Free Repair Cafe in Palo Alto Opens

October 12, 2012

I am totally amazed at this new FREE REPAIR CENTER in Palo Alto. Peter Skinner started this Palo Alto Non-Profit where you can bring the toaster, electronic devices all the way to tea pots. This is their endeavor to going green. Teaching people if you can fix something you no longer need to throw it away.

Absolutely fabulous!

This Repair Cafe is at the Museum of American Heritgage. This idea started in the Netherlands and is going strong.

Everything here that is fixed is FREE! Did I say FREE!

Sue Dremann from the Palo Alto Weekly Staff writes the following:

Silicon Valley entrepreneur starts ‘Repair Cafe’ From headsets to vacuums, volunteers will fix household items to reduce landfill waste

A new Palo Alto nonprofit organization that aims to help non-tinkerers solve the minor mysteries of repairing broken small appliances and household items will open its doors on Sunday, Oct. 14. Dubbed the Repair Cafe, volunteers armed with hand tools will help people learn to repair frayed electrical cords, non-popping toasters and even luggage at the Palo Alto Museum of American Heritage. Peter Skinner, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and longtime chief financial officer, founded the first such organization in the U.S. after reading about repair cafes in the Netherlands, he said. The small European nation has 30 community-based fix-it cafes. Instead of tossing the broken devices into the Dumpster, people will save money and do something good for the environment while learning a few handyperson skills, he said. Among the items volunteers can help fix are small household appliances, furniture, luggage, some electronics, including personal computers, toys, bicycles and clothing. Palo Alto ACE Hardware will have staff on hand, and Green Citizen recycling company and the city’s Zero Waste program will have booths. There will be information about where to recycle things that can’t be repaired, he said. “The idea appealed to me because of my own dissatisfaction with the prevalence of our hyper-consumer culture where we buy and we toss,” he said. Every time he does that personally, he finds it discomforting, he said. After reading a New York Times article in May, Skinner contacted the Netherlands group to see about using their name and model. They were excited about the idea, he said. With his background as a chief financial officer for Silicon Valley companies, including formerly at Accept Software Corporation, Skinner knew he could fill the role of group organizer. He set about putting together the volunteers and their skills and finding a location for the inaugural event with the help and advice of two friends, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Bob Wenzlau and John Eaton. Skinner admits he is not a fix-it expert. “I have moderate fix-it skills, not refined fix-it skills. I’m the perfect candidate” for the Repair Cafe, he said. He plans to bring an electric kettle with a lid that won’t close and a corroded multimeter electronic-testing device that stopped functioning. Skinner said he hopes to assuage people’s fear of those things that seem imposing — and build in people a sense of the value of repairing. “We are all so acclimated to throwing things away,” he said. That trend has nearly doubled in almost 50 years, he said. In 1960, each person in the U.S. generated 2.68 pounds of waste per day. By 2008, the average was 4.5 pounds per day. About 54 percent ended up in the landfill, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Out of 2.25 million pounds of electronics that were retired in 2007, 82 percent were discarded in landfills nationwide, according to the EPA. The deleterious effects are more than mountains of trash. Landfills are usually located near bodies of water, and plastics can leach chemicals and gases even before they disintegrate, the EPA states. A Zero Waste America study found that 83 percent of landfills surveyed in 2008 had leaks in their protective linings. Incinerators that process landfill materials are also a major source of 210 different dioxin compounds, heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium, nitrous oxide, hydrogen chloride, sulfuric acid, fluorides and particulate matter small enough to lodge in lungs, according to the EPA. Waste incinerators create more carbon dioxide than coal, oil or natural-gas power plants, the EPA notes. Skinner said he is interested in grassroots, community-based solutions to problems. “We have so little appetite for sweeping policy changes,” he said. Eaton, a mechanical engineer by training, said he will volunteer at the event. “I’ve always been a tinkerer and repairer since forever — ever since I was a kid and started pulling lawnmower engines apart,” he said. That first introduction to things mechanical probably led to his career choice, he added. It has also made him popular with his friends and neighbors. “My friends will call and say, ‘John, come over for a glass of wine — and by the way, the dishwasher isn’t draining right,’” he said. Eaton said headphones and earbuds are some of the most challenging items to fix. Tiny coaxial wires, which have a braid of fine wires within them, have to be connected with a soldering iron while looking through a microscope. His stereoscope — a microscope with two eyepieces — is one of his most-used tools. “It’s not something people have a lot. But it’s good when things are broken and you can’t determine why they are broken,” he said. In his arsenal are items one wouldn’t have found in Dad’s toolbox. New tools are used for new technologies: miniature wire strippers, good tweezers and pry tools made out of plastic so they won’t gouge consoles, he said. Skinner said Repair Cafe will start out quarterly, and hopefully it will expand as community interest grows. So far, he’s spreading the news through his neighborhood email list and has posted notices at ACE Hardware and the Museum of American Heritage. “The response I got has been amazing,” he said. People have supplied a list of items needing repair, from DustBusters to luggage. One woman wanted to bring a moped. That brought up a point he wanted to emphasize. The Repair Cafe is for small appliances and items only — things that won’t take too much time to fix. “No cars, no washing machines, no dishwashers. If it takes a truck to move it, it’s probably not a good thing to bring,” he said. Repair Cafe will take place Sunday, Oct. 14, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Palo Alto Museum of American Heritage, 351 Homer Ave., Palo Alto. Also, check out this video with free repairs.

