Categories
Fixing Stuff Samuel

Fixing A Samsung Twin Cooling Fridge That Is Leaking

This post is a step by step guide for fixing a samsung fridge that is leaking water. In my case water was leaking down into the crisper at the bottom of the fridge. To Fix This Issue we will be removing the evaporator cover from the fridge and cleaning out the water tray…. don’t worry if you have limited experience with refrigerator repair, I had none before attempting this as was able to complete this fix relatively easy.

– – – Update 3/8/2021 – – –

My good friend Ol’Brute was using this page to make this same repair on his Samsung fridge and he took it a step farther, finding an item you can buy that will permanently fix the manufacturing defect with the fridge so that it won’t ice up again in the future.  You can still go through the steps below to fix the iced up fridge, however while you are doing that you can also install this piece and prevent any future freezing:  https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-DRAIN-EVAPORATOR-REFOEM-Original/dp/B008KFG9NO

Step 1:
Unplug the fridge then empty all of the contents out, and take out all of the drawers.

Step 2:
Unscrew the Cover

  • Take out both bottom screws
  • pop the cover off the middle section
  • once the small cover is off then take out the hidden screw that is behind the cover
Evaporator Cover

Helpful Hints For this Step
– The small cover in the middle has hooks on either side. Take a small flathead screwdriver and pry one side out and it will pop out easy.
– Once you remove the small cover if there is ice built up underneath, take a hair dryer and melt the ice until you can access the screw.

Step 3:
Remove the Cover. This step is the most challenging step of the entire process so take your time and make sure not to break the cover. The best way to remove this is to pull from one side. There are small brakets on each side, once you put pressure on one side the entire cover will bow in the middle and the brackets on the side you are pulling will slide out, and then the entire cover can rotate sideways and easily slide out.

Pull the right side of the cover towards the left until it bows in the middle and slides out

Helpful Hints For This Step
– If you have trouble getting the cover off you can take a flathead screw driver and slide it under one side. From there you can gently pry until the cover slides out.
– If you get very stuck on this step, take a hair dryer and heat up the cover, depending on how much ice has built up ice could be keeping the cover panel locked in place.

Step 4:
Unplug the evaporator. There will be two wires that you need to unplug, pictured below:

Step 5:
Take the hair dryer and melt all of the ice frozen in the bottom of the metal tray, pictured below:

Step 6:
Boil water and melt the remaining ice stuck in the drain hole:

Helpful Hints For This Section
– It took me 5 different pours of boiling water before the ice fully melted. Once the ice melts you will hear water drain down to the pan at the bottom of the fridge. Go ahead and pour a couple more small amounts of boiling water after the ice melts to help clean the line.
– If the ice is really stubborn in the drain hole, put a flat head screw drive and take a hammer and very lightly tap the screw drive. Do not hit it very hard, this is only to try and loosen up the ice a bit.

Step 6:
Reassemble the fridge, plug it back in and then bask in the satisfaction that you just solved a problem with your own two hands and fixed your fridge without paying a single dime to anyone!

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

Tesla Should Adopt The Bird Scooters Service Model

Lately is has become apparent that Tesla is having a hard time servicing their vehicles in a timely manner. To fix this they have stated they will build more service centers. While this is possibly a good long term goal, they should also consider adopting the servicing model of the Bird Scooters startup.

Bird scooters service model works by allowing anyone with the app to apply to be a “mechanic”. Once they are tested and approved, then they are able to open the app and see scooters that need servicing. Each scooter will have a “bounty” depending on what repairs are needed. Tesla could mimic this approach, open up their app to allow mechanics to apply. The benefits of this approach would be:

– Mechanics would scale up and down in each location as needed. Tesla would not need to predict how many services centers to build and where to build them. If a particular city or state had lots of repairs, mechanics wold naturally sign up in these areas to accommodate the work load.

– With the disruption that is about to take place over the next 10 years in the automotive industry, many retirees from the automotive sector will need to supplement their income. Countless mechanics and parts men who have worked for 30 years to pay into a pension are going to have their pension severely cut over the next 10 years. Assuming things go to plan autonomous cars will take over and have far few accidents, meaning far fewer repair jobs available. Electric cars require far less maintenance than ICO cars, so the traditional franchise dealership model is going to implode. Without collision, service & parts revenu the traditional dealership will not survive. All of this adds up to a massive influx of trained mechanics and body repair men flooding the market in each state. Tesla should use this influx to their advantage and put these people to work in a distributed service model!

  • As many people know it is Tesla’s stated goal to become more of a Software as a service company over the next decade. This distributed mechanic workforce fits perfectly into the master plan.
  • On a human level this plan also helps soften the blow for the actual workers in the automotive industry. Instead of being out of work and needing to completely retrain, workers can become contractors with flexible work hours, potentially working from their own “home office/shop” or possibly renting space in co-working buildings that should spring up to meet the demand for this new type of mechanic. Many of these co working spaces can most likely be setup in the old franchise dealership stores.
  • Overall this plan would help Tesla scale their mechanics and fix the current service bottleneck. Additionally it should buy Tesla tremendous goodwill by saving the actual workers who are currently in the automotive work force from financial ruin. Both of these help Tesla tremendously in the long run.

—– Update —–

After some feedback on this idea I wanted to outline how to avoid a few potential problems:

Mechanics would need to be thoroughly vetter to make sure they provide great service

– To solve this a star rating system similar to Uber could be instituted. Additionally the owner of each vehicle could select if they would like to “approve” the mechanic before the mechanic is allowed to fix their vehicle. Once a mechanic claimed a car to fix, the app could notify the Tesla owner and show them a profile of the mechanic including past customer reviews.

Categories
Samuel Thoughts

Motivation

Lately I’ve been pondering why I’m able to be so disciplined and motivated. Since about middle school everyone has always told me that my personality is “extreme” or that my level motivation or discipline to doing an activity I want to do is more intense than their own. After thinking about why that is, I realized that I play a little game in my head when I’m pushing myself, and most people do not seem to play this game. I can’t remember exactly when this game started but I think it started around the time I was 12 when I started playing hockey more intensely and when I got into martial arts intensely for the first time.

If I’m doing an activity like working out that requires discipline to keep going and push myself I will always play a game in my head and talk to myself like this: “ok if I can do 3 more reps then X person I love will be safe for another day and have good luck”. Or I will say that I personally will be safe and have good luck for the day. Additionally sometimes the game goes more morbid and I will say something like “If I don’t do 3 more pullups then X person I love will be injured today”. Think about that for a second, it’s so easy to do 3 more pullups if the consequence is that your best friend or wife or nephew will be injured if you don’t. It’s actually almost trivial to complete the last set of whatever I’m doing at that point.

To me this game seems very common, but I came across a podcast by Joe Rogan today where he explained that he plays a similar game in his mind when doing hard activities. Quoting Joe

“When I workout it’s about rape and murder. My head is filled with scenarios where I’m stopping bad people. Stopping child molesters stopping bad people from doing things. I just fill my head with animalistic rage. That’s what I do when I get tired. When I get tired I think about saving someone I care about. I think about stopping someone who is trying to murder someone I love. That’s what I think about. I think about protecting people I care about. Or I think about someone trying to kill me. Think about the worse case scenario, you are tired and someone is trying to kill someone you care about”.

You have to put yourself in animalistic fury.

Another “cheat” I often do when I’m doing something that requires discipline is I make sure I only have to make the discipline decision one time, or at least as few times as possible. So for example if my goal is to not eat chips I don’t buy chips and put them in the house. That cuts down my need to be “diciplined” to only the times when I’m out at a store and chips are in front of me to purchase. The rest of the time I’m at home and physically can’t eat them, so I don’t need any discipline in those moments. Or another example, If I don’t want to leave dirty dishes around the house I can store all dishes and only leave myself 1 set. Problem solved there are no extra dishes, I have to clean them each time I eat.

