Selling It: Estée Lauder

Recently, a devotion talked an early time when Estée Lauder was founding her cosmetics company, waiting all day to meet a potential buyer. The speaker admitted that they weren't even sure if she was still alive. So I pulled up Wikipedia. Nope, she passed away in 2004.

The Wikipedia listed four quotes from her that I just thought were quite brilliant:

"If you have a goal, if you want to be successful, if you really want to do it and become another Estée Lauder, you've got to work hard, you've got to stick to it and you've got to believe in what you're doing."

"Beauty is an attitude. There's no secret. Why are all brides beautiful? Because on their wedding day they care about how they look. There are no ugly women - only women who don't care or who don't believe they're attractive."

"When you stop talking, you've lost a customer. When you turn your back, you've lost her."

"If you don't sell, it's not the product that's wrong, it's you."

I suppose that last one could be considered a little harsh, but if you think about it, we're always selling. Even if it's simply the version of ourselves that we're presenting to everyone else, we're still asking them to buy it.

The Sift 31-35

The Sift 31: People are People

• Have You Taken a Moment to Say 'Thank You'?
• Self-Destructive Instructions
• Strangers In Our Midst
• Treat Different Customers Differently
• Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders (Video - Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook)

Read more...

---

The Sift 32: Good to Know

• Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing than Typing
• AMBER Alerts Now Available on Facebook
• Examiners use spectrum analyzers to bust cellphone-packin' cheats
• Use a Google Voice Number from Outside the U.S.
• Encrypt, Password-Protect, and Keep Your Phone Out of Pocket to Avoid Warrantless Searches

Read more...

---

The Sift 33: Transit and Travel

• The Burden of the 787
• Streetcars and the Transit Master Plan
• Top 8 Ways to Score Free Hotel Upgrades
• Tesla Confirms Plans to Unveil Electric Model X SUV This Year
• WSDOT helps guy propose aboard Amtrak

Read more...

---

The Sift 34: Turmoil in Egypt

• YouTube, Flickr Show Escalating Violence in Egyptian Protests
• Facebook and Twitter Blocked in Egypt
• Internet Access & SMS Blocked in Egypt as Protests Escalate
• How Users in Egypt Are Bypassing Twitter & Facebook Blocks
• Protest Spreads in the Middle East (photos)

Read more...

---

The Sift 35: Hey, It's Facebook

• Netflix Working on Deep Facebook Integration
• Facebook may be developing, testing VoIP calls straight through its website
• Facebook Increases Security by Allowing HTTPS Usage Everywhere
• Facebook phone rumors resurface: cloud-based, HTC-built?
• Facebook Experimenting with "Social Captchas" for Authentication

Read more...

---

Suggestion for Haiti

It's my understanding that some of what Haiti encountered during the earthquake in 2010 was due in part to building codes that were not stringent enough for the types of disasters the tiny island nation could potentially weather, including earthquakes. If that is indeed not true, that this was just so massive a quake that better building codes wouldn't have made sense, then stop reading now as the rest of this post will be invalid.

I don't mean to be crass or up here spouting off in ignorance from the comfort of my comfy chair, this is just something that's been rattling around in my brain and I wanted to commit it to the blog, as it were. Hopefully it comes across in the manner intended.

But, if it's true that Haiti's building codes were (are?) inadequate, I'd like to offer a proposal. I read recently about when Monsanto got serious about safety - they declared that all of their facilities would be built to U.S. standards, or local country standards, whichever were more stringent. If a country had week or non-existent standards, that was fine, they'd just fall back on U.S. standards and be fairly confident that they weren't just getting by on "good enough."

So my thought is that Haiti ought to adopt a similar idea for building codes. Select a city or state (or country) with similar disaster opportunities - an area that has escaped similar disasters through stricter building codes. Maybe it's L.A., San Francisco, Miami. Maybe it's some other country altogether. But take those building codes and announce "Those are now our building codes." Like a country deciding that its official currency is the U.S. dollar, this would be planting a stake in the ground and saying "we are now in lock-step."

I think it makes sense from a number of perspectives. For the purposes of example, I'll just pick Los Angeles.

First, the government would no longer need to worry about people trying to get around the law or exert political pressure to change the laws to their advantage to the detriment of the people. (Well, at least not Haitians.)

Second, it would cost less. Even if they paid a little to that other organization to be kept in the loop, it would still cost less than developing and maintaining your own set of standards, since I imagine those can change from time-to-time as new technologies and learnings become accepted.

