You may save on your gas bill and same time feeds a hungry child by signing up with XOOM

Xoom energy partnered with ACN is feeding a hungry child per your billing periods when you signed up with your energy bill. Please check with your zip code if the rate is lower than your current gas supplier. In order to find out the rate, make sure you are looking into the section of your current energy bills that talks about the delivery charge (this is the only portion is going to change on your future bill), what is the rate being used there (i.e $amount/therm for gas and $amount/Kwh for electricity). If the rate you see is higher than the rate Xoom are offering (US resident click here,  Canadian resident click here ) then switch, I recommend using the sure lock promotion which can guarantee that your bill won't change until that period is over. Beside Energy there are other services that are worthy of subscribing (if your current subscription of similar service is at higher price) such as: Wireless Phone Service, Home Security Service,Credit card processing service for business owners, etc. Each service will allow one child get fed each month through the outstanding "Project Feed Kids" when you pay your subscription fees. Please email me if you need additional information.

DIY Refrigerator repair

My long time loyal refrigerator suddenly refused to cool anything down to below 32 degree Fahrenheit. It was beginning of June 2013 and temperature started to raise. We were thinking of getting a new one since this one was over 15 years old. However it turns out that buying and deliver it to the right time when some one be at home is going to cost us more than a week and we still have lots of food which needed to be kept frozen, therefore immediately fixing it sounds better solution than buying one.  

I thought to give it a try. First I did some online research on how the refrigerators function and their maintenance. I came to know it is common for refrigerators that has a defrost mechanism to not to cool anymore if the excessive ice is build up on it's coil that the defroster failed to defrost. Due to those ice my upper portion of the refrigerator was able to cool down to 32 degree but the buttom portion was not able to cool down that much, the temperature was over 65 degree (I measured using my temperature gun that uses laser technology). Because the cold air was not blown, the refrigerator never was out of the defrost cycle as the ices were built up on the coil and obviously the defroster failed to melt it. An youtube video gave a very good detail of what I needed to know. 
This was a Norge Refrigerator on the top right.
The interior look like the picture below.

I start dissembling the fridge. Doors were easy to take off, however one of the screws that kept the middle segment cover refuse to loose no matter how I tried. I sprayed some WD-40 and had to wait for a while to loose this one and finally I was able to get to the middle section where the coil resides. Here are the pictures and the description of the steps I took: 
Step 1: I took the doors off
Step 2: I had to loose extra two screws that were covering the temperature control unit. that looks like the picture on right.
Step3. After get the cover off, I pull the controller and It came off like a drawer. you can see how it will look like on the picture. I saw a thick layer of ice covering the cooling coil.
Step 4: I started to crash the ice gently using a kitchen knife, but that was an idiotic act, as I realized I could easily melt them using hair dryer
    Step 5: I started using hair dryer, then I thought of using warm water, and it turned out to work faster than the hair dryer.

 Step 6: I was getting impatient as the melting process was taking too long I used hot water, after melting significant amount of ice I was able to remove the foam cover on the top of cooling coil


Step 7: Still lots of ice to remove, repeated the hair dryer, crushing and throwing hot water couple more time finally it was clean enough to see the cooling coil and the defrost coil seating inside the cooling coil assembly (Picture on right)
Step 8: I found that the one end of the defrost coil is severely corroded, in order to make sure the defrost coil is intact I used my digital multimeter and it shows the continuity between two ends. I re connect the corroded end with electrical tape and put the defrosting coil back where it was.   

Step 9: Start assemble all the parts that I dissembled. 
Step 10: Start the refrigerator and after a few minute I hear the cooling chember started blowing the cold air again, happy end of my measurable story.

Tips: To avoid this situation, you should always make sure your refrigerator is not overloaded and always have enough space to circulate the air. Also don't forget to clean the rear of your refrigerator and vacuum the air filtration compartment.
Thanks for reading.

Software Engineering by Ian Sommerville, what are the differences between International and domestic edition.

I ordered Software Engineering by Ian Sommerville two days ago and it arrived from India today. I was little surprised to see the cover of the book which was not the same which was shown in most of the site. The cover of the book that I received is like this:
I knew this book has multiple ISBN associated with : ISBN-10: 0137035152     ISBN-13: 9780137035151.

However I have compared the content with a regular version of the book:

and found that it is very same page by page. I just wanted other readers of the book to be assured that if they have received a book with same name but a different cover like me, is indeed the same book. I got the book from http://www.abebooks.com at a significantly cheaper price. I hope this post will assure those students who are wondering whether this international version book is as same as the regular version or not.

Making a DIY fitted RealD 3d glass (Passive) with a regular frame.

I have been enjoying my LG 47LW5600 3d TV for a year by now. It came with four pair of nice 3d glasses. I also had a few pairs of reald 3d glasses left from the reald 3d movies that I watched in the theater. These glasses works fine with my 3d tv so I used them whenever we had extra guests visiting us. Those reald 3d glasses were very uncomfortable to me as they were too big to wear. This post is about how I customized those glasses for additional comfort.

Here is Step by Step Procedure with the picture to help anyone who wants a pair of 3d glass that nicely fits.

Step 1: Gather the tools and items you need:
1. Scissors
2. small flat end screw driver.
3. A eye glasses frame that fits nicely on you (You could buy this type of frame with glasses from 99 cent store which I did)
4. A pair of realD 3d glasses.


Step 2. remove the two temples (Look at the hinge and you will figure out how to pull them off)















Step 3. Using screw driver pry off the upper parts of the main frame.









Step 4. Take out the plastic filtered lenses.










Step 5. Take out the glass from the selected frame (Which you want to turn into a 3d glasses) and keep it on top of the plastic lens and mark the circumference with a pin.

Step 6. Cut the glass following the outline.

Step 7. Snap the plastic to the frame where the glass used to be.

What to do when your SAMSUNG BEHOLD touch screen stopped responding

Frozen touch screen is a common problem that samsung behold users may face very often after using it for a few years. I was one of the unfortunate users of samsung behold phone as it stopped responding after over two years of reliable service. Here is how I solved the issue. The good news is it wasn't that difficult. I just ordered the screen on ebay and it arrived within three days. I opened the back and unscrewed total six of the screws and carefully pry off the inner frame that hold the main circuit board. Disconnecting tape like wires were a piece of cake. You have to be very careful while pry off the lcd screen as the glue was kind of hard to get off. After removing the lcd screen, you can take out the outer touch screen module easily. Then install the new one, turn on the phone and your problem is solved. You can even get a video tutorial about this procedure on youtube. Feel free to leave comments if you want to share your experience or need more information. 
Update: Found this video tutorial as many requested: