Do a Google search and you’ll find that many people have problems with the ice maker in their Samsung refrigerator. Of all the things Samsung can make, it’s ridiculous that they can’t even make an ice maker that just works without freezing up every 3 months. I have the 28 cu. ft. Food Showcase 4-Door Flex™ Refrigerator with FlexZone™ in Stainless Steel. I went with the counter-depth version. It’s smaller than the full-depth version but more expensive for some reason.
I have no problem with this fridge but as cool as it may look, the ice maker is a joke! I used up my extended warranty to have a “certified” technician come out 3 or 4 times to fix the ice maker (some of them are just clueless!). Anyway, in every situation, the ice maker stopped working because of ice buildup preventing the ice maker from working. One technician (a Samsung technician) said it was because I wasn’t using the original Samsung (overpriced) water filter. So, I put in an overpriced Samsung original water filter and, unsurprisingly, the ice maker still stopped working after a while – again, because of ice buildup. And, of course, I’m past the extended warranty so I have to fix it myself. If your stupid Samsung ice maker stops working because of ice buildup, here’s how you fix it (until it stops working again in 3-6 months).
Buy a steam cleaner
I bought this Bissel steam cleaner on Amazon. It’s supposed to be used for cleaning but it works well for melting ice that jams your stupid Samsung ice maker.
Melt the ice
Put some water in the steamer, wait till it’s hot, then stick the nozzle up the ice maker opening and pull the trigger. Super hot steam will fill up the ice maker box and begin to melt any ice in there.
After a while, try to pull out the ice box. If it still doesn’t come out, repeat until it does. Once it comes out, you’ll see some ice buildup like in the picture below.
Use the steamer to target the ice buildup until you can remove all the ice.
In the picture below, you can see that most of the ice is no longer stuck. Once you’ve removed all the ice, put the ice box back in and wait a day for new ice to be made.
And that’s how you temporarily fix your stupid Samsung ice maker.
Let’s say you want to build a simple, static website with the following requirements.
You want to keep track of changes to each file using version control.
You don’t want to spend a lot of money.
You want a simple setup, intuitive interface, and automatic publishing of changes.
You want SSL encryption with a certificate that automatically renews.
You want your own custom domain.
You don’t want to manage servers and you want to focus on your content.
You can accomplish this in many ways. But, I think the easiest way is to use GitHub and Netlify.
GitHub
GitHub, Inc. is a provider of Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git. It offers the distributed version control and source code management functionality of Git, plus its own features.
Netlify
Netlify is a San Francisco-based cloud computing company that offers hosting and serverless backend services for web applications and static websites.
This post will show you how easy it is to set up a simple website using GitHub and Netlify.
UPDATE: An alternative to Netlify is Render. Unlike Netlify, which is limited to static sites, Render supports web apps (Node.js, PHP, etc) like Heroku. Render is like Netlify + Heroku.
1. Create a free GitHub and Netlify account
This step is self-explanatory. If you create a GitHub account first, you can then log in to Netlify using your GitHub account, which saves time.
2. Create a repository in GitHub
I created a private repository (repo) called “documentation” to create a hypothetical website containing product documentation. When I created the repo, I opted to automatically create a README.md file to explain what the repo is about. At this point, there’s only one file in the repo.
3. Create a new project in Netlify
When you create a new project, you have a few options. In this case, we’ll choose “Import from Git”,
4. Choose Git provider
Since we’re using GitHub, choose GitHub.
5. Connect Netlify to GitHub
In order to auto-publish from GitHub to Netlify, you need to connect the two.
6. Choose repositories
You may choose to connect Netlify to all of your GitHub repositories or just some. In this example, I just want Netlify connected to the one “documentation” repo I just created.
7. Choose a branch to deploy
In this example, I only have one default branch called “main” in the “documentation” repo. Since I just need to transfer static files in GitHub to Netlify, there is nothing to build.
8. Deploy site
Once you click the “Deploy Site” button, Netlify will take all existing files in your GitHub repo and host them. You can see the status of the deployment in the “Site overview” tab along with the default URL. Notice that in steps 2 and 3 of the screenshot below, you can set up a custom domain and secure your site automatically with a Let’s Encrypt certificate.
9. See the deployed site
If you go to the auto-generated URL, you’ll see a Page Not Found error. That’s because we only have a README.md file in the repo.
10. Create an index.html file
Let’s create a home page for our new website. In GitHub, create a new file with filename “index.html” and add some HTML to it.
Commit the new file. For simplicity, I will leave the default values and click “Commit new file”.
You will then see that you have two files in the repo.