Third, cross-certification. If you can build in Los Angeles, then you know what's required to build in Haiti. And in time, it could work the other way... you've established yourself as a reputable company in Haiti, then you already know all the requirements and laws to get contracting jobs in Los Angeles. You could see other countries wanting to jump on board and suddenly you've got a global thing going and in the process, everyone's safer.

Fourth, tourism and compliance. You can invite code compliance officers and those that write the laws to come over from Los Angeles to train and review procedures. And their families can come along for a vacation very inexpensively. And they tell their friends about the lovely time they had and it's a shot in the arm for tourism.

I suppose it's hard to even think of tourism with Haiti still suffering so much, but that, too, will need to come back. If you'd like to learn more about what's currently going on in Haiti, you might check out World Vision's website. Also, check out these amazing photos from The Big Picture.

Life and Death and Cake

It's one of those days etched in my memory. Well, it's a weird sort of day, because it has a bit of a bridge to next week as well.

Today, of course was the day the Challenger exploded. Next week on my birthday, the Columbia disintegrated on its way back from a mission. I was in a Vegas hotel when I learned the news of the second, in my sixth grade class when I learned the news of the first when they wheeled in a TV for us to watch it launch and explode over and over again.

While the details are a little fuzzy in my brain, I'm pretty certain that this was the date my grandfather passed away. He was in a Reno hotel on a gambling trip and just didn't wake up. His funeral was on my birthday. We went to TGI Fridays after the burial. Hated that place for years, even if what little I can remember it was a joyous, happy time for everyone but me where lots of family gathered together at a big long table in the middle of the restaurant. I imagine they were joyful because they were remembering what a great guy he was and happy that he was no longer in the daily pain he endured from a silly thing he did as a teenager. But I just remember looking at the balloons and blinking traffic lights and street signs and stuffed bears and thinking what an awful place this is and how can you all be sitting here laughing and having fun. Perhaps it explains my extreme hatred of and discomfort around clutter and why I don't like making a big deal of my own birthday.

Of course, it's also Carol's birthday (the person, not the cat, though the cat was named after her). Happy Birthday, Carol M., wherever you are.

How To: Fix a "TE Error" on an LG-WM2277HW (part 2 of 2)

<<< Back to part 1 of 2 (introduction and step 1)

Step 2 - After they're off, you can slide the entire top of the unit backwards and then lift off.

Step 3 - Remove the soap drawer.  (The basket is on top because I'm still not sure if the ceiling's going to cave in and if it does, I don't want it to fall into the machine.  Crazy, I know.)

Step 4 - I realized there was probably water still in the machine, so I drained it at this point.  You'd probably do it earlier in the process just to be done with it since it takes some time for the water to drain.  This shows the door removed, but that's actually not necessary.  There may have been a screw or two in here that helps hold the front in place.

Step 5 - Back up top, there are a few screws that hold the control panel in place.

Step 6 - With the control panel resting on top -- it's still connected by the wires in the middle -- you have access to a few screws that hold the front panel on.  You have unplugged the machine, right?

Step 7 - Remove the tension ring.  Be careful not to damage the gasket that seals the door.  

Another shot of the ring.  The machine has a metal lip on the front panel and the gasket fits around that and then the ring holds it tightly.

The ring contains a really powerful spring.  I actually needed my wife's help getting the ring back in place afterwards, the coordination of holding it in place while applying pressure (while being careful of the gasket) really benefited from two sets of hands.   The machine occasionally dribbled a little bit before the repair, but now it doesn't.  Hooray.

A shot of the metal rim and gasket.

Step 8 - Disconnect the door sensor from the right side of the machine.  (If your door opens to the right, it might be on the left.)  I can't tell if this picture is oriented correctly.  After this point, turning on the machine will get you the "dE error" (door) instead.

Now, we can see the problem.  The curve at the top of the photo is the southeast corner of the opening.  Here two blue wires go into a plug and that plug plugs in.

Yep, look at that.  Wire's broken.  

Step 9 - You could probably replace the entire plug, or just strip the wire, reattach to the plug and then secure with electrical tape as I did.

Step 10 - Reassemble everything.  I recommend testing as soon as the door sensor plug is reattached, just to be safe.  But here it is - up and running.   And has been running perfectly since then.  (Including no longer occasionally dribbling out the front while running.)

Did you find this helpful? Help me - the next time you want to buy something on Amazon.com, click here - that will give me an affiliate/finder's fee. You get the same great prices, but you help me buy more coffee.

