Do It Scared!

In April 2009, I had jaw surgery to correct an underbite (a type of malocclusion), which involved breaking both my jaws and moving them to new positions. It was my first major surgery and first overnight stay in a hospital as an adult. I ended up in the hospital for two nights. I thought I was prepared for the hospital, having researched what other jaw surgery patients went through and even talking to my friend, a nurse; but the reality was more horrific than the bad scenarios I had anticipated. Four years later, I feel comfortable enough to write about my experience. I wanted to share what happened and hopefully, to provide useful advice for those who might be facing an overnight hospital stay.

The Good Samaritan Hospital is located in Los Gatos, California, an upscale community. The hospital costs were toward the high end so I assumed that the care provided would be excellent. I believed in the principle that you get what you pay for. In this case, it was the wrong assumption to make.

The Pain Scale

My nurse friend told me that the most important thing to know for a hospital stay after surgery is the pain scale. The pain scale is a subjective rating from 1 to 10 by the patient regarding the intensity of pain being felt. It serves as a means of communicating to the nurse how much and how soon pain medication is needed. He stressed that, at pain level 5 (still tolerable), I should be asking for pain medication because it may take up to 30 minutes before the medicine is provided. During that time, the pain level will rise to 6 or 7; at which point, the pain will be at the threshold of being bearable. His advice was spot on. Unfortunately, at this hospital, 30 minutes is extremely optimistic.

I noticed that the hospital hired a lot of nurse assistants, who served as first responders to a patient’s call. Unfortunately, most of them did not speak English well and worse, they did not seem to be trained because most didn’t know about the pain scale. After pushing the call button, I had to overcome these obstacles:

1. Someone will ask over the telecom, “What do you want?” Because my jaw was wired shut, I couldn’t answer. I kept pushing the button. Sometimes, my roommate would shout, “He can’t speak!”
2. Eventually, after 10 to 30 and sometimes up to 45 minutes, a nurse assistant is sent to check up on me.
3. The nurse assistant would look at me cluelessly while I tried to pantomime the pain level with my fingers. I only recalled one nurse assistant who understood my hand signals about the pain level. The rest acted as if they had no concept of the pain system. Later on, after I managed to get a piece of paper and pen, most of them couldn’t understand because besides not speaking English well, they couldn’t read it either. I tried underscoring and circling the pain number vehemently but again, because most of them had no knowledge of the pain system, they couldn’t understand.
4. Once the nurse assistant gave up and left for help (I hoped), or was scared off by my roommate who would shout, “He’s in pain!” Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t understand what he said either. In two instances, the same nurse assistant guy came, left, and basically ignored my requests, and I had to suffer to the next nurse assistant on duty for relief.
5. After another 10 to 20 minutes, an English speaking nurse practitioner or a registered nurse would show up. The first words were “What do you want?” And because I could not respond, that phrase was repeated in a louder voice with more irritation. Eventually my roommate would come to the rescue and say, “He can’t talk!” Near the end, after having to intervene on my behavior for more than half a dozen times throughout the night, he asked, “God damn it, what the hell is going on?”
6. After the nurse understood that I needed pain medicine, if she was nice, she would tell me that she needed to get the one nurse in the entire hospital that was able or allowed to give pain medicine (my educated guess). If she was not so nice, she would just leave without saying anything. This would entail waiting another 10-20 minutes (in the hopes that they understood my need) and in one case, a long one hour wait; toward the end of which time I was in total agony.
7. Finally, a nurse would come and give me the pain medicine. She was invariably the nicest sounding nurse, but maybe that’s because she dispenses the narcotics directly into my bloodstream. Miserably, it takes about another 5-10 minutes before the pain relief occurs after the injection.

So, the 30 minutes delay is the most optimistic and the best wait time. The longest was almost one and a half hours. The average was around 45 minutes to 1 hour. Within an hour, my pain level has increased by one or two levels. Over an hour and I was writhing in pain. I now understand what it feels like when pain gets to the level that you basically live in and for pain. Your own consciousness wraps around pain and the pain consumes your very being. That’s all you can feel and all you can think about. It’s hell.

I never got my roommate’s name but I am so thankful that he was present and able to voice my frustration. I never got to apologize for being the cause of his sleep interruptions. My frustration was captured by the phrase which he kept repeating at the end and which I repeated in my mind, “God damn it, what the hell is going on?”

Well, What the Hell Was Going On?

Why were there so many nurse assistants, why didn’t they at least speak English, and why did they seem so untrained? During the first night, I remember encountering six of them (if not more). Likewise, I would encounter the same number of nurses, never seeing the same one twice. Were their shifts so short? Why didn’t they leave a note for each other saying I couldn’t talk? Why did they treat me as if I was intruding and making inconvenience demands? Why is it that as a patient, besides fighting the pain, I needed to battle for my own care?

It wasn’t just the pain medicines. It also took a lot of effort to get the ice packs. I read that I needed to ice the first 24 hours to keep the swelling and inflammation down when the body is in overdrive to address the massive injury. Then later I can switch to a hot pack to encourage blood flow and faster healing once the body is settled down. Because of the communication barrier (I couldn’t talk and the nurse assistants couldn’t understand spoken or written English), it was a struggle to get ice packs. And when I did manage to successfully communicate my needs, I was given one or two small ice packs, totally inadequate, which I had to apply myself. I remember only one instance when a registered nurse got me the long, large ice packs and wrapped them around my jaw. Eventually, I gave up and stopped asking for ice… it took too much effort.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m blaming the nurse and nurse assistants. After thinking about it, I realized that the problem is systemic and the nurses represent just the tip of a dysfunctional iceberg. It starts with the governmental regulations that are meant to protect the patient but create bureaucracies in the hospitals as a side effect; the health insurance industry, high health costs, and mandatory emergency care for the uninsured that force hospitals to cut costs by hiring a larger proportion of cheap, unskilled nurse assistants; the prevalence of malpractice lawsuits that increase insurance costs and adds additional bureaucratic paperwork; and the cost cutting that results in understaffed, overworked and burned out nurses. If we include office politics, drama, and the natural progression towards mediocrity that can be expected to exist in any human organization, we end up with quite a tangled mess.

I talked to my friend, the nurse, and he confirmed that the problem is systemic to the hospital, the administration, the hospital workers (including the nurses), and the bureaucracy necessary to meet all the regulations and to defend against lawsuits. He agrees that this applies to the government and health insurance companies and goes further to say that society itself is part of the problem. Everything results in a dysfunctional organization that barely meets the cares of its patients with of course, an often conflicting focus on making a profit.

Nurses are understaffed and thus, end up overwhelmed with work. As an example, he states that in one hospital, he had to do a mandatory round of all patients every 15 minutes, while having to do physical checkups, paperwork, and ensuring that the medication schedules were being met (the types of medication and schedule were different for each patient). Imagine doing this for a dozen or more patients and then having to do admission for a new patient (or even two). Most days, he can only spare 5 minutes to consume his lunch.

Worse, the nurses who start out caring about the patients and working hard are often rewarded with more work until they burned out or leave. Once they burned out, they just don’t care as much and just try to get by. My friend is efficient and uses his skills to find ways to do things faster in order to handle the load. As a reward at a previous hospital, he was asked regularly to take care of triple the number of patients per shift as other nurses, with the same pay. Adding to his workload, patients were waiting for him to begin his shift so they could report issues and injuries because they didn’t like dealing with the other nurses. His coworkers told him, “Don’t work so hard. You’re making us look bad.” Eventually, he had to quit.

It’s Not a New Problem!

I thought that my health care experience was a recent phenomenon, but it isn’t. I read a book titled “On Death and Dying” by Elisabeth Kuler-Ross M.D., and in that book, there was a patient referred to as “Sister I” who experienced the same problems. She said that the nurses seemed insensitive to pain; their response time was 30-45 minutes; and the nurses were cold and did not want to engage or do their job. So she set about forcing the nurses to do their job. Below are some quotes from Sister I.

• “I think someday if I ever started bleeding or going into shock it would be the cleaning lady that finds me, not the staff.”
• “And part of my making rounds with the patients in the past years was really to find out how ill they were and then I would stand in front of that desk and say So-and-So needs something for her pain and just waited a half hour…”
• “I thought it was typical of certain floors because the same group of nurses is on. It’s something in us, that we just don’t seem to respect pain anymore.”
• “I think they are busy. I hope that’s what they are. But I have walked and seen them talking there and then see them go on breaks. And it makes me furious. When the nurse goes on a break and the aide comes back and tells you that the nurse is downstairs with the key [to the medicine cabinet] and you have to wait. When that person wanted to have her medication even before that nurse went down for her meal.”
• ”And I think there should be somebody in charge of that floor that could come and give you the pain medicine, that you shouldn’t have to sweat through another half hour before anybody comes up. And sometimes it’s forty-five minutes before they come up. And they certainly aren’t going to take care of you first. They are going to answer the phone and look at the new hours, and new orders that the doctors left. They are not going to do this the first thing, find if somebody asked for pain medication.”

