Last week Gmail released 5 new themes, and so far my favorite by far is Tree Tops. For me, a theme has to do more than just look cool, the theme has to mix well visually with Active Inbox (a GTD spin-off I use for Gmail). Plus, on my high screen resolutions I see a lot of the screen, and the themes’ use of color has to be very well done so that the text, message highlighting and all the the Gmail labs features I use look well mixed in a particular theme.

Thats a lot of words just to say that I really am enjoying the Tree Tops theme!

Soon I will be adding 2 new subjects to this blog, Diabetes and Working at Home.

DIABETES
As a Type 2 Diabetic its time to be more serious about my knowledge of type 2 diabetes and my diet (diet as a lifestyle, that is — not a temporary fad). A great way for me to learn, is to blog about what I’m learning, so here it comes.

WORKING AT HOME
Anyone that knows me will be laughing now, but you can make a good living working at home – either as a primary or secondary source of income. But you must plan and be organized.

I wonder why so many blogs these days, and even ever more often use black text for navigation? I learned “old school” some basics I stick to when I design sites myself, and using a different color for nav links and other text links is one of the basics and inviolable, IMO.

At any rate I’m very pleased with this theme, and we’ll see how it turns out over the next several weeks.

This holiday season, as a token of our appreciation to our most enthusiastic fans, we’ll snail-mail a free holiday postcard on your behalf. Yes, through the mail and everything.

- Gmail Blog, Spread some holiday cheer, one card at a time

So get on over to that website and send a free “Gmail Card” to the Google fan in your life, or maybe that person in your life who doesn’t use email (yet).

• if you need to call for warranty service call the toll-free number on the water heater
• on a previous post, commenter Tom said “If you have a problem with this water heater call 1.877.817.6750“
• if you are considering buying/installing a Whirlpool water heater I’d suggest asking the opinion of a couple of plumbers in your area. For example, would you recommend whirlpool? would you buy one for your home? do you fix a lot of whirlpool water heaters?

Other Whirlpool News

Whirlpool sells applicances under at least 8 brand names
Whirlpool got $19.3 million from the US Dept of Energy
Read CNet News: Whirlpool wants to pull plug on ‘dumb’ appliances

George posted July 29th, 2008 at 6:07 pm

I’m glad to hear this post was helpful! We spent a lot of time and money on this Water Heater since we bought it and I was rather upset to find out they no longer sold the thermocouple any more. We got the Flame Lock Enhancement Kit and now ours is fixed, though we had to pay about $90 to have it installed.

George posted August 5th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

Kevin,

You may have to have a professional install the kit – I paid someone to install mine and its working good ever since.

I bought mine because of price and (like you) I trusted the purchase because of the name. I’ve learned when I buy low price (like I did with my Walmart ILO model IWT3206 32 inch SDTV also in this blog) that you need to trust the name, and I thought it was a darned shame that Whirlpool evidently had to be sued into taking action.

George posted August 5th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

Mike,

Good luck! I know what you mean about cold showers, I went about 5 days altogether with cold showers before my kit was delivered, professionally installed/fixed this last time. Unfortunately it wasn’t covered by ServiceCare so I paid about $100 for it – but its worth it to know I don’t have to worry about “popping” thermocouples.

Mike posted April 12th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

I purchased my flamelock water heater about 4 years ago (12 yr warrantee). Last year the thermocouple went out with the same saga as all the stories above. I finally located and installed an upgrade kit 65 miles away and installed it myself. I only wasted gas and a day of work. Now one year later, the thermocouple is dead again – I think. Is it possible there is a shutoff switch that protects the thermocoupel? I thought that was what the new kit was all about. If so, how do I reactivate the thermocouple?

TUE APR 21

So on or around July 29, 2008 I had my flame lock enhancement kit installed. Today… cold water again! I tried to light it following the instructions on the (Whirlpool FG1F4040S3NOV) Water Heater and the pilot wouldn’t stay lit. So I was late for work and all I knew was that there was no hot water and we had to call someone to look at the water heater to diagnose and fix.

My wife had called Mueller’s Plumbing Service and the guy was working on it for us when I got home after work. I left after the work was done, went to the bank, then to the Bi-Lo for some groceries and I got a call when I was parking – “Come home,” said my wife.

I got home and the pilot was off again! I tried lighting the pilot again and ended up calling Mueller’s Plumbing again and I’m waiting for them to send their guy back out. Whirlpool is NOT my favorite company right now.

I called Whirlpool while waiting for the plumber and was told it was the gas valve (the box says Flame Guard Gas Thermostat). Later the plumber came back and told me that I did need that and to order it and they’d install it. Of course now Whirlpool was closed, so I had to order it tomorrow.

