Dane DeValcourt

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My wife has a 2004 Toyota Highlander that was exhibiting some strange issues with the A/C and heat.  In the summer while driving with the A/C on it would randomly just switch to heat and just as randomly switch back later.  Sometimes bumps would trigger it or a sharp turn.  Same would occur in the winter while using the heat.  It would randomly switch to A/C and back.

Problem was pretty annoying but I suspect fearing the possible cost to repair kept her from bringing it in for service.

The issue seemed to get worst over time and with the horrible Louisiana summer heat and humidity quickly approaching she finally brought it in to get inspected and to get a quote.

The shop she brought it to “checked it” and told her it was the “temperature control actuator”.  They told her it would cost about $500 to fix.

After getting this information I went to Autozone and O’Reilly’s trying to find this part and what it costs.  Neither could find this part.  This made me pretty curious and wondered why no one could identify the part.   So I went sit in my car and whipped out the iPhone to Google this part and figure out what was going on.  I didn’t find any mention of a “temperature control actuator” for a Toyota Highlander but I did find lots of information pointing to what appeared to be the same A/C issue with the Highlander by many people.

I found many complaining that they had to replace the A/C control assembly to fix the problem.  The A/C control assembly sells between $700 – $1000, just depends where you get it.  Labor to replace it was between $300-$500.  Many reported paying or getting quotes between $1200 – $1500 to replace it.

This was not looking good.  I went back inside the store and confirmed the part was $700+ but they didn’t have it.  Turns out this was a good thing.  It caused me to go back to the car and start searching for that part.  This time I stumbled across someone who was a mechanic who ran across this problem with a client.  He mentioned that after he took everything apart thinking he was going to have to replace the A/C control assembly he found the real problem.  Apparently the issue is with the temperature control switch (knob) and the three wires connecting it to the control assembly circuit board had broken.  This was especially interesting because it really seemed like it made more sense to me.  The fact that bumps in the road would cause this to work and not work really made me think this was a short or something along those lines.  I didn’t buy the other explanations personally because most of them would have only accounted for it not working entirely and not sporadicly.

So…. I decided this broken wire issue had to be the problem and I would at least check this out before spending any money.  Figured I didn’t have anything to lose by confirming this.

I went home and went straight at it.  Tore the center console apart and got to the control panel.  Tore the control panel apart and got to the circuit board (control assembly).  Sure enough two of the three wires connecting the temperature control to the circuit board had broken off.

Yay!  Got it soldered again and everything reassembled and sure enough it is working like a champ and cost NOTHING to fix it!  Sad that most places wouldn’t attempt to solder it back but rather would just charge people $1500 to replace the whole control assembly.

Anyway… with all that said I thought I would share and detail the process for others in the hopes of saving others a ton of money in the future.

***Couple of New Notes***

I highly recommend doing as others have suggested and replacing the ribbon cable you need to solder back together.  Part of the problem with the current design seems to be that the ribbon cable is too short.  This causes added tension when things are put together and adds to the issue with the wire breaking.

Also, you will or should know how to clean the old solder from the holes on the circuit board in order to correctly solder things back together.  Use a desoldering pump to assist with this.  If you don’t know how to solder you might be able to find a small local computer repair shop or trade school with people willing to do it for very cheap.

I have not been able to fix the spacing between the photos with out risk of messing up the entire post so I am leaving things as they are for now.  Sorry about that.  Appreciate all the great feedback this post has been getting, makes you feel good to hear the positive comments.

***End Notes***

Step 1.  Remove the knobs.  These simply pull right off.

Step 2.  Remove the trim panel from center console.  Start at the bottom on one side and then the other.  Work your way to the top.  This is easily done with no tools and just a little force.

Step 3.  There are six 10mm bolts to remove that are holding the center console in place. (Three on each side of console)

Step 4.  Remove two screws from both side of the assembly.

Step 5.  Pry the bracket away from the control assembly in order to clear the alignment pins.

Step 6.  Unplug the wiring from the control assembly.  There are three things to unplug.

Step 7.  You should now have the control assembly module completely removed from the console.  In order to access the circuit board inside the black plastic housing of the control assembly you will need to remove the screws holding the rear plastic cover on.  Once the screws are removed you can separate the two pieces slowly.  You can only separate it slightly as there is a ribbon cable connecting one circuit board to the other.