That book was published in 1969. I think that if one is dying from a disease, the pain felt must be orders of magnitude greater that what I experienced. I can’t even begin to imagine how unbearable it could be. It’s depressing and horrible to think that this has been going on since at least 1969, before I was even born yet.

Thank God I’m Healthy

Thank goodness that morphine makes me very sleepy. I was able to sleep through most of my stay at the hospital and I think that sleep spared me a lot of problems by reducing my need for pain medication (and the trials of trying to get the medicine).

After that nightmare experience, I am so grateful every day that I am in good health, and that my family and friends are also in good health. Nowadays, I try to exercise regularly and eat healthy (everything in moderation). I avoid taking crazy risks that might result in major physical injuries. I realize that I don’t fear death at much as I used to; I just fear debilitating and painful long-term injuries.

If I should ever be in a hospital again, hopefully I can think clearly and speak so I can be my own patient advocate. And if I can’t, I hope to have someone beside me who can take that role for me and battle the system for the care that I would need. Ultimately, in and out of hospitals, you are the only one responsible for your own care.

I use TurboTax to do my federal and California state income taxes. When e-file first became available, I remember having to pay a “convenience” fee of $15 each (for a total of $30). It seemed strange to me that I had to pay to save the federal and state government money; they didn’t have to hire someone to input my printed tax forms after all. Thankfully, a few years ago, the IRS finally realized this and made federal e-file free. Unfortunately, the state e-file for TurboTax has always required a fee, which has increased to $19.99 this year.

CalFile

Initially I blamed California for the state e-file fee; but last year, I found that California did provide several options to e-file for free and that I qualified for CalFile. The $19.99 fee is actually imposed by Intuit as a service fee. CalFile is a web-based application that allows you to fill in and submit an online Schedule CA 540 state income tax form to the California Franchise Tax Board. Because I had the California 540 form completed in TurboTax, all I did was to copy the total amounts from TurboTax into the CalFile web forms (which referred to amounts on the state 540 and federal 1040 forms by line numbers).

CalFile is totally free and easy to use. If your taxes are simple and you make less than $169,000 if single (or higher amounts if head of household or married), you can use CalFile. Check the CalFile qualifications. This year, you are required to create an account to use CalFile; however, both the CalFile Deluxe and Basic account types are free. An account allows you to quit and continue your online 540 form at a later time.

If you are doing state income tax for another state than California, I suggest going to your state’s website to see if there are free e-file options available.

CA SDI vs. VPDI

While we are on the subject of income taxes, when doing an itemized federal income tax return, you are allowed to deduct mandatory state fees in addition to the state income tax. Such a mandatory state fee is the California State Disability Insurance, which appears on the W2 form as “CA SDI”. If you work in California, this state-administered disability insurance premium is automatically deducted from your paycheck and totals to around $1000 a year. On the federal income tax return, this mandatory fee is considered a state tax and thus is deductible.

Until a couple years ago, even TurboTax did not deduct the CA SDI in my itemized federal 1040 form, even when I explicitly inputted it as part of the W2 form. I had to manually work around TurboTax’s limitation by changing the deduction amount in the 1040 Schedule A form (line 5, “State and local Income taxes”). The latest version of TurboTax will recognize the CA SDI input on the W2 form, tag it as a “CA SDI” type, and deduct it properly on the Schedule A form.

In California, as an alternative to CA SDI, employers have the option to administer their own disability insurance plans, which must provide equivalent benefits as the CA SDI plan does. This is called the California Voluntary Plan Disability Insurance, which appears on your W2 as “CA VPDI” or CAVPDI. Because the costs of the plan, including administration and any employee subsidies, are considered a deductible business expense, some companies may decide to go with a CA VPDI after running the numbers and finding out that they could get a net gain.

When the CA VPDI first appeared, it was unclear as to whether or not an employee can deduct the CA VPDI on the federal income tax return. It is a mandatory fee indirectly mandated by the state after all. And from what I heard, the IRS did not correct the forms submitted by those who treated the CA VPDI the same as a deductible CA SDI. Unfortunately, the IRS eventually decided that the CA VPDI was not deductible by employees in the IRS Rev. Rul 81-194 ruling, which stated:

“Amounts withheld from wages of employees for contributions to voluntary plans are nondeductible personal expenses under section 262 and are not deductible as taxes, business expenses, or medical expenses.”

This IRS ruling is not a big surprise. The decision resulted in more tax revenue for the federal government, so was actually a no brainer decision. California followed suite by issuing an update to the Schedule CA 540 instructions to omit wording which suggested that the CA VPDI was deductible on the federal income tax reform.

So, just remember that you can deduct CA SDI, but you can’t deduct CA VPDI. The latest version of TurboTax will recognize the CA VPDI on the W2 form as a “CA VPDI” type and won’t deduct it in the 1040 Schedule A form.

Just in case, don’t forget that you can deduct your car’s vehicle license fee, which is a part of the yearly DMV vehicle registration. The vehicle license fee amount can be found in the itemized costs on the DMV vehicle registration renewal form that you get each year. It is a mandatory state fee and can be deducted on your federal income tax return.

Free Tax Software

I suggest filing your income taxes late so that you can borrow the TurboTax software CD (preferably, the version that includes one free state) from your family or friends once they are done with it. This will save you the cost of purchasing TurboTax, which varies from $40 and up. Alternatively, the online version of TurboTax provides free federal filing, but requires an additional $27.99 for a state filing.

I believe that the above information still applies if you use some other tax software, like TaxCut.

When I was very young, in elementary school, there was a celebratory event with cookies and punch. I remember taking extra cookies. As I was wrapping them up in a napkin, I looked up to see my teacher, whom I liked and respected. She had a cold, frozen face on and I could see the blistering stare of disapproval that she was attempting to suppress. Shamed-face, I turned away.

As I think back, I realized that it was worse that she didn’t ask me why I was taking extra cookies. I would have answered that I was saving them for my younger sisters. We were recent immigrants and didn’t get the luxury of cookies so often. But she didn’t. Instead, she made a quick judgment. And though she tried to hide her disapproval, I was able to sense it and be affected by it. I reacted with feelings of shame.

I am not making out my teacher to be some sort of horrible person. She isn’t. What she did was what many adults would do almost unconsciously in the same situations. I’ve done it. You’ve also done it. We’ve done it to other adults and to children. In the greater scheme, this is how I imagine cultural mores and social conduct are trained into children and enforced in adults.

As a sensitive child, I reacted in two ways. First, I learned to inhibit my own actions by imagining what others would think of them beforehand. Second, I made a vow to not judge others in any way. The first was a bad decision to follow in extreme and turned me into a “nice” person; which turned out to not be a very nice thing to do at all. The second, I’ve often failed at and it remains to be seen whether in the end, it is bad or good decision. I think good and I will try to convince you so.

Why Judging Can Be So Wrong

I have two problems with judging. The first problem is that we judge the motivations of others. We say they did something because they thought or felt a certain way. Can we truly know what someone is thinking or feeling? Even if they tell us, we can’t be sure that they are not liars or that they don’t even know themselves. Most likely, they will tell us rationalizations and justifications that make them appear in the best light.

We are worse when we ascribe negative motivations like hatred to behavior. Supposed a neighbor invited you to her party. At the party, she doesn’t talk to you at all beyond a quick hello and you observe her talking to and laughing with others. You think, she doesn’t talk to me much because she doesn’t like me. But maybe, she was busy being the host and taking care of those whom she thought needed her the most. And she thought that you could take care of yourself and do the mingling on your own. She made a judgment and so did you.

The second problem is that we judge the actions of others. Have you hear the saying, don’t judge people, judge their actions? Well, it can be wrong. Some folks perform what can be considered bad actions for all the right reasons. Others can perform what can be considered good actions for all the wrong reasons. Can you tell which is which? Can you tell if it is neither? I can’t.

Take the over-used example of a person stealing food. Stealing is a bad action. What if their children are starving? The action is still bad, but we wouldn’t judge them as bad persons.

There are some actions that are so detrimental to society, like the killing of another, that judgment must be made and punishment mete out. Laws are enacted to enforce such cases. If you break the law, the fact remains that you broke the law, regardless of your reasons. But it’s not universal. You have civil law for murder (illegal killing). You have military law and international conventions governing war conduct to put limits on the amount of condoned killing by soldiers. Even more unclear, different societies have different ideas of what is illegal and what punishments are appropriate.

The Judging Paradox

Unfortunately, we humans have evolved to judge. We quickly judge if a situation or another person is dangerous or not. We decide to fight or flee. The decision is then automatically applied to future situations that are similar. It is a shortcut for our brains. In the past, when survival was more difficult, it saved our lives and the lives of our families and community countless times. In the present and future, it may cause more problems than it solves.

I am not advocating getting rid of quick, automated judgments and decisions. If we had to think carefully when responding to each and every event that occurs, we would be so busy that we couldn’t think or do anything new. It is okay to have automated reactions, but the downside is that such reactions may not be appropriate and may even be damaging.

