When it rains it pours… This morning, our LG Tromm front-loading washer issued another series of beeps indicating an error. This time, however, it wasn’t the tE error code that we’ve grown accustomed to. Instead, it was an OE error code.

The good news is that, unlike a tE error, OE errors are very easy to resolve. As it turns out, OE stands for “Outlet Error,” and it’s typically caused by a clogged drain filter.

To resolve this error, you simply need to clean out the filter. Unfortunately, since the drain is clogged, you probably won’t be able to drain the water out of your washer. And even if you could, cleaning the filter is still a messy task.

For starters, look at the lower left corner of your washer (on the front side). See that little square-ish door? Open it. You should see a small black hose on the left and a round, black plastic circle on the right.

Start by pulling out the hose (gently), unplugging the end, and letting it drain into a bucket. This should help reduce the mess, though you’ll still get a bunch of water draining out when you remove the filter.

The next step is to remove the filter. That’s the black plastic thing on the right, and you remove by turning it counter-clockwise. But before you do that… Get some towels and place them around the front if your washer. You should tuck them under the front edge as far as possible.

Better yet, if you have the optional pedestals for your washer/dryer, open the drawer, line it with towels, and then place a bucket directly under the filter (the drawer will let you get the bucket back under the front edge).

Now… Unscrew the filter and clean it. There will likely be a bunch of gunk on it that you can pull off. I would also recommend washing it to make sure that it is completely clean — pay special attention to the threads.

From there, it’s just a matter of screwing the filter back in, plugging the end of the hose and slipping back into place, and replacing the little door. That’s it.

For reference, our washer is model number WM2487HWM.

Speaking of troubleshooting an LG washing machine… If you need to drain your washer, here’s how: turn it on, hit the spin speed button (timer will read 13 min), and hit start. That’s it. For reference, our washer is model # WM2487HWM.

Since tomorrow is Super Sunday, I thought I’d share our family’s Super Bowl chili recipe. Truth be told, we cook and eat this throughout the year, but it’s also become a tasty Super Bowl tradition…

Here’s the ingredient list for a single batch:

• 1 lb. ground beef
• 1 cup chopped onions
• 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
• 1 14-16 oz. can diced tomatoes (or break up if whole)
• 1 14-16 oz. can chili beans
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp. chili powder
• 1/4 tsp. oregano

Start by growing the meat and onions in a large pan and then put them in the pot. Note that I usually brown the meat, drain the grease, and transfer to the pot before browning the onions.

From there, just add the rest of the ingredients, stir well, heat it up, and then let it simmer for a minimum of 15-20 minutes. If you have the time, I recommend letting it simmer a bit longer (maybe an hour or so) for best results.

If you need more than the recipe above produces, you can simply scale up by doubling or tripling (or more) the ingredients.

Note that you can also replace the ground beef with ground turkey. Once you cook everything up, you can’t really tell the difference, and it’s a good bit healthier.

My wife recently heard a funny chime from our LG Tromm front-loading washer. When she went to the laundry room, it was reporting error code tE. The manual instructed her to unplug the washer and call for service.

Since it was in the middle of a cycle when the error struck, however, she decided to unplug/replug the washing machine and let it finish the current load.

Power cycling took care of the error code (at least temporarily) and the cycle finished without problems. Unfortuantely, the problem recurred a day or so later… More chimes, and another tE error code.

Concerned, she called the number in the manual for advice. The LG rep that she spoke to advised her that this error code corresponds to a “thermistor error” — in other words, there’s a problem with temperature control.

The rep also gave her instructions for resetting the washer, though I (unfortunately) can’t recall exactly what the steps were. Regardless, that didn’t help, so it sounds like a repair is in order.

While I typically enjoy fixing things around the house, I’ve been swamped and simply don’t have time to tackle this myself. Thus, we called Best Buy (where we bought it) and they’re sending a “Geek Squad” appliance repairman on Monday.