I pried one side (where the cable was) apart and then used a butter knife to release the connector for the ribbon cable.  Once the cable is free you can completely separate the two pieces.

Step 8.  Remove the screws and clips holding the circuit board in place.

Step 9.  Remove the nuts that hold the switches in place.

Step 10.  With the circuit boards and switches removed from the assembly I could now see the real problem. Two of the three wires that connect the switch to the circuit board were broken.  Clean away the old solder and wire pieces.  You should have three clean holes on the switch board in which to re-solder the wires to.  I’m no expert on soldering but it wasn’t hard at all.  If your not comfortable soldering something such as this then find someone who is.

Once things are soldered back together you basically need to reverse this entire process to reassemble everything.  It really was pretty quick and easy to do and it can likely save you lots of money.

Good luck!

Major changes occurring in data center networking and storage.  Networking in the virtualization arena .

Unified Communications, particularly mobility.  SIP, Phone Proxy and more and more video conferencing.

Internal business collaboration, fostering ideas and innovations, getting ideas out from and to everyone and allowing others to feel they are truly contributing and appreciated as well as credited.  Too often things have to filter up through layers of mgmt and red tape, anywhere along the way one manager could simply not have the vision or foresight and have a great idea come to a stand still.  Or how often are great ideas actually credited to those who came up with them?

Slate Computers.  Yes I like and have adopted the term for that form factor of computer.  Slates are going to have a huge impact I think.  iPhone started the touch revolution IMHO because they got it right.  To this day, nearly 3 years now, there has not been one touch device that comes close to the accuracy and responsiveness of the iPhones screen.

For most people these days our PC needs are pretty simple.  Web and email are primary.  Most of what people are doing is social media stuff which is all web based.  Actual applications are becoming a thing of the past for many.

Laptops got people away from the desk and fixed locations.  People want information at their finger tips right?  Started sitting at Starbucks or on their couch with laptops, often looking up information as it strikes them.  Thoughts that pop up, news they read, conversations they over heard, something on TV, all of these things made people want that ability to Google or Wiki something anytime from anyplace.

Phones / Smartphones started helping us satisfy that need.  But none of them were as good as we hoped or wanted.  Needed something between a Laptop and Smartphone.  Thus emerges the netbook.

Netbooks have been a huge hit.  Great for the coffee shop or couch.  Cheap.

eReaders came along for many reasons I’m sure.  Print world is hurting, particularly news papers and mags.  Desire by some to make the print world head in the direction of the music world after finally recognizing how digital music is changing things.  iTunes showed the world what was possible for music, so its easy to see how Amazon could want to apply that same model to the book and print world.

I suspect the “Green” iniative also helped the eReader world.  The form factor of most eReaders is great and handles book very well.  eInk is easier on the eyes and form factor is smaller than the Netbooks but larger than say the iPhone.

However we find we are getting ourselves back into a problem that I think many of us hoped would be solves one day and thought was solved recently by the iPhone.  Gadget creep.  Too many specific devices are being needed again to solve specific needs.

I can remember almost 10 years ago sitting down with a good friend and boss in Denver for lunch one day and having to place gadget after gadget on the table so I could sit comfortably.  Pager, PDA, Cell and MP3 player.  I recall the conversation we had about hoping that in the near future we would have one device that did it all.

The iPhone did solve the gadget problem in my life for the last few years.  However I find myself really want an eReader these days for all the PDF’s I go through constantly.  There have also been moments I wished the iPhone was bigger when doing some web browsing and thought about getting a Netbook.

So yes I have my eyes on Slates.  I think they might be able to help replace the netbooks / ereaders in the very near future.

PC’s and Gaming.  There has been some debate lately about the future of PC gaming and well 5 years ago I would have considered anyone questioning the future of PC gaming as one who probably needs a pysch eval.   Today however I think PC gaming is dying.  Yup I said it.