What I suggest we do is to become more conscious of when we may be blindly judging and to re-examine some of our decisions. For when we judge others, does the judgment not reflect on ourselves also?

Reframe, Reframe, And Keep Reframing

The best scenario is not to judge at all. We can try but it’s such a part of our human makeup that it would be impossible to do so all the time. When we have to judge, let us always ascribe the best motivations for actions that we can think of. More than likely, we will be wrong. But if we are going to be wrong, we might as well be wrong in the right way. Or at least, in a way which makes us feel good and helps us to react with our best selves.

I call the above method, to reframe. Our initial judgments will be driven by our emotions and we will reach the most negative conclusion about another’s intentions. We have to catch that initial judgment and reframe it by changing the conclusion to a positive one. For example, you are driving down the freeway and a car cuts in front of you. Heart beating, adrenaline pumping, and furious, you think, what a jerk, he’s doing it on purpose to piss me off, and I’m going to cut him off for revenge.

Quick, do a reframe! Force yourself to think, gosh, his wife’s pregnant, they need to get to the hospital, he’s unsettled and forgot to check his blind spot, and I had better back off because I don’t want to cause an accident on this most auspicious day. Calmed down and with a smile on your face, you immediately hit the brakes with great eagerness… and the car behind you rear-ends your car.

Ugh, ignore the last part. You get the idea. Reframe, reframe, and keep reframing until it becomes a habit. The trick is to catch yourself in the act of making a negative judgment and then to quickly reframe that judgment to a positive one. You will need to monitor your thoughts and feelings to do so. Check out my previous blog about monitoring and accepting thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes, another person’s action will affect you so strongly that you will not want to reframe. We can’t be saints all the time. To handle that, you will first need to acknowledge strongly how that action affects you emotionally, before doing a reframe. Doing so will defuse the negative emotion enough for you to do a reframe, which will then handle the remaining negative energy.

Going back to my earlier example of the party, you feel ignored or slighted because the neighbor did not spend much time talking to you. Express how that action affected you, “I am pissed off that she invited me and now is ignoring me. This is an insult!” Keep expressing how hurt you are until you can do a reframe. I like to think that we can always judge that the action is hurtful to us, but not that the person is a hurtful person.

In the End

With practice, over time, we will become less likely to judge others. We will be more likely to withhold our judgment and opinions. After all, isn’t being judgmental a lot of work? Evolution is not the best at reducing work. It just optimizes what is already there (judging) that works well enough. The more evolved method is to eliminate the work. Judging is extra work we don’t need.

Try your best to avoid judging people because we humans are so complex and messed up, that to get an accurate judgment of a person is beyond our abilities. If you catch yourself judging negatively, do a reframe. Don’t forget that this advice also applies to judging yourself. Treat yourself as well as you treat others. As Mother Teresa said, “… in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

A few months ago, my sister complained that her Time Warner Cable Internet Broadband Plan’s monthly charge had increased by $4-5. I asked to see the bill and saw a $3.95 cable modem rental fee, which after checking with her, was a new addition. A quick google revealed that Time Warner Cable had started charging a rental fee for cable modems, which previously were free. (I guess the penny-pinchers finally got control of Time Warner.)

I don’t know why my sister complains about technical stuff like this to me. Oh, wait, it’s because I usually solve the issue for her. Anyhow, I decided to buy a cable modem for my sister so that she could avoid paying that rental fee. I ended up getting a used cable modem compatible with Time Warner for $20 from craigslist. The following contains some information which might be useful if you are also looking to buy a cable modem.

DOCSIS 2.0 vs 3.0

DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) is a term which you will encounter when shopping for cable modems. Simply, DOCSIS is a communication standard for cable modems which allow cable modems from different companies to work with an Internet broadband cable provider’s equipment. There are two versions of DOCSIS, 2.0 and 3.0, which are commonly supported by Internet cable providers. The main difference between DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.0 is the speed which they can handle.

If your Internet service speed is significantly less than 42Mbps downstream and 30Mbps upstream, you should be okay with DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem because those are the maximum throughputs for DOCSIS 2.0. If your Internet service is around that speed or higher, you should invest in a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem.

Because my sister had the Time Warner Basic plan, which is rated for up to 3Mbps and actually tested at 20Mbps (please, don’t let the penny-pinchers at corporate find out), a DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem is more than adequate.

Time Warner’s Compatible Cable Modem Models

Originally, Time Warner recommended five expensive DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems on their Buy Your Personal Internet Modem page. Thankfully, the latest version of that page adds more models, including DOCSIS 2.0 modems, and breaks them into two groups tied to service plans; which are very helpful. Still, my sister’s rented cable modem is a Cisco DPC2100, which isn’t on the official list of recommended modems to buy.

After googling, I found Time Warner’s Lease Your Modem page which lists all the rented modems that Time Warner supported. This list contains three times the number of modems as the previous webpage. In the rented list, I found the Cisco DPC2100 which is a DOCSIS 2.0 modem.

The point is that if I buy a modem in this rented list, it must be acceptable to Time Warner because they rent the same out to their current customers. This is good because more options mean a greater supply which leads to lower prices when purchasing.

Shop for Cable Modems on Craigslist

When looking for cable modems on craigslist, it pays to do your research. I found that in the majority of instances, the cable modems on craigslist were overpriced. In some cases, new modems on craigslist (without the warranty) were sold at the same price or more than brand new modems that I found on Amazon and other reputable sites. Craigslist sellers were not reducing the price to account for the risk (lack of warranty, no returns, etc.) that buyers had. So if you are looking for a new cable modem, it pays to check stores (online and offline) in addition to craigslist.

If a used cable modem is acceptable, you will want to check craigslist for deals. (Also, if you don’t mind, look for online and offline deals concerning manufacturer-refurbished cable modems, which are almost as good as new and come with warranty.) As a general rule, I would target around $20 for a used DOCSIS 2.0 cable modem and around $40 for a used DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem. If you don’t have the fastest broadband plan, you don’t need to get an expensive cable modem with extra features that you won’t be able to take advantage of.

I ended up getting my sister a Scientific Atlanta DPC2100 version 2 cable modem for $20. This is basically a newer version of the Cisco DPC2100 (Cisco purchased Scientific Atlanta) that my sister was currently renting from Time Warner. At $20, it will take five months of not paying the $3.99 rental charge before we break even; after which, the saving begins. Because I paid for the cable modem, my sister enjoyed the savings immediately. (Again, this is why she complains to me about this stuff.)

Install Your New Cable Modem

Installing your newly-purchased cable modem is very simple. Here is Time Warner’s FAQ on what you need to do to install a purchased cable modem.

Basically, you will want to know your cable modem’s model (some service agents will ask for the model, others won’t) and the MAC address. Along with the model, the MAC address should be printed on a label on your cable modem. The MAC address will look like 00B0D086BBF7. Once you have these two tidbits of info, you can call Time Warner at 800-892-2253. The Time Warner agent will ask you to hook up the new cable modem (if you haven’t already done so) and update your service with the new MAC address. Within a minute or two of the agent activating your new modem, your Internet access should be re-established.

Don’t forget to return your rented cable modem to the nearest Time Warner store. Anyone can return it. The agent at the store won’t ask for anything (like account number) and will provide a receipt. Depending on where you are in your billing cycle, you may see that rental charge one more time before it goes away.

Save money on your Time Warner monthly bill by buying a used cable modem. It’s a breeze to setup.

I needed to move music from my sister’s old iPod Mini to her new iPod Nano. At first, I thought I needed to install special software to do the music transfer; however, it turns out that there is a method that doesn’t require extra software. I found it in the comments from this webpage, Get songs off your iPod. The steps are to copy the music directly from the old iPod, import the music into iTunes, and then copy/sync to the new iPod.

Before we start, non-IOS iPods (which excludes iPod Touch) are either formatted for Windows or for Mac. So depending upon the format, you will need to use the corresponding operating system to retrieve the music from the old iPod. In my case, the old iPod was formatted for Windows. (The instructions below should also apply for Mac.)

Copy Music From the Old iPod

1. Connect the old iPod to the computer using the USB sync cable.
2. Launch a File Explorer window and look for a new drive with a label like “Bob’s iPod”. That is the iPod’s hard drive.
3. If you don’t see a drive for the iPod, then you will need to set the “Enable disk use” under iTunes.
   • Open iTunes and you should see the iPod listed under DEVICES. Select the iPod.
   • If you see a “Welcome to Your New iPod” message, click on the Continue button, and then the Get Started button.
   • Under the Summary tab, make sure that “Enable disk use” is selected. On my computer, the “Enable disk use” was selected by default and grayed out because “Manually manage music” is selected. (If you wish to unselect “Enable disk use”, you must unselect “Manually manage music” first. Disabling “Manually manage music” means that the iPod will be overwritten to match whatever is in the iTunes library automatically.)
4. In File Explorer, open the iPod’s drive and you will see three folders: Calendars, Contacts, and Notes.
5. There is a hidden folder named iPod_Control. To see it, go to your folder properties and enable the “Show hidden folders” property. Under Windows 7, you would click on the menu Organize, Folder and search options, View tab, and check the “Show hidden files, folders, and drives” option.
6. Go into the iPod_Control folder and then into the Music subfolder. You will see many folders named like F00, F01, etc. Under those folders, you will find mp3 files with names like DGUZ.mp3, TBBO.mp3, etc. These are your mp3 music files. (Don’t be concern about the weird names because the song titles and artists are embedded in the mp3 files and iTunes will use that embedded info.)
7. Copy the whole iPod_Control\Music folder to your hard drive.

