Roomba main brush problem

My Roomba is making a thumping noise, it seems that the main brush is not turning properly. Here is the official support instruction from iRobot for fixing the problem.

2005 Santa Ema Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve

winemaker's notes (from wine.com):

"The 2005 vintage in Isla de Maipo was exceptional, with low yields, no rain at all in the growing period from bud break to harvest. Maximum temperatures in the area ranged from 28-30 ºC (82 – 86 ºF), with less than 180 mm of rain during winter time so it was a dry year. These conditions allow Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to ripen fully displaying a great flavor and full concentration.

With our Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from Isla de Maipo, we obtained an optimal phenolic ripeness, solid and round tannins, full color and a great fruit expression."

90 points Wine Spectator:

"Muscular, with solid loam, raspberry, blackberry, fig paste and coffee notes backed by a broad, dark, toasty finish. Rock-solid. Drink now through 2010." (02/09)

Notes from klwines.com:

"One of the hardest panels of people to please is our staff here at K&L. Much more difficult than approval by the fashionistas on Oscar night, harder than the judging of any of the last three Marques vs. Vasquez fights, and tougher than judging gymnastics at the Olympics, they are simply brutal. Think you have the next big thing, someone is right around the corner to shoot it down, "too edgy," "has VA," "that's not dry" all heard before you know it, and those are just some of the nice ones. If you see Jim Barr getting out his copper pipe you know you really have problems. My point is this, to my surprise everyone thought the Santa Ema "Reserve" Cab was a great deal, I heard not a single detractor in the bunch. The reason why is simple: this is just a great wine for $10 a bottle. Packed with its loam, coffee, blueberry and mocha tones, this sings as soon as the bottle is opened. No need to lay this Cab down to resolve and rough edges, it is as smooth as Barry White in a sequined jump suit. OK, maybe that is a bad example but you get my point. So try this out with your weekly burger or even your spaghetti and meatballs, just don't try and pick it apart knowing that the toughest of the tough have already tried. "

Tennis league information

For singles play you can try tennisleague.com. You don’t need to be a USTA member for this, but leagues are organized based on USTA NTRP ratings (and the number of games one plays in a season just depends on how many matches one can fit in). So there is no requirement to play every week/weekend. Most players tend to play at their level in the singles leagues, unlike USTA tournaments where there are always players playing a level lower to go deeper into the tournament.

You can find information about USTA leagues and tournaments here:

http://www.usta.com/TennisLink/Default.aspx


You can search for USTA tournaments here:

http://tennislink.usta.com/tournaments/Schedule/Search.aspx


another league to consider is world team tennis their website is:

http://www.wtt.com/

For singles play there are other leagues too like Ultimate Tennis and the USTA’s Flex League.

2005 Tin Roof Cellars (Merlot)

winemaker’s notes

“Our 2005 Merlot offers ripe, luscious black cherry and plum fruit aromas and flavors characteristic of the Merlot variety, enhanced by hints of tobacco, herbal spice and chocolate. With smooth, supple tannins and a long, rich finish, it pairs especially well with grilled red meats, herb-roasted chicken, pork chops, red-sauced pastas and flavorful hard cheeses.”

2006 Water Wheel Australian (Red Blend) "Memsie"

Grape blend: 87% Shiraz, 7% Cabernet Sauvignon, & 6% Malbec

Wine Review (from Kenswineguide): This dark purple wine opens with a spicy blackberry like bouquet. On the palate, this medium bodied wine is round, easy to drink, and has fruit forward black current flavors along with a little black licorice and spice. The finish is dry, but brief. This would pair nicely with your favorite burger.

Winemaker Notes: The 2006 Memsie red has a dark cherry/purple colour. There are obvious blackcurrant, plum and spice characters dominating the nose. The palate is fresh with voluminous and forward, spice, berry and plum flavours obvious. These flavours are complimented by hints of sweet oak. The wine has great length with a persistent, smooth and clean finish. Ready to drink now to 2010 with a variety of food styles including risotto and red meats.

Wine Advocate notes:

"The purple-colored 2006 Memsie Red is composed of 87% Shiraz, 7% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 6% Malbec, the wine was aged for 6 to 9 months in used American hogsheads. The aromatics are unusually expressive for a wine in this price category. Aromas of cinnamon, allspice, plum, blueberry and black currant lead to a medium to full-bodied wine with a plush texture, ripe sweet fruit, and a sense of elegance. This tasty wine will provide pleasure over the next 4-6 years. Congratulations to Water Wheel for over-delivering on a superb quartet of wine values."

Who said CDMA violates the law of physics.

Many proponents of CDMA technology, when inquired about the early days of CDMA, say that it was a tough time pushing the technology. Some Stanford professor even said CDMA violates the law of physics.

I have already been curious who said this and did some research. It turns out that in the Jan/Feb 1997 edition of IEEE internet computing, the name was mentioned in an interview "George Glider on the bandwidth of plenty", Bruce Lusignan.