How To: Fix a "TE Error" on an LG-WM2277HW (part 1 of 2)

Last November, we noticed that the drywall ceiling in our laundry room was bowing, as if there was water pushing down on it. The sky was literally falling. Or at least literally about to fall. As if that wasn't enough, the very next day, the washing machine threw a "tE error."  (So this is about the error, not the stupid ceiling.)

LG-WM2277HW
Washing Machine

The LG-WM2277HW is a rather nice front-loading electric washing machine from LG, but it's a fancy computerized deal, so things like this can be kinda scary. When we first got it, it would often throw some other error, but it turned out that it was because I was spinning the drum after emptying a load. When I'd do that, the machine would turn on. Thought that was pretty cool. Well, it wasn't.

So, yeah, turning the thing now would get me a "tE" flashing on the screen. Now, this was a rather expensive washing machine no longer under warranty and we had laundry to do and we didn't know how long until the ceiling was going to collapse. (By that evening we were pretty sure there wasn't several gallons of water up there, but the ceiling was obviously waterlogged.)

I have manuals for all of our appliances saved on the computer, so I went upstairs to look up the error. It said that there was a problem with the thermistor. To this day, I've never bothered to find out what a thermistor is. But, the more I looked on Google, the more cases I came across where someone got the tE error simply by moving the washing machine or by running a really heavy lopsided load. The thermistor wasn't failing, a wire was being knocked loose. Sounds to me like a manufacturing defect.

My wife, who has incredible faith in me -- or hadn't seen the instructions that I'd seen (copied below) encouraged me into trying to repair the thing itself.

The instructions I found:

To be more specific, unplug unit. Behind the machine are two plastic kick plates, remove to slide off the top. Once off, two top self tap metal screws and one screw behind panel wall, remove. Remove two detergent screws. Lift electrical panel and set on top of machine. Remove four top screws. Bottom drain has one screw in front, take out plastic cover and one screw in back. Take off rubber by opening door. With a screw driver, prey and lift up the brass spring ring and remove. Then the front panel should slide up and out. Be careful because electric wire is still connected, move to the side of unit. You will then be able to find the thermostat. Unplug and replace, you will need to use the same rubber bushing. Took me an hour, I’m not an appliance repair guy.

Good enough?  I was able to get the job done, but it left a lot to be desired.   So, I decided to document the job myself, in case that helped.  And due to my own stupidity, I did part of the job twice -- I wanted a photo of the error itself but had forgotten to take one.  I thought I had an easy way to get to the error, but I actually rebroke the broken part.   Also, I didn't take photos until I was reassembling, so I had to rearrange them all.  I think I have them all in order and I captured all of the relevant parts.  And yes, this is the kind of thing that voids warranties, but maybe it will save someone the cost of having some guy come out for what's a pretty dumb little engineering defect.

The dreaded "tE Error"

The tools I used: standard screwdriver, flashlight, utility knife, electrical tape, pliers, small screwdriver

Word of caution: Not only does this void your warranty, the metal edges are very sharp.  I got one tiny cut and I think I was very lucky that this was the only injury I received.  They wear safety gloves, vests, pants and eye protection when assembling these things.

Step 1 - Ok, here we go.  The lid is attached by two plastic "kick plates" on the back.  Each plate has two screws.

Continue on to part 2 of 2 (steps 2-10, with photos) >>>

Self-Induced Sickness

Shortly after putting the kids to bed last night, the room started spinning. No matter what position I got into, it kept spinning. I finally found that if I lounged on the couch and let my head loll to one side, that was OK. So I lounged there for a long time with my eyes closed not sleeping.

Later, I went upstairs to the bedroom, took a melatonin and laid in bed not sleeping. At one point, I noticed I could see every blood vessel and vein in my arm. They had all come up to the surface. I didn't fall asleep for a long time. When I finally did, I slept very well, but was in no way ready to get up for the day and had to end up calling in sick.

I slept some more (garbage trucks didn't help any... yeah, yeah, doing their job, I know) and then laid in bed and read for awhile. By lunch time, I was starving and had lunch plans, so got ready and went and met friends for lunch.

I thought about it and decided that I was probably dehydrated and also just exhausted. Normally we get to sleep in a little bit on the weekends. But on Friday night, small group went really late (which is fun), but we didn't know what time the contractor was coming on Saturday, so we got up early (he showed at 10:30) and then Sunday got up early again because we've been going to both church services. So I had no time to recuperate. I am going to have to reevaluate my schedule to make sure there's no recurrence and make sure I'm getting enough to drink because that was not fun at all.

Fortunately, there was nothing more to my getting sick, even though I told myself it was ok to throw up if that made things better. But that didn't happen, yay.