11. View deployment status
When you committed the file in GitHub, that automatically triggered a deployment to Netlify. In Netlify, click the “Deploys” tab to check the status of the deployment. In the screenshot below, we see that the status is “Published”.
12. View the deployed change
Going to the auto-generated URL in Netlify, we see that our new home page has been published.
13. Handling Large Media (Images, PDFs, etc)
If you have large, non-text media such as images and PDFs, to avoid bloating your repo, you can use Git LFS. Clicking on the “Large Media” tab gives you more information about that. Personally, for images, I prefer to use ImageKit.io. Alternatives are Cloudinary and Uploadcare.
14. Analytics
You can install Google Analytics on your website and/or you can get analytics from Netlify for $9 per month. Clicking on the “Analytics” tab provides more information.
Redirects
If you need to create redirects, you can use a simple redirect file.
Or, you can create advanced redirects in the Netlify configuration file.
If you want a staging environment where certain people can preview changes before you push them to production, one way to do this is by
creating a “develop” branch in your GitHub repo
connecting Netflify to that branch
enabling site-wide password protection in Netlify (password protection is a paid feature) on the site sourced from that branch.
Though Netlify supports basic authentication, it is not the most secure method of protecting a site. Instead, you can use Netlify’s site-wide protection which uses JWT secret.
Eggs are some of the healthiest foods you can eat. And, they taste good and are very cheap. However, if you’re looking to lose weight while maintaining or building muscle mass, you probably should only eat egg whites instead of whole eggs. As you can see in the table below, most of the protein in a whole egg comes from the egg white and all of the fat comes from the yolk.
Egg White
Whole Egg
Calories
18
71
Protein
4 grams
6 grams
Fat
0 grams
5 grams
You can buy egg whites cheap at Costco. A box of 6 16oz cartons costs $9.
Cooking it is super simple. I prefer the set-and-forget method to create an egg white patty. Here’s the recipe.
Planning a trip can be fun, but it can also be challenging. With so many activities to plan for, having a high-level view of a month-long or two-week-long trip makes it easy to see the bigger picture, but a certain amount of detail is necessary to ensure your planned itinerary is reasonable and makes sense, e.g. if it takes 2 hours to get to the airport and you have to be at the airport 3 hours before departure, then you better take that into account so you don’t miss your flight. One simple way to plan a trip is by using a spreadsheet like Google Sheets. I’ve created a hypothetical San Francisco, USA to Seoul, Korea vacation plan showing day-by-day and hour-by-hour activities in two different views.
Month View (each time block is 3 hours long) – View template
2-Week View (daytime time blocks are 1 hour long) – View template
Of course, you can group or split each time block to have less or more time slots depending on your needs.
Plane ticket prices can vary significantly from one day to another and by airline, number of stops, total trip duration, etc. If your dates are flexible, you can easily find cheaper flights using Kayak.com and Google Flights’ price grids. Here’s an example. Say I want to fly from San Francisco to Korea some time in early May.
I want no more than 1 stop / layover
I don’t want a layover longer than 4 hours
Kayak
On Kayak.com, you need to select +- 3 days for each departure and return date.
Choose some filters.
After the search results appear, expand the Flexible Dates section to show the price grid.
What’s nice about Kayak is, when you hover over a price, you see
the total price
the airline
the number of stops
the total flight plus layover time, if any, for both departure and return
the total trip duration
In the example above, the $1339 price offers nonstop service for a 9-day trip. If we compare that to the cheapest price ($1095), we’d have to stop somewhere and the total trip duration would be 11 days.
Google Flights
On Google Flights, you can do a similar search. For round trip flights, there will always be a price grid so you just enter your preferred departure and return dates. For the filters, I chose “1 stop or fewer” and “Under 24 hr”.
What’s interesting, and very useful, about Google Flights is, once you choose a departure date, prices start to show up in the date picker so you can choose a return date that is cheaper than others.
Google Flights is really fast. The prices and search results show up almost instantly.
On Google Flights, the cheapest prices are highlighted in green cells. In this example, it’s $1050. Compared to Kayak, it looks like Google Flights has more flight options as all of the cells have a price. However, unlike Kayak, in order to see more information like the airline, trip duration, and number of stops, you have to choose a price and click OK. The price grid will disappear and you will see the flight details.
Which is cheaper?
If we put both grids next to each other, we find that
Google Flights offers more flights (all cells have a price)
Google Flights offers either the same price or cheaper prices, even if the price difference is just $1.
KayakGoogle Flights
Note
Kayak can book flights for you whereas Google Flights will always send you to an external booking website. Price differences are often due to different travel websites offering different prices. It’s always preferable to book directly with the airline as that cuts out any intermediaries and, if there are any issues, you can contact the airline (or Kayak) directly and usually get better customer service. Just because Google Flights may offer cheaper flights, you might still find an overall better deal on Kayak.
