Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Interview: New Oddball Interview Questions for 2013 from Glassdoor

Question was asked: "If you were on an island and could only bring 3 things, what would you bring?

  • If I were already on a deserted island, I wouldn't be able to bring anything.
  • If I were bringing something from the island, it would depend on what island I was on.
  • If the question meant 3 things to bring to a random, deserted island for survival, then a knife, shovel, and a fishing line (or fishing net or fishing rod if it came with a line).


If you were a pizza deliveryman how would you benefit from scissors?

  • Cutting coupons and self-defense
  • I liked this response: It would keep me from running.

Are you more of a hunter or a gatherer
  • Because I am typically assigned to solve more complex problems, I have more experience as a hunter. Complex problems tend to require the ability to analyze a moving target. Otherwise, I can be a hunter or a gatherer effectively.
What is your least favorite thing about humanity?
  • I actually interviewed with ZocDoc, and my questions were all technical. All questions were generic programming questions that you regurgitate from a text book. Sadly, I do not perform well with those questions. Seriously... who says they are going to use polymorphism when they design, architect, or program? Or list the different types of sorts when most frameworks already provide solutions to sort data? Although I can answer them, I think part of my mind goes into why do they even ask these questions. Sorry for the rant.
  • People who complain but do not vote. People of apathy deserve what comes to them. Procrastinators know it is their fault. But, whiners think they are right, portray an illusion that their problems are bigger than they are, and yet do nothing about the problem thus wasting everyone's time, attention, and energy.
  • People who think oddball questions are a waste of their time, especially if those people are engineers.
Can you instruct someone how to make an origami "cootie catcher" with just words?
  • What is a "cootie catcher"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_fortune_teller
  • Yes. Get a square paper, fold corners toward the front center to form a smaller square, fold corners toward the back center to form an even smaller square, create two creases by folding and unfolding the square into rectangles, stick fingers underneath the square flaps created
What's the color of money???...
  • The color of blood and sweat

Reference

http://www.glassdoor.com/Top-25-Oddball-Interview-Questions-LST_KQ0,34.htm

Review: Chase Mortgage experience (poor)

Because this was my first time going through the mortgage process, I had decided to try a few lenders to compare different rates. This turned out to be such a huge hassle. I thought I could just get the rates that I wanted. To get those rates, I had to submit so many different forms.

There are some costs to go through the mortgage process. I was told that I didn't have to make a decision until it was closer to the closing date. But I was charged an application fee, $400+.

Eventually, I had decided to go with another lender more than a month prior to the closing. So, I asked if I could have the application fee refunded. I figured since they never got around to doing the appraisal for my place because it was still being built, I could recover some of that cost. I never received a response back.

Even thought I had notified the loan officer, the processor still contacted me on how the progress of the building was... so that was another awkward moment.

So sad to say that even though I have been a long time Chase customer since they acquired Bank One, this experience was quite disappointing. I even shared what I would have liked to see to help with my decision, but feel that it was completely ignored.

On a side note, I had also tried Wells Fargo. The loan officer there kept asking for the same information multiple times. The first time, I visited a branch and I provided my name, address, and other basic information. Then, he put me on the phone which I had to provide the same information. Then we scheduled a physical meeting. Before that, he had his processor call me and requested the same basic information. Then I met the officer, and he asked for my basic information again! At this point, I just easily eliminated them as an option.

Now, I kind of wish that I had tried TD Bank. I have found that their desk personnel are much more helpful and seem to be extra helpful with problems. Maybe it is different between branches, but sometimes that it is all it takes. She even mentioned that my credit score could be lowered due to multiple inquiries which I have confirmed because Chase had requested for my credit score twice.

I'll have another post after everything is completed on my recommendation on what to prepare for on a mortgage. I really took the hard way of doing things, but I want to wait till it is all over before I post so that I can evaluate the entire process.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Work Life: C# Web Service Errors

No spaces in name of XElement

Error Message:
System.Xml.XmlException: The ' ' character, hexadecimal value 0x20, cannot be included in a name.
This is because I had used:
XElement root = new XElement("List Of Members", e1, e2, e3);
... which should have been:
XElement root = new XElement("ListOfMembers", e1, e2, e3);

Parameterless Constructor

Error Message:
cannot be serialized because it does not have a parameterless constructor
This was because I was trying to return a variable of type XDocument which does not have a parameterless constructor. I then tried return specific classes, but still received this error because my classes did not have parameterless constructor.

