Removing music from IOS7 iphone/iDevice purchased off iTunes

The music app in IOS7 continues to be a piece of crap that ignores folders and makes you make local playlists or sync with your iTunes while at the same time, tries to move you away from iTunes to iCloud.  It's trash.

You may have songs for whatever reason, (belongs to someone else, got it free from the starbucks, whatever) that comes up in your phone.  You try to swipe it but there's no delete option like the other songs that you copied from your computer.

To remove it, you must:

• In Settings, make sure "Show All Music" is on.
• Play (replay* because you played it at some point to have this problem) the song and just fast forward to the end.
• In the playlist on your screen, if you see a cloud icon, touch it to "complete" downloading the song to your device.
• So at this point, the song is fully in your phone. You've enabled the cloud connection, played it all the way to the end to ensure full download.  Now you can swipe it to see the Delete option.
• Delete the offending song.
• In Settings, make sure "Show All Music" is off to get rid of the song name with the cloud icon from your list.

Fellowes Quiet Air Purifier with True HEPA Filter (AP-300PH) - PlasmaTRUE Ionizer Noise

Fellowes Quiet Air Purifier with True HEPA Filter ( model AP-300PH) is a rebranded Winix 9500 made by a Korean manufacturer and is generally highly rated.  Some features (remote) was removed when this product was ported over to the American market and priced around an average of $190.  If you have the patience and wait for a "hot deal", then you can strive to get it at around $130 before tax and probably need to use an online coupon.

Here is the historical data of the price on CamelCamelCamel

I highly recommend this purifier. It works noticeably well in both performance and sound.  The filters are reasonably priced (not cheap for how long they last but i deem it acceptable especially if you periodically clean it before replacing it).  If someone farts in the same room, the auto sensor will detect it and ramp up the speed to clean out the impurity. Seriously.

Fellowes customer service and warranty is pretty solid.

There is only one fault with this product and it's the PlasmaTRUE ionizer that's built in without a way to disable it.  The topic of whether an ionizer is dangerous to your health is debatable, but the reason that it is such a fault in this product is that it emits a high pitch rapid chirping sound that is highly irritating and makes this product least desirable.

The good news is that while this model doesn't provide the option to turn off the ionizer like the Winix model, with a 5 inch Philips head driver, you can simply unplug it like this:


1) Remove the peripherals

2) Unscrew the top 2 screws to open the console

3) Be mindful of the wire thats still attached and just rest it like this:

3) That black wire in the right side of the below picture is what you will unplug.  Unscrew the 2 screws on the side of the black casing to loosen it

4) Maneuver the wires and gently undo the tape so you can open it

5) Squeeze out the red/black power wire

6) Voila.  Quiet purifier without the optional ionizer.  Just secure it and put the tape over the wire when you reverse your steps to secure and close the unit up.

Toilet tablets will destroy your inner toilets

Little did i know that if you use those toilet tablets with bleach (2000 Flushes/Corox etc), that unless you flush often (have big active family), the water will accumulate and eat away at your flapper mechanism and parts.

After 1 day of having the bleach tablet in my toilet, my brand new flapper already lost most of its color and is well on it's way to needing to be replaced.

Damn.

Finding that long term cookware

So when i first moved to my own place with my spouse, we were given a set (pots and pans) of nonstick cookware that I still have to this day.  Needless to say, i abused the hell out of them, using them all incorrectly for nonstick (I calphalon which is supposedly healthier than Teflon).  I was scouring it hard to clean stubborn gunk, blasting it with high heat, scraping with metal utensils and this went on for years.  I should probably have cancer now.

I recently started becoming more health conscious because i have an expanding family. So after much online searching, I boiled down my choices to cast iron, glassware, ceramic and stainless steel.  All 4 are fine and have pro's and cons but here are just the cons because now we need process of elimination.

• Cast Iron - It's for the avid cook.  You have to season the cookware and if there are multiple chefs in kitchen everyone has to get on board with the extra special maintenance of how to clean cast iron.  It's a niche market for a reason and will continue to be, since im also looking for a quick fix of something that can take abuse/mistreatment, gets thrown in the dish washer if im in a pinch, etc
• Glassware - expensive.  Hard to fine.  More fragile than metal.
• Ceramic - it's impossible to tell what company uses a lead/chemical/crap free glaze.  Even if you stick to a corporate brand you trust, a report just came out that in India, there may be a scandal where all the colored ceramic knives might be leeching into the food.  If I didnt go for stainless steel this would be my next choice.

I chose stainless steel.  It's priced okay and hits all the checkmarks of being usable, durable and will kill me the slowest.  Speaking of which, there are different grades of stainless steel (build quality and composition).

The recommended is the surgical steel grade stainless steel.  In reality the best you will find with little difficulty is 18/10 stainless steel cookware. (18% chromium, 10% nickel)  It's durable, will withstand beyond the "perfect condition" that all cookware wants you to be in and is the way to go.  If you are allergic to nickel, then buy the less durable 18/0 stainless steel cookware.  

