wait! Another nice feature is if your turn comes up and you're not there, you can still push yourself to the front of the line if you show up anytime in the next 30 minutes. So that's what I did when I got there, even though the line was only one person long.
The system is developed by QLess. Here's a text message transcript of my texts this morning. You start the queueing process by texting them "Olathe DL"
Monday, November 12, 2012
Landlord check list for renting house
When my wife and I got married, we each owned a house. We moved into one and started renting the other. Eventually we moved to another house and started renting both of our original ones. Now that we have rented them out a few times, I wanted to make myself a check list for doing it again. Decided to post it online in case its helpful to others. Here are the main steps that we take.
1) Advertise house on Craigslist with rent, square footage, pictures deposit required. We don't allow pets, so we emphasize that too.
2) Clean house. Identify anything that needs fixing and schedule repairs.
3) Show to people for about 1 week. We've averaged about 6 parties looking at it. We try to pick some week night or weekend to show to as many as we can so we can save some trips. Ask people about when they would plan to move in. (UPDATE: on our 4th time renting, the house became vacant in early December. There was virtually no interest from anyone to see it until January, then it still took us another month to get an interested party)
4) After showing to several parties, pick the one party that seems the best of those that still want to move in. We sometimes have 2 or more parties who want to move in after they look at it, sometimes just one.
5) Ask the people you chose to fill out applications, one per adult. Email them application and document about credit rights. Tell any people that you didn't choose that you're going forward with someone else but will call them back if the first choice doesn't work out (which has happened twice). NOTE: applicants should not send their SSN by email, for security reasons. If they are scanning and emailing the application, then have them tell you SSN over the phone instead of writing on application.
6) For each adult applicant, do: credit check, employment verification with employer, residence verification and referral with current and past landlord. All of that should be on application. For credit check, must have SSN, DOB, and signature giving approval so those also need to be on application. We also do background checks because my wife is a private investigator, but those can be expensive otherwise. If you do that, then you should get permission for that too. We charge $20 per application to pay for credit checks, but only if we pick them to move in.
7) If you want to accept them after that, then let them know right away. Get deposit and have them sign lease soon if move-in date isn't for a while. Otherwise, get deposit, application fees, and pro-rated rent and sign lease at walk through time right before move in. Set time to meet for walk through and transferring keys.
8) Create lease agreement and send to tenant for review, along with EPA Lead pamphlet (only for old houses).
9) Send tenant phone numbers to change utilities into their name and explaining trash procedure.
10) Make sure you have enough keys for them. Bring keys, garage door openers, camera, lease, and walk through check list to final walk through.
11) At walk through, review condition and any special instructions for each room. Take broad pictures to document general condition of each room. Takes 20-30 minutes. Go through lease together explaining every item, 20-30 minutes.
12) Sign lease, get check for deposit, pro-rated rent, and application fees. Give keys.
There are lots of templates for applications and lease agreements, so find the ones that you like best. In my opinion on the lease agreement, the more detailed the better to minimize misunderstandings or disagreements on responsibilities.
UPDATE: Regarding signing lease on move-in, we had a case recently where we had 3 people who said they wanted to move in, then we ran the applications for them, then they changed their minds. So we spent $50 on application fees for nothing and had the property unlisted a few days. That made us think we should get a signed lease and deposit earlier. Or rather than signing the lease up front, maybe get the deposit and have a separate paper that says deposit will be forfeited if applicants back out.
UPDATE: Regarding signing lease on move-in, we had a case recently where we had 3 people who said they wanted to move in, then we ran the applications for them, then they changed their minds. So we spent $50 on application fees for nothing and had the property unlisted a few days. That made us think we should get a signed lease and deposit earlier. Or rather than signing the lease up front, maybe get the deposit and have a separate paper that says deposit will be forfeited if applicants back out.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Eddy-Ballentine Trail
My wife and I went hiking recently on the Eddy-Ballentine trail in Kansas City, MO. I used my MapMyFitness phone application to track our route via GPS, and that map is below. We loved the terrain and wildlife. There are lots of rock features, some hills, and some creek beds. And we saw a deer and a turtle during our hike.
The wild life that we didn't appreciate were all the ticks. Luckily my wife thought ahead of time that we should take precautions so we wore long pants and sleeves and hats. When we finished hiking we checked each other for ticks and we literally had about 10 each! Most of those we found on the outside of our clothing, but we both did also find a couple inside our clothing. This was mid-Spring, which I think is a prime season for them. But regardless, cover your skin when you hike there.
