So, it has been 6 months since my last car oil change huh. The people from Servitek sent me an SMS the other day reminding me that it is 6 months already since the last checkup. (Or course, I have been in Mazda Ortigas couple of weeks ago for the rear suspension replacement).

Regularly changing your car’s engine oil and filter is one of the most important things you can do to keep your car running well. Over time your oil breaks down and your filter becomes clogged with contaminants. Depending upon your driving habits, this may take as few as 3 months or 3,000 miles or be as long as 20,000 miles or 24 months (consult your owner’s manual for service intervals). Fortunately, changing your oil is both easy and inexpensive.

Inexpensive huh? In my case, Php 2,600 for the fully synthetic oil and the service fee is not at all cheap. And here’s a funny thing, when I was paying the bill, my wallet only has Php2,500! I was a hundred pesos short! Embarrassing! Good thing there’s an ATM nearby.

For a Do-It-Youself change oil for your car, here’s the link: http://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Oil-in-Your-Car

But if you’re like me, or if I were you, go have some mechanic who knows what he’s doing do it for you.

Ever wonder how that ‘twit–twit’ door locking mechanism (keyless-entry remote control) in your car work? I did… This post is inspired by a someone who stupidly thought that you can unlock a car with the key (unlock) miles apart by using a cellphone! Yeah, how dumb is that?! Imagine you lock your car keys inside you car and the spare key is in you house several miles away. You then asked your wife to call you and ‘twit-twit’ or unlock the car by using the cellphone. He hopes that the sound will be loud enough, coming from the earpiece of the phone, to unlock the car!

Of course it doesn’t work that work that way. By inspection you’ll instantly know that it has something to do with RF or radio frequency. Let’s read more shall we?

How does it unlock the door from 20 feet away?

How secure is it? Can I open someone else’s car with it, or can other people get into my car with theirs?

That keychain thing with your key is that locks/unlocks your car is actually a radio transmitter. When you push a button on the fob, you turn on the transmitter and it sends a code to the receiver, which in turn, locks or unlocks the door.

Now the second interesting question:

In the very early days of garage door openers, around the 1950s, the transmitters were extremely simple. They sent out a single signal, and the garage door opener responded by opening or closing. As garage door openers became common, the simplicity of this system created a big problem — anyone could drive down the street with a transmitter and open any garage door! They all used the same frequency and there was no security.

By the 1970s, garage door openers had gotten slightly more sophisticated. You can see this level of sophistication in the photos below. The first shows a controller chip (black) and a DIP switch (blue). A DIP switch has eight tiny switches arranged in a small package and soldered to the circuit board. By setting the DIP switches inside the transmitter, you controlled the code that the transmitter sent. The garage door would only open if the receiver’s DIP switch were set to the same pattern. This provided some level of security, but not much. Eight DIP switches provide only 256 possible combinations. That’s enough to keep several neighbors from opening each other’s doors, but not enough to provide any real security.

After a (very long) holiday vacation, today is the official first day of work for 2009!

So what’s up?! Well, first, I got a dollar an hour even though i am sandboxed… that’s good news.. Hope it continues till tomorrow and the day after and the day after that and so on and so forth..

Kawasaki Disease is what I learned today.. It’s the sickness or apparently the caused of death of John Travolta’s Son, Jett.

My sympathy.

Geesh, that is one of my longest post title ever!

Are you looking for a place to stay (homestay) here in Vancouver/Burnaby British Columbia, Canada? Perfect!!

I certainly wish that this post and information in here will help someone out there looking for a very nice place to stay (a homestay) here in Burnaby, Canada.

I want to post here my personal experience in homestay. At present I am staying here in British Columbia, Canada, in Vancouver to be specific. Actually, to be more specific still, it’s in Burnaby.

But since the location of the homestay place I’m staying in is in the area of Burnaby commercial district and super near the Boundary (Road) between Vancouver and Burnaby, I can say that I am in Vancouver and Burnaby at the same time… Both are very conviently accessible.

What is Homestay and It’s Advantages?

You probably know what ‘homestay’ is or you wouldn’t be searching for it right? But in case you don’t know, it’s a living arrangement in which a foreigner (a person from foreign land… or internation student or cross trainess) lives with a family in the home.

This post will be updated… call 604-323-0552 for any inquiries on homestay… mentioned Eli Palad as reference.. or email me your info at eli_palad at yahoo . com

That is the world famous “Gerber Baby“. You can see that Gerber baby photo on most, if not all of the Gerber products available today!

Ever since the first conceptualization of a product representation, that well-known gerber photo baby has been the company’s only ‘mascot’.

But do you know the story behind that famous face/baby? That’s our trivia for today.

The Origin of the Gerber Photo Baby

What’s the origin of that famous gerber baby picture? The answer is Dorothy Hope Smith.

Dorothy Hope Smith is an artist who specialized in drawing children.

The year was 1928 when Gerber announced that they are looking for a baby face for the ad campaign. Dorothy Smith submitted one of her unfinished charcoal baby photo to the company saying that she can finish it if they want and if Gerber chose that photo.

Gerber loved it and says they will use it as it is. And the rest is history.

Of course you can read the complete story on Gerber’s website but the story is pretty much it.

Who was the Baby on the Gerber Photo?

Her name was Ann Turner Cook, mystery novelist and retired English teacher, knows the real answer. She was the subject of a simple charcoal sketch by Dorothy Hope Smith.