The article is based on this YouTube video. These instructions are similar for adding 120 V circuits as well.
When you open the panel door, verify that you have empty slots to put a one-pole (120 V) or two-pole (240V) circuit breaker. If you don’t, you may need to upgrade your panel to a larger one.
Unscrew the screws and remove the panel cover.
You will usually see two large cables coming into the box.
One black wire = + 120
Other black wire = – 120
Voltage diff between the two = 240
The 2 black wires go into a main breaker.
In this example, the main breaker supports 125 amps, and the main breaker is located in the same panel as the circuit breakers.
The electricity then goes into the two left and right rails. Usually, you’ll have some 120 V / 15 A circuit breakers for general power, 120 V / 20 A circuit breakers for kitchen and bathroom power, and 240 V / 20 A double circuit breakers for an electric dryer.
Electricity flows from the rail through the circuit breaker through the wires.
Everything in the box is hot until you turn off the main breaker. Once you turn off the main breaker, only the 2 black wires and the terminals they are connected to are still hot.
In my home, the main breaker is located in a separate panel outside whereas my circuit breaker panel is in the garage. This is safer because once you turn off the main breaker outside, there are no hot / live wires in the circuit breaker panel.
The “6/3” identifier means this cable is 6 gauge and has 3 conductor wires and 1 ground wire for a total of 4 wires. The max amperage that this cable supports is 55 amps as indicated in the chart below.
Find the right kind that fits your circuit breaker box. My breaker box brand is Challenger. From the time when Challenger went out of business in the 90s, they were bought by different companies until Eaton/Cutler-Hammer finally got a hold of them. So, in my case, I can buy Eaton BR/C breakers.
The amperage of the circuit breaker must be less than or equal to the max amperage of the cable connected to it to prevent the cable from melting and causing a fire.
When you knock out a hole, make sure you knock out a 3/4″ center hole in one of the sides, not a smaller 1/2″ hole. If you accidentally knock out a 1/2″ hole, you can seal it with one of these:
Note: The cable is very thick and difficult to bend. Using the Leviton outlet is MUCH easier than making your own outlet because with the Leviton, you don’t need to bend the cable at all.
Run the cable through the stud and into the breaker box.
The cable can be hard to cut. If you can’t cut it with scissors or snips, you can use an angle grinder.
For ease of work, feed the thick wire into the electrical box before attaching box to stud.
Strip the wires in the cable. First, slit the exterior jacket / sheathing lengthwise using a sharp utility knife. Then, use a wire stripper to cut just the sheathing layer using the flat blade part. You can’t use the various round blades because the cable is too thick.
Attach the wires to the outlet.
The red and black (hot) wires are interchangeable and connect to the gold screw terminals.
The white (neutral) wire goes to the silver screw terminal.
The bare copper (ground) wire goes to the white screw terminal.
Screw the outlet to the box.
Strip the wires on the other end of the cable. Make sure the main circuit breaker is off.
Connect the white (neutral) wire to the neutral bar.
Connect the bare copper (ground) wire to the ground bar.
Connect the two red and black (hot) wires to the 240V circuit breaker.
Insert the circuit breaker.
Turn on the main breaker and then turn on the new 240 V circuit breaker.
Test voltage
Hot (red) to hot (black) should be about 240 V.
Hot (red) to neutral should be about 120 V.
Hot (black) to neutral should also be about 120 V.
Do the same voltage test at the receptacle.
Here’s how mine came out.
It would have been more expensive and a hassle to put the outlet by the garage door, so I just put it next to the circuit breaker panel. I’ll just use an extension cord to reach the garage door.
You can buy this EV charger cable on Amazon for $330.
This is not a complete list of tourist places and popular Korean food. It’s just a list of places that I think may be worth visiting and a few other relevant things.
As of December 30, 2021, all travelers, including fully vaccinated travelers, must submit a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of departure in order to board flights to the US. Learn more.
As of March 2, 2022, foreigners must submit a negative PCR test taken within 48 hours of departure in order to board flights to Korea. Read consular notice.
Starting from April 1, 2022, vaccinated travelers who have completed vaccination overseas AND register their vaccination history through the Quarantine COVID19 Defence (Q-Code) systemBEFORE traveling to Korea will be eligible for quarantine exemption. Vaccination is considered to be complete 14 days after the 2nd shot for a two-dose vaccine (valid up to 180 days) or with booster shots. Read consular notice.