Basically what the compiler is looking for is the follow:
public Class1
{
  Class1()
  { }
}
The constructor can also be private or internal if you do not want to have a public parameterless constructor.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Work Life: Correcting 100% Width Text Input to Fit into Container

I always find it odd that the default values of HTML for textboxes (aka text inputs) when you set the width to 100% always seem to be wider than than its container. 

By default, you would think that it would either contain the entirety of the textbox or spill over on all sides of the textbox. In the latter case, I expect to see overlap on the left as well as on the right.

To correct this, set your textbox style to the follow:

input
{
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    border: 0px;
}

Default



Corrected




This happens in both IE10 and Google Chrome 33.0.1750.117 m.

Friday, February 21, 2014

Buggish: Cannot turn off / hangup / end Switch Calls Option in Mid-Call (Google, Motorola DROID RAZR)

The issue is while I am on a call and someone else is calling in, I switch to that call. I keep it short so it ends before the first call. If I hit "end" on the second call, this hangs up both calls. If I do not hit "end" and wait a moment, it will automatically switch to the first call. At first, I thought this was the reason it hangs up both calls because I ended the first call while the second automatically ended. After a couple more occurrences, the second call does not go away thus the "SWITCH CALLS" option is always there. Even though the other person has already ended the call, I only get a dial-tone when I switch to that line. When I hear the dial-tone and hit the end-call button, both sessions will end.

Depending on when the second caller ends the call, the switch may take a while. Thus, I sometimes manually switch the call. There was one call where I hit it around the time I heard the other person end the call because I heard a click right before I hit the switch button. At this point, I am not sure which call I am on. A nice feature would be to display which number I am on.

Cooking: Bitter Curry - bleh

I was interrupted while cooking curry, so I had put it on lower heat. The call last longer than expected. After the call, I continued with my lunch and it tasted awfully bitter. It was more of a bitter aftertaste because I won't taste it if I continuously stuff my mouth (of course until I ran out of food). BLEH!

I thought I'd give a try to fix it. Quickly, I found the link below that attempted to correct curry (also learned that you can overcook curry). I tried that and it tasted a little better, but I think I totally overcooked it because I was also trying to cook the food with the spices to see if I could infuse the flavor into the onions and potatoes. Well, that part worked.

I'll have to pay more attention next time.

Reference
http://www.ehow.com/how_8367624_fix-bittertasting-curry.html

Life: Play Pokemon Live with Thousands of Others on Twitch TV

While watching day[9]'s stream on SC2, I noticed this stream. It was somewhat interesting to watch as thousands of people are trying to play a single game of Pokemon. You can see the hundreds of commands being executed on a side screen.

Amazingly during the time, they were able to make progress although it took a very long time and a lot of back and forth movements. This is interesting because with so many people, you are bound to have a lot of trolls who want to disrupt the game or people providing wrong commands because their commands are lagging.

Everyone is free to join in the game. Check out the link below.

Reference
http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Life: Cleaning continued - Glass Stop Top

When I moved in the stove already had dark rings around the burner area. Like the smaller one in the picture below:



Over time, it became like the one you see in the larger burner. I have a pan that is larger than the burner thus the larger circle. I tried to keep it clean by using a sponge and water but the burn marks just become larger and dark. In the picture is about a year's worth of cooking prior to my attempt to clean with baking soda.

In the picture you can see on the left side that it is already partially cleaned and some white streaks. That is because I already started testing with the baking soda. The white residue appears much clearer with flash which I cannot see as clearly with my eyes.

Below you can see that I am already half done with the burner.


If you do this on a somewhat regular basis, you can probably remove the grime with just a sponge. Mine is rather caked onto the top, so I used a screwdriver. I did not have a razor like one of the videos below, but the screwdriver worked very nicely still. I was very careful not to scratch the surface. The scratch marks you see in the picture was already there just from regular cooking.

I had used baking soda and let it sit on it overnight. This made it easier to scrape the grime off. I tried the same method on an area I didn't apply baking soda and it barely removed anything. I also tried to reuse the baking soda, but it was much less effective.

I may have been able to just use a sponge over multiple days because the baking soda does get dirty. It would have take many days for me because you can barely see the difference with just manual force.

