Qingdao Here I Come!

As the recent Geiko commercial and Europe would say, “It’s the Final Countdown!” I’ll be heading off to Qingdao, China (pronounced “ching-dow”) for my IBM Corporate Service Corps assignment in just over a week. I’ve known I’ve been heading to Qingdao for several months now, but it’s finally starting to get real.

Qingdao is a coastal city on the Yellow Sea, and is sometimes referred to as the Asian Riviera. It also has a lot of German influence… including a lot of beer culture. It serves as home for Tsingtao Brewery – a fact that didn’t take me long to figure out. Qingdao is home to the Tsingtao Beer Museum which is #1 on the list of things to do, so I can assure you I’ll give it a visit.

This past week, I finally heard what my specific project will be, and which of the 11 other IBMers I’ll be working with on it. I’ve enjoyed getting to know everyone on the bigger team, but am especially excited to be working with Matthias and Maria – the two other members of my sub-team. Their personality and backgrounds seem to fit very well with my own, and I know their experiences will be well suited for the project.

Speaking of the project, as I alluded to, I found out that I’ll be working with the Qingdao Han Te Networking Technology company. They are a roughly three-year-old online education startup whose growth has presented some challenges. In particular, we’ll be working to help establish some processes to help manage the management of their various activities.

I don’t know all the details yet, but we’ll be meeting with them later this week, and then obviously the majority of the interactions will take place when I’m in China.

The other bit of information I wanted to share is that the whole CSC China 33 team will be updating a blog on Tumbler that you may want to follow as well.

What the Heck’s a Norwex?

I finally have had a chance to write a bit again and wanted to share an update and story on how I stumbled across Norwex – and don’t worry, it’s ok if you’ve never hear of it. I hadn’t either.

When I was visiting a good friend of mine who lives in Ohio, his wife mentioned something about Norwex if passing. Not having any idea what that was myself and being a curious person, I had to ask. She told me that they are a green cleaning option that allow you to just use water and these special silver-infused high-end microfiber cloths to clean. Of course, I was hugely skeptical, but wanted to see her demo how it worked nonetheless – if nothing else to get a good laugh.

She happily agreed and then proceeded to pull out a piece of raw chicken from her refrigerator. She wiped it all over her counter, and you could see the chicken slime all over the place. Pretty gross. Then she takes a wet Norwex Envirocloth and proceeds to wipe over the area where the chicken was. Then comes the cool part. She takes out a special protein test used to detect germs in restaurants and wipes it over the same area of counter. And sure enough, no protein residue. Wipe the cloth… no protein detected. Test a spot that wasn’t cleaned with the cloth – it immediately reacts and turns the opposite color.

All that she did to clean it, was rinse it out well under hot water or a little dish soap if you’re really concerned. The micro-silver embedded in it also prevents that nasty cloth or sponge smell that so often happens to things that get wet in the kitchen.

She then goes on to tell me about how Clorox wipes aren’t really as good as most of us (including me at the time) think they are. If you read the directions, the surface is supposed to stay wet for 10 minutes.

I found this video on YouTube that shows both the chicken test and a Lysol test with liquid germ powder. It certainly made me think twice.

So getting back to present day… she sent me home with two of the more popular options, the all-purpose Envirocloth and the Window Cloth which amazingly leaves windows, mirrors, and other smooth glass.

Since then I’ve purchased several other Norwex products and couldn’t be happier with nearly all of them. I love that I’m able to reduce the amount of chemicals I’m using around the house given our two little ones. Perhaps I’ll share the details about some of those other ones in another post.

Norwex cloths are only available from Norwex consultants, so don’t go looking for them on Amazon. If you’re interested in trying them out, I’d be happy to help you get started, just let me know @TalkToErik.

What Do an Empty CO2 Tank and a Frosty Freezer Have in Common?

If you’ve seen my profile on Twitter, you may have noticed that I say I can fix anything. Now in reality, we all know that that’s not quite true as some things just can’t be fixed. However, this isn’t one of those times.

I won’t make you wait to find out the answer to my blog title. In essence, both the empty CO2 tank and the frosty freezer were symptoms of things that were broken around the house. And the thing that I find most interesting about it, was that the underlying issue for both my keezer (a beer dispensing devices made out of a freezer; same origin as kegerator) and my deep freezer was ultimate the same. The problem: an improper seal was letting air get where it wasn’t supposed to be — whether it was the warm air in the garage or the CO2 keeping my kegs nicely carbonated.

Don’t worry, I’m able to proudly still keep my “Can Fix Anything” title, both stories have happy endings!

Let’s start with the supposed frost-free freezer. It was pretty apparent there was an air leak towards the top of the freezer as that’s where all of the frost was accumulating. A bit of googling led me to believe that the freezer gasket was the issue. The only problem is, replacement gaskets are surprisingly expensive. I would have never guessed that 12 feet of pretty narrow vinyl would cost a hundred bucks!

Fortunately, I’m resourceful and found another way to fix it. After going back to my good friend Google, I found an article that talked about how vinyl can get dried out. After putting a large towel over the main freezer section to keep it as cool as possible. Then I carefully first cleaned, then spread a thin coat of Vaseline around the whole gasket. It was pretty amazing how different it felt before and after doing so. I also loosened the screws in a few places where the gasket wasn’t completely tucked behind the door, and then re-tightened them.

At that point, I was feeling pretty optimistic that things were going to work better, but time was the true ultimate test. The next morning, Korey yells out to me asking where the key is to unluck the freezer. The seal was now so tight that she thought it was locked! Freezer problem solved.

Fixing the keezer also involved finding out where the leak was coming from. Fortunately, there was something that recently changed right before the issue manifested itself… the changeover to a new keg. And kegs are pretty simple creatures. They have an inlet, an outlet, and a large mouth. Applying pressure to the keg outside of the keezer, resulted in a slow leak through the liquid ball valve. Keg lube didn’t help, but changing out the post on the inside did seem the problem. Only time will fully verify that the problem was solved, but fixing an obvious problem on the offending keg has me feeling pretty confident.

What’s broken for you recently? How did you fix it? Let me know @TalkToErik