What the Xbox360 and PS3 are capable of and still pushing out today despite being a few years old now is amazing.  I know the quality on the PC for most games is superior due to the resolutions.  However with todays large HDTV’s and the constant improvement in consoles I really think PC gaming is dying.  I use to hate consoles.  The weird controllers and small TV’s just didn’t cut it for me.  However, I broke down and bought a 360 after getting an HDTV a few years ago and have been thrilled.  Funny thing is it’s not for any reason I have mentioned so far.  My main reason for enjoying consoles now is that I never have to wonder if my console can handle this new game.  No more upgrading a home PC to play a game.  And this is from the guy who lived for doing PC upgrades early on.  Now I just want to have fun with as little hassle as possible.  Time is valuable.

Finally, yes I am still thinking a lot about the service provider industry and particularly that of the cable industry.  I have seen some positive articles and things lately that at least tells me others are concerned with and thinking about some of the same things.  I still think something major has to happen soon within the industry and there needs to be an expedited shift or transition from what the industry was to what it could and should become.  I still read and see too much discussion on transitioning old to new and talk of improvements to older technology.  To much energy, money and talent is being focused in the wrong areas in my personal opinion.  Time to rip that bandaid off and start over.  Otherwise the same thing is going to happen to the cable industry that happened to the phone industry.

Sure there is more I would love to say but will have to try getting to it later.

First its important to make a disclaimer that I am not specifically referring to anything that is or has occured at my current place of employment of course.  I have spent 15 years in IT and in that time I have seen a lot go on in the corporate world particularly as it relates to those around me.  I haven’t spent much time in or around the upper echelon types and for that I am actually very thankful.  Those people kinda scare me as I know I simply can’t relate to the type of person they are and what drives them.  Nope, I prefer to spend my time in the trenches and behind the scenes.  I like working with the technology, particularly the machines.  Things are either working or broke.  No politics, favoritism, emotions and all the other crap that comes along from others self interest.

I have what is apparently a very naive and wonderland like view of what work is suppose to be.  I believe that people should be the best they can be at the job they choose to do.  I believe that if you are great at what you do others will recognize this talent and reward it (not just financially).

There are LOTS of flaws with this basic logic however.

1. “job they choose” – not everyone is in the job they choose to do.  No one stuck a gun to their head but people get forced into jobs they don’t particularly choose and want to do.  Many reasons why this may be, such as being fired and having to take something to make ends meet or management moved someone and well the employee hoped it would only be temporary.
2. “others will recognize” – others should recognize but either don’t for a number of reasons or does but because of politics, favoritism or simply chooses to ignore.
3. “reward” – most will instinctively think money when you see reward, and some would argue that yearly raises are rewards.  In actuality rewards mean many different things to different people.  It’s important to know and recognize how to reward someone if you really feel they deserve it.  Personally I think a good manager is one that can recognize what drives a person and what their idea of a reward is.  They can usually get the most out of an employee by satisfying them through some of the non traditional rewards.  For instance, some may value learning and training or might just like to be taken out to lunch after a job well done.

It’s nuts all the things I am thinking about just in what I have typed so far.  I wish someone could tap into my head and sort all of this stuff out and put it in words for others.  I think way more about even some of the most subtle things then most people do and I really believe others might find some of it interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, nothing I say is new or ground breaking, simply just things I think of from conversations with others.

Some of the things racing around right now:

Managers/VP’s/CXX’s – What happend to earning respect?  Its not bestowed just because of a title right?

IT People / Geeks – There are people in IT and there are those that ARE IT (Geeks).  Understand the differences and reward / promote correctly.

Movers and Shakers – Ughh these people irk the heck out of me!  These are the people who obviously only care about themselves.  Wake up and see this corporate america!  If someone is jumping to a new position every chance they get within a company something is wrong.  This person doesn’t care about the company or the job they are doing or the people working with or beneath them.  How can they if they can’t stay in one place long enough?  They are only after power and money.

Things aren’t always as they appear on the surface.  This is something that has always puzzled me when it comes to management and executives.  Many create an environment where they (the manager) is very out of touch with those working for them and sometimes its the employees that exclude the manager.  Regardless there are so many things that don’t come to the surface that an out of touch manager will not see or hear about for various reasons and thus some bad employees can “float” around for a while.  Sadly many employees will unwillingly protect the bad employees without even knowing it.  In one breath they will talk among themselves with nothing good to say about someone, however in an effort to prevent things from affecting them or the department the good employees will often over compensate and pick up the bad employees slack.