Reference

Mike Gandy (with a razor blade) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L83W1vv6lk
 - I like this video the most because this was more similar to my situation. The grime in the other videos were much simpler to remove.
Simone Smith (her attempt with some humor, also not a glass stove top) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OmHC8LuYeE
Bella Peters - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrCxp3Twuyc
Clean My Space (where I learn a lot of cleaning tips) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjVxtKgy8gI

Question: Google Drive Charts - How to create a year-by-year comparison? (no solution)

I am playing around with Google Drive charts. I have data of my weight over 1 year and some months, so I wanted to be able to view the data year by year. This way I can view my weight compared to previous years.

The reason I would like this is because the holidays are approximately the same every year. This means that my macro eating habits are going to be somewhat similar every year. For example, I overeat during Thanksgiving, around year end holidays, July 4th bbq, certain birthdays, etc.

Currently, my graph is one long time line. I do not feel like splitting my data into different sheets separated by years (i.e. a sheet for 2014 and another sheet for 2013, etc.). I would like something similar to the article I found on superuser for excel.

As far as I can tell so far, I cannot find a way to manipulate the Google Drive charts to display what I am looking for.


Reference

superuser "Excel chart with year-to-year comparison" - http://superuser.com/questions/492284/excel-chart-with-year-to-year-comparison

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Life: Narcissistic Personality Test

I found the title amusing and clicked into the article (link below). Some of the questions are somewhat obvious to which way it leans towards so I wonder if it is possible for a narcissist to actually answer some of them honestly. Could I be one too? Perhaps, I truly believe that I am humble but not in practice?

For example, I ask a lot of questions when I see a problem. These questions may or may not be related to the direct problem. I ask questions like where did it come from, should this be handled by me, should this even be handled by the person presenting the problem, what should be the proper protocol, etc. Then one of my coworkers who seem to have a problem with that started to do the same thing to me except that his questions do not even pertain to the problem and feeds it into his paranoia that the world is against him. He would ask, why are you asking, why are they asking, why are you doing that, why should you be doing that, etc. Although the questions are similar, his intentions are not the same as mine and does not help our group, in my opinion.

But what if I am really blind to see that I am actually like that? I can clearly say that I eventually use my information to provide better solutions either to preventing the problem or channeling the problem to the proper resources.

Or is my coworker the one that blindly sees that he is copying what I am doing? I have discussed that he is just wasting my time with a lot of the requests or questions that I have posed to him. He said that I do the same thing. After some thought, I can see how he thinks it seems that way. But, I the key factor (the intention of the question) is that it is not. I was unable to convince him of this.

Lastly, could we both be blind to what we do? I imagine it to be something like an addiction. I know that I am not supposed to do something, but I will still do it and may even deny acknowledging that I did it to ease my mind. For example, procrastinating but saying that I am just really busy.

Reference
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-16-pinsky-quiz_N.htm
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/02/student-narcissists-prefer-twitter-more.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BpsResearchDigest+%28BPS+Research+Digest%29

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Work Life: Lack of Female Employees in Tech Industry - Thoughts on Dropbox Hiring Practice Article


Interview Questions

If someone came in right now and announced that the zombie apocalypse had just started outside, what would you do in the next hour? What is something that you’re geeky about? What is a superpower you would give to your best friend? (questions from LinkedIn article)

"They don’t lead to better hiring outcomes as Google learned." Yet it is used at DropBox and they appear to be doing well. Google used to use them, and see where they have gotten. I think the problem with the question today is either the interviewers no longer understand why they are asking those questions or the interviewees just do not know how to interview.

"Dropbox's interview process is juvenile ("frat-boy" indeed) and their C-suite dudes need to get a clue." (Clinical Coordinator) "Are these interview questions some kind of sick joke? Did I really work so hard all these years, only to be rejected because I don't know (and don't care!) what I would do in a zombie apocalypse?" (Attorney at Law) "Asking what you would do with the last hour of your life is deeply personal and has 0.0 correlation with work ability." (Analytical Marketing Expert) "I'm with you, these questions are bull." (owner)

I just find these responses interesting. Basically, many of these comments boil down to (in my opinion) is "that fits my model, therefore my opinion makes sense and it is so obvious that this does not require any more arguments to support my opinion." Why do they not consider that both companies have started just as small as theirs but has grown that much faster with what they think are bad interview questions? Or not consider the interviewer wants to know how you analyze the problem, come up with a solution, and provide the reasoning behind the choices? Are questions that just want you to regurgitate an answer whether you know why that is the answer any better than these? What are the better questions?

