I was recently looking for a way to save money on gas and came across Upside which promised to save me a bit on the price per gallon without much effort. Let’s see how it works and if it’s worth it (spoiler alert: it’s worth it).
Category: Technology
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Infiniti Key Fob Synchronization
Sometimes an Infiniti Intelligent Key fob will become unrecognized by your car. The buttons on the remote will still work but the car will often complain of an incorrect key ID and the door handle buttons and hand sensor won’t work. To fix this you need to synchronize the car and the key.
I have a La Crosse WS-9230U-IT weather station and the batteries ran out on the remote sensor. No problem, replace the batteries, but the remote sensor will not connect to the base station. I follow the reset instructions here:
This still doesn’t work. Until I see a small note here. The key is to do the following:
- Take the batteries out of the base station and the remote.
- Press any button on the base station at least 20 times to drain any remaining power.
- Let the base station sit there with no batteries for at least 10 minutes.
- Install the batteries in the remote.
- Install the batteries in the base station
- Do not press any buttons on the base station.
- Let the base station and the remote reconnect.
- Set the time on the base station after the connection has been re-established for at least 10 minutes.
I recently had to replace the hard drive in my TiVo Bolt which turned out to be an easy process but I initially chose the wrong drive. Here’s the right set of options for replacing the hard drive in a TiVo Bolt DVR.
By default Google Maps in satellite view shows trees and objects in a fake 3D view that distorts images and hides things that would otherwise be easy to see. To switch back to the flat 2D view use these links.
At its most basic OhmConnect pays you when you save electricity.
During peak demand times OhmConnect will give you a one hour window called an OhmHour during which you need to use less than electricity than the utility forecasts you’ll use. If you beat the forecast they pay you a small amount. If you progress through the membership levels and consistently beat your forecast your earning rate goes up.
The peak demand OhmHour times tend to be in the 5-9PM range and are always one hour. You’re typically given a heads up the day before that one is coming up.
Above the dashboard shows a successful OhmHour and a payout of 83 points.
Points are redeemed through PayPal, Amazon, Target or a number of other options at one point equal to one cent.
The easiest way to beat your forecast is to automate energy savings. For example put a smart plug on your refrigerator. When the OhmHour happens the service will automatically cut power to your fridge. Your food will be just fine without power for an hour as long as you don’t leave the door open.
Network connected thermostats also are an easy way to reduce power usage. By turning off air conditioning for an hour it’s pretty easy to cut back electricity usage dramatically.
To ensure a successful OhmHour you can also take a brute force approach and just flip your main breaker and then go read a book for an hour.
In addition to points you also earn tokens. Tokens are a currency on the OhmHour platform that can be used to do things like opt our of an OhmHour, increase your baseline forecast or protect a streak.
If you sign up here I get $20 and you get $10 on enrollment and $10 when connecting your first smart device.
After replacing compact fluorescent bulbs on a bathroom with LED light bulbs the new bulbs stay on very dimly at all times. When the switch is turned on they come on normally but when the switch is off they stay on dim. What causes this?
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Extend Samsung Galaxy S6 Battery Life
If you need to get more battery life out of your Samsung Galaxy S6 here are the steps I followed that seem to help.
My Logitech M705 started acting strange with scrolling. Ideally one scroll of the scroll wheel would produce the same amount of scrolling each time and in the proper direction. Instead it would jump around, bounce back in the wrong direction and be generally unpredictable. The fix that worked for me was updating the firmware on the unifying receiver.
For some time now Adobe Flash has been causing Firefox to freeze for a few seconds and then comes up with a message that Flash has crashed. I don’t know why I lived with it for so long but here’s how to fix it and stop it from happening.