How to Save on Back-to-School Electronics

August 13, 2012

This is a great article from Kiplinger. Loaded with sites for purchases and to get the best deals. I wanted to share this with you. See the following 6 tips:

Among the most-expensive items on many families’ back-to-school shopping lists are electronics, such as computers, tablets, MP3 players and smart phones. According to a National Retail Federation survey, families are expected to spend about $218, on average, on these items during the back-to-school shopping season this year.

That might cover the cost of smaller items, such as phones, but families will have to shell out more if they want to buy laptop computers or certain tablets.

However, there are ways to keep the cost of electronics under control. Jon Rettinger, president of gadget review site TechnoBuffalo, offers these tips:

Shop online. Shopping online makes it easy to compare prices from several retailers. And there are plenty of sites that do the bargain hunting for you by scouring the Web for the best deals. Our favorite deal site, dealnews.com, has a page devoted to the best computer deals. Other sites that feature deals on computers and other tech items include MacMall.com (Apple products), Offers.com, Shopping.com and Shopzilla.com.

Monitor daily deals. You can find deeply discounted computers and other items on daily deal sites that specialize in tech products, such as RedTag.com and Woot.com. These sites feature just one product a day, but both offer e-mail alerts so that you don’t have to monitor the sites each day.

Set up price alerts. If you want to buy a particular tech product (not just the lowest-price computer, for example), sign up for price alerts so that you can receive an e-mail when the price on that product changes. There are a number of price alert sites that track electronics, such as Gazaro, PriceSpider and PricePinx.

Buy refurbished. You can save a lot by purchasing refurbished tech items, which are used but restored to like-new condition and usually have a one-year warranty. Among the sites where your can find refurbished computers, tablets and other products are Apple.com, BestBuy.com, CompUSA.com, Dell.com, Newegg.com and Walmart.com.

Take advantage of trade-in programs. One way to pay less for a new tech item is to trade in a used item. A number of retailers, including Best Buy, Circuit City and Radio Shack, have trade-in programs that offer cash, a gift card or credit for the value of a used item that can be applied toward the purchase of a new item.

Avoid extras. Just say no to tech support and retailers’ extended warranties, Rettinger says. Your credit card might offer an extended warranty (see How Credit Cards’ Extended Warranty Coverage Stacks Up). Or Rettinger suggests buying extended warranty coverage through SquareTrade.com, which offers warranties 40% to 60% cheaper than retailers’ warranties. Another extra that he says to avoid is Microsoft Office Home & Student edition ($120) because you can use Google Docs for free.

