Property Tax Too High?

August 1st, 2009 Filed Under Blog

According to a San Jose Mercury News article by Broderick Perkins, you have until August 15 to get a free review of your home’s assessed value. Under Proposition 13, you should have received your “Notification of Assessed Value” postcard indicating your properties assessed value. The postcard will also state if you the value has been lowered.

“Lowered or not, under another tax law, Proposition 8, if you believe your assessed value is too high, you have until Aug.15 to seek a no-cost review.”

Interested? Go here: http://www.sccassessor.org/prop8 to ask for that free review.

Keep in mind that you’ll be asked to provide 3 comparable home sales showing your property’s value.

“The sales should have been completed before, but as close to Jan. 1, 2009 as possible. That ’s because the law requires the assessor to value properties on Jan.1 and you want comparables dated near that date.”

You can get recent sales values online at:

Or you can get help from your local (San Jose, California) Realtor® like myself… Thuan V. Nguyen, DRE #01347572.

Read the full article at Broderick’s website, DeadlineNews.com.

New Business Cards

July 28th, 2009 Filed Under Real Estate

My new business cards came in, they look great. However, I really should have made my picture a little bigger. Also this is the second set of cards that VistaPrint has slightly cut off centered. That’s strike #2… of course I am keeping tabs. Back to the cards, if you know me and don’t have any of my cards yet, let me know I’ll get you some ASAP.

Oh, BTW, if you live in San Jose, CA and need real estate assistance… please feel free to give me an email: thuan@nexusinvestmentsinc.com.

Ultimate Frisbee San Jose

July 23rd, 2009 Filed Under Blog

So, I have been looking for pick-up Ultimate Frisbee games back in San Jose, CA and can’t find any! If anyone out there finds this post and knows of any please leave a comment.

Vista and Toolbars

July 9th, 2009 Filed Under Sys. Admin

Since XP, I have come to depend an autohide toolbar to access programs quickly and easily. But after switching to Vista, that easily made toolbar took a little work to make. If you are looking to make a toolbar in Vista, here are the steps:

1) Make a folder (it can’t be deleted)
2) Put all your shortcuts into it
3) Drag the folder to the edge of your screen where you want the toolbar to go
4) Customize it

Hope that helps,
Thuan

Career Change

July 5th, 2009 Filed Under Blog

I am back in California and glad but the IT job market here isn’t too hot, so I am have made one of the biggest decision I have made in years. I have decided to become a full-time Real Estate agent. It’s something I have always done part-time to learn about real estate investing, but now that my better half has graduated, it’s time to get serious. Time to go beast mode. <– Inside joke.

If you know me personally, this announcement would be a big surprise and relevant. But for most of you that reach this blog, I know you don’t care. However, this does involve you… if you leave a comment and ask about anything regarding IT and/or coding… expect a delayed response. I’ll always be a geek and love me some technology, so I can never leave it. But I’ll only dedicate 20% of my time on it.

-Thuan

HTML Back-A-Page

June 21st, 2009 Filed Under Javascript

Programming to have your HTML go back a page isn’t hard. It’s simple Javascript that you can use in a link or a form’s button…

<form method="post">
<input type="button" value="Back" OnClick="history.go(-1 );return true;">
</form>

<a href="javascript:history.go(-1)">Back</a>

Hope that helps,
Thuan

HTML Tags Converter

June 13th, 2009 Filed Under Javascript

For some reason I couldn’t find a HTML Tags Converter on the web at all, so I wrote one…

It’s really simple Javascript, but a very useful tool when you need it… if you find it useful, leave a comment.
-Thuan

Removing MS SQL Full Text Search

April 30th, 2009 Filed Under SQL

This week I had to move one of my sites from web host to another. Full Text Search, though useful, turned out to be a nuance because the new host doesn’t not allow it and the old host wanted to charge me $20 to remove it.

Why didn’t I just remove it myself? Well, I assumed I didn’t have the privileges because it was grayed out in Enterprise Manager. But hope was not lost, I fired up Query Analyzer and found that I was able to manage full text search functionality without any issues. Here’s the code if someone needs it…

Step 1, Drop the table (or tables if you have multiple)

USE DB_NAME;
GO
EXEC sp_fulltext_table 'TABLE_NAME', 'drop';
GO

Step 2, Drop the Full Text Search Catalog

USE DB_NAME;
GO
EXEC sp_fulltext_catalog 'CATALOG_NAME', 'drop';
GO

In summary, working on a shared hosting environment can have its disadvantages but with a little Transact-SQL know-how it isn’t all that bad.

BTW, here’s a good reference for MS SQL Full Text Search Stored Procedures… linky.

Using BitTorrent

April 24th, 2009 Filed Under Sys. Admin

Before you read on, please note that to understand this article you must have some knowledge about peer to peer (P2P) file sharing and/or have used some sort of P2P file sharing program. In this article I will compare the steps needed to start/use/download while using these types of programs.

Why use BitTorrent? The advantage with using BitTorrent is our downloads can (and for the most part will) reach much higher speeds resulting in faster downloads.

Using torrents is like using any other P2P programs. If you have used any programs such as LimeWire, then you are 90% of the way there. How’s that?

Lets start by reviewing how we would use a program such as LimeWire:

bt_limewire

1. Start the program
2. Search for your desired files
3. Select and start downloading

Simple? Yes. Well using BitTorrent software is almost exactly the same. The only difference is the manner in which you do step 1. Here’s a breakdown of the steps for BitTorrenting:

bt_utorrent1

1a. Open your favorite web browser
1b. Go to your favorite bit torrents site
2. Search for your desired files
3. Select and start downloading

What? That’s it?! Yes, do you see the difference?

The only thing different is programs like LimeWire automatically connects to the file sharing network for you. This way all you have to do is start searching for what you need. BitTorrent software doesn’t work in that manner. Instead of starting the BitTorrent software you start up your browser then visit your favorite torrent sites. I say your favorite torrents site because there are many of them.

Once you click download this using torrent… your torrents software should start automatically for you. If you don’t know which torrent software to use, then take my advice and use uTorrent. I have used many and IMHO it is the best in regards to speed, usability, and configuring.

As with all related “downloading” off the internet. Be sure to filter through the search results for virus spreading fakes. And to be really sure, scan for viruses after downloading your desired files before opening them. This is probably the #1 reason why everyone gets those “I don’t know what happen?” to my computer viruses and spyware.

Oh, BTW, LimeWire has BitTorrent software built into it… however, I don’t suggest using it.

Also, if it isn’t so obvious… when you are on a BitTorrent website you’ll see unfamiliar terms such as “seeds and leechers”:

*Seeds, the number of people that are sharing the complete file.
*Leechers, the number of people downloading and sharing some of the file… you share what you downloaded thus far.

Hope this helps.

-Thuan

Reflection.js

April 7th, 2009 Filed Under Javascript

I have been using a fancy snippet of JavaScript ever since I ran into it a few months back. After giving it some time to prove itself, it’s time to thank Cow for making my blog, reflective.

What is it?
Reflection.js

What does it do?
Reflection.js allows you to add reflections to the images on your web pages using CSS. All you have to do is give the desired images a “reflect” CSS class. Simple as that.

I have used it numerous times, but here are a few more examples…

Whatcha think? Pretty cool right? If you want it? You can download it here… http://cow.neondragon.net/stuff/reflection/

-Thuan

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Property Tax Too High?

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