Here is the quoted text from this interview "
For some reason people were unusually intense in opposition to CDMA technology. Bruce Lusignan, a brilliant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, said that CDMA, as Qualcomm described it, violates the laws of physics—and this was quoted over and over again. So that laws of physics—laws of God, if you will—were involved in this debate! And because it was said to violate the laws of physics, lots of people jumped to the conclusion that Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi (of the Viterbi algorithm fame) were pushing a technology scam!
"

It was also interesting to see that Bruce later obviously changed his opinion as he also published a number of papers on receiver design for IS-95 CDMA technology.

Bruce's original comment was hard to find, but I got something in one article (" Down to the Wireless - Stakes High as Rivals Race to Provide Next Generation of Celluar Gear") published online in May 1996 edition on LA Times website. This article quoted Bruce's comments as follows "

On the other side of the aisle is Bruce B. Lusignan, professor of electrical engineering and director of the communications satellite planning center at Stanford University, who contends that CDMA technology is actually something of a hoax and will ultimately result in a loss of capacity compared with the gains offered by other digital signaling methods.

'The basic problem is that it does not have anywhere near adequate protection from the fading that the other techniques all have,' said Lusignan, who said his lab has been studying the underlying technology, known as spread spectrum, for 20 years. 'That makes it completely inadequate to achieve the type of capacities that they have been advertising.'

"

In the book "The Qualcomm Equation", the author also pointed out that "In several forusm, two Stanford professors, Bruce Lusignan and Don Cox, took CDMA to the task and concluded that the system essentially would not work as planned."

Free DVD burning software

CDBurnerXP:

• CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Everyone, even companies, can use it for free. It does not include adware or similar malicious components.
• Used this for a couple of times by now, it seems pretty fast (compared to some other software packages I used before).
  

Video recording mode explained

MODE	DESCRIPTION	PICTURE QUALITY	SOUND QUALITY	RECORDING HOURS	VIDEO RESOLUTION (NTSC/PAL)
XP/HQ	High Quality	DVD	CD	1 hour	720 x 480/576
SP	Standard Play	DVD	MP3	2 hours	720 x 480/576
LP	Long Pay	VCD	MP3	4 hours	480 x 480/576
EP	Extended Play	VHS	MP3	6 to 8 hours	352 x 240/288

Unlock GPS on Samsung Blackjack II

Download: MoDaCo Smartphone GPS Activator, a google search will review the latest link to CAB file.

Install it on your phone.

Now go to any applications that uses GPS and change GPS setting to COM4/Baud Rate 19200. (For example, this can be changed in Option->GPS Setting in Google Map, then select use GPS.)

Obviously, you need to be out of door to have good GPS reception.

Notes from service as a trategy

Many businesses are service oriented. When service is considered, there are a number of important aspects.

The first thing is obviously defining the attributes of the service offering. One thing to keep in mind is that to be excellent in something, the business may need to be prepared to be bad in something. There is no all-good businesses. The business to focus on assigning resources to attributes that they care for.

For example, one case study done by Harvard Business school scholars Frances X. Fei and Corey Hajim is related to the Commerce Bank. Commerce Bank explicitly claims that they have the lowest deposit rate, but this is exactly the attribute that allows them to spend more money on service so that 24/7 banking can be offered. They also have very limited product set (four checking accounts types as compared to tens of options from other banks), but this is exactly the attribute that allows them to hire less-educated employees that have a very good attitude and are friendly to the customers all the time. As a matter of the fact, one of the hiring criteria is to see whether the employee has an innate smile (it is tough to pretend smile all day long).

In order to have good service offering, three aspects of the business needs to be taken care of: funding, employee, and customer.

Funding mechanism: Some of the innovative ideas include customer pays in a palatable way. Present operation as value added services (For example, the true incentive for Progressive to have a van at the accident location shortly after the accident is to bust fraud which is a huge overhead for insurance. However, this is presented as prompt response to the customers.) Customer performs the work.

Employee management: Employees can be divided into four quadrants (high/low aptitude x high/low attitude). Obviously, the high apptitude/high attitude folks cost almost twice as the other two quadrants. Can you find a way to best make use of the high aptitude/low attitude or high attitude/low aptitude? One important thing is to design a system so that typical employees have a reasonable chance of success.

Customer management: Customer satisfaction is usually based on perceptions. So need to take care of the customers in the following areas: "End" is more important than "Start"; Make winning last/losing fast (people prefer to win $5 twice instead of winning $10 one shot; on the other hand, they prefer to lose $10 instead of losing $5 twice); Give choice to customer on non-important features so that they feel important.

Tools used for simple widget development for mobile devices

Free Javascript Editor: easy to use interface, provide syntax highlighting for Javascript, HTML, and CSS, which are the only languages I used.

PIXresizer: a tool for converting image format, in particular, I used it to convert JPG files to PNG files as the platform I used only support PNG. This tool also support batch conversion of files.

SUN Java Wireless Toolkit: Need to install the latest JDK first. The platform I use is bs based on Javs ME so the emulator here really helps to make the debug easier.