Incheon Airport Tourist Information Center: 1F, Passenger Terminal 1 in front of Gates 5 & 10 / 7 AM-10 PM
Myeong-dong Tourist Information Center: In front of Euljiro 1(il)-ga Station (Seoul Subway Line 2), Exit 5 / 09:00-20:00, Closed on the day of Seollal (Lunar New Year’s Day) & Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving Day)
Seoul Station Tmoney Town : 1F, Seoul City Tower near Seoul Station (Seoul Subway Line 1, 4, AREX), Exit 10 / Weekdays 09:00-18:00
There is a $4.11 deposit. Get deposit refund (minus $0.41 for the cost of the card) at the Tourist Information Center at the airport before leaving Korea.
MPass can be used on subway lines, airport railroad all-stop train, Seoul city buses (mainline buses, branch buses, circulation buses, village buses, night buses)
The pass offers 20 rides a day for the duration of the pass.
Hotels
When choosing a hotel, if you want to be close to
many attractions
easy subway transportation with direct connection to the airport
tons of food options
tons of shopping options
you probably want to stay around the Myeong-dong area.
The Seoul Sky Observatory is located at the top of the Lotte World Tower, the world’s fifth tallest building standing 123 stories and 555 meters high. As the tallest building in South Korea, it is the only place where you can take in a gorgeous 360-degree view of Seoul, the capital city of South Korea roaring with brilliant history and dynamic modern culture.
Seoul Grand Park is a park complex to the south of Seoul, South Korea, in the city of Gwacheon. Facilities at Seoul Grand Park include hills and hiking trails, Seoul Grand Park Zoo, Children’s Zoo, a rose garden, Seoul Land amusement park, and the Seoul Museum of Modern Art.
Tour package is available from the KORAIL Travel Center at each departure station
Foreigners can purchase train tickets from Yongsan Station to Dorasan Station online, but will have to register for the Dorasan Security Tour at Dorasan Station if they wish to travel further.
Operating days: Wednesday-Sunday, once a day / No trains Monday-Tuesday
To visit the DMZ Joint Security Area, you must go with an approved travel agency. This visit is part of the Panmunjeom Tour. Panmunjeom is one of the most visited tourist sites of the DMZ
A traditional street market in Jongno-gu, Seoul, South Korea. The market is one of the oldest and largest traditional markets in South Korea, with more than 5000 shops and 20,000 employees in an area of 42,000 square meters.
Hottoek is a Korean-styled pancake. One of the most popular Korean street snacks, it is made from a simple flour batter and filled with sweet syrup made from cinnamon, brown sugar, and peanuts. It’s a great snack when you’re between meals.
Red beans are mixed with eggs and wheat dough by hand, then this artisan bread is shaped and baked without any artificial sweeteners or preservatives, keeping only the sweetness of its original natural ingredients.
Hodu means walnut in Korean and they are cookies filled with red bean paste and walnuts.
허니 브래드 (Honey Bread)
Thick bread is divided into nine parts filled with whipped cream and then topped with honey, caramel syrup, and cinnamon powder. Its original name was Honey Butter Bread.
계란빵 (Gyeran-ppang: Egg Bread)
has a shape of rounded rectangle and contains whole egg inside of a bread. They are often sold by street vendors.
꽈배기 (Kkwabaegi: Twisted Korean Doughnuts)
It is made with glutinous rice flour and melted butter. The dough is deep-fried in oil and tossed in sugar and cinnamon powder. Like most fried breads, it tastes better when it’s hot. You can enjoy the original taste of twisted bread by eating when it just comes out of the oil, or by heating them up.
뚱카롱 (Ddungcaron: Fat Macaron)
Rice Punch 식혜 (Korean Sweet Rice Drink)
Songpyeon half-moon rice cake (송편)
The fillings for these rice cakes vary, but the most common are sweetened sesame seeds and mung beans.
Pat-sirutteok 팥시루떡 (Layered rice cake with red beans)
율란 Yul-lan – Chestnut cookies
무지개떡 Mujigae-tteok (Rainbow rice cake)
불고기 Beef Bulgogi
Thinly sliced or shredded beef marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, sugar, scallions, and black pepper, cooked on a grill (sometimes at the table). Bulgogi literally means “fire meat.” Variations include pork (dwaeji bulgogi, 돼지불고기), chicken (dak bulgogi 닭불고기), or squid (ojingeo bulgogi, 오징어불고기).
Galbi (갈비) – pork or beef ribs
Cooked on a metal plate over charcoal in the centre of the table. The meat is sliced thicker than bulgogi. It is often called “Korean barbecue” along with bulgogi, and can be seasoned or unseasoned.