What to Know About a Down Payment

May 7, 2012

When you buy real estate, it’s very exciting. First, you shop (till you drop) until you find your dream home (or maybe your dream home minus some bedrooms and closets). Then, you write possibly the biggest check of your life.

What is it? What happens to it?

It’s Not Actually a “Down Payment”

Because it’s the first money that a buyer puts “down” against the purchase, buyers often refer to it in slang as the “down payment.” That’s not technically correct, mostly because a purchase might involve more money down later. For example, you might buy a $400,000 house and hand over 5 percent of the purchase price (or $20,000), when you sign the contract, and then put another percent down at closing, so that your entire down payment is $40,000, in addition to the fact that you’re handing the seller a mortgage for the last 90 percent

How to Handle That “Earnest Money”

So technically, that check that goes with the contract is known in the trade as “earnest money” (because it’s used to prove that you’re very, very earnest about buying this property) or the “contract deposit.” You don’t, however, want to just hand it over. It should go into a special account, known as an escrow account, which is held by the escrow and title company in California.

Where Does the Money Go?

It varies by state.  In California, all the other money in a real estate transaction, even the mortgage, goes through escrow, too (but that’s not the way it is in most states). More typical is that the earnest money stays in escrow until the deal closes — and you own the house or apartment.

If Something Goes Wrong, Do You Get Your Money Back?

Well, that depends on the terms of your contract. Your contract — which you should read carefully and have your agent explain — should outline in what scenarios your earnest money is forfeited, and in what scenarios you would get it back.

Typically, you might get it back if:

• the seller changes his or her mind and decides not to sell
• you have a contract with a financing contingency, and the bank denies you a mortgage loan
• you have a contract with an inspection contingency, and the inspector finds something seriously wrong (like a terrible termite infestation) with the subject property
• there is a fire in the property before you buy
• you elect to cancel the contract rather than go through with the deal

The most typical reason not to get your money back:

• you, as the buyer, change your mind and decide not to buy.

In other words, you can’t just cancel your contract on a whim. There are probably secondary provisions that keep you from “throwing” the deal — for example, if you have a financing contingency, then you wouldn’t have to go through with the purchase if the bank doesn’t give you a mortgage loan. But, there are probably contract provisions that state that you have to apply seriously and give the bank the income documentation and financial records that it asks for.

You have to be careful with an FHA loan and make sure you have a lender that is very familiar with the intracies of an FHA loan. One example cites a case where the buyer thought she was getting an FHA loan, and then found out that the FHA wouldn’t finance in the condo building where she was trying to buy. You might think that’s not her fault, but she still lost her deposit because she didn’t do enough research.

So, (I said this above but it bears repeating) read your contract. The huge amount of money you save may be your own.

Statistics for Single Family Residences & Condos San Mateo County

December 27, 2011

Click on Single Family Nov. Report for your November update on the listings, sales, current inventory, etc… in San Mateo County. This is the most current report until January.  For Condos and Townhomes click on Condo Report Nov. 2011. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

 

Check out Walk Score

July 27, 2011

Walk Score 2011 Ranking of Most Walkable Cities

This is a great site, I just had to share it. You can click on any city to see if it is a great city to walk around in. They also have a blog called www.blog@walkscore.com This is a fun site to check out.

 

Free e-Waste Recycling Day!

August 6, 2010

Thanks to Suzanne Bowler, she is having an e-Waste from August 9th to August 13 from 9-6. Located at Intero Real Estate Services, 1250 San Carlos Ave, Suite 102 in San Carlos. They will be taking desktops, laptops and PDAs, monitors, TVs, printers computer systems (they erase HDS) mice, keyboards, stereos, radios, VCR, DVD players, etc… as well as telephones and cell phones. All proceeds will benefit the funding grants to children’s charities in our communities…. Thank you Suzanne!

New USB in Our Wall-Sockets

June 5, 2010

Can you guess what this is?

October 16, 2009

 

It’s a hard disk in 1956…  a hard disk drive with 5 MB storage.
In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive. The HDD weighed over a ton and stored a total 5 MB of data.

Time to appreciate your one ounce 8 GB memory stick which has 1600 times the capacity of this monster!    

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