The other issue that we had was following the trail. It is marked in many places, but the markers are just pretty small orange dots or arrows. No real signs after the trail head. You can see by the map that there are some loops. At one point we were on the northern loop and realized that we recognized the terrain and had missed the cutoff to get off the loop. Then we back tracked and found the cutoff, but then we missed the next part too. We had to check the MapMyFitness map on the phone to see where we had gone wrong. If we hadn't have had that, we may have ended up at the golf course to the east, or somewhere else, I'm not really sure.
But again, it was a really nice trail, so if you're careful about the ticks and are careful (or familiar enough with the trail) to not get lost, then its a great hike right in Kansas City.
View Eddy-Ballentine Trail in a larger map
The wild life that we didn't appreciate were all the ticks. Luckily my wife thought ahead of time that we should take precautions so we wore long pants and sleeves and hats. When we finished hiking we checked each other for ticks and we literally had about 10 each! Most of those we found on the outside of our clothing, but we both did also find a couple inside our clothing. This was mid-Spring, which I think is a prime season for them. But regardless, cover your skin when you hike there.
The other issue that we had was following the trail. It is marked in many places, but the markers are just pretty small orange dots or arrows. No real signs after the trail head. You can see by the map that there are some loops. At one point we were on the northern loop and realized that we recognized the terrain and had missed the cutoff to get off the loop. Then we back tracked and found the cutoff, but then we missed the next part too. We had to check the MapMyFitness map on the phone to see where we had gone wrong. If we hadn't have had that, we may have ended up at the golf course to the east, or somewhere else, I'm not really sure.
But again, it was a really nice trail, so if you're careful about the ticks and are careful (or familiar enough with the trail) to not get lost, then its a great hike right in Kansas City.
View Eddy-Ballentine Trail in a larger map
Monday, June 25, 2012
Trader Joe's High Brow Chocolate Chip Cookies serving size discrepency
I decided to send this email to Trader Joe's recently regarding one of their products.
"Admittedly, this is a fairly minor issue...but my wife and I noticed what seems like an inconsistency on the box for the Highbrow Chocolate Chip Cookies. On the front panel, there is an arrow pointing to four cookies with a note that says "serving suggestion". But on the side panel in the Nutrition Facts it says 'Serving Size 2 cookies'. We're wondering if one of those is a mistake, or if the suggestion on the front is that a person eat two servings of cookies. The latter doesn't seem to make sense, and actually seems a little misleading as a person could easily think that 4 cookies was the serving size and see the Calories per serving of 140 calories, and accidentally eat twice the calories that they expect. So we hope that you will change one or the other to make them consistent. Thank you."
Pictures of cookie box are below. Here was their response:
"Hi Eric,
Thank you for contacting us and sharing your feedback! All of our Trader Joe's products will have the statement 'serving suggestion' next to the picture on the packaging. This is because the pictures are only a suggestion on how to serve, therefore it does not represent the number of cookies inside the package.
The serving sizes on our products are always considered according to their nutritionals. Our customers make the decision as to how much they consume.
Thank you,
Trader Joe's
Customer Relations"
"Admittedly, this is a fairly minor issue...but my wife and I noticed what seems like an inconsistency on the box for the Highbrow Chocolate Chip Cookies. On the front panel, there is an arrow pointing to four cookies with a note that says "serving suggestion". But on the side panel in the Nutrition Facts it says 'Serving Size 2 cookies'. We're wondering if one of those is a mistake, or if the suggestion on the front is that a person eat two servings of cookies. The latter doesn't seem to make sense, and actually seems a little misleading as a person could easily think that 4 cookies was the serving size and see the Calories per serving of 140 calories, and accidentally eat twice the calories that they expect. So we hope that you will change one or the other to make them consistent. Thank you."
Pictures of cookie box are below. Here was their response:
"Hi Eric,
Thank you for contacting us and sharing your feedback! All of our Trader Joe's products will have the statement 'serving suggestion' next to the picture on the packaging. This is because the pictures are only a suggestion on how to serve, therefore it does not represent the number of cookies inside the package.
The serving sizes on our products are always considered according to their nutritionals. Our customers make the decision as to how much they consume.
Thank you,
Trader Joe's
Customer Relations"
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