This article really hits the nail on the head because you want a set that well built in addition to using the right grade metal.  http://www.allcookwarefind.com/Stainless-Steel/

My favorite was the 7 Piece because I'm only partially replacing my existing cookware Cuisinart 77-7 Chef's Classic Stainless 7-Piece Cookware Set

Free Electric Double Breast Pump kit via Health Insurance

Thanks to the new healthcare law starting this year, many people with health insurance are eligible for free breast pumps.  It varies among insurance companies, and also within the same company due to the policy that you are in and those that are grandfathered in from a previous policy with specific clauses will not qualify.  However, it's easy to find out and you dont need to call your insurance company. All you need is:

• Your health insurance info
• Your doctor (OB) info

Most people use the wildly popular medela electric double pump kit that comes in some fancy tote or bag.  Some use other brands.  Everyone wants to avoid using manual pumps unless you are on a real budget crunch.

The pump you get really boils down to where you apply for your pump.  You want a place that has a limited and desirable inventory so that you get what you want or close to it.

Now, you can uselessly search through medela's out of date website to try to find a store that participates (willing to do the actual footwork and jump through hoops to squeeze money from the insurance company) or you can just keep reading.  Byram Health is pretty much the best possible store to buy from:

website: www.byramhealthcare.com
Breast Pump Customer Service Team
Phone  1-877-773-1972
Fax       1-800-521-6291
Email: breast-pumps@byramhealthcare.com

They only sell Medela (MY57038) which is a model that is only offered through DMEs working with insurance companies that has the Pump In Style motor but not the one touch let down button that you find on some of their other models as well as the Ameda Purely Yours (No Tote) incase for some reason you dont like Medela.   

This MY57038 is almost exactly the same as the Pump in Style portable tote but without the fancy tote and extras.  Go to your nearest Target if you want to see it in person but this (and the backpack version) is a very popular model.

Reach out to the company, get the form, fill it out and submit it.  They will contact your doctor on your behalf from no earlier than 30 days prior to your baby’s due date and not after 365 days from the actual date.

If your insurance provider quotes less than 100% coverage they would contact you via email to let you know.  Also provide time for shipping, processing and restocking.   They say it takes weeks or months, but they are fast.  Especially for a company that acts after the insurance company pays out.

Gmail's new mandatory categories is extremely annoying and needs to be disabled

Some make changes for improvements. 
" " " for bug fixes.
" " " for new features.
and some makes changes for the sake of change itself.  Just to make things different.

That's what Gmail did. They took an existing feature that everyone has grown accustomed to and forced additional categories in their effort to place ads ("promotions" was the primary label that Google wanted to throw in along with bundling it with "Social", "Updates" and "Forums") into the inbox.

Even if you configure the inbox to disable/hide and undo this intrusion, you are still stuck with the minor annoyance of scrolling a bit on the dropdowns that appear in the "Move To" and "Labels" buttons

You can't disable (yet) these drop-downs that appear but if you use Firefox with Adblock you can hide them thanks to the fine people at Google Groups who made the effort complain and a user (Mario Krušelj) to post a custom solution.

In Firefox, edit (or create if you dont have) the category "Element Hiding Helper" in your filter preferences and add the following filters:

mail.google.com##.J-N[title="Social"]
mail.google.com##.J-N[title="Promotions"]
mail.google.com##.J-N[title="Updates"]
mail.google.com##.J-N[title="Forums"]
mail.google.com##.J-LC[title="Social"]
mail.google.com##.J-LC[title="Promotions"]
mail.google.com##.J-LC[title="Updates"]
mail.google.com##.J-LC[title="Forums"]

Screenshot below:

Internet Web Browser of choice

I use and recommend two internet browsers to use.  Firefox as the primary and Internet Explorer as the back up.

Internet explorer is self explanatory. Sometimes there are sites that just simply doesnt display properly on other browsers.  So when i know i need to view a certain site that I trust is secure, I load up internet explorer to view it.  It's also the browser i integrate JAVA with because again, i trust the site is secure and I dont want java loaded on a daily basis for my usual browsing on my primary browser (Java is notoriously bad for security).

Otherwise my primary browser is Firefox.  There are many browsers out there, all of them fine.  Infact one can say there are just too many damn browsers out there, both on the desktop and the mobile.

To make a long story short, the reason firefox is my preference is due to the way they implement extensions.  Speed is not an issue for me to go to Chrome, and the adblock plus extension works best (most customizable/powerful) on Firefox.

My balance of an uncluttered browsing experience with the right amount of extensions has led me to be a Firefox user with the following 6 extensions (and with Java disabled):

• Adblock Plus - Blocks ads by URL (unsurpassed customization compared to any other browser)
•  NoScript - blocks scripts except those i explicitly approve
• ForecastFox - Weather forecasts for the next 2 days unobtrusively in the bottom right of my browser
• InFormEnter - Right click populate common info like name and address (especially in filling out address info when shopping)
• WebSlingPlayer - I have a slingbox
• X-Notifier - single point of access for all my various email accounts

While the default layout isn't bad, I also move around the the bookmark bar, url bar, tabs and stuff to customize the look of the browser.