Dak galbi (닭갈비)
Stir-fry marinated diced chicken in a gochujang-based sauce, and sliced cabbage, sweet potato, scallions, onions and tteok.
Dubujeon (두부전)
Steamed tofu mixed with ground beef and vegetables.
Bungeoppang (붕어빵; “carp-bread”)
is the Korean name for the Japanese fish-shaped pastry Taiyaki that is usually filled with sweet red bean paste and then baked in a fish-shaped mold. It is very chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside.
Gukwa-ppang (국화빵)
is almost the same as bungeoppang, but it is shaped like a flower.
Places Not in Seoul
As a bonus, here are a few places in Korea outside of Seoul.
I’ve used many enterprise-level productivity tools like Atlassian Jira, Confluence (Wiki), Microsoft Teams, Asana, and, of course, email. Asana seems to be the best for managing large projects that have multiple tasks and deadlines. Microsoft Teams is great for having discussions separated by topic and sharing documents related to each discussion. As the president of an HOA (Homeowner’s Association) that pays an experienced property manager, it’s interesting that we’re still communicating by email because so often we’d have a hard time finding specific information and documents. Microsoft Teams would be a big improvement but the free version doesn’t come with some useful features available in the paid version. Of all the tools I’ve used, it looks like Slack fits the bill because 1) there is no bill (pun intended – there’s a free version) and 2) it comes with features similar to the ones in the paid version of Microsoft Teams. This post will explain some of Slack’s features that could be beneficial for small groups like an HOA.
Separate Discussions By Topic
One of the problems with a simple chat tool is different topics get lost in one super long chat. At my HOA, we have different topics to talk about, e.g. landscaping, security cameras, parking, etc. With Slack, you can create multiple channels to represent these topics. Each channel is a separate chat discussion as you can see in the screenshot below.
In the screenshot above, you can see:
Group Name: Antoine Ct Landlords
Channels: These are discussion topics:
landscaping-cleaning
security-cameras
vehicles-and-parking
Direct messages: this shows you who is in the group and allows you to send a message directly to one specific person
Apps: you can see the list of apps you’ve integrated with Slack such as a polling app
In the screenshot above, the chat in view is the one for the landscaping-cleaning channel.
Apps
Slack allows you to integrate many apps for a seamless experience. Below are some of the apps you can integrate.
One thing we often do as an HOA is conduct polls. You can add a polling app and then create a poll in a channel. For example, I added the Simple Poll app and created a poll in the landscaping-cleaning channel. In the screenshot below, the simple poll asks if everyone wants to hire one landscaper for all units and split the cost. The answer options are simply yes and no.
Of course, if there is too much chatter, the poll can get buried in the history of chat messages. If that happens, you can pin the poll to the top. It then shows up in the bar at the top of the channel like this:
Links to Documents
Chatting is useful, but eventually you’re going to need other productivity tools like documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. In the chat field, you can click the + button to insert things other than text, e.g. create a post.
A post in Slack is like a Google or Word doc.
If you prefer to use a different tool like Google Docs, you can link the Google Doc to your Slack channel. Just copy the Google Doc share URL and paste it into the chat and, optionally, pin it to the top as I did for the poll example above. Or, you can create folders in the bar at the top of the channel to organize documents and chat messages. In the screenshot below, I clicked the + button to add two folders: Documents and Photos.
I then hovered over the Documents folder link and clicked Add to bookmark to add links to external resources:
Test Document 1 (link to a shared Google Doc)
Association Website (link to a WordPress site)
Multiple Teams
If you are part of multiple groups or teams of people, you can create a separate Slack group (called Workspaces). In the screenshot below of the Slack homepage, I see the workspace for the example HOA group mentioned above called “Antoine Ct Landlords”. There is also a button to create a new workspace.
If you are part of a small (or large) group of people and need to discuss many topics and don’t want to pay a monthly fee, you may want to give Slack a try.
I’m often finding myself needing to calculate the frequency of unique values in a spreadsheet. It turns out it’s a 2-step process. For example, if you have a column of data as shown below and you want to know how many times the numbers 1, 2, and 3 occur, you need to first add a column containing the unique values in column 1. Then, you can use the frequency function to calculate frequency.
1. Get Unique Values
In column 2, get the unique values in column one using the unique function:
=UNIQUE(A2:A7)
If you want, you can also sort the values as follows.
=SORT(UNIQUE(A2:A7))
2. Get Value Frequency
In column 3, get the value frequency using the frequency function. The data is in column 1 and the classes are in column 2.
FREQUENCY(data, classes)
=FREQUENCY(A2:A7, B2:B4)
Google Sheets seems to want to add an extra row with the value 0. I just ignore that.