WED APR 22

I called Whirlpool from work today and they are shipping the gas valve, which should arrive tomorrow.

THU APR 23

The part arrived today and we called Mueller’s Plumbing Service and they sent a guy out and later he was joined by another plumber dude. They ended up rigging it to work because something on the flame lock replacement kit A was defective.

The owner of Mueller’s Plumbing later came out to explain the work they did, why it was safe (which I’d already read online somewhere), and that the best thing for the long run would be to consider getting a new flame lock replacement kit A.

Calling Whirlpool again (about 9pm EST) and they said the soonest they can get a flame lock replacement kit A shipped out to me would be Monday – thankfully we already have hot water!

Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection.

- Andy Palay, Gmail engineer, Gmail Blog

Gmail says Offline Gmail will be available to users of Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days (as of Jan 27th).

Google continually evolves everything and Google Maps is no exception to that rule. During the past month or so I’ve noted some really cool new features like updated zoom/pan/navigation controls, new My Maps features, and navigable street view is available in some areas.

Let’s take a quick look at new My Maps features, here’s a list:

• Google Real Estate Search
• Hot Spots Guide
• Island Guide
• Videos from YouTube
• Photos from Picasa Web Albums
• Gas Prices from GasBuddy.com
• Distance Measurement Tool
• Places of Interest
• The Weather Channel
• The Tap Mapplet

Recently I was grabbing a cup of coffee at Burger King with a friend and I was sending an invite through Google Calendar and I wanted to include a link to a map of the store’s location. The first place I went was the Burger King site and used their Store Locator and it didn’t list the restaurant I was looking for.

GOOGLE MAPS TO THE RESCUE

I went to Google maps and mapped a nearby location and went into My Maps, checked the “Places of Interest” checkbox then selected Fast Food in the new window. A bunch of local restaurants popped up as little purple dots on the map and I clicked the one I wanted, and got not only the address, but the phone number, too!

I added that info into my invite and fired it off, sure that my friend would be able to get directions if he needed them. Ironic that Google Maps could provide all of that info along with a street view of that particular Burger King, and the official Burger King website could not. UPDATE: While writing I checked again and it seems like Burger King or MapQuest caught up. Maybe one of them is just a day behind Google Maps!

INTERESTING GOOGLE MAPS NOTE

On another note It seems there are all kinds of cool Google map hacks out there, too, and some of them look really useful and the idea of hacking Google maps as a whole is promising and probably has many developers salivating over the possibilities.

Figure 1: JustJared.com

I’m amazed at times to I see high profile websites breaking what I consider to be unspoken “laws” of web design. One of the first of which would be to insure that visitors to your site can distinguish between clickable and non-clickable text. For example, you want readers to easily see at-a-glance how to navigate through your website.

This unspoken “law” is broken by some of the biggest web sites, and even some very popular blog templates which can become high profile sites.

I will be picking on the incredibly popular JustJared.com tonight because I happened to walk by my wife when she was on this site and I wanted a good example of exactly what I would not do to a site.

Area 1 (see figure 1 near logo at top): Check out the link below and look at the main logo where it says “TOP CELEBS” on the left and has a list of celebrities (I’ve highlighted it orange). Tonight the list’s upper left says Angelina Jolie and ends at the bottom right with Zac Efron – but you cannot tell at-a-glance that these are clickable links.

Area 2 (see figure 1 above article): These are older and newer links which take you to the post before and after the current post. Again you cannot tell at-a-glance that these are clickable links.

Area 3 (see figure 1 right edge): Here again is black text hiding its “clickability”. There’s a link above the banner for potential advertisers to click if they are interested in advertising on JustJared.com and then below the banner is a list of designers – designers of what I do not know, but again they are black and you cannot readily tell they are clickable.

Another way to put this idea is that as much as is possible you want to make your web sites as easy to use as possible. You don’t want visitors looking around trying to learn how to use your site, you want them clicking around reading stuff and clicking on stuff without any thought whatsoever – okay, you do want a little thought, but you want their thoughts to be about your content, whether or not to click your ads, and whther or not to buy something on the site.

Due to high demand for the BlackBerry® Storm™ 9530 smartphone, all orders placed today will ship no later than 12/15/08.

- VerizonWireless.com

So, if you are in the market for a Blackberry and none other will do (at least if you are shopping with Verizon) you might want to choose from the Blackberry 8703e, Backberry Curve 8330, or Blackberry 8830 World Edition if you want to get it before Christmas.

Or, if you are shopping at AT&T Wireless (formerly Cingular Wireless) you might consdier the Backberry 8820, Blackberry Bold, or the Blackberry 8700c.

NICE BACKBERRY BOLD YOUTUBE
VID BY CrackBerry.com (6:12)

Click here to view the embedded video.