I somewhat agree with one comment by Elizabeth Langdon, "I do not, for a minute, believe that anyone would be excluded from consideration at DropBox, or anywhere else..." It is rare that an open-ended question is one of the questions that make or break the interview.

I know this is just from the internet and should be taken with a grain of salt. So, I am just posting this to encourage my readers to put more effort into providing a constructive criticism than just ranting.

I am not bashing the content of the comments just the lack of value of the comment while projecting that it should have value. I also agree that oddball questions are not the most effective questions or at least should be asked by someone that understands the purpose of the question.

Gender Card

Another pick topic in the article and the comments is the unfairness to women in a technology company.

First argument is that the questions are geared more towards men. Do women not consider the end of the world, or imagine having powers, or being geeky? Who hasn't thought of the end of the world with all the world-ending movies that we have? I can guarantee that most men and women have thought of it more than I have. Who has not dreamed of having superpowers? I do not even see the correlation to gender. Perhaps, the poster thought they had to choose a superhero? I can see that there are more male superheroes than women. And then there is about being geeky? There are plenty of female doctors, lawyers, and other very high educated positions who I would consider to be geeky. I wouldn't even say that I was geeky.

The second item is about discrimination against women. There is some but I think it is even less so than other industries. I have worked primarily with men. In my current employment, there are more women than I have worked with in the past. Even then they are a minority. Interestingly, there are more female IT managers than male IT managers even with that discrepancy. 

I do not know anyone that would have any problems working with women. Many would even favor having more women in the group. And plenty of them willing to go farther with favors from women than from men. I have a hard time believing that the IT industry discourages women more than other industries.

Sadly, there are very few female engineers. Even the ones that I have met and worked with, few have really proved their value. Of the rare few, they have truly deserved their respect and positions. Some I would consider may even deserve higher positions, but I think they struggle equally with their male counterparts.

I really liked this statement by Debbie-Lee Mumford, "Like most things in life evolution is a slow process. For those woman that have been held back, or have not succeeded in male dominated environments; are we looking at the reasons why they don’t succeed? Or are we crying foul because we cannot change things to our liking soon enough? I think there is a lot more to this discussion and we are scratching the surface."

Another statement from Gayle Coffman, "If you can not or will not fight for your own rights then fight for the women that will come after you. You have 10 years experience. I am glad it is getting better that it was when I started in IT 34 years ago but it is only because your rights have been hard won by your American female predecessors. Don't forget how it used to be."

Although in the article, Coffman appears to be somewhat against Mumford but I agree with what both stated. Not just women, but for anything that is right. I am not one for extremes. Just because I did not have the luck to have things lined up for myself, I fight for certain rights. But, I choose which fights are to be taken and I do not expect changes to happen overnight. I think with many things in our society, we expect change too quickly. Things already move much faster than they did in the past, but being spoiled by technology we have succumbed to the illusion that we can get results instantaneously (or close to it).

I think the main issue is not how we treat women in the workforce, but how education and social expectations are hindering them from excelling in the technical field. I remember in the first level of computer science, the class nearly had half women and half men. By end of the semester, only a third of the class were women. By the following year, there were even fewer. For some projects, even those that remained struggled with the course material.

In the professional world, I have found that more women struggle keeping up with the logical flow of information and arguments. Although I think I do a better job of training than my colleagues, I struggle relating to women's thought process. Am I wrong somewhere? I do not know. I could be.

For example, I was explaining how we should organize our group mailbox. I do not move the messages to different folders. My colleague did not like the mailbox to be full of messages. She keeps pushing that they should be organized into folders. I explained that it makes it difficult for the team to search for emails when they are in folders because each role have different ways to gather certain emails. One reason is that outlook does not search emails in folders very effectively. Another argument is that if I move the email, someone may not know that there was even a new email to read.

Her counter-argument was how was she supposed to read emails that she has not read? I explained that she just had to read from the newest to the oldest until she reaches emails that she already read. This seemed simple enough but for some reason she just said that she could still miss an email. I tried to understand how she would miss it using that method, but she just stuck with that it would not work.