Import Music into iTunes

Actually, you don’t need to import the copied music into iTunes. Instead, you could drag each of the copied mp3 files directly to the new iPod; however, you would need to go into each of the copied Music folder’s subfolders to select the mp3 files. To avoid that effort, I recommend using the first import method listed below, “Add Folder to Library”.

If you wish to rename the copied mp3 files to the actually song titles, you will want to configure iTunes to copy and organize imported music files. To do so, go to iTunes menu Edit->Preferences…, Advanced tab, and make sure both “Keep iTunes Media folder organized” and “Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” options are checked. After importing the mp3 files, you will find them under the “iTunes Media folder location” (usually your user’s “Music\iTunes\iTunes Media” folder), renamed according to song title.

The iTunes application supports three methods to import music into the iTunes library. They are listed below with the first requiring the least effort:

1. (Warning: This behavior might not exist in iTunes versions earlier than 11. Earlier versions of iTunes may not process subfolders.) Use the iTunes menu “File->Add Folder to Library…” to select the copied Music folder. iTunes will then import all the mp3 files under all the subfolders in the Music folder.
2. (I believe this feature was added to iTunes 9.) Copy or move all the copied mp3 files to your user’s “Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes” folder. Within seconds, iTunes will detect the files and import them; the imported mp3 files will disappear from that folder.
3. Drag and drop the copied mp3 files to the iTune’s LIBRARY on the left sidebar.

Unfortunately, in the last two import methods, you will need to go into each of the copied Music’s subfolders to select the mp3 files. So I recommend updating to the latest iTunes and using the “Add Folder to Library…” method.

Copy Music to the new iPod

1. Connect the new iPod to the computer.
2. Under iTunes, select the new iPod under DEVICES. If you see a “Welcome to Your New iPod” message, click on the Continue button, and then the Get Started button.
3. Go to iTunes LIBRARY->Music and select the Songs tab.
4. Select the music which you wish to copy and drag them to the iPod under DEVICES.

Alternatively, you could sync the music to the new iPod by selecting the iPod under iTunes DEVICES, going to the Music tab, checking the “Sync Music” option, and then performing a Sync.

If you are getting rid of your old iPod, you can wipe it by doing a restore. Under iTunes, select the old iPod under DEVICES, go to Summary tab, and click on the “Restore iPod…” button. Once the iPod is rebooting, you can disconnect it. If you don’t, the iPod will reboot, reconnect to iTunes, and you will see the “”Welcome to Your New iPod” screen. You can eject and disconnect the iPod at that point.

Have you and a friend ever had the following conversation about what to eat for dinner?

Me: Where do you want to eat?
Friend: I dunno. Where do you want to eat?
Me: Anywhere is good. What’s your preference?
Friend: Oh, anything is good.
Me: Uh, how about Persian?
Friend: Nah, I had that yesterday.
Me: How about Italian?
Friend: Italian gives me indigestion.
Me: Hmm, how about Thai?

The above happens when people try to be nice to each other. Just don’t!

In the past, I wanted to be a nice person and tried to be and do things that I thought a nice person would be and do. And that ended up not being a very nice thing to do. I thought that being nice meant to be accommodating and to be willing to do things for others, sometimes at the expense of inconveniencing myself. In the end, I was being dishonest and not so nice to others and myself.

Almost a decade ago, on a trip to Central America, I was being so nice and accommodating that I ended up pissing off my travel companion. She told me to just stop it and tell her the truth. Evidently, I expressed no strong opinions or preferences and she couldn’t engage me as a real person because effectively I had no personality. After a while, it was more than she could bear.

She gave me pause (for which I will be ever thankful) and I took a hard look at my behavior and myself. She was right. In trying to be nice to others, I ended up being dishonest to myself. I didn’t respect my own wants, desires, and needs enough to express and assert them. I wasn’t being true to myself, and that was not being very nice to my friends and family.

Let me clarify for those who might be suffering from the “nice” virus. Being honest and assertive does not mean being confrontational and combative. It just means to express your preferences to others. Share your likes and dislikes. When you say, “I don’t care”, it should really be because you don’t care. Don’t be “nice”, only to resent the outcome. If you feel strongly about something, then take a stand on it. You may not get it, but others will know where you are coming from. They will know you and that is the nicest gift that you can give them.

Being accommodating could transfer the burden of decision making to friends and family. Because I did not express my likes and dislikes in a misguided attempt to put their needs before mine, I made them responsible for the decision and the outcome. They may feel uneasy because they are unsure that what they choose is something I would like. Even though I professed to not care, they know that it is unrealistic to not care all the time. Can you see how unfair and unnecessary this burden is?

Here’s how I would handle the dinner conversation nowadays:

Me: Where do you want to eat?
Friend: I dunno. Where do you want to eat?
Me: I am in the mood for Persian.
Friend: Nah, I had that yesterday.
Me: Ok, tell me what food you don’t want to eat tonight.
       No Mexican or Chinese for me.

Please don’t go to the opposite extreme and become a scrooge. If the outcome is not important to you and you feel like being accommodating, then be accommodating. If you care about the outcome, then ask for it. If you don’t get it, then shoot for compromise instead of accommodation. Compromise is when both teams have some skin in the game, while accommodation is when one team never bothered to play. If I care about the other team (friends and family) playing instead of me winning, the latter would irritate me a lot.

Once I stopped trying to be nice, it felt like a huge burden had lifted. It was very hard work being nice and accommodating all the time. I had more free time for myself because I wasn’t busy doing things for others. Now I relaxingly say what I want and am okay if I need to compromise. And once in a while, when I feel like it, I am very accommodating.

Case in point, here is a conversation that would have gone in a different direction if I had still been trying to be nice:

Friend: Could you give me a lift to the airport?
Me: Sure. It’s only 15 minutes drive.
Friend: Oh, it’s not that airport; it’s the other one.
Me: You mean the one that is like an hour away?
Friend: Yes. I wanted to save money so got a flight from there.
(In my head: Ugh, so you want to save money, but are okay with me wasting my time and gas money? I don’t think so. Homey don’t play that.)
Me: Sorry, I don’t have the time. Have you considered taking the airport shuttle?

She ended up getting a ride from another friend, a very nice guy whom we both know.

Be a good friend and family member. Express your wants and needs clearly. Respect their needs and wants in return. Don’t be nice, definitely don’t be real nice, just be real.

In my previous post, Setup Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Windows 7 Boot Camp, and Shared exFAT Partition, I decided to use Mac OS X as much as possible and in addition to Windows 7. It would be nice if I could use the same applications (or equivalents) on both operating systems. And it would be great if those apps made use of the same data whether running on Mac OS X or Windows 7. Effectively, I would like to share my apps between Mac OS X and Windows 7.

My methods for “App Sharing” in order of preference are:

1. If both the Mac OS X and Windows 7 application versions use the same data format, then store that application data in a shared FAT32 partition (I had issues with exFAT). If you don’t have a shared partition, you can use a private network share or even a cloud-based drive like DropBox (which introduces some security concerns).
   • My favorite secured information storage apps, Keepass and Truecrypt, run under both Mac OS X and Windows 7 and use the same data files on the shared partition. (Note: I saw some comments that using a large Truecrypt file with Dropbox may have issues such as sync not working 100% or not working in a timely manner.)
   • To a lesser extent, iTunes on Mac OS X and Windows 7 can use the same music and video files on the shared partition. Just run each iTunes and use the Mac OS X “File->Add to Library” or Windows 7 “File->Add Folder to Library” menu option. If you wish to sync your iPod, iPhone, or iPad to either the Mac OS X or Windows 7 iTunes, make sure they share the same library identifier; see my post, Sync an iPod Touch to Two Computers, for instructions.
2. If the Mac OS X and Windows 7 application versions don’t use the same data format, then they might support cloud sync’ing. My primary concern with the cloud is security, because a copy of my information will be accessible on the Internet and stored in a hard drive belonging to a company which might not always have my privacy as its top priority. It is a lot less secure than just having a local copy on my hard drive. To mitigate this, I will remove all sensitive information before using the cloud.
   • The browser I use, Chrome, supports sync’ing bookmarks, tabs and extensions to/from Google. It’s as simple as going to Settings, “Signing in to Chrome” (specifically, providing your Google account’s username and password), and clicking on “OK, sync everything”. If you sign in from multiple machines, the bookmarks will be merged. To see tabs opened on other machines, create a new blank tab and click on the “Other devices” link at the bottom.
   • The latest version of my favorite note taking application, Evernote, runs on both Mac OS X and Windows and supports cloud sync’ing. For sensitive info, the latest Evernote offers an option to password-protect-encrypt a note. I am using an old, non-cloud-enabled version 2.1 of Evernote for Windows and plan to upgrade to the latest cloud-enabled versions on Mac OS X and Windows 7.
   • My contact information and notes are stored in a Personal Storage Table (PST) file used by Microsoft Outlook for Windows. I found that Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010 for Windows used the same PST file without any issues. And Outlook 2010 for Windows can cloud sync directly to Google Contacts and Notes (Google provides sync tools for Outlook for Windows). Unfortunately, Outlook 2011 for Mac OS X does not use PST and does not support cloud sync’ing directly to Google. However, Outlook 2011 for Mac OS X can sync to the Mac OS X Mountain Lion’s Contacts (new name for Address Book) and Notes applications, and the Contacts and Notes application can cloud sync directly to Google. (If you don’t want to use Google, there is a way to use iCloud instead for the same purpose.)
   • If I wish to sync my contacts and notes in Outlook to an iPhone or Android phone, the above method of cloud-sync’ing to Google Contacts and Notes will help. I can sync contacts and notes on the iPhone and Android phone directly to/from Google. Alternatively, for iPhone, I can use iTunes sync with Outlook on Windows, or iTunes sync with Contacts and Notes on Mac OS X.
3. If the Mac OS X and Windows 7 application versions don’t use the same data format and don’t support cloud sync’ing, they will usually provide an export/import migration path between the Mac OS X and Windows 7 application versions. In this case, I would just migrate to using the application solely on Mac OS X. In the future, if I need to, I can migrate back to Windows 7.
   • My expense tracking application, Quicken, supports migrating data from the Windows version to Mac OS X version. Because Quicken for Mac OS X may not have the same set of features as for Windows, you will want to research whether the Mac OS X version will fit your needs. I plan to upgrade from Quicken 2003 for Windows to Quicken Essentials 2010 for Mac OS X.

Moving from Evernote 2.1 for Windows to Evernote 4.5 for Windows and Evernote 3.3 for Mac OS X

Evernote supports export/import but there was an export data format change between Evernote 2.1 and the latest Evernote versions. I found a forum post, New user help-importing Evernote 2.0 files into Evernote 4.1, which indicated that we need to use Evernote 3.1 for Windows to import the old Evernote 2.1 format and then export to the new data format. Actually, I found that Evernote 3.1 was cloud-enabled, so there was no need to export because the imported 2.1 notes were sync’ed directly to the cloud.

Here’s how I migrated from Evernote 2.1 to the latest version:

1. Run Evernote 2.1 for Windows. There is no need to do an export because the exported “ENExport.enx” file won’t be usable.
2. Look at the bottom status bar to see the total number of notes. It will say something like “Notes: 272″ or “Notes: 15 of 272″.
3. Quit Evernote 2.1. Do not uninstall it yet because we may need to use it later to verify that all notes were migrated.
4. Install Evernote 3.1 for Windows (it will co-exist fine with Evernote 2.1). I was able to download a version of Evernote 3.1 from FileHippo.
5. Run Evernote 3.1 and sign-in. You will need to register for an Evernote account, if you don’t already have one, to use Evernote. Even if you plan to only use locally stored notes, and not the cloud-sync’ed notes, you still need to have an account.
6. Go to menu File->Import->Evernote 2.x Databases… and select your 2.1 database file “EverNote.enb”, which is usually located under the Evernote 2.1 install directory; for example: “C:\Program Files\Evernote\Evernote 2″. (Note: There is a menu option File->Import->Evernote Export Files… but it will ask for the new .enex export file which we don’t have.)
7. The import will occur. At the end, I got a warning message saying that some of my imported notes contained “Premium File Attachments” which are not supported under the free account. I didn’t think I was attaching any files that were not in the list of supported free file attachment types (also listed in the warning dialog), so I clicked on the “Restricted Import” button. “Restricted Import” appears to import all notes except the ones that have the premium file attachments.
8. Once the import completed, a “Data import successful” dialog appeared and asked if I wanted to “Place all imported notes into a synchronized notebook now?” I answered Yes.
9. Back in the main Evernote window, in the left navigation pane, I noticed a new notebook called “EverNote” under the Notebooks section. There is a sync icon before the name, which I guess means it is synchronized to the cloud. After the name is the number of notes in parenthesis; in my case, it shows as “Evernote (271)”.
10. Since I had 272 notes in Evernote 2.1, it looks like one note was not imported, probably the one with the premium file attachment. Now to track down the missing note.
    • I checked the log file by going to menu Tools->Options->General->Open Log folder and opening the “AppLog_[date].txt” file. (There is a “SyncLog_[date].txt” but it just contains logs from the cloud sync function, not the import function.) I scrolled to the bottom of the AppLog and saw this message, “272 notes successfully imported”. There wasn’t any message about which note was not imported. Darn.
    • Looks like I have to do a brute-force comparison with the old Evernote 2.1 notes. Thankfully, I filed my notes under many manual categories so it really helped to facilitate the comparison. On Evernote 3.1, in the left navigation pane, I opened up Tags->Manual categories. I started Evernote 2.1 and opened its Manual Categories. Then I checked the count of notes in each category to find a mismatch in the number. I was able to locate the missing note in Evernote 2.1. Strangely, it only had an embedded image and I was able to copy and paste it into Evernote 3.1 successfully. The count of notes in Evernote 3.1 went to 272. Problem solved.
11. I noticed that all my imported notes had text saying “(needs sync)” in its title. Looks like I needed to synchronize the imported data to the cloud.
    • I was concerned about the 60MB/month upload limit on a free Evernote account. To see the size of my database, I went to menu Tools->Account Properties and Database tab. My notes are mostly text so it was only 2.4MB in size. I think if your data is larger than 60MB, you might need to sign up for the premium account.
    • In that same Account Properties dialog, under the Account Usage tab, I found how much of the 60MB/month limit I had already used; it said “”0.5MB out of 60 MB used” so far. You can also get to this tab by clicking on the “Current Monthly Usage” in the top ribbon-like bar.
    • I clicked the Synchronize button at the top-left to sync against the cloud. The progress was reported in the bottom status bar to the right and looked like “Updating server database, 55% done”. Strangely, “Updating server database” went to 100% about 3-4 times, interspersed with “Updating client database…” progress messages.
    • Once the sync was complete (no more status updates), my notes no longer had the “(needs sync)” text in the title. I double-checked the monthly usage and it still said “0.5MB out of 60 MB used”, instead of the 2.9MB that I expected. Oh well.
12. Exit Evernote 3.1. If you exit with unsynchronized notes (even notes in the trash), you will see a warning dialog. Just cancel the exit and do the sync and/or empty the trash.
13. Uninstall Evernote 3.1 and re-install the latest Evernote 4.5 for Windows. You can also install the latest Evernote 3.3 for Mac OS X (from the Mac App Store).
14. Once you sign-in to Evernote, the notes will sync down from the cloud. You can see the sync progress in the status bar; under Evernote 4.5, to show the status bar, go to menu View->Show status bar.

Sync’ing Contacts and Notes between Outlook 2010 for Windows and Outlook 2011 for Mac OS X

As described above, sync’ing contacts and notes between the Windows and Mac OS X versions of Outlook is complex, involving intermediate applications. I will do a separate post later about how to do the Outlook sync between Windows and Mac OS X.

Moving from Quicken 2003 for Windows to Quicken Essentials 2010 for Mac OS X

Because I use Intuit Quicken as a glorified expense tracking application where I manually input all the expenses and run summary reports, I was fine with using the very old Quicken 2003 for Windows. I used one Quicken file for each year and in the file, I used one account for each month. So, for each year, I could see the trend of how much I spent monthly (accounts listing) and how much I spent per category (itemized report).

From the reviews complaining that Quicken Essentials for Mac OS X is a glorified checkbook with transaction downloads from banks, it looks to be more than what I need because I didn’t want to download transactions from a bank. I don’t plan to provide my bank’s login credentials to anyone! After testing Quicken Essentials, I found that it was fine for my needs: manual expense input works great and the pre-defined summary, trend, and itemized category reports provided the info I wanted.

Unfortunately, to migrate from Quicken 2003 for Windows to Quicken Essentials for Mac OS X, I needed to upgrade to Quicken 2004 for Windows as an intermediate step. How do I know this? The Quicken Essentials’ converter tool told me so when I attempted to open a Quicken 2003 file.

