From the Ashes

Failed Smog Test in California

phoeniix — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:55:41 +0000

I recently failed my smog test in my 1995 Civic EX. I have 175k miles on the car and my catalytic converter needs replacing. I didnt want to spend $1000’s of dollars making all the necessary repairs so I spoke with my neighbor who messes with cars. He suggested to try the following:

The most important thing to do before going to get smogged, is to get your engine and exhaust system hot. Drive around for 30 minutes in 4th gear to flush out extra particles.
Replace your spark plugs. If a plug isn’t firing properly your going to have much more than just exhaust coming out.
Replace your air filter.
Run though one tank of gas with fuel system cleaner.
Fill up the tank with premium gas before going to get smogged.

Some other things to try are:

Replace the fuel filter to ensure that only gas is getting combusted.
Get an oil change.

For me, doing steps 1-5 helped me pass my smog test. I only passed by one point, but that gets me through another 2 years before having to address this again.

ActiveSync Error 0×8503001c

phoeniix — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:33:16 +0000

I was getting 0×8503001c while trying to sync my att tilt running windows mobile 6.1 to Windows XP sp3. I finally determined that the problem was in contacts and that all the contacts where I was using the notes field were bad. I recreated those contacts manually without the notes and everything synced fine.

Tell it like it is

phoeniix — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:11:36 +0000

I don’t remember this book growing up… Children’s Book

PS3 Game Comparison

phoeniix — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 18:47:49 +0000

Looks like someone has compiled a nice list of Playstation 3 games with side-by-side comparisons of each games technical features. It is sorted by resolution and release date for quick and easy access. There are also some links to buying or renting games. They also mention this is a work in progress so I hope theres more to come!

See the PS3 Game Comparison Table at ps3bio.com.

Recycle old batteries, cell phones, and inkjet cartridges

phoeniix — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:48:23 +0000

The other day I aimlessly wandered into my neighborhood Best Buy and out of the corner of my eye I found a recycle box. This is amazing. No more hunting through the phone book looking for recycle centers that charge me to recycle. Nope. Best Buy stores offer a very convenient method for recycling these toxic technology products. You can recycle old cell phones, inkjet cartridges and rechargeable batteries. Thank you Best Buy.

For more information please visit The Best Buy Recycling program

The land of the free Antivirus?

phoeniix — Fri, 12 May 2006 22:35:16 +0000

Nothing is free. Or is it? A new product to hit the open source repositories is a very popular antivirus program called Clam. Although still in beta stage this proves to a be a pretty powerful system cleaner. They have released versions for Linux and Windows. You can also view the linux project on SourceForge.

Follow up to My Fatigue

phoeniix — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:14:17 +0000

This is a follow-up to my post a few months ago regarding my fatigue. Although the B-Vitamins did help some, they seemed to only relieve the symptoms temporarily.

I started to suspect that it was my diet although I had no idea where to start. A few articles online led me to the idea of a food alergy. Researching that, I found that anyone can have alergies to all kinds of foods. I took a look at what I eat on a daily basis and I concluded that I eat wheat and dairy products every day. This was interesting because I have eaten cereal with milk everyday since I can remember and I have been tired for the past 10 or so years since age 21.

Taking a “risk” I switched to oatmeal or soymilk for my morning meals. It took a few weeks to notice something but now instead of being tired every day, I’m tired and exhausted only one or two days a week.

This has drastically changed how I live and helped at my job too. I still eat cheese every other day, but I suspect that the sheer quantities of dairy I was consuming may have hurt. I am probably lactose intolerant and this food allergy doesn’t help.

Reading further articles I found that adults dont need milk. This is sort of what I blindly thought.

I’m also experimenting with lowering my wheat intake but that doesnt seem to make such a difference.

Wash your vegetables

phoeniix — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:23:36 +0000

I learned just recently that I should wash my vegetables with a citrus based vegetable wash. I never thought about this before. I have been perfectly content holding my vegetables under the faucet washing off what I thought was other people’s finger grease. My wife used Magnawash vegetable wash one night on our zucchini and cabbage and showed me the bowl full of water, vegetables and a disgusting layer of what appeared to be oils and hairs and all other sorts of foul materials floating on top. That was enough for me. I’m sold, “Wow we should use this every night”, I said.

If you are interested in obtaining Magnawash for your store, please visit Saison Trading – An organic product wholesaler, email contact (at) saisontrading.com, or call 1-619-294-3075 for more information. If you live near the San Diego Metro area, Magnawash can be found at the friendly Nijiya Japanese Marketplace in Kearny Mesa.

Nijiya Market
(858) 268-3821
3860 Convoy St # 109
San Diego, CA 92111

Getting Video Lan Client to run on my x86_64 Fedora Core 4 Server

phoeniix — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 20:51:35 +0000

I was having a problem of getting VLC to run on my 64 bit FC4 server. I installed vlc through yum and everything installed beautifully but when running, it kept saying:

[someuser@myserver ~]$ vlc
VLC media player 0.8.4a Janus
[00000025] main interface error: no interface module matched “hotkeys,none”
[00000025] main interface error: no suitable intf module
[00000001] main vlc error: interface “hotkeys,none” initialization failed
[00000026] main interface error: no interface module matched “screensaver”
[00000026] main interface error: no suitable intf module
[00000001] main vlc error: interface “screensaver” initialization failed
[00000027] main interface error: no interface module matched “any”
[00000027] main interface error: no suitable intf module
[00000001] main vlc error: interface “(null)” initialization failed

The solution was to run vlc with the 64 bit libraries:
vlc –plugin-path /usr/lib64

PIM functions for Thunderbird

phoeniix — Tue, 27 Dec 2005 03:55:28 +0000

Mozilla has done it again. Thunderbird now has PIM functions! Granted it’s still in super mega infant alpha stage 0.0.1 but I now can store my tasks and notes within Thunderbird. Check out Lightning, Thunderbirds latest addition that will put it on stage with Outlook and Evolution. Get the latest version here! Oh, and listen to their advice and use Mozilla Backup.