Tuesday, December 24, 2013

The catch with T-Mobile's $30 monthly plan

It's unlimited text and data, first 5Gb at 4G!  It includes only 100 min.  But you will later find out that each extra min is 10 cents, which is the lowest you can get for prepaid.  So far so good.

You may get the plan from Walmart, but as long as you buy a sim activation kit online at t-mobile, you have the choice when you activate.  I don't how what happened but I got the sim for free, but today it's $10.  I was just going to get a free sim for every kid because I spotted that their $10 pay as you go last for 90 days.  Not so fast now in case they drop that again.

The 1st hurdle is actually with AT&T to unlock my phone.  I setup profile for my wife but the bill is under my name.  It may be the probable cause that I couldn't unlock.  I waited until the contract ended and then some, because I can't risk any mishaps in the busiest time of the year.  Finally I chat with them online and it was quite helpful.  May be it's my phone, they have a procedure that I have to do it.  I don't have another carrier's sim at the time so I didn't try.  I copied the steps from chat but the 1st line is missing before I realized it.

A couple of days later, I received an email with the instructions.  This time they have an unlock code that I don't think I have it before.  When the T-Mob sim came, I inserted it, power on, entered the unlock code and it seemed to work.  I was on the t-mob network but can't make any calls because my sim wasn't activated.  But I am sure they can't fuck me up on the carrier unlock.

I considered carefully when to activate.  I tried the activate website and it seemed to work and help to transfer my number too.  But when I actually do it I want not to be at a very busy time when there are no real agents to trouble shoot.  And I have 2 days off so there is one spare day for fuck ups when they claim to do it in 24 hours.  And I don't want to wait too long when it's close to the deadline of the activation of my free sim.  And I don't want to start losing things from the package.

So I took the plunge on Xmas eve day before I realized it.  It went totally smoothly online until the last payment page.  I use Linux and they screw up.  Who wouldn't do a website nowadays without sticking to some common standards?  I was afraid that I got the number transferred but I can't call because my service wasn't paid.

They don't have online chat.  It's terrible when there are so many numbers involved.  I tried to pay elsewhere online but they don't have my number registered yet.

I called as the last resort and very soon an agent answered.  He was helpful.  He got those data that I entered online.  Instead of payment, he first deals with the transfer first.  AT&T wants to screw me.  They want my AT&T account number instead of my phone number.  But I have a browser tab on that ready.  Now that was OK and before he continued, the phone got cut off.  I was using my mobile phone.  So I switched to my landline.

Another agent answers the phone very soon.  I think the 1st guy is American dealing with carrier transfer and tech stuff.  This woman is in India dealing with other non-tech stuff.  Now, I got too many apologizes in one day.  It sounds as if he is sorry that t-mob website don't support Linux well enough, but that would be a first.  She is sorry for the cut off.  After a minute or two she confirmed that the transfer is successful and transfers me to payment.  This 3rd call center could have been in Mexico.  Again I don't have to wait and some agent pickup the phone soon.  May be I picked the right day in the year?  She is not sure what my problem is and I understand that the usual automatic prepaid payment via the phone is available.  So I said goodbye and dial 223 or something.  It was wrong.  You dial 611 but * or #  then 223.  Seriously!

I dial 611 again and realized the correct number should be prefixed with a * or # (that I don't remember).  It doesn't matter because I couldn't pay anyway.  Because the transfer is actually not completed.  I called 611 again to find out that I have to wait 2 hours until I got the completion text.

Before that I registered on t-mobile website but then the registration wasn't real because I don't have an active number to go with it.

A couple of hours later I can receive call too.  And I got the completion text.  Now I can pay online, after registration again.  And I sign up for automatic payment.  But as soon as I paid, learned to check the balance, my 100 min was up as indicated on the website!!  What's going on?  I called 611 again with no waiting.  The guy assured me that my account status was OK and I can use the phone.  1st they have a funny way to tell the balance. I paid $30 and they say my balance is $0 and I will be paying $30 next month.  But really the minutes count is wrong and after some wait the used minutes drops from 100 to 10.  But I don't think I made 10 connected calls.

Before the transfer completion I can dial out but incoming calls go straight to my old AT&T voicemail.  I looked it up and enter the t-mob voicemail number into my phone and it didn't seem to work.

Somehow it all worked.  Then I wanted to setup visual voicemail (for my wife).  There is a subscribe button on the website but it does nothing except redirect to your homepage.  Then I did what I prefer to do, switch over to her google number voicemail.  Android reported that it can't do it and I have to talk to t-mob. 

After a while of online search, I confirmed that t-mob don't allow visual voicemail nor forward voicemail for prepaid accounts.  This is pretty strange as I would think $50 and up prepaid plans are more popular and the money isn't too bad.  I thought I got an old internet post of how to switch to google voice email.  In GV I setup a contact with my mobile phone number, then I setup a group for it.  If group members call, GV will not try to ring any numbers so the call will go straight to google voicemail.  Now I just need to setup call forward in my phone, to forward when no answer to my google number.  But the problem is, forwarding isn't allowed by the t-mob network, and that's why you just can't simply change over to GV voicemail.  A waste of time.

Those are the catches.  I spend half a day doing it, on xmas eve.  May be I'm lucky.  I could have waited for 24 hour and nothing would happen because AT&T wants my account number.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Mulching fallen leaves on lawn

This is another "why I didn't thought of that" moment.  I was brain washed into racking up the leaves, and put them in the green collection bin.  That is a lot of work and last many weeks for all leaves to fall.

I didn't know what triggered me to search how to deal with fallen leaves.  Indeed I didn't remember what I was searching.  I agree that mulching fallen leaves save a lot of resources.

Just happened that my 1st season small battery mower had a mulching attachment.  I only know that it is for grass, and I use it a lot out of laziness.  I also use the grass chip collection bag because it is convenient too.  At the front yard, mulching the grass cuttings may spread the chippings into the sidewalk.  There's more work to clean up.

My mulching attachment is to keep the grass chips in a loop around the blades, instead of allowing them to go out into the bag.  The grass are cut finer and drop back onto the ground.

Leaves look very different from grass so I doubted.  When I mow the fallen leaves, I was impressed.  The leaves are palm sized, dried and brittle.  One pass over the yellow leaves, the pile is gone leaving a green path.  I can still small dots under the short grass.  But instead of a very yellow pile, the ground turns green with barely visible yellow dots at an angle.

It's easier than mowing.  You can easily see where the leaves are done.  My mower isn't that big so the lesser the overlapping passes, the more effort are saved.  But my small mower is very good at manoeuvring to get to the leaves.  Even for a big pile (by nature) you can still see the lawn after all leaves are mulched. 

Now I can just mulch the leaves when I mow the lawn as soon as the leaves fall.  I don't need to wait for sufficient leaves to pile up before raking.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Clean and seal your grout perfectly with green chemicals

Grout is like teeth.  The two very effective cleaning agent is baking soda and hydrogen peroxide.  Dry or paste baking soda helps to polish away trapped dirt and especially grease.  Hydrogen peroxide bleaches.  I always know that.  If your grout is white for example, you can get back the original color as white as you want.  The problem is the amount of work and the amount of hydrogen peroxide to use.  Now I made it perfect.

First option.  You add first-aid 3% hydrogen peroxide slowly into baking soda powder.  You just add enough to "wet" all the powder and obtain a paste.  For horizontal surface you can make the paste thinner.  Now you just need to apply the paste on the grout.  The hydrogen peroxide will stick and bleach much longer than if you spray the liquid onto a vertical wall.  If helps if you brush the paste into the grooves to get rid some of the grease and dirt first.

You rinse or just wipe when dry.  Residue baking soda is eatable and safe.  Hydrogen peroxide turn into water and oxygen.  If your grout is white, the residue baking soda actually makes your grout look snow white.

Water tends to separate from the baking soda paste.  You can add something like a little guar gum or xathan gum to the mixture at room temperature to thicken and stabilize the mixture.  If you use corn starch, you probably have to warm or heat the hydrogen peroxide first to get a gel.

Option two.  Hydrogen peroxide plus acid is a bleach.  The hydrogen peroxide is more table is acid.  Citric acid crystal from food supplies is a good acid.  A one pound bag doesn't cost that much and last a very long time.  One teaspoon per cup of hydrogen peroxide (or water) is a stronger acid than vinegar.  You can make a much higher concentration acid until the crystals no longer dissolves.  Now you need to thicken the bleach to save peroxide.  It's a few dollars a quart but you have walls and walls of tile in the bathroom, kitchen or the floor.

I get the idea from computer preservation enthusiast.  They thicken peroxide to work on plastic shells of old computers.  I already told you.  The warm or heat the peroxide in the microwave.  Then add corn starch or other starch to make a gel of peroxide.  You can add guar gum or other gum in room temperature.  You save gums if you warm the peroxide too, and it works better.  You will use a lot less gum than starch.  Just don't add baking soda to the acid as it will react.

It's perfectly safe to heat the peroxide.  The peroxide will decompose faster but still in a slow rate compared to the bleaching.

In this option the ingredients are all natural and biodegradable.

Now the difficult part is sealing of the grouts once it is clean.  There are plenty of grout sealants to choose from if you don't mind the toxicity.  Pick one that whitens as well as sealing.  Then you don't need to worry whether the grouts are clean enough for sealing.  And you don't need to match the color of the grout in various shades of white.

I was wondering if there's anything naturally non-toxic for my kitchen counter?  Easy to apply but do not need to be permanent?

Simple - wax!  I actually tried before to use a candle to seal the grouts.  I gave up.  You cannot rub the candle wax into the grooves.  And you cannot melt the wax by burning the candle - too much soot.

Just happen I have emulsifying wax NF at hand so I tried.  You have to melt it and pour onto the grouts.  Then recover the excess wax that solidifies.  You cannot spread the wax easily because the tile will cool and solidify the wax.  It will have a lot of waste and inconvenient.

I have the almost perfect solution.  The wax comes in small peas.  You just put a pea on the grout and melt it with a gas lighter type barbeque lighter.  The wax will melt and follows the tip of the flame down the groove.  The wax stays white when solidifies.  You can use organic white bees wax if you want.  It's at even higher melting point.  This lighter method seems to be much better than direct pouring, when the wax solidifies as soon as it touch the cool surface.

Since grout is very porous, I doubt if you can easily get rid of all the wax.  Initially the whole groove is covered by wax.  It's unlikely you can melt the wax by any hot objects unless you pour boiling water on the wax.  How often does that happen?  If that happens you can "repair" the wax in no time.

So far the wax stays in the grooves, translucent white in deeper grooves.  When there is wax, no way can dirt get in there or stain the grout.

It's not a quick to seal with wax.  But it's pleasant and you can spread the work in as many stages as you want.  The area of the kitchen counter that you prepare food isn't that big.