Thankfully, Intuit provides a copy of Quicken 2004 free for anyone who needs to upgrade to Quicken 2005 and later from a version earlier than Quicken 2004. To download and install Quicken 2004 Deluxe, do the following:

1. Browse to Using an Intermediate Version To Convert Older Versions of Quicken.
2. Expand “Quicken for Microsoft Windows” and click on “Quicken 2004 for Windows” to download it. (Note: If you use Chrome, Chrome may report that the download page contains malware, but this is a false positive. Ignore it and click on the “proceed anyway” link.)
3. Once downloaded, run “QW04DLX.exe” to install Quicken 2004 Deluxe.

To upgrade your data files from Quicken 2003 to Quicken 2004:

1. Locate your Quicken 2003 data files (they come in file sets with extensions .QDF, .QEL, .QPH, and .QSD). By default, the data files are located in the Quicken installation directory under “C:\Program Files\Quicken” or “C:\Program Files (x86)\Quicken”, or they could be under the “My Documents\Quicken” or “Documents\Quicken” folder.
2. Run Quicken 2004, go to File->Open, and select the 2003 .QDF file. Quicken 2004 will show a “Convert your data file” dialog, so confirm it by clicking on the OK button.
3. Quicken 2004 will save the original 2003 data files under a “Q03Files” sub-directory and generate the updated 2004 data files (file sets using extensions .IDX, .QDF, QEL, .QPH, and .QSD).
4. Repeat the above to upgrade other 2003 files.

To export the Quicken 2004 files to a format compatible with Quicken Essentials for Mac OS X (and Quicken 2012 for Windows):

1. The Quicken Essentials install CD comes with a Windows converter program (insert the CD under Windows to access it) and a PowerPC converter program (which can only run in Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier) which can be used to convert Quicken 2004 files and later for use by Quicken Essentials.
2. Because I didn’t have a Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier machine, I decided to run the converter under Windows. Instead of using the converter on the CD, I downloaded the latest Windows Quicken_converter.exe from Converting to Quicken Essentials for Mac from Quicken for Windows or MS Money: expand the “Convert your data from Quicken for Windows” section, look for the “Quicken_Converter_Setup.exe” reference, and click on the “you can download the converter here” link. (Note: If you use Chrome, Chrome will display a false malware warning which you can ignore by clicking on the “proceed anyway” link.)
3. Run the downloaded “Quicken_Converter.exe” to install “Quicken Converter 2012″.
4. Launch “Quicken Converter”.
5. Select “I’m transferring data from Quicken for Windows”, click “Get Started”, select “Open a data file located on this computer” and click “Select File”.
6. Select your Quicken 2004 .QDF file and click “Convert it!” in the confirmation dialog.
7. Once done, you will be asked to indicate the location to save the transfer file to. Click OK and select a directory. I selected the automatically created “Q12Files” sub-directory.
8. Click Save and the resulting export .QXF file (and a new updated 2012 .QDF file) will be saved to the selected directory. This .QXF can be imported into Quicken Essentials for Mac OS X or Quicken 2012 for Windows. (I also think that Quicken 2012 for Windows can open the updated .QDF file directly.)
9. Click “Convert Another” and repeat the above to convert other Quicken 2004 .QDF files.

To import the exported .QXF files into Quicken Essentails for Mac OS X:

1. Copy the exported .QXF files from Windows to your Mac OS X machine. I suggest using the shared partition or a USB flash drive.
2. Launch Quicken Essential for Mac OS X.
3. Click “Create a New Document”, modify the file name (with extension .quickendata), and click Save. Quick Essentials will open with an initial blank setup.
4. Go to menu “File->Import…” option.
5. Select an exported .QXF file and click Open. Your data will be imported.
   • Note: If you import data from more than a year ago, you might be concern that the import failed when Quicken Essential shows you an empty register. This is because almost all of the Quicken Essentials pages will filter on the “Last 12 Months” (look for the filter bar at the top). You will want to change that to “All Dates” in order to see entries older than one year.
   • To import another .QXF file, go to menu File->New…, type the new filename (without the .quickendata extension) into “Save As:”, click Save, and repeat the import steps above.
   • Note: Unfortunately, we can only import one .QXF into one Quicken Essentials file. If you attempt to import a second .QXF file, you will get a error message saying that it is not allowed.

Besides selecting “All Dates” to view older entries, I noticed that the accounts listing is sorted alphabetically and there is no way to override that. I had to rename the accounts to re-order the list to match my needs; for example, changing “Jan” to “01 Jan” and “Apr” to “04 Apr” so January will come before April instead of after. I also hid some columns that I didn’t use. Unfortunately, I had to make these changes for all accounts because there was no way to change things globally.

I recently got a new macbook with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. I did not like some of the useability changes made (more on that below), but thankfully did not experience the slowdown, crashes, or bad battery life that others had reported. I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in the hope that those useability changes would be improved. My hopes were dashed, but I was determined to create an unholy combination of the old and the new which I will call Mac OS X Mountain Leopard. Grrr… meow.

Here are the tweaks that I made:

1. Disable natural scrolling. The reverse scroll seems so unnatural to me. Because I will be switching between Mac OS X and Windows often, adapting to natural scrolling would also cause confusion on Windows.
   • To disable natural scrolling, go to System Preferences->Trackpad->Scroll & Zoom, and uncheck the “Scroll direction: natural” box.
2. Enable tap-click, two-finger-tap-2nd-click and two-finger-tap-drag in addition to the new three-finger-drag. My fingers are trained to do a two-finger tap or drag so I wanted to enable it and use it alternatively with the three-finger-drag. The three-finger drag is still useful for rearranging icons on the dock; whereas, the two-finger-tap-drag would launch the application instead. I was expecting a three-finger scroll inside an application window in addition to the two-finger scroll, but it wasn’t supported.
   • To enable tap-click and two-finger-tap-2nd-click, go to System Preferences->Trackpad->Point & Click, check the “Tap to click” and “Secondary click” with “Click or tap with two fingers” boxes.
   • To enable two-finger-tap-drag, go to System Preferences->Accessibility->Mouse & Trackpad->Trackpad Options…, check the “Enable dragging” box and leave the default “without Drag Lock” selection.
3. Globally disable application restore. This feature was very confusing and a bit annoying. For example, when I would run the TextEdit application to open up a new document, I would get 3 or 4 of the previously opened documents also and would have to hunt for the new document. I’m sure that others may find this useful but it wasn’t for me.
   • To disable application restore, go to System Preferences->General and check the “Close windows when quitting an application” box.
   • On OS X Lion, this option is labeled “Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps” and you would uncheck it to disable the application restore.
4. Change Gatekeeper to allow installation of programs from anywhere, not just only from the Mac App Store. I ran into this issue when attempting to install GNU Emacs, which I had to download separately because it is not in the App Store.
   • To allow installation from anywhere, go to System Preferences->Security & Privacy and select the “Anywhere” option under the “Allow applications downloaded from:” section.
5. Disable notifications from programs like gfxCardStatus or Game Center. I’m okay with the Notification Center but too many non-critical notifications can train me to ignore all notifications (like ignoring the boy who cried wolf too many times).
   • To disable specific notifications, go to System Preferences->Notifications, select the application, and then uncheck any or all three options: “Show in Notification Center:”, “Badge app icon”, and “Play sound when receiving notifications”.
   • FYI, the “Badge app icon” is a red circle with a number inside that appears on the top-right of the application icon in the dock . The best example is the Mail program showing the number of unread emails.
   • There does not seem to be any option to only display the banner (which appears in the upper-right of the screen briefly and then disappears) without leaving at least the last notification message in the Notifcation Center.
6. Disable automatic system updates during sleep. I don’t trust automatic updates and want to be asked if I wish to install them or not.
   • To disable automatic updates, go to System Preferences->Software Update and uncheck the “Install system data files and security updates” box.
7. Turn on indicator lights on the dock to show that an application is running. This was checked already on my macbook (maybe because I upgraded from Snow Leopard and it persisted that setting).
   • To enable indicator lights on the dock, go to System Preferences->Dock and check the “Show indicator lights for open applications” box.
8. Turn off Auto Correct. I usually make sure to disable automatic correction in programs like Outlook, Mail, and Word because most of the time, the corrections are wrong. I hated having my technical words replaced by common words because the dictionary used didn’t have those words, or having an acronym re-capitalized. On Mac OS X, I noticed that disabling Auto Correct in the applicatons’ Preferences did not stop all auto corrections from occurring. It turns out I have to disable it at the system level also.
   • To disable Auto Correct, go to System Preferences->Language & Text->Text and uncheck the “Use symbol and text substition” and/or “Correct spelling automatically” boxes.
   • I do uncheck the “Use symbol and text substitution” box because when I type a), b), and c), it is annoying when the c) ends up as a copyright symbol.
9. Make scrollbars visible all the time. Hiding the scroll bars was a bad idea for two reasons. One, I can’t see the vertical scroll bar until I do a two-finger scroll. Hovering over the location of the vertical scroll bar does not show it; but strangely, doing the same for the horizontal scroll bar will show it. Two, the horizontal scroll bar appears, overlaps an item, and prevents selection of that item. For example, when attempting to move a file that is in the last display line of the Finder’s list mode, the horizontal bar will appear and prevent the selection of that file.
   • To make the scrollbars visible all the time, go to System Preferences->General and select the “Always” option for “Show scroll bars:”.
10. Show Finder status bar. I like the Finder’s bottom status bar because it provides useful info at a glance.
    • To show the Finder status bar, go to the Finder’s View menu and click the “Show Status Bar” option.
11. Make hard drives visible in Finder’s left-hand navigation pane. I think the reasoning behind hiding the hard drives is to force the usage of the favorites folder to access files. Unfortunately, I organize my files differently than Apple imagines I would, so I do need a way to quickly view the root folder of my hard drive.
    • To make the hard drives visible in Finder, go to Finder’s Preferences menu, Sidebar tab, and check the “Hard disks” box under DEVICES.
12. Make the ~/Library folder permanently visible in the Finder. I could use Finder’s “Go->Go to folder” menu and input “~/Library”, but that’s slower than just clicking on the Library folder.
    • To make the ~/Library folder permanently visible, launch the Terminal application and run the following command:
      sudo chflags nohidden ~/Library

    Note: If you use Disk Utility’s Repair Permissions function, it will re-hide the ~/Library folder and you would need to do the above again.

