Family Circle

My Dad and I made a program that would help remind people to “Take A Break!” after looking at the computer too long. It helps to notify you to give your eyes a break and rest for a while before returning. We worked for about one week on it, and we hope you like it.

If you want to install this fantastic item…

1. Click here to download the program, and save to your machine.

2. Double click the downloaded .zip file, and extract the whole “MyReminder” directory to “C:\”.

3. Then go to C:\MyReminder directory, and click “runReminder.bat” and in a second, the Reminder program will pop up. You can “snooze” for certain number of seconds and it will remind you again, or “dismiss” to close the program.

4. You can modify the “alarmConfig_en.properties” under “MyReminder” directory, to display different reminder messages. You can put as many messages as you like, and the reminder program will randomly pick one at a time.

Note: If you want to extract “MyReminder” to somewhere other than “C:\”, for example to “C:\temp”, then you need to edit “runReminder.bat” under “C:\temp\MyReminder” directory, and modify “-DINSTALL_DIR=” to new directory, such as “-DINSTALL_DIR=C:\temp\MyReminder”.

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June 13, 2008. David graduated from Murwood Elementary School this morning, with Outstanding Academic Excellence award.

The Xies at David’s graduation party, in front of Murwood school.

We were awakened by the sudden shake of entire house structure last night. Earthquake! Rushed to kid rooms and David and Emily were still in deep sleep. Waited for a while, and it seemed to be over. Just as we went back to sleep, a second wave of shake rattled the window and door.

I stayed up for a while and checked on earthquake.usgs.gov. The earthquakes were in the mountain area between Moraga and Danville, about 8km from our house in Walnut Creek. The first is 3.0, followed by the second one at 3.5. Both a quite shallow at 7.7km depth. That is why we can felt them so strongly.

We need to be more alert as the images of earthquake in China are fresh, and should put earthquake prep kit in a place that we can dash for cover.