Ah well, just some random thoughts.

It’s been a while since I posted anything here.  Have had a lot going on in life as of late which kept me from posting anything and also is what has now prompted me to post.

As many know I have been studying.  I was anyway.  I took my CCIE Voice written the last week of June in San Francisco while at Cisco Live – Networkers.  I passed and I suppose thats a good thing.  I know it is but I barely made it, and realized just how difficult the test is.  I feel I knew the content well, not perfect but ok.  The real kicker with these tests is just how much trickery and deception they put into them.  Really messes with your mind to the unsuspecting and nervous as hell test taker.  I can barely keep my wits taking tests when its just a normal test trying to gauge if you paid attention and know something.  These tests are on a whole different level.  Bleh.. its done and now I am trying to find it in me to do the lab so that I might finally one day become a CCIE.

I also learned that my neck issues (surgery on 6 vertabrea, fused and full of metal rods) makes studying very difficult and painful.  No pity party, just a personal observation that I have to contend with and consider going forward in my life.

Been in the midst of some major projects at work.  Awesome stuff, technology heaven for me although I am starting to realize the long late nights and being hunched over the computer configuring routers and switches for 36+ hours at a time with little sleep and breaks is also something that my neck isn’t too happy about.  I run on adrenaline and excitement through it all (with high doses of caffine and pain medication) and can still manage but its really not the same.  What sucks is I am 35, and I am becoming one of those people I didn’t care for when I was 25 in this field.

I couldn’t stand those old mainframe farts who couldn’t do the 48 hour, no sleep, bust your butt projects always complaining of needing a break or spending time with family or back aches and blah blah.   Karma is a PITA!   I am now becoming one of these people.  I still manage to do what I need to do but it damn near kills me in the end.  Thinking and worrying about my family the whole time, fighting back the pain and sleepiness.  Sucks getting old.

Work is umm.. well that needs a whole other book to be honest.  Lots of change, and at first glance it doesn’t look like the good kind of change.  But one has to give it time before making rash decisions or judgements.  Hard not to but it’s the only thing I can do now to try and maintain my sanity.  It has led me to make some new observations about life and people and corporate america that I believe I am going to document and share in my next post.

Peace

Typically when deploying VoIP in the enterprise your going to be dealing with G.711 and/or G.729 codecs.  Both of these codecs sample at 10ms intervals.  The default is to usually send packets every 20ms, however in some situations one might see this set to every 30ms.

If your doing packets every 20ms this creates about 50 packets per second.  If your set to 30ms you will be creating 33.3 packets per second.

Lets focus on G.711 for a second.  G.711 has a sample size of 80 bytes.  So if we are set to use the default voice payload freq. of 20ms and we know that samples are taken every 10ms then our G.711 voice payload will be two samples of 80bytes = 160bytes of voice in every packet.

Thats only part of the equation though, you can’t forget about headers!

You will need to know what headers your going to be dealing with such as Layer 2, Layer 3 or both combined? And possibly WAN headers also.

In a typical ethernet packet your looking at about 58 bytes of header overhead.  18 bytes of ethernet (Layer 2) and 40 bytes of IP, UDP and RTP (Layer 3).  So with your 160 bytes of voice and 58 bytes of header overhead your dealing with 218 byte packets.

In this example we are using the default 20ms voice payload freq. which we said corresponds to about 50 packets per second right?  So we take our total packet size of 218bytes x 8bits x 50 packets per seconds = 87.2 Kb/s for every voice call.

Don’t have time to write part 2 yet.

These are my own notes for how to continue.

Political Party

Strippers

Predictable

Irrational

Predictably Irrational

Ok so if you read this and you don’t know me personally (actually I suspect even those that do know me) may not know that I am fascinated with understanding what makes us who we are.

I think this is just another aspect of a very core component of me and who I am, which is my unquenchable thirst for knowledge.  Not just knowledge for the sake of knowledge and trying to appear smarter than I really am.  My desire is to understand things.  I love to understand everything I can about something.  It makes no difference what it is, I will want to know everything I can about it.