Firebug plugin for Mozilla Firefox: This is very useful tool for debugging Javascrip embedded in HTML.

Planting trees in Southern California

Climate note about Southern California

The Southern California coast extends from San Diego to San Luis Obispo and includes Santa Barbara, Ventura, western portions of Los Angeles County and Orange County and San Diego.

The Southern California coast is influenced by the Pacific Ocean and has a mild climate due to the marine air. Summers are moderate in temperature and coastal fog is common. Hot, dry winds, known as 'Santa Ana’s' can be damaging here and in the inland areas of Southern California. Inland Southern California includes Riverside, San Bernardino, Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank, the San Fernando Valley, Ojai Valley, and Santa Paula. The interior is more subject to hot, dry desert air than the coast and is considerably warmer.

Annual rainfall along the northern coast can be as high as 16 inches in Santa Barbara and as low as 9 inches in San Diego. Droughts are not uncommon, and all crops are irrigated. The main temperate fruit and nut crops grown commercially in this region are apple, macadamia, olive, peach, persimmon, and English walnut. Since winters along the Southern California coast and interior are usually mild and often frost-free, temperate tree fruit varieties with low winter chill requirements are usually chosen because the low latitudes in this region receives a more limited number of total hours (100~400) at 45ºF, which are necessary to mature fruit, than other regions in the state.

Coins with random bias

Suppose you are given a coin with random bias. The bias of the coin is uniformly distributed over [0, 1] and assume that the value of the bias does not change during the tosses.
(a) What is the probability that all three tosses are heads?
(b) What is the probability that the second toss is Head when the first toss turns out as Head?

Solution:
Let Xi, i=1, 2,3, denote the outcome of the i-th coin toss, then:

So the probability of three heads is 1/4.


So the probability of second toss being H when the first one turns out as H is 2/3.

How many tosses to get 2 heads

Question: Given a fair coin, how many tosses on average do you need to get 2 heads?

Heuristic based solution:

This is based on the general principle of conditional averages and dependency/independence between events.

Suppose
E(x) = average tosses needed to have 2 heads
E(x|H) = average total tosses needed to have 2 Heads when the first toss is Head
E(x|T) = average total tosses needed to have 2 Heads when the first toss is Tail
E(x|HH) =average total tosses needed to have 2 Heads when the first two tosses are heads = 2
E(x|HT) = average total tosses needed to have 2 Heads when the first two tosses are HT
Then we have the following relationships:
E(x|T) = 1 + E(x) (The first toss is wasted so we are back to nothing)
E(x|HT) = 2 + E(x) (The first two tosses are wasted and we are back to square 1)
Further, we have the following relationship:
E(X) = 0.5 E(x|H) + 0.5 E(x|T)
= 0.5 { 0.5 E(x|HH) + 0.5 E(x|HT)} + 0.5 (1 + E(x))
= 0.5 { 0.5*2 + 0.5 [2 + E(x)]} + 0.5 + 0.5 E(x)
= 1 .5 + 0.75 E(x)
Solving the equation, we get E(x) = 6, meaning on average 6 tosses are needed to get 2 heads.

If the question is for 3 or more consecutive patterns, similar approach can be used. But the number of iteration needed will be more than the two levels we show here.

Markov chain based solution:




As shown in the above figure, define a Markov chain that is formed by the following three states:
S1: the previous tossing generates Tail ;
S2: the previous tossing generates Head;
S3: after current tossing, we get two consecutive Hs.



Then, the probability transition matrix, denoted by P, is represented in the first equation above.

It can also be seen that S3 is an absorbing state. What we need to calculate is the average steps need to reach the absorbing state. We use hi to denote the average number tosses needed to move from state Si to S3 (also known as average hitting time). Clearly, we have h3 = 0. Then, we have the second equation shown above.

Basically, this is based also on the principle of conditional expectation also. The left side is a decomposition of the first toss and what happens after the first toss.
Solving this equation, we get h1 = 6; h2 = 4.
Then the expected number X of tosses to get two heads in a row is given by the third equation above, meaning on average 6 tosses are needed to get 2 consecutive heads.

The same method can be generalized to calculate the average number of tosses to get N heads in a row. The states in the Markov chain will be all the initial sequence of the final N heads. For example, N=3 means the following state (H, T, HH, HHH). Another example, if we want to calculate the same for HTH, then the Markov chain is formed by (T, H, HT, HTH).

How can the stimulus package help you

I am trying to collect some information on how the stimulus package can help individuals or families. Here are some useful links:

- How much will you benefit from the package

Notes from patching the lawn with new pieces of SOD

The SOD available from homedepot is 16x48 in inches.

It is harder than I expected to dig up the damaged area and break up the clumps. It is easy to dig when the ground is wet but then it is hard to break the clumps. A better approach might be to dig up the area when it is wet, leave the clumps for a couple of days to dry up and then break them. This will also make the raking easier.

When laying out the strips of sod to cover the area, you might want to overlap strips onto the existing lawn. When the strips are in place, cut to fit the bare spot's shape.