Category: advice and tips

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advice and tips

Got suspicious call from Chase Fraud Service

Twice

The first time, call originated from this number 1 844 540 4033, the guy not even verified my name, and told my Southwest Air Credit Card is stolen, then started reading about those “fraudulent” charges. At the end, I asked the last 4 digits of my card number, that does not match; and I asked the first name, does not match, and so on. So I told him I would hang up and call Chase directly.

The second time, they are coming back with a similar message, with this call back number 1 800 955 9060.

This itself (the phone calls) appears more like fraud, I am thinking they are trying to get more information from me. To have a peace of mind, I did verified my credit report via annualcreditreport.com (free for everyone, 3 reports for one year), and I could not find the card number mentioned by the suspicious caller.

Just trying to add some burden as we are having a baby girl lately. Those cheaters.

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advice and tips

How much should we tell Facebook, LinkedIn?

Dos and Don’ts in the social media age

Recently the Facebook “lab rats” testing for its “news feed” is the news (see this one at Guardian). I gave it some more thought and since I’ve thought about this privacy thing before, I’d like to share some of my thoughts.

We all knew (hopefully heard about) a few years ago, people complained employers in the Facebook (or linkedIn), and got fired. So if one does not plan to move on, my suggestion is not to say negative things about employers publicly. Because although Facebook and other social media appears not necessarily public, they are actually public as soon as it’s went up in the air.

The more worrisome thing for me is, though, is with the big data (data scientists) Facebook and LinkedIn got, they have already affected how we interact with friends, reading news, and how to look for new jobs. And in the process they could manipulate how we think (Facebook appears already did this). So there is the danger of intersection of social media, psychology and data science. Should we worry about all this?

I don’t know. I am not a pessimist, but I think to be careful, or use another proverb: trust but verify. The technology usually will brings positive changes to society, but just like iPad, we should be careful don’t let iPad to our baby sitter 🙂

PS, I happened to read some unpleasant reviews on my former employer at glassdoor.com made by some former coworkers. I don’t think that’s a good idea either. I think those can be address at exit interview, or survey, but not at a public places like glassdoor.com. I don’t have personal opinion about this website (for/against), I just felt some of the comments went to extreme: too good to be true, or too bad to be true.

Another reason which I think is more relevant to those kinds of comments, is people felt frustrated (due to various reasons). And they felt relieved when they left for new jobs, and they wanted to say whatever they like. Wrong. Two reasons: 1) We don’t want to comment others purely out of our own frustrations; 2) We don’t want to bad mouth others if all at possible.

Oh, boy, now we are talking about human psychology 🙂

PS 2: came across this article “Facebook – the big tobacco in social media”, thought it’s interesting read.

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advice and tips fun

Good news, bad news

The good news is if one searches “kids St. Louis” in iTunes App Store, my app To Market will show up between six flags and magic house. The bad news is, after spending hours trying to add the feature of “add to calendar”, the app crashes if one tap that button 🙁 🙂

20140620-015032-6632119.jpg

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advice and tips

Self identity

Serenity became 4 years old a few months ago, and we are actually expecting our second child this July. Being the 1st generation Chinese immigrants in mid-west, we have some unique challenges such as being the minority in the community. This is not the case in the pre-school/toddler community we sent Serenity to (Hope Montessori at Creve Coeur). But it’s not always the case. I recall, once when Yoyo was still very little, probably one year old, we went to a mall play ground, and a Caucasian girl (about 10 years old) came over to play with Yoyo, but her dad called her back. It seems to me a race kind thing was going on (from the expression). This is fine with me, my personality is I don’t care too much about discrimination other people say/express towards me. But nonetheless, I don’t want my daughter felt that way when she grows up.

Economy condition
Beside race, another common thing is different economy conditions among families. For us personally, we really work hard to send her to the private pre-school. It’s not a small change for us. I wishes my app store or google adsense revenue could make up some of those some day 🙂

Fun aside, once I talked about private school option with a fellow parent (his daughter is my daughter’s good friend in the class). And one worry from her dad, is if we send our kids to private school, will they feel so removed to ordinary people’s lives. Note both of us have fairly humble up-brings. We don’t want our kids growing up having no empathy for people are less fortunate than us. This is a very good point I did not think much before the conversation. Interestingly enough, I heard discussions on similar topic lately with my coworker, one reason they decided moving to new school district is that new school district demographics matches their background better. Not too affluent like some other districts 🙂

I will update more as I have more thoughts on this topic.