Categories
Fixing Stuff Julia

Making Your Rental Work (A Preparation)

I got permission from my landlord to make small, surface level updates around the house. And the first room I’m pumping myself up to tackle is the bathroom. We have an old light wood vanity with a surface that is slightly discolored after years of use, no matter how hard I scrub. So, I’ve done a little research and I’m planning to make purchases in early October. I think all I need is the following and the space is going to look 100% better.

Vanity Update:

  • Screwdriver
  • TSP cleaning solution
  • Sandpaper to remove the finish on the wood
  • Primer
  • Half-gallon can of paint
  • Painter’s tape (for the floor and mirror since I’ll paint the trim of it too)
  • two new pull handles

To update the countertop:

  • Xacto knife
  • Removable vinyl contact paper in ‘marble‘
  • Rubbing alcohol
  • Smoothing device (like a credit card or gift card)

Other:

 

Eventually I’d also like to buy removable wallpaper and/or repaint the bathroom, but I think this will be more than enough to start. I already love the shelf we hung when we moved in, and the shower curtin/handtowels/rug we have.
I’ll post an update with photos of supplies and the before/during/after photos when this gets underway. Posting this “prep” is working to hold myself accountable to actually start and finish this project.

Categories
Laravel

Setting Up Laravel Staging Environment

In this post we are going to cover setting up a Laravel staging environment. We are going to assume that a live environment has been setup on this account following these steps previously covered.

1.) Create A new folder for the staging site, this will live in /git/staging/repo-name

2.) Manually Clone The repo into this new staging folder then checkout the staging branch

3.) Create A symlink to this folder for the staging subdomain:
ln -s ~/git/staging/repo-name/public ~/public_html/staging

*Please note, in order for this to work symlinks to the files in the live sites public folder must be setup as symlinks instead of setting up the entire public_html folder as a symlink to the lives sites /public folder. In practice the code to do this looks like:

ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/css ~/public_html/css
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/fonts ~/public_html/fonts
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/images ~/public_html/images
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/js ~/public_html/js
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/.htaccess ~/public_html/.htaccess
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/favicon.ico ~/public_html/favicon.ico
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/index.php ~/public_html/index.php
ln -s ~/git/live/repo-name/public/robots.txt ~/public_html/robots.txt

4.) Create a staging subdomain with document root of public_html/staging

5.) Create new database and add credentials to .env file

6.) run migrations and seeds

Categories
Laravel Samuel

REgistering Middleware

After floundering with creating custom middleware today I wanted to type up my notes for future use. I apologize about the lack of polish these are for my own personal user later:

1.) Create new middleware file: php artisan make:middleware FileName

2.) Add whatever rules are needed to this file (note see SFPS or Fire for great examples)

3.) Register your middleware. Open up app/Http/Kernel.php and find the following section:

protected $routeMiddleware = [
'auth' => \Illuminate\Auth\Middleware\Authenticate::class,
'auth.basic' => \Illuminate\Auth\Middleware\AuthenticateWithBasicAuth::class,
'bindings' => \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\SubstituteBindings::class,
'can' => \Illuminate\Auth\Middleware\Authorize::class,
'guest' => \App\Http\Middleware\RedirectIfAuthenticated::class,
'throttle' => \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\ThrottleRequests::class,
];

*Just toss your new middleware in the mix, so an example I just added is:
'auth_administrator' => \App\Http\Middleware\AuthAdminister::class,

4.) Add your route group to web.php file, something like:

Route::group(['middleware' => 'auth_administrator'], function () {

// include all the routes you want to protect

});

5.) If you need to redirect a customer to their specific page then create this new page view and route, something like:
Route::get('/customer-dashboard', ['as' => 'dashboard', 'uses' => 'DashboardController@customer']);