Money vs. Fulfillment

Nowadays I am spending many hours, reading books and soul-searching.
One of the books I read was Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez.

The book shows interesting relationship between money and fulfillment (I'll call it Happiness).
It says that most people are not happy, regardless of how much money they make.
On a scale of 1(unhappy) - 5(ecstatic), most people marked 2.5 to 2.8, not even 3!
I couldn't rank my current life to be 3 (content) either, even though I am happy most of the times. I couldn't say I felt content. I still have lots of things to do to prepare for the future.

The author also made me think about how many hours I have left in my life.
If I live 40 more years, I have 350,400 hours to go.
If I sleep 1/3 of the hours, I have 233,600 hours to go.
If I eat three times a day, wash twice a day, drive to somewhere an hour or two... I may have less than 120,000 hours to go.

So what am I supposed to do now... to be happier?
Before squandering any more hour (and dollar), I need to ask myself whether it enhances my happiness...
This way, I may be able to spend the rest of my hours and money more wisely...

Diet - simple way

Diets Don't Work by Bob Schwartz said four rules to succeed in diet*:

1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat exactly what your body wants.
3. Eat each bite consciously.
4. Stop when your body has had enough.

How simple is that?

Actually there is one more thing I want to add.

5. Drink each gulp consciously.

Luckily I haven't developed the habit of drinking soda with every meal.
Still, whenever I have a hamburger or pizza, I drink a coke.
Without the help (?) of soda, I noticed that I can't eat as much hamburger or pizza or donuts or other heavily breaded foods.

If my body doesn't want grease without soda's tricking me, I guess I need neither, after all.

(*Also shown in Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez)

Ultimate and free solution to my laptop overheating problem

I killed my three previous laptop computers over the past 5 years, mainly due to the overheating and fan failure problems. I used those laptop computers everyday all the time, except for the sleeping time. Because I didn’t have a desktop computer, I used them at home, at work, at school, everywhere. Basically, those were overworked. I wished to blame any one maker, but those three were all from different computer manufacturers. I guess, laptop overheating problems are common. But, when this one, my current laptop began to show the same issue, I got really upset and annoyed with this chronic issue. After a lot of search in the web, I found that the overheating is an inherent problem to laptops because all the parts including the hard-working CPU are crammed into this small and densely-populated flat machine. “All right. I give up on this idea of using a laptop for everyday use, finally. I will switch to the dual system – use a desktop at home and use a small/inexpensive laptop for travel use.” That was the conclusion.

But, then, I wanted to do something – take some risk – to fix the overheating problem MYSELF. The thought process behind that I threw away the previous problematic laptops was… “Gosh, I would have just gone to the electronics street (there is such an area in Korea where you can get a real good and cheap computer repair) if I were in Korea. I cannot find good and cheap place to get a repair service in the US. OK, if I have to pay like $100-200 to check up and repair this getting-old laptop, I would rather replace it with a new one.” But, this time, I wanted to do something myself.

I did a thorough research in the web on how to cure the overheating problem. I found cleaning is the key. But, here was a challenge: take off the board and clean the parts inside! It seemed not dangerous, but I was hesitant to do that. I continued to search a better/easier solution. I found two easy-looking solutions: (1) blow in air to the fan area using the air compressor; and (2) buy an external fan (Targus by Target). Both options needed money! Targus looked good, but I have to go buy it for $$ (about less than $30, though). Buying an air compressor is another expense although I don’t know how much yet. SO,

I found my ultimate and free solution. HOLD THE BREATH AND BLOW YOUR AIR INTO THE FAN AREA!

You need these three equipments (?): a mask to keep dust from going into your lung; a protection goggle to protect your eyes from dust; and a straw.

1. Find where your fan area: in my Dell laptop, the fan was found in the bottom of the laptop. And, the hot air from the computer seemed to get out through the slits or holes in the left side of the laptop.

2. Swallow your saliva and make your mouth dry: you don’t want to put water into the system.

3. Blow through the straw a strong air into the fan area: you goal is to run the fan. If you blow an air, you will see both the fan running and the dust going out from the side of the computer.

4. Repeat this until you don’t see any dust come out.

And, another ongoing help is to have some space between the bottom of your laptop and the floor where your laptop sits. This will help the hot air come out easily from the lot of slits on the bottom of your laptop. I use the pizza baking pan! This works beautifully.


I did all this today. So, we will see how this will correct the problem. During this one day, which used to be a sufficient time to see at least 5 times of burning hot keyboard, my laptop is working so smooth and cool. And, it seems that it is at least a very good solution to clean the dust without taking apart the laptop.

Do you have a hot laptop? Try this.

Do you have any other ideas to fix the laptop overheating problem?