Yes, we could probably get it done cheaper by a local appliance repair outfit, but we’re still (relatively) new to the area, and most of the places we’ve checked out so far have questionable reputations. So Geek Squad it is…

For reference, our washer is model number WM2487HWM.

Have you ever noticed that Microsoft — for some unknown reason — has set the default left/right margins in Word to 1.25 inches. Seriously? 1.25 inches? What a waste… Of both time spent changing it and paper when people don’t bother.

Well, today I had finally had enough, so I decided to figure out how to change the default margins. The good news? It’s super easy. The bad news? It took me a long time to get around to figuring it out.

To change the default margins in Word 2011:

1. Pull down the “Format” menu.
2. Select “Document…” from the list.
3. Change the margins.
4. Click the “Default” button.
5. Hit “Yes” to change the “NORMAL” template.

That’s it. From here on our, all of your documents will have plain old one inch margins from the get-go. And if you’re too lazy (or forgetful) to change it on a per-document basis, you’ll also use less paper.

Have you ever wished you could launch an app with Siri? Or maybe change your iPhone’s settings? Yeah, me too. It seems like such an obvious thing, but Siri just can’t do it. Unless… Unless you jailbreak your iPhone.

So how can you make Siri launch apps, or otherwise do your bidding? Simple. Just install a handy (and free!) little app called SiriToggles, which is available through Cydia. You’ll never look at Siri the same way again.

Once installed, you can tell Siri to do cool stuff, like “launch Pandora” or “turn on [or off] wifi.” Pretty awesome, huh? Honestly, until I discovered this hack, I was completely underwhelmed by Siri.

As far as I’m concerned, you can add this to a long list of reasons to jailbreak you iPhone. It’s not quite as useful as free tethering, but it’s pretty darn cool.

Oh, and if you’re thinking of jailbreaking your iPhone 4S, be sure to check out my post about potential problems with the Absinthe jailbreak — and their solutions.

After jailbreaking my iPhone 4S and getting everything back up and running, I ran into a minor snag with the Twitter app. When I clicked on “Home,” it said “Protected Tweets.” What? Protected Tweets? Are you kidding?

Protected from whom? From me, apparently. I couldn’t access my own account, so I did the usual troubleshooting thing… I deleted and reinstalled the app, which should have deleted all of the relevant settings.

But it didn’t help… When I re-installed the app, I ran into the same problem.

Confused, I went into the Settings app and saw that the Twitter tab was greyed out. On a hunch, I clicked through General > Restrictions.

The Restrictions were turned off, but I toggled them on and then off again. And when I went back to the main Settings window, guess what? Twitter was no longer greyed out.

So I clicked into my account, re-entered my password to re-authorize my account, and then exited back out. Voilà. That solved the problem. No more protected Tweets.

Today I went out and picked up a shiny new iPhone 4S to replace my still-pretty-shiny iPhone 4. I’ve been waiting to do so until after a jailbreak was available for this device. The release of the Absinthe A5 jailbreak, made that a reality.

Upon returning home, I backed up my iPhone one last time, and then downloaded the latest version of Absinthe (currently 0.3) and went to town.

Unfortunately, as the jailbreak neared completion, I ran into problems. The last step of this jailbreak is to go into your phone and click on the Absinthe icon.

But… Then things went haywire. My phone gave me the “Waiting for Absinthe to complete” screen, and then updated the screen to say:

Didn’t work? Try this: 1. Tap ‘Jailbreak’ to open the Settings Application and turn on the VPN named ‘Jailbreak’.

And so I did… But instead of jailbreak goodness, I got an error:

Cannot Open Absinthe, Absinthe could not be opened. The error was: “The URL can’t be shown”

It offered to let me “Close” or “Retry,” but re-trying resulted in the same error over and over. Ugh. No jailbreak for me. At least not yet.

After a bit of Googling, I decided to restore my iPhone and try again. This time, however, I removed the passcode lock and rebooted both my phone and the computer before proceeding.

And guess what? It worked perfectly the second time around. I suspect that it was the passcode lock that created the problems, but it may have just been a random glitch.

Oh, and one other thing… I made sure I was connected to my wireless network before running the jailbreak (I wasn’t connected the first time around). I doubt this made a difference, but you never know.

For what it’s worth, I’ve also heard that you can run into trouble if you’ve set up a VPN. But I haven’t messed with VPNs, so that couldn’t have been my problem.

I’ve just finished sync’ing everything back onto my phone and restoring my jailbreak apps using PKGBackup, and so…

It’s time to tackle my iPad 2, which is currently jailbroken, but still running iOS 4.3.3. Wish me luck. Hopefully I won’t need a tall cup of coffee to see me through to the end.

As I noted in a previous post, I’m currently learning to like coffee. As a part of this process, I’ve bought an AeroPress coffee maker and a Kyocera grinder. Thus, I can grind my own coffee beans just before brewing myself a fresh cup.

So what’s the relationship between the volume of beans in the grinder and the volume of grounds that they produce? The instructions that came with my AeroPress suggest using two scoops (measured with their included scoop) of grounds per 10 oz. cup of coffee.

Since I’d like to grind my beans fresh everyday, and I don’t want to waste any coffee, I’d like to know how many beans to use. Thus, I decided to do an experiment…

I start by measuring out a scoop of beans and putting them in my burr grinder. I then ground them up at an intermediate coarseness and scooped them out of the glass container.

Surprisingly, the grounds took up a bit more volume than the beans themselves. I figured that there was a lot of wasted space between the unground beans, so grinding would reduce the volume.

Quite the opposite, grinding the beans actually increased their overall volume — essentially “fluffing” them up a bit. I repeated this process one more time to be sure, and I got the same result.

My best guess is that there was a ca. 20% increase in volume, so if you want X volume of grounds then you should start out with 0.85X volume of beans.

Of course, your mileage may vary depending on the beans, grinder, desired coarseness, etc.

To say that I’ve never liked coffee would be an understatement. Don’t get me wrong, I like caffeine, but I never developed a tast for coffee. Instead, Diet Coke has always been my delivery system of choice — until I quit drinking it, that is.

The main reason I quit drinking Diet Coke is that it didn’t always agree with me, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was all the other crap in there — artificial sweeteners, etc. — as opposed to the caffeine that was causing the problem.

So over the holidays, I decided to try learning to like coffee. We had out-of-town guests who were coffee drinkers, so I figured why not? If they’re going to brew a pot every morning, I might as well give it a try.

I started having a cup every morning, and guess what? I got the caffeine kick without the general malaise that often kicked in as my Diet Coke wore off.

After New Year’s, when I went back to work, I began stopping by a local coffee shop on the way to work for a cup of joe. The advantage here is that they rotate their brews, so I was able to sample a variety of things.

As for how I like my coffee, I tried drinking it with cream and sugar, but… That didn’t really improve the taste (to me), so I decided not to bother. Instead, I’ve been drinking my coffee black.

It’s been about a month, and I’m slowly but surely developing a taste for coffee. And boy, do I enjoy have that warm cup in my hand as I walk in to work. Things might change in the summer — iced coffee, perhaps? But for now, a steaming hot cup does the job quite nicely.

I should also note that I ordered an AeroPress coffee maker and a simple burr grinder so I can start making it myself at home. Not only is this way cheaper than the coffee shop, but it also reduces the waste associated with all those to-go cups.

I considered a Keurig single-cup home brewer but, there again, there’s a ton of waste in the form of all those little K-cups that you’re throwing away. Yes, you can buy a refillable K-cup, but it was also hard to justify spending $150 on the machine.

If you’re looking for a GPS navigation app for your iPhone, look no further than MotionX GPS Drive. This thing is awesome — and it only costs $0.99. If you’d like turn-by-turn voice directions, it’ll cost you an extra $9.99/year, but still…

Compared to the price of a “real” GPS navigator, GPS Drive is a steal — and far more convenient. And it’s also way cheaper than the TomTom and Garmin apps, which cost $50-$60 each.

And no, I don’t have any affiliation with the company. I’m just a big time fan, and I love having a full featured GPS in my pocket at all times. This is especially true when I’m traveling, as it’s one less thing to pack.

It’s no secret that I love using MyWi to share the 3G connection on my jailbroken iPhone. I was thus disappointed to discover that my phone had stopped connecting to the internet after using MyWi — and the only way to fix it was to re-boot.

As it turns out, this was due to a bug in the b1 release of the redsn0w jailbreak. The good news is that it’s a simple thing to fix — though not quite as simple (in my case) as Google would have you think.

For starters, I ran across several articles stating that I simply needed to re-jailbreak with the latest version of redsn0w (currently b4). So I did, being careful to uncheck the box to install Cydia (since it’s already installed).

Note: You really should backup your iPhone before re-jailbreaking just in case something goes wrong. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Unfortunately, this didn’t help. I then dug a bit deeper and found a recommendation to install the Corona 5.0.1 Untether via Cydia. This didn’t make much sense since I already have an untethered jailbreak, and because the latest version of redsn0w was supposed to apply the same fixes, but…

I went ahead and installed the Corona Untether, and guess what? It solved the problem entirely. So now I’m once again free share my 3G connection with my other devices without having to re-boot my phone when I’m done.

Like many owners of a rooted Nook Tablet, I was the unwelcome recipient of an over-the-air (OTA) upgrade to version 1.4.1 of the Nook operating system. This removed the Android Market and effectively killed root access. Bummer.

Unfortunately, this update also made it such that a “factory restore” would give a clean install of 1.4.1 instead of 1.4.0. Drats!

The good news is that an enterprising soul over at the XDA Developers Forum figured out how to easily downgrade your Nook Tablet from 1.4.1 to 1.4.0, effectively restoring its rootability. (link)

To do this, you simply have to download a .zip file containing the full 1.4.0 installer, copy it to your Micro SD card, pop the card into your powered-down Nook Tablet, and then boot it up.

As it turns out, the boot process is designed to look for this particular file and re-install the system if it finds it — basically a troubleshooting failsafe which can be used to overcome an untimely update.

If your Nook Tablet boots without running the update, you’ll need to try a different Micro SD card. For the record, my fancy new 32GB card wouldn’t work, but the old 2GB card from my son’s HTC Freestyle worked just fine.

There’s no need to re-format the card. Simply put the .zip file at the root level, pop it in, and hope it works. If not, try a different card. That’s it.

The main gotcha (aside from owning an incompatible Micro SD card) is that you might need to scare up a Micro SD adapter to load the .zip file onto your card. That said, it might be possible to mount the Nook via USB and drag the file to the card.

If you run into any problems — say, for example, that the N button stops working (mine did) — you have two choices…

Either do a factory reset, which involves re-booting and aborting the boot process eight times in a row, or simply deregister your device. To do the latter, you can access your settings by going tapping the clock/battery icon instead of clicking the non-functional N button.

Now, re-register your Nook and quickly turn off the wifi to prevent updates. Bam. You’re now ready to re-establish root access. Just be sure that you also block OTA updates so this doesn’t happen again.

Note: This same process should also work if you bought a new Nook Tablet and it came with 1.4.1 pre-installed.

After upgrading to iOS 5, I discovered that Apple has added a “Newsstand” app that holds various news sources and subscriptions. Unfortunately, they don’t allow you to add it to a folder, so it’s hard to hide it if you don’t use it.

Well, guess what? I’ve discovered that you can stick the Newsstand app in a folder, albeit with a major caveat. So how do you put it in a folder? Easy…

Simply drag one app onto another (neither of which is the Newsstand app) to create a folder and, while the folder creation animation is happening, quickly drag the Newsstand app onto it.

Voíla. The Newsstand app is now nestled inside your newly created folder.

The caveat that I mentioned? I can’t actually get it to launch from within the folder. Instead, it hangs and I have to reboot my iPhone. But if you want to hide it away in a folder, this works.

Tonight I decided to upgrade from iOS 4.3.3 to iOS 5.0.1 so I could take advantage of the new iOS 5 untethered jailbreak. What I really want is an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S, but until that happens I’ll stick with my iPhone 4.

Unfortunately, while upgrading I ran into some problems… The status bar made it about 2/3 of the way across the screen, and iTunes reported that it was “Restoring iPhone Software,” but it wouldn’t go any further.

After a bit of Googling, I discovered that the problem might trace back to the a jailbreak app called Wifi Sync that I had previously installed. While there’s a script out there floating around to remove this app once you’ve started the upgrade process, it didn’t fix the problem for me.

Instead, I ended up putting my iPhone into recovery mode and trying again. Sadly, I once again ran into problems. It was at this point that I realized that I wasn’t running the latest version of iTunes. Thus, I updated iTunes and then tried again.

At long last… Success! iTunes was able to verify my iPhone and then restore/upgrade the software. From there, it was just a matter of waiting for the data to be restored from my latest backup, and I was good to go. Now I just have to apply the new jailbreak and I’ll be back in business.

I’ve been waiting patiently for an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4S before I upgrade. As much as I want to chat with Siri, make use of iCloud, and shoot pics with that fancy 8MP camera, I can’t stand the thought of losing my jailbreak.

So what are the actual benefits of jailbreaking? While I have zero interest in pirating software, I do value the ability to get the most out of my hardware. So here are the three biggest benefits of jailbreaking in my not-so-humble opinion…

MyWi. First and foremost, by jailbreaking I’m able to use a handy little app called MyWi to create local wifi hotspots with my phone, enabling me to share the 3G data connection with other devices. Yes, this app costs $20, but that’s a one-time fee, and it lets you avoid the ongoing tethering fees from AT&T.

biteSMS. Next up… I absolutely love using biteSMS to streamline my texting experience. We have an unlimited texting plan, so I’m not really interested in the ability to send messages through the biteSMS network. But I am interesting the quick compose and quick reply functionality as well as the templates, signatures, etc.

SBSettings/Activator. Finally, if you really want to customize your iPhone experience, you’ll love SBSettings (and Activator, which comes with it). SBSettings give you super quick access to your settings, including brightness, rotation, the ability to toggle bluetooth and wifi on/off, etc. And Activator allows you to set up a variety of shortcuts/gestures to launch apps with the flick of a finger.

Of course, I’m just scratching the surface here, but these are the three jailbreak functions/apps that I simply cannot live without. What about you?

As followup to my earlier post about buying an iPhone as a gift for my wife, I wanted to share some thoughts about the best cases for protecting your iPhone. I’m talking about reasonably priced cases that protect without adding too much bulk.

I’ve previously shared my thoughts about the Otterbox Defender, which is big, clunky, and overpriced. Yes, it protects your iPhone, but so does the box that your phone came in.

So what do I recommend? One of two things.

For starters, I’ve been a huge fan of the Incipio Edge case ever since I upgraded from the iPhone 3Gs to the iPhone 4. And since the form factor of the iPhone 4S hasn’t changed, neither has my opinion of the Edge. I’ve used and abused my phone, having dropped it on pavement multiple times, and it’s no worse for the wear thanks to the Edge. Yes, I’ve had to replace the case once (after about a 18 months) but

Another case that I like quite a bit — though probably not quite as much as the Edge — is the Otterbox Commuter. This is a very protective hybrid case consisting of a silicone sleeve and a hard plastic frame. Unlike the Defender, the Commuter is quite slim, and then silicon sleeve is relatively smooth, which means it easily slides in and out of your pocket.

In the end, I’d still lean toward the Incipio Edge as it’s a bit more sleek while still being very protective. It’s also a bit cheaper than the Otterbox Commuter, so that’s another point in its favor. But really, you can’t go wrong with either of these cases.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering… I’ve never bothered with a screen protector (both cases come with them) and the glass on my phone is completely scratch-free despite having been carried in my pocket (often with keys, coins, etc.) for well over a year.