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advice and tips kids

Mall playground, park playground

(Update 08-30-2014) We went to St. Louis Outlet Mall (the mills) again today. The playground is busier today as this is labor day long weekend. But still fun. We also explored the mall a bit more this time.

photo

(Update 07-20-2014) We went to St. Louis Mills today, as I felt it’s might be a better fit for my older daughter as she is 4 years and 4 months old. I vaguely recall they have a playground, last time we visited there (a year or two ago), Serenity was not quite there yet. Today it’s no question she is ready for that. The plus side of this playground is it’s both big, have a fence around it, and it’s indoor (good for summer and winter). The two new outlet malls in Chesterfield don’t have big playground like the one in Mills.

(Update 05-10-2014) We went to Chesterfield mall today, specifically the playground, as our little guest has allergy, we try to play inside. Personally I prefer Chesterfield mall over West County mall for the playground, it has more room.

(Original 05-04-2014) I have not been to the mall much recently, but the past Friday evening we went to mall to pick up something, and let our daughter playing in the playground for a while. Two things made me uncomfortable: one little boy, who is still in diapers, was a bit aggressive, he pushes my daughter and other kids, while his parent does not care much until I complains. Also, there is a “Asian child fund” charity, presumably they see me as asian, asked me for donation, which is fine by itself. I am not comfortable though, is when they showed me the list of money other people gave (don’t know if this is true or not). It’s just not the right way to ask for money, in my opinion.

Yesterday evening (Saturday), after dinner we went to Beirne Park, and we enjoyed it as usual. Personally I think the atmosphere at park and at mall playgrounds are different. Obviously it’s not a fair comparison too, as the park playground is much bigger. But at least the parent can watch out the kids and teacher them if needed.

Water outage
This past Wednesday we had an water outage; this is the first time I experienced this in the condo/maybe in the US. Personally I am not too upset by this, because back in China we had those kinds of things more often when I grew up (power/water outage). I joked we need to go to hotel if we don’t have water. But everyone in the neighborhood was asking each other about what happened. Water was restored after we came back from dinning outside. Yesterday (Saturday) we received a letter from the condo management co. explaining about what happened: it was essentially a clerical/communication mistake, the water company thought we did not pay the water bill, and we have already paid actually. This made me to think: this water company monopoly thing does not help, say if we are not happy with the water company, we can not switch, because they are the only provider.

Farmers market
Creve Coeur opened its own farmers market. I saw an interesting comment written a while ago.

My apps free for a week
myNestEgg

ToMarket

collegeFund
The last app (collegeFund) has a problem I know of, and I already submit the fix/update. It will take some time for App store to review and make it to the store.

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advice and tips fun

Kids Summer Camp in St. Louis Area

It’s finally spring time here, which also means summer is around the corner. And we need to get kids into summer camp, instead of let them glue to Netflix or iPads all day 🙂

There are quite a few summer camps in the area, some are almost full time (like regular semester), some are more short. And I recall YMCA has some discount a few months ago for early registrations (early Feb), don’t know if they still have it.

There is also a kids summer camp at St. Louis Community College Meramec. There is this Missouri Science Camp, which is being held at Rolla, MO, where I went to graduate school.

I know Ladue News has a nice summary for the summer camps, but I could not find it online. IndependentSchools (the association of private schools in St. Louis) has a good list too.

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advice and tips finance iOS iPhone app

Small changes coming to collegeFund app

I was listening/reading two stories on the college debt (source: NPR) and the financial well beings of millennials (source: fortune/cnn), which lead to to add some new features to the collegeFund app. The app was essentially a college savings (529 plan) and I did not thought too much of this college debt problem at the time the app was conceived 3.5 years ago. At the time I opened 529 plan for my daughter, and started put some money into it.

A lot has changed in my personal finance and to the economy in general. Now I felt for a lot of people, college debt is like a mortgage, it’s just something they have to bear with, and manage while go on with their lives. Btw, I saw another good resource for college debt here.

I just updated the app, submitted to the app store, it’s under review now. Here is the screenshot. Let me know if you have any questions. Email me at minjie dot xu AT gmail dot com.

collegeFund_iPhone5_screen

(Update 05-10-2014) I made couple more updates to fix bugs I introduced when adding this “debt free” tab/screen. It’s mostly settled now. I am thinking other enhancements, along with myNestEgg app.

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advice and tips finance

Redeem British Airways Avios Points for Free Flights

From my limited experience BA Avios points are difficult to redeem for international flights, esp. from where I live STL to PVG Shanghai. But I also heard BA miles is very efficient for the US domestic flights, the trick is also to find them. So here is how I did recently, for one way STL to LGA (New York). I used AA advantage account to search award flights first (note AA is the BA partner in the US), and I saw some openings. Then I go to BA site, search the same date, I got the award seats.

I have not done round trip or multi-stop in this case. This is something I will try next time.

(Update 04-20-2014) Today I booked the round trip ticket for STL to CLL (College Station, Texas), it costs 36,000 points plus $20 for 2 tickets. This is compared to 22,500 points + $7.50 for three STL to LGA (New York) tickets. It’s a bit more expensive for the round trip tickets, even considering breaking it into 2 legs, it’s 9,000 points per leg.

Also, I noticed the points guy has some good stuff (this one and this one) about redeeming BA Avois points.

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advice and tips finance fun

Squirrel visited my sienna minivan again

This time it tried to make an home again, luckily because it was overnight, they did not bite cable or things bad enough to cause damage.

I am annoyed by them to be honest. So as my neighbor. So who is the culprit? I heard from my neighbor, the new Toyota Sienna minivan is using soy based (food based) as insulation material under the hood. No wonder they chewed those thing left and right in my van. But why Toyota did this, so that they could boast they are “green”, or to make the regulators happy? This “green material” is just creating trouble for people like me, who had to park car outside, unfortunately in this country in many places, squirrels is just a way of life. I think Toyota should either reimburse me for the repair cost ($600) plus my time, or issue a voluntary recall to replace the material from food based to chemical based. Better yet, put some tabasco (the hot sauce) on it.

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advice and tips

Squirrel visited my car again, took Serenity to Post Office

(Update 3-29-14) They came back again last night, as I saw some hay above the battery again in Sienna van. I talked to my neighbor yesterday evening, and his Lexus SUV got squirrel after I got it last time. It seems we still need to figure out something. Maybe they are used to moth balls now?

(Update 3-16-14) They came back one more time, on Friday/Saturday (March 14/15), I found out on Saturday morning. That’s the 3rd time they caused damage to my car (the check engine light is back on again). I am putting moth balls around battery now.

(Original 3-13-14) This time things got a bit worse, they tried to make a home under the hood (on the battery). I could not start the car. Had to call AAA for help. The AAA driver did a trick, he said my car was “flooded”, basically too much fuel in the engine as I was applying gas trying to start. I also talked to my neighbor as his SUV got bitted by the squirrel twice too. His solution is the moth ball. So I’m trying similar tactic shortly after I got the car back from dealer on Tuesday afternoon (Mar 11). While this incident is a bit unfortunate, my wife commented we are much more fortunate compared to the people who likely lost their lives in the MH370 incident.

Some links on squirrel messing with the cars.
toyota tundra forum

car talk

I also saw couple videos at Youtube. I also posted this at mitbbs.com

Post Office Visit
Last time I took Serenity to USPS, is probably a few years ago when she took the passport photo when she was 6 months old. Yesterday I took her again to post office, to send a book I bought from Amazon almost 13 years ago, and sold it on Amazon at almost the same price (Pragmatic Progmmer). Anyway, sometimes it’s difficult to get Serenity happily leaving school for home in the late afternoon. I usually waited. Lately I tried a few new things, like remind her after 5 minutes, like the USPS thing, etc. Just try to be innovative, and also be fair minded. I knew one occasion she really dislike leaving is when she worked on drawing/cutting paper.