So why do I say all of this?  It’s not about technology this time.  Nope its about us, the human.

I am not as fascinated with the physical side of what makes us who we are as humans.  My fascination is with the behavioural side of what makes us tick.

When I was younger (teenage years and early twenties) I hated psychology.  Pretty vague statement huh? 

Let me elaborate a bit.  In high school I took a psychology class and well I hated it.  Thought it was stupid.  How could anyone believe the crap they were teaching?  How could anyone think they know what makes us tick and make the decisions we make?  And even worst than that was how could anyone tell me that I am not really my own person, that nearly every decision I make was influenced by someone or something?

Thats not exactly what they were saying in those textbooks, but its how I interpreted it.   It really upset me to hear things that implied that a lot of who I am and who I will be is very closely tied to my parents.

I mean come on, I am a teenager.  I don’t want to be associated with my parents.  I want to be independent, I want to think I am my own person.  I make the decisions that make me who I am.

Boy was I wrong!

To be continued….

Here is my current schedule for Networkers this year.  Subject to change of course.

Monday is CCIE Voice written day.  I take my test Monday afternoon around 4 or 5 I think.

I have a couple of sessions on monday but its going to depend on the test to be honest.

 

Monday: 

1:00 PM-3:00 PM   BRKSAN-2701  Fibre Channel Storage Area Network Design  

7:00 PM-9:00 PM   BRKGENPNL-1003  Panel: Ask the Expert: Unified Communications  

 

Tuesday:  

7:30 AM-9:30 AM   BRKVIR-2985  Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch  

10:00 AM-11:30 AM GENKEY-5501  Welcome Address with John Chambers  

12:00 PM-2:00 PM  BRKDCT-2951  Deploying Nexus 7000 in Data Center Networks  

4:00 PM-6:00 PM    BRKRST-3471  Cisco NXOS Software – Architecture

 

Wednesday:  

8:00 AM-10:00 AM  BRKRST-2043  Advanced WAN Design: Network Virtualization  

10:30 AM-11:30 AM GENKEY-5564  Keynote with Padmasree Warrior  

12:00 PM-2:00 PM  BRKCOM-2988  Unified Computing – A Unified Data Center Infrastructure

4:00 PM-6:00 PM   BRKVVT-2784  Maximizing Cisco IP Phone benefits  

7:30 PM-11:30 PM  Customer Appreciation Event  

 

Thursday:  

8:00 AM-10:00 AM  BRKRST-3470  Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch Architecture  

10:30 AM-11:30 AM GENKEY-5565  Closing Guest Keynote: Guy Kawasaki  

12:00 PM-2:00 PM  BRKSAN-3921  Troubleshooting the Unified Fabric (FCoE)  

2:30 PM-4:30 PM   BRKCRT-1963  CCVP:Mobility Features in Cisco UCM version 6 and 7

Cisco has refreshed / updated the CCIE voice lab.  Listed below is the new equipment and software it will cover.

 

Lab Equipment:

• Cisco MCS-7845 Media Convergence Servers
• Cisco 3825 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR)
• Cisco 2821 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR)
• ISR Modules and Interface Cards

             VWIC2-1MFT-T1/E1 
             PVDM2 
             HWIC-4ESW-POE 
             NME-CUE

• Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Switches
• IP Phones and Soft Clients

Software Versions

Any major software release which has been generally available for six months is eligible for testing in the CCIE Voice Lab Exam. 

• Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express 7.0
• Cisco Unified Contact Center Express 7.0
• Cisco Unified Presence 7.0
• Cisco Unity Connection 7.0
• All routers use IOS version 12.4T Train.
• Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Switches uses 12.2 Main Train

Network Interfaces

• Fast Ethernet
• Frame Relay

Telephony Interfaces

• T1
• E1

 

Source:  Cisco Learning Network

Some of the major changes are:

1) Remove analog devices (such as VG248, ATA)
2) Remove CatOS (Catalyst 65xx)
3) Replace CCM with CUCM 7 (Linux Appliance)
4) Replace Unity with Unity Connection 7 (Linux Appliance)
5) Add CUPS 7 (Linux Appliance)
6) Add SIP phones

Basic topology:

 

Source:  http://htluo.blogspot.com