Then she argued how she would organize all the emails to how she wants to review. I recommended her to use the search feature. Each email has a certain unique characteristics that she can search by. I also explained this is why I have been pushing us to standardize certain terms so that it would make it easier to search for emails. For example, use the word "defect" and not "bugs", "issues", or "problems" that way we can search by the term defect. She says that is impossible because people outside our group may not follow that. I stated that my experience is that it is ok as long as we are consistent. To be consistent, we should respond and use the proper terms so that at least our emails will come up with the specific keyword. Over time, other groups would start using our terms as long as we are more consistent than they are. This goes for date formats, ticket number formats, etc. She just nods her head and agrees. After about a week, she does not follow the format and still complains about how full the mailbox is. Everyone else in the group seemed to have already accepted the new process.

Later, another woman joined our group. She also had a hard time adopting a shared mailbox concept. There were times where emails were moved and we lost traceability of certain tickets because there are gaps. So, I tried to explain by using that example. Because their roles need to find emails in a certain way, other roles need to the same emails but in a different way. They want to sort work done in testing into a test folder, work in release to a release folder, and approvals into a management folder. When they need to reference a past email, they only need that one email. While audit requires all the emails. By breaking into the different folders, we lose the ability to track tickets across multiple emails. So it is more important that we do not sort it into folders.

I have demonstrated how they would find their specific email which is basically the same as what they did except they did it in a folder. So it does boggle my mind why they cannot adapt because it is the exactly same thing minus a step. I was not adding a step so why is it more difficult? To this day, they just come to me to find the email which takes me seconds to do.

Maybe I am biased. I am able to work with some women. There is another woman in our group that understood (and also unable to convert the other two). So from my point of view, I think it is more the process is in how we process information. I find I have the same problems with men who have similar thought processes. I chose a simple scenario but issues are more complex as the situation grows larger. After dealing with more complicated situations, I see certain behaviors that seem similar between those that I have difficulty training.

Questions

There were many questions about some of the statements in the article. For example, why does it matter that only people who talk are men? Why don't they speak up? Shouldn't the statement be that they are not allowed to speak? That would be an issue. Only men speaking is not an issue. In some meetings I have been in, it is always the same 3-4 people speaking. Now that I think about it, they are all Caucasian while 80% of the team are not Caucasian. Thinking further, majority of management is also Caucasian while majority of the team are not. And most of us don't consider that the company is racist.

No females in leadership? Majority of our managers are women, while a large majority of the team is men. The team does not treat them any differently. Our nation's presidents have been all male, yet female population is about half. 

They were uncomfortable with Break-up Room and Bromance Chamber? I would be too.

The article fails to explain how these relate directly to women. There are serious issues on how society pictures women and expectations of women. I do not think this article did a good job on explaining that.

And the last question, if the workplace is so terrible why are there not more woman started companies? If the situation is so biased, a woman-led business should easily be able to undercut the market and start their own ideals. I am sure there are reasons and I think those would probably be worth more of my time to read and learn about.


Reference

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140217222725-8451-dropbox-s-hiring-practices-explain-its-disappointing-lack-of-female-employees?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0
http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2013/02/interview-oddball-and-riddle-questions.html

Life: Cleaning Around the Washer's Door - Second Attempt

I spent quite some time watching videos on cleaning. One of the techniques that I tried to replicate was cleaning using baking soda and vinegar. Baking soda has made cleaning much easier on the tougher stuff that were greasy especially the range hood.

So, I tried this on the washer door again. I had attempted this once and was not very successful (see post link below). As you can see in the pictures, I was only able to clean certain areas where I can rub it down with a paper towel.

This time I tried to use baking soda on the right side. I used fantastik Scrubbing Bubbles bleach 5-in-1 all purpose clean on the left. I let both sit there for about 30 minutes. I tried to use paper towel to wipe it down but did not appear to be any easier.

The next day, an idea suddenly dawned on me to try to use a screwdriver. I did not even have to scratch all the mess out. I am not sure if it was because of cleaning agents or if it was usually that easy to remove since it was equally easy near the left and right hinge, as well as the part in between which was not exposed to either agents. (I felt pretty stupid not having thought of this earlier)

Once I was able to remove the stuff (which was incredibly disgusting), I noticed it was just a wet chunk of lint and probably some other stuff. Even knowing that, I still did not want to touch it even with my gloves on. But, the washer now looks much cleaner.

You can kind of see that it is much cleaner across the top.

Here you can see that it much cleaner than the similar picture from the other post. I used the fantastik Scrubbing Bubbles.