The information above was mostly derived from:

• Making Lion and Mountain Lion more like Snow Leopard
• How to Get Rid of Mountain Lion’s Biggest Annoyances

I recently got a mid 2012 Macbook Pro 15in laptop. It came with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion which I promptly upgraded to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. I then installed Windows 7 Boot Camp on it. I thought I had the perfect setup.

To my dismay, I found that while the Macbook lasted 6 hours or more while running Mac OS X, the Windows 7 lasted at best 3 hours. The reason for the short battery and heat (the laptop got very hot under Windows) was that under Windows, the discrete graphics card was active all the time! The Boot Camp 4.0 drivers for Windows did not support switching graphics between the integrated and discrete video cards, but instead used discrete all the time.

I decided to use Mac OS X as often as I could to take advantage of the battery life and only switch to Windows when I needed to. Under Mac OS X, there is an neat application called gfxCardStatus which allows me to force Mac OS X to use only the integrated graphics card. This is useful because I found that unlikely applications, like Powerpoint, would switch the Mac OS X to use discrete graphics.

Unfortunately, sharing information between the two operating systems is inconvenient because while Mac OS X can read NTFS, it can’t write to it. And while Windows can read HFS+, it cannot write to it. There is a commercial product called NTFS for Mac that allows Mac OS X to write to NTFS, but some reviews indicated that the NTFS partition might get corrupted. Alternatively, I could use a cloud service like DropBox but I would have to pay for more storage space, there would be duplicated files on both the Mac OS X and Windows partitions, and there would be a dependency on having Internet access to sync those duplicated files. The best solution (free, non-wasteful, and fast) would be to have a shared exFAT partition which both Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Windows 7 can read and write to. (exFAT is an enhancement of FAT32 that removes the 4GB file size limitation.)

Update: After copying back my data to the Shared exFat partition and accessing it from both Mac OS X and Windows 7 under VMware, the Shared partition got corrupted within a day. I did some research and found that exFAT on Mac OS X often got corrupted and would disappear. Disk Utility was not able to repair the exFAT partition. I decided to reformat the Shared partition as FAT32 using Disk Utility with “MS-DOS (FAT)” format; I can live with the 4GB file size limit, but I can’t live with corrupted data. FAT32 is older (hopefully less buggy and more reliable) and uses two file allocation tables (while exFAT uses just one) so it should be more recoverable. If you wish to use FAT32, just replace any references to exFAT with FAT32.

To create the shared exFAT partition would require me to re-size the existing partitions. The Mac OS X Disk Utility supports re-sizing the Mac OS X’s HFS+ partition without destroying its contents. Under Windows 7, there are 3rd party tools to re-size the NTFS partition but success was not guaranteed and there was a chance that the Windows Boot Camp partition might become unbootable.

Because I also had an issue with running the Windows 7 Boot Camp under VMware 4 and 5 (I couldn’t figure out why), I decided to start from scratch with a new Boot Camp. After backing up the data on Windows 7, I ran the Boot Camp Assistant to delete the existing Boot Camp partition.

Maximum of Four Partitions

My original Mac OS X Lion came with 3 partitions on the hard drive using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) schema, which we can see by running “diskutil list” under the Terminal command line:

The Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) partition contains the boot software, the Macintosh HD partition contains the Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and the Recovery HD partition contains the Mac OS X Lion Recovery.

Windows 7 uses Master Boot Record (MBR) which allows a maximum of 4 primary partitions (or 3 primary and 1 extended partitions) that Windows 7 can be installed on. Because Boot Camp requires that Windows be the last partition, we have an issue because adding a Boot Camp and a Shared partition will result in 5 partitions, rendering the last partition as uninstallable by Windows 7. How do I know? I attempted it and ended up with the resulting Windows 7 install screen to the right. Clicking on Show Details informed me that Windows 7 needed to be installed on a Primary partition, which the last partition wasn’t.

To get this to work, we have to sacrifice the Mac OS X Lion Recovery partition. Then when we add the Windows and Shared partition, the total will be 4 partitions. Deleting the Recovery partition was not a problem because I plan to make a bootable USB key containing the Mac OS X Mountion Lion install. Unfortunately, because the Recovery partition is a hidden partition, we cannot use Disk Utility to delete it. Instead, we will use the Terminal command line to erase and merge it with our Mac OS X partition.

Update: There is a way to avoid deleting the Mac OS X Recovery HD partition. I found a post, MBA13/2012: OSX + Win7 + Shared exFAT, which uses a tool called gptsync to avoid deleting the Recovery HD partition by hiding it from the Windows MBR table.

Here’s how to erase and merge the Mac OS X Lion Recovery partition:

1. Launch the Terminal application.
2. Run “diskutil list” to see the 3 existing partitions: EFI, Macintosh HD, and Recovery HD. (See the “diskutil list” results above.)
3. Look for “Apple_Boot Recovery HD” partition and note its identifier, which in the above is “disk0s4″. Likewise, note that the “Apple_HFS Macintosh HD” partition’s identifier is “disk0s2″.
4. Erase the Recovery HD partition by running “diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s4″. (Format: “diskutil eraseVolume format name device”)
   

5. Reclaim the erased space by merging the now blank Recovery HD partition with the Mac OS X HFS+ partition by running “diskutil mergePartitions HFS+ Lion disk0s2 disk0s4″. (Format: “diskutil mergePartitions format name fromDevice toDevice”. This is non-destructive on the first partition because the force flag is not set; and in this case, the format and name are ignored.)
   

6. Note that the above steps result in 2 existing partitions: EFI and Macintosh HD.

Create Boot Camp and Shared Partitions

We are ready to create a Boot Camp partition for Windows 7 and the Shared exFAT partition. Before we start, there are two important points to keep in mind:

• We will introduce a new step in the Boot Camp process, between the Boot Camp partition creation and Windows 7 installation. The new step involves creating the shared exFAT partition.
• Any change to the partition tables after Windows 7 is installed will break the Boot Camp partition. So make sure you are certain about how to size each of the partitions.

I decided to split my 750GB hard drive into 3 equal 250GB partitions for Mac OS X, Windows 7, and Shared. Here are the steps I took to create a Boot Camp with the Shared partition:

1. Insert the Windows 7 Install DVD. Boot Camp Assistant won’t create the Windows partition without the DVD inserted.
2. Run the Boot Camp Assistant and select only the “Install Windows 7″ task.
   • If you don’t already have the latest Boot Camp 4.0 Drivers for Windows 7 available, then also select the “Download the latest Windows support software from Apple” task to create a DVD or USB flash drive containing the Boot Camp Drivers for windows.
3. On the next screen, drag the slider to size the Windows partition; 249GB was the closest I could get to 250GB. The resulting Mac OS X partition would be the size of both the final Mac OS X and Shared partitions; in my case, 500GB. (We are short 1GB because it is used by the EFI partition. Partition sizes are not an exact science so I’m not concerned.)
4. Note: Before hitting the Install button, be prepare to hold the Option key when the Mac reboots so we can boot from the Mac OS X partition, instead of the Windows 7 DVD.
5. Hit the Install button. The Mac will create the Windows partition (takes a couple of minutes) and then reboot (screen goes grey and then black).
6. Hold the Option key down during bootup and select the Mac OS X “Macintosh HD” icon when the Launch Manager appears.
7. Back in Mac OS X, run “Disk Utility”, select the hard drive, and go to the Partition tab.
8. Select the “Macintosh HD” partition, click the plus button to add our shared partition. A new partition is created with the name “Macintosh HD 2″ which is half the size of the original “Macintosh HD” partition; which are the sizes I wanted. You can move the slider to adjust the sizes.
9. With the “Macintosh HD 2″ partition selected, choose “ExFAT” for the Format and “Shared” for the Name. Hit the Apply button to create the Shared exFAT partition.
10. Restart and the Macbook will boot from the Windows 7 Install DVD to install Windows.
11. For the Windows 7 install, hit the Next button, hit “Install now” button, check the “I accept the license terms” box, click Next button, click “Custom (advanced)” option, and select the Boot Camp partition; for me, that partition is named “Disk 0 Partition 4: BOOTCAMP”.
    • You might notice a “Disk 0 Unallocated Space” partition of 128MB. There isn’t any way to reclaim and use it.
12. Because Boot Camp Assistant used FAT32 for the Windows partition, the Windows 7 install will disable the Next button and show an error “Windows cannot be installed to Disk 0 Partition 4″ at the bottom. Clicking on “Show details” will display “Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS.” To resolve this issue, reformat the Boot Camp partition as NTFS.
13. With the Boot Camp partition selected, click on “Drive options (advanced)”, click on Format, click OK on the warning, and the Boot Camp partition will be formatted as NTFS. Its name will be blanked out, resulting in a “Disk 0 Partition 4″ label. The error at the bottom will disappear and the Next button will be enabled.
14. Click Next and Windows 7 will start installing itself to the Boot Camp partition. The installation took me about 30 mins, including an automatic reboot.
15. Once Windows 7 is running, open “My Computer”, select the DVD drive, and click on Eject in the top menu to remove the Windows 7 Install DVD.
16. Insert the Boot Camp 4.0 Drivers for Windows 7 DVD (or USB flash key) and run “setup.exe” on it to install the Boot Camp drivers. This took me about 10 minutes including another reboot.
17. Open the Boot Camp Control Panel and select “Macintosh HD Mac OS X” as the system to start the computer with. Or you can leave it set to Windows and use the Option key when booting to select which OS to run.
18. Double-check that you can access the “Shared” partition on Windows 7; it will show up as an additional hard drive.
19. Restart and run Mac OS X.
20. Check that the Shared partition is accessible. If you don’t see it in the Finder, go to the Finder’s Preferences, Sidebar, and check the “Hard disks” box under DEVICES. Alternatively, from the Terminal, you can type “cd /Volumes/Shared”.
21. FYI, here is the final “diskutil list” output:
    

22. As a last step, I launched VMware and it was able to load the Windows 7 Boot Camp successfully. Sweet.
    • Note: On startup, VMware Fusion will display a warning message “VMware Fusion is not compatible with gfxCardStatus”. You can quit gfxCardStatus or remember not to manually switch the graphics device while VMware is running.
    • Note 2: When running Windows 7 Boot Camp under VMware, the Boot Camp and Shared partitions will be unmounted from Mac OS X. When you shutdown Windows 7 Boot Camp, those partitions will be re-mounted under Mac OS X.

Most info above derived from:

• Macbook Air + Lion + Windows 7 Boot Camp + shared partition. Look for the first answer by HuzZz. Note that I skipped his first step which involved creating a blank 1GB partition; it wasn’t necessary.
• Deleting the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion “Recovery HD” Partition.

I thought it would be useful to put the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installer on a USB flash drive. It would be faster than reading from a DVD. I can use it with a Macbook Air or Pro Retina which do not come with a DVD drive. And the USB flash drive is more portable and robust than a DVD.

Note: I’m doing the following on a Macbook running Snow Leopard. The resulting USB flash drive will boot on Intel-based Macs only. If you want to boot the USB flash drive on a PowerPC-based Mac, please see the comments.

Note: For instructions on putting Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on a USB flash drive, see this page, How to create a bootable, backup Mountain Lion install disk. These instructions also apply to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Create a DMG file

You can skip creating a DMG (Disk iMaGe) file if you clone directly from the Snow Leopard “Mac OS X Install DVD” disk to the USB flash drive. I just wanted a DMG file for speed and convenience; in case I need to clone to a dual-layer DVD or to another USB flash drive.

1. Insert the Snow Leopard 10.6 “Mac OS X Install DVD” disk into the DVD drive.
2. Run the “Disk Utility” application (under the “Applications/Utilities” folder).
3. On the left-hand pane, you will see “Mac OS X Install DVD” appear under the DVD drive when the DVD is mounted. A “Mac OS X Install DVD” disk icon will also appear on the desktop.
   • If you don’t see the “Mac OS X Install DVD” even after waiting for a while, try closing and starting the “Disk Utility” application again.
4. On the left-hand pane, select the “Mac OS X Install DVD” by clicking on it.
5. Click on the “New Image” icon, located in toolbar at the top.
6. Select the location to save the DMG file (“Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg”) to. Leave the defaults of “compressed” for “Image Format” and “none” for “Encryption”.
7. Click on the “Save” button. The DMG file creation can take 20 minutes or longer.

Format USB Flash Drive as Mac OS X Bootable

You will need an 8GB USB flash drive. Format it as a Mac OS X bootable drive by following these steps:

1. Insert the USB flash drive.
2. Run “Disk Utility”.
3. On the left-hand pane, select the USB drive (not the FAT32 or other partition under it).
4. Click on the “Erase” tab, select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for “Format” and input a name like “Snow Leopard Install USB” (or anything because this will be overwritten later).
5. Click the “Erase…” button and then the “Erase” button. This format operation will take less than a minute to complete.
6. Once the format completes, make sure that the USB flash drive is selected in the left-hand pane. In the bottom pane, check that the “Partition Map Scheme” is set to “GUID Partition Table” (which means it is Mac OS X bootable). Under Snow Leopard, formatting as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” appears to select the “GUID Partition Table” scheme by default.
7. If you are not running Snow Leopard and the “Partition Map Scheme” is not set to “GUID Partition Table”, please repeat steps #1-3 above and then the following alternative steps:
   4. Click on the “Partition” tab, select “1 Partition” under “Volume Scheme”, ensure “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” is selected for “format”, and leave the name alone or change it to be anything (it will be overwritten later).
   5. Click on the “Options” button and ensure that “GUID Partition Table” is selected. Click OK.
   6. Click the “Apply” button and then the “Partition” button. This format operation will take less than a minute to complete.

Restore DMG file to USB Flash Drive

Restore the DMG file to the bootable USB flash drive:

1. Locate the “Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg” file that was created earlier. Double-click on it to mount and launch it. You will see a “Mac OS X Install DVD” disk icon appear on the desktop. You can close the “Mac OS X Install DVD” application window that was also opened.
2. Insert the Mac OS X bootable USB flash drive that we created above.
3. Run the “Disk Utility” application. On the left-hand pane, you should see both the USB flash drive and the mounted DMG file.
4. On the left-hand pane, select the partition under the USB flash drive.
5. Click on the “Restore” tab and drag that same partition (under the USB flash drive) to the “Destination” field (you will see a green plus mouse icon appear when you drag over the field).
6. Strangely, you cannot drag the “Mac OS X Install DVD” partition under the DMG file to the “Source” field (the green plus mouse icon won’t appear and no action is taken on the drop). Instead, you must right-click on the “Mac OS X Install DVD” partition and select “Set as source”. The “Source” field will then be filled with the partition name.
   • Even though you can click on the “Image…” button and select the DMG file, when you do the restore, Disk Utility will throw a “RESTORE FAILURE” error with the message: “Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be image scanned before it can be restored.”
   • If you are cloning directly from the “Mac OS X Install” DVD, you can just drag the partition under the DVD drive to the “Source” field.
7. I left the “Erase destination” box checked. With this box checked, the restore operation took about 25 minutes. When this box was unchecked, the restore operation reported that it would require 4 hours.
8. Click the “Restore” button, then the “Erase” button, and input your Mac OS X administrative password.
9. When the restore completes, you may see two “Mac OS X Install DVD” application windows appear, the first from the mounted DMG file and second from the USB flash drive. There will also be two “Mac OS X Install DVD” disk icons on the desktop. Also, notice that the partition under the USB flash drive is now named the same as the source, “Mac OS X Install DVD”.
10. Select the USB flash drive in the left-hand pane. In the bottom pane, double-check that the “Partition Map Scheme” is still set to “GUID Partition Table”.
    • If you are not using Snow Leopard and find that the “Partition Map Scheme” is no longer set to “GUID Partition Table”, you may need to redo the restore. Reformat the USB flash drive (per the alternative instructions above) and before doing the restore, uncheck the “Erase destination” box. I fear that the “Erase destination” function may modify the partition map scheme to be something other than “GUID Partition Table”.

Boot from the USB Flash Drive

1. Insert the USB flash drive.
2. While starting your Mac, hold the Alt/Option key down to launch the Startup Manager.
3. Select the USB flash drive to boot from; it will be labeled “Mac OS X Install DVD”.

Most of the information above was derived from:

• Install OS X Snow Leopard from a USB flash drive
• Install & Boot OS X Leopard from a USB Flash Drive
• Common OS X issues, solutions and useful tips