As a followup to my earlier post about problems rooting a Nook Tablet, I thought I’d say a few words about why you should root your Nook Tablet. As with jailbreaking an iDevice, there are a number of clear benefits to rooting your tablet.

The biggest reason is that the Nook Tablet is a powerful piece of hardware at a great price point, and by rooting it, you can turn it into a great little Android tablet. In fact, it’s a good bit cheaper than equivalent Android tablets, and it’s far more capable than the Amazon Kindle Fire.

By rooting your Nook Tablet, you gain access to the full Android Market and can thus install a plethora of third-party apps that aren’t available through the Nook app store. This includes things like the Amazon Kindle Reader app, so you really can have the best of both worlds with this device.

Another major benefit is that you’ll gain access to the full 16GB of onboard storage space. Out of the box, the Nook Tablet only give you access to a measly 1GB for third-party stuff, with the balance being reserved for content from Barnes & Noble. Sure, you have that handy slot for micro SD memory cards, but still… What a waste.

And finally, customization… Once you root your Nook Tablet, you’ll be able to install the launcher of your choice and fully customize the interface.

I spent much of last night trying to root the Nook Tablet that we bought our oldest son for Christmas. Being fairly computer savvy, and having experience jailbreaking numerous iDevices, I fully expected this to go smoothly. Boy, was I wrong.

The good news is that we were ultimately successful, and he’s the proud owner of a rooted Nook Tablet, complete with the Android Market. What follows is a rundown of the problems that we experienced and how we solved them.

For background, we were following the instructions from the XDA Developers forum, and the initial steps went well. We got it into USB debugging mode and updated the drivers without a hitch, but then we hit a major snag…

When it came time to run the “NookandZergy” script to actually root the device and install the Android market, we couldn’t get it to work. We were using my son’s laptop running Windows 7 Home Edition (64 bit) and it didn’t seem to recognize the Nook properly. When it comes up, you’re supposed to see a long number followed by the word “device.” Instead, we got that number followed by the word “offline.”

And when I clicked “Y” to proceed, it just hung with the following message:

"first need to make sure you didnt lie about it showing up, I also need to check for root and a sdcard"

and it refused to go any further. I re-did everything multiple times and the same thing kept happening. When I tried entering the commands manually from the command line, I got a bit further, but then it would error out trying to find “build.prop” — again, I re-tried multiple times with the same result.

Frustrated, I went to bed.

But then we had an idea this morning. Actually, my son suggested it, so credit for the solution goes to him. We simply switched to a computer running Windows XP Home Edition. Bingo! The script ran flawlessly, and we had a rooted Nook Tablet, complete with the Android Market, within a few minutes.

So… If you’ve experienced similar problems, I recommend re-trying the process using a machine running Windows XP. I’m assuming there’s a bug of some sort in the script that makes it incompatible with Windows 7, but I don’t know enough to identify (much less fix) the actual problem.

My wife has recently been hinting that she’d like an iPhone to replace her current dumbphone. Given that she’s eligible for an upgrade and Christmas is coming up, I figured the timing was perfect. But how to buy it without her knowing?

My primary concern had to do with activating the phone… If I don’t activate it, can I get the upgrade pricing? And if I do activate, will it knock her old phone out of service? I don’t want to give away the surprise.

I came up with one possible scenario on my own — activating the new iPhone and then rushing home to swap the SIM card into her old phone until Christmas, but that would be risky and kind of a pain.

Edit to add: Actually, I’m not sure this would work, as the iPhone uses a “micro” SIM, which is much smaller than a standard SIM card.

So instead, I did the obvious. I called the local AT&T store to ask. And guess what? They said that they can sell me a phone with the SIM — presumably extending the contract at the same time — and then we could call 611 on Christmas after I give it to her to actually activate it.

So if you’d like to give someone an iPhone as a Christmas present without them knowing about it, and without having to resort to an iPhone gift card (which is kind of anti-climactic) it can be done.