Here you can also see that it is much cleaner than last time. I used ordinary baking soda with water (soaked for 30 minutes).

This view is not great to see that it is cleaner around the hinge, but you can see door itself is much cleaner. I used fantastik on the door to clean. It does not look as dirty before but I had to use several paper towels to clean the door.

Same as the previous picture, this view does not show how much cleaner it became. Also same as the previous picture, the door is much cleaner.


I am not exactly sure how to clean around the corners or edges. The left side is a little dirtier which I think is more because I am right handed so was difficult to get around the gaps. I also found that cleaning every week also removes some stains that was not easy to remove in the past. While some stains just slowly clear up over time. Somehow, this keeps me to stay cleaner. 

I just noticed today that my hands are much drier than usual because my hands used to not be dry at all. I have only used gloves since using baking soda and fantastik. I have been cleaning with just paper towels and Kaboom with the power of Oxi Clean before. I do not know if that is the cause. I'll have to note as I continue to use the gloves because it may just be because I wash my hands way more frequently than I did in the past too. 

The next project is to figure out how to remove the stains from the bottom of the toilet seats. I tried baking soda and both all purpose cleaners. None seems to fade the stain.

Most of these were leftover from the owner prior to my renting the unit so I am not sure what caused some of these uncleanliness. I am sure these are things that were accumulated over several years. I plan to have my own place eventually and figured to use this opportunity how clean certain appliances... just in-case I somehow screw something up. I find that it is just easier to clean things on a weekly or every two weeks (maybe once a month). Weekly is easiest to maintain the habit though. 


Reference:
http://douglastclee.blogspot.com/2014/01/life-cleaning-around-washers-door.html

Monday, February 17, 2014

Buggish: Cannot Scroll After Click on Back Button on Google Chrome

On Google Chrome (Version 32.0.1700.107 m), I cannot use the scroll wheel after clicking on the back navigation button on the browser. After dragging the scroll bar, I then can use the scroll wheel as normal.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Cooking: Filleting a Fish (first time)

The experience was not as easy as it was in the video. I could not do the pull the head to remove the guts (although most of the guts have already been removed). Then, I am able to fillet one side. Cutting through the ribs was harder than it appeared in the video. Filleting the other side was not as clean as the first side especially when cutting the ribs. After that, I pulled out the rib bones. This was very difficult with fingers. I did not have tweezers. Overall, I did get two fillets. They appear so much smaller than I had imagined from the whole fish. I used the rest of the fish for soup.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Life: Checking Outlook Recent Activity

I received an email for verification from Microsoft and was not sure what it was for. So I went onto my outlook accounts to check which one had the email address that received the verification request.

While I was at it, I checked the recent activity page. I noticed on one of my accounts a bunch of sign-in from Netherlands. I panicked a little, so I changed my password. I then checked one of my google accounts that automatically downloaded the emails and did find that the schedule matched up.

One odd part of this was that in the morning, the IP was from the US. The IP from last night was from Netherlands.

Google (US) - 209.85.214.140
Google (Netherland) - 209.85.219.14


Email

It would be nice if the email contained what address it was trying to verify.

Microsoft account
Verify your email address
To finish setting up this Microsoft account, we just need to make sure this email address is yours.


Steps to check activity

  1. Sign into outlook.com
  2. Click on your user icon
  3. Account Settings
  4. Recent activity
  5. Answer security question

Monday, February 3, 2014

Review: 2013 metrics for Honda Civic 2012

Gas Data for 2013

First full year of data for my Honda Civic 2012.

Total Miles Driven10696
Total Gallons of Gas311.72
Total Cost of Gas$1,025.22
Gas Milage34.31
Average Price per Gallon$3.29

MPG

Gas Mileage has dropped from 35 mpg to 34.31 mpg. Now average 34.86 mpg lifetime. I'm not sure if this is due to my mom using my car for a month but somehow her mpg is much lower than mine.

Average Gas Price

Interestingly, gas price is lower than total average $3.34 and a 2012 average $3.43. 

Insurance

Premium went up $10 with Geico.

Reference

Guesstimations: Super Bowl XLVIII - Conclusions

Well, the results were surprising given all the news, rumors, and other opinions. This super bowl was expected to be close yet ended so lop-sided. The closest opinion was from someone saying that defense has won majority of the super bowl matchups.

My prediction of 37-27 (Denver) was crushed by the 43-8 (Seahawks).