2015-March Shinnyo Podcast – Understandi

2015-March Shinnyo Podcast – Understanding Impact – 2015-March Shinnyo Podcast – Understanding Impact Responding to Icky Moments 1 -> 10 -> 10 million Every Seed is Important Try Not to Watch Your Pot When Boiling Water A Snowflake Starts an Avalanche Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard There are many inconsistent and confusing examples of contradictory spiritual behavior … Continue reading 2015-March Shinnyo Podcast – Understanding Impact → http://ow.ly/2VjYzP

2015-March Shinnyo Podcast – Understanding Impact

2015-March Shinnyo Podcast – Understanding Impact

• Responding to Icky Moments
• 1 -> 10 -> 10 million
• Every Seed is Important
• Try Not to Watch Your Pot When Boiling Water
• A Snowflake Starts an Avalanche

Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard

Found on YouTube

There are many inconsistent and confusing examples of contradictory spiritual behavior in the world. We seem to have buddhist monks behaving aggressively in Myanmar, people beheading people in the name of a belief system, children with explosives strapped to themselves being sent as human bomb carriers, and in Japan, toxins were unleashed on the public in a subway all in the name of a religion or belief system. 1,000 years ago, we had the Crusades marching across a continent in the name of spiritual liberation. Last month we talked about alignment between actions and our principles. But what exactly happens when misalignment occurs?

When we witness behavior that is contrary to our beliefs, humans generate a typical “fight or flight” emotional response. This is part of our built-in survival mechanism to avoid things that make us shudder, go “Eeek!” or “Blechh!” and generally keep us sane because we reinforce our own belief system. If you were in a constant state of questioning your own beliefs, you might find yourself overwhelmed by a sense of confusion or disarray in a very short time. But these are all short-term and immediate responses to aversive behavior. What I find more interesting is the relationship between these exposures to repellant behavior and what we call Karma or the concept of how positive and negative actions have impact over time.

Let’s say someone is harmed or killed in the name of a particular belief, that is the victim is perceived as being an enemy of the beliefs, or otherwise would cause some kind of harm to it. And the person who causes the harm or death is not directly impacted or addressed by their actions, meaning a witness or onlooker doesn’t see an individual person as the cause of the negative action –  we don’t perceive someone specific to blame for the incident. To keep this example simple, 10 random people witness this act. What happens in these 10 different impressions of the action of one person? What happens when this same act is magnified by media coverage to expose this same act to 10 million random people? What if it were just you, who saw what happened?  What would you do? What would you say to others? What if you did absolutely nothing?

The parents, family, friends, and even enemies of the person who performed the act above have impressions, too. And each of those people create a downstream effect of how that act will be perceived by generation upon generation of others. Was it good or bad? Was it righteous or tyrannical? Was it selfish, or generous? Each of these individuals contributes to future actions of whether this one act will be repeated in the future, and to what extent it will occur (positive perception generally leads to magnification of the effort).

In the nature of cause and effect, each of the above actions or inactions results in something else. The seed that doesn’t get planted, doesn’t result in a plant, which doesn’t have roots that hold soil, which results in:

• the dirt can more easily be washed away in the rain,
• one fewer plant to grow and filter the air,
• one fewer parent plant to produce seeds,
• less shade on the ground leading to hotter soil temperatures,
• one fewer plant to act as a home to a few insects,
• and so on.

Yet, all it takes is one positive act to have the same and opposite effect. Whether you “Do unto others..,” “Pay it Forward,” watch for “Butterfly Effects” or plant a seed, things start to happen when you do something. The odd and sometimes frustrating thing is that in all of these actions, there is no guarantee of instant gratification of seeing the results of your action. It may happen centuries in the future. This is why detachment from attachments is emphasized in philosophy; try to not have the expectation of a result every time you cause something to happen. By becoming an agent of change, you automatically subscribe to the results – you really don’t need to sit around and wait for the “Lessons Learned” meeting to happen.

Photo courtesy of Earth Science Picture of the Day @esra.edu

The concept of inertial change isn’t new. Over 40 years ago, John Naisbitt wrote about Megatrends and studied how they occur and what we can learn from them. 40,000 years ago, someone scratched into the wall of a cave that a big four-legged animal might be a thing to eat and feed a village, or you could plant something and get a similar result. Ultimately, how do you react to things and how do you affect your downstream relationships (all 10 generations worth)?

/* For more information and discussion feel free to e-mail me at jlui at jlui dot net, or twitter @jhlui1; With Gassho _()_, James*/

Using Demo Data for Oracle Data Mining Tools

With the forthcoming (but already available) SQLDeveloper 4.1 edition, an improved version of the Oracle Data Miner tools is incorporated into the SQLDeveloper console.  However, I found that there were a number of steps needed to actually use this new data modeling product other than just responding ‘Yes’ to the “Do you wish to enable the Data Miner Repository on this database?” prompt.

Here’s what I ended up doing to get things up and running (so that I could play with data modeling and visualization using Excel and the new SQLDeveloper DM extensions.)

#In this case, I’m adding back the demonstration data (i.e. EMP, DEPTNO type tables; the SH, OE, HR, et.al. schemas) into an existing R12 e-Business Suite (12.1.3) instance.

# Installing the Oracle Demo data in an R12 instance.

# Use the runInstaller from the R12 $ORACLE_HOME
cd $ORACLE_HOME/oui/bin
export DISPLAY=<workstation IP>:0.0
./runInstaller

# Choose the source products.xml from the staging area – Download and stage the DB Examples CD from OTN
/mnt/nfs/database/11203/examples/stage/products.xml

# Complete the OUI installation through [Finish]

cd $ORACLE_HOME/demo/schema
mkdir -p $ORACLE_HOME/demo/schema/log
echo $ORACLE_HOME/demo/schema/log/     ## used to respond to the Log Directory prompt during mksample.sql

sqlplus “/ as sysdba”
— will need passwords for: SYS/SYSTEM and APPS (used for all of the demo schemas, some of which pre-exist such as, HR, OE (PM, IX, SH and BI were okay for 12.1.3).

— ## Be sure to comment out any DROP USER <HR, OE, etc.) commands in this script (or you will be restoring your EBS instance from a backup because it just dropped your Module schema tables…) ##
— They look like this:
/*
mksample.sql:– DROP USER hr CASCADE;
mksample.sql:– DROP USER oe CASCADE;
mksample.sql:DROP USER pm CASCADE;
mksample.sql:DROP USER ix CASCADE;
mksample.sql:DROP USER sh CASCADE;
mksample.sql:DROP USER bi CASCADE;
*/

–Similarly – if/when you decide you no longer need the data – do NOT just use the $ORACLE_HOME/demo/schema/drop_sch.sql script
–or you just dropped your HR/OE/BI EBS schemas; don’t do that.
/*
drop_sch.sql:PROMPT Dropping Sample Schemas
drop_sch.sql:– DROP USER hr CASCADE;
drop_sch.sql:– DROP USER oe CASCADE;
drop_sch.sql:DROP USER pm CASCADE;
drop_sch.sql:DROP USER ix CASCADE;
drop_sch.sql:DROP USER sh CASCADE;
drop_sch.sql:DROP USER bi CASCADE;

order_entry/oe_main.sql:– Dropping the user with all its objects
order_entry/oe_main.sql:– DROP USER oe CASCADE;
order_entry/oe_main.sql:– ALTER USER oe DEFAULT TABLESPACE &tbs QUOTA UNLIMITED ON &tbs;

*/
— in this instance the $APPS_PW is synchronized to all application module schemas (i.e. AR, HR, GL, etc.)
— log directory would be the actual path from echo $ORACLE_HOME/demo/schema/log/ (including the trailing slash)
SQL> @mksample.sql

# to additionally create the Data Mining user (DM in this case)

create user &&dmuser identified by &&dmuserpwd
default tablespace &&usertblspc
temporary tablespace &&