Lengthen the Life of Your Dishwasher – DIY Life
Like most appliances, dishwashers often get neglected (until, of course, they suddenly stop doing their job). With a bit of routine maintenance, though, you can prolong the life of your dishwasher long after its sticker date. Here are a few easy tips for keeping your dishwasher in tip top shape:

1. Keep your hot water heater set to the temperature recommended by your dishwasher’s manufacturer; you can locate this info in your user manual. Forgotten where you stashed that old manual? Try Google-ing the model of your appliance; many manufacturers post their product manuals online.

2. Run a monthly cleanse cycle on your dishwasher. Simply empty a packet of sugar-free lemonade where you normally place detergent and run the dishwasher through a normal cycle.

3. Check the interior racks of your dishwasher. If the paint is wearing off, consider investing in a dishwasher repair kit to prevent scratches on your pots and pans.

4. Soak the spray arm with diluted vinegar monthly to clean off any scum build-up.

5. Be sure to regularly check the food trap for any residue that may have been acquired in a few weeks time.

So go ahead, show your dishwasher a little TLC — and avoid those dreaded prune hands!

Microsoft has re-re-re-re-released their search engine, and now they’re calling it Bing. Some people have joked it stands for ‘But it’s not Google’, but who knows?

It appears Bing has a decision engine behind it to attempt to improve the results. Of course, the user has no control over the decisions/filtering, so…

One blogger, after watching the promo, wondered if this might be the end of smaller stores for searches (although Google suffers from the same issue anyway). If you search for Home Depot, Bing will also put up links for Lowes and Wal-Mart on the side.

Anyway, the point of this post is someone has created a webpage that allows you to enter a search criteria, and it will pass it to both Bing and Google, and display the results in a split screen on your browser.

Compare Bing to Google

Some very interesting pictures from way back in 1981…

Xerox Star 8010

Someone I know recently travelled to the New York area for a wedding. They stayed outside the city, and decided to rent a car with a GPS.

They used the GPS to get to the wedding, and it took them 35-40 minutes to get there.

On the return trip, the GPS originally planned the reverse route. As they were driving along, it ‘piped’ up that it had found a shorter route. They decided that they had gotten the GPS, so they may as well take advantage of it.

The new route involved driving through busy downtown streets. They were moving so slowly, they were able to purchase drinks and hot dogs from a sidewalk vendor. Three hours later, they arrived back at their hotel.

Now, if the story ended here, you would be inclined to think GPSs are very flawed, and a good old map would have served them better.

But, the story doesn’t end here. Family from the area, returning to the same location, took the reverse route the GPS had originally planned (i.e. the same route used to get to the wedding). It took them six hours to get back.

So, based on this, the GPS did accurately find a shorter route (and must have been tied into a traffic condition system).

I think we all know that anecdotal evidence is just that, but sometimes we put too much stock in it anyway.

Ever remotely connected to a machine with your screen’s resolution > 1600 across or greater than 1200 down and ended up with a stretched, or window/letterboxed display? Ever wondered why?

It appears the version of Remote Desktop shipped with XP will support a maximum of 1600×1200, so depending on your monitor and it’s settings, you either end up with a stretched display or window/letter boxing.

The Remote Desktop in Vista has corrected this, and supposedly supports dual monitors as well (although the last time I read, the client and target machine had to have identical screen layouts and resolutions).

When I last looked at this, there wasn’t a way to upgrade Remote Desktop in XP, but now there is. It’s called SP3.

I’ve installed SP3 at home, but hadn’t used Remote Desktop in awhile. Recently, I fired it up, and immediately noticed it was different. Sure enough, once I was connected, I was seeing the remote desktop at full resolution of my monitor (1920×1200).

Just be cautious if you have an AMD system, and especially from HP. There have been reports of constant reboots if you attempt this, but I haven’t been keeping track, so don’t know what/if any fix is currently available.

In honour of Earth Week, here’s some interesting information on rechargeable batteries.

Adventures in Rechargeable Batteries

I’ve started using the charger talked about (The LaCrosse BC-900), and am quite impressed with it. One thing I like is the solution to C/D batteries. Instead of having to deal with all these different batteries, the charger came with adapters. You places a AA inside an adapter sized like a C cell. If you want a D cell, then you place the C cell adapter inside a D cell adapter. Means you only have to worry about 2 kinds of batteries (or if you don’t have anything with AAA, then 1).

I don’t have any hard evidence about the batteries themselves, but the charger is great. Discovered that some old rechargeables I have around the home only hold about 250mAH these days, even thought they’re rated at 2500mAH…

Another great charger maker is Maha. They’re a little more expensive, but look to have a few more features.

Where to download music legally — and, in one case, for free

The free one is Jamendo.

<p> Checkout <a href=”http://national.ballet.ca”>National Ballet</a>. Pick a ballet, select a date, and then at the bottom is a seat chooser.</p><p> The Venue is shown in 3-D and you select a Section. It then shows you the seats that are available, and the price range. A third tab is available where you can see a photograph taken from the location identified in the section.</p><p> Impressive! and especially in comparison to that corporate ticket seller that shall remain unnamed.</p>

One of the things I like about Intelliware is the sanity of the hours. We’re not asked to work extra hours to try and get things done.

James Shore has posted a link to an interesting discussion where a team was ‘asked’ to work extra hours to get rid of a backlog of work.

The team involved had historical performance data, so were able to compare before and after. They discovered that productivity went down and bug levels went up.

Just one more reason to not try to solve ‘we are behind’ by throwing more people or more time at the problem.

Energized Work

Ever wondered where a flight is? The FlightAware sight mentioned doesn’t appear to support Canadian airports/airlines unless the flight is going to/coming from the US, but if you’re in the US, you can check the status of any flight. Where it is, current speed, expected arrival time etc.

Outsmarting your airline – Joel on Software