February 17, 2015 / Posted in  Cars

Here’s a quick video on the side marker and reverse light LED upgrades I did. I also tried changing the front and rear turn signal lights to LEDs, but always got a dashboard warning light something was wrong. Those lights seem to do a lot of fading on and off with the lock/unlock cycles so perhaps they aren’t meant to be LEDs. I guess all that’s left is to change the license plate lights but that might be a bit overkill. Comments welcome below as usual, thanks!

Recommended Back up: Parking Light LED Light Bulbs 3157, 19 LED White 2-pc Set

Recommended Side Markers: LED Light Bulbs T10 Wedge, 5 SMD LED Amber 2-pc Set

How do I even get to my reverse lights to change them? Click here

February 15, 2015 / Posted in  Reviews, Technology

Tablo TV is an interesting method of adding a DVR to over the air television. It’s also pretty reasonably priced at under $200 to start. Instead of your TV receiving the decoding the signal from your antennae, the antennae connects directly to your Tablo TV box. You also connect a USB hard drive that you supply. Tablo supports WiFi and a LAN cable, so I used LAN with my ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router just to make it a little faster and more responsive.

January 15, 2015 / Posted in  Product Management

The elite, short list of world billionaires. Such an exclusive club, as of this publishing there were less than 1,600 members in a world of over 7 billion souls. Billionaires are interesting because they are scarce and live a lifestyle they can afford to cloak in mystery. The billionaires that interest me most are the self made billionaires. They are smart, but not necessarily in the highest IQ tiers. So if it isn’t smarts, what is it that has enabled self made billionaires to bend reality to their will? I will dive further into this subject and talk a little about why each member makes the cut. This list may change with time, but as of today, here are my choices for Chris’ top 10 billionaires list.

Chris’ Top 10 Billionaires list:

10. Scott Cook

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit (phot...

December 19, 2014 / Posted in  Cars

For about 6 months now I’ve been experiencing a BMW X3 muffler rattle. At first I ignored it but as it became more persistent and embarrassing, I decided to get under the car and troubleshoot it. All the connections under the car were firm and in good condition. What was causing the muffler rattle that sort of sounded like an aluminum can in my exhaust? I also noted, it only seemed to happen on start up, idle, and when the car was under no load decelerating.

I took a video and pasted it below with more details. Basically, there is a baffle in the right exhaust pipe that opens and closes based on a vacuum line. At idle and no load, the baffle closes and it opens once the engine starts winding up. It’s also closed when the car is off...

October 7, 2014 / Posted in  Cars

The family and I recently purchased a 1999 Coleman pop up tent trailer, and I’ve been itching to do some trailering ever since. The BMW X3 can easily pull the trailer, I had no problem doing 65 MPH+ up the Altamont pass on the first trip out, but you definitely feel the extra weight when braking. Even though the trailer weighs less than 2,000 lbs., it comes with electric brakes that engage automatically when you depress the brake pedal in the car. To make those or any electric trailer brakes work, you need a brake controller as well as the 7 pin trailer harness connector. I had already installed the hitch and the 4 pin connector, now I needed to get the full 7 pin trailer lights for my BMW X3 and brake controller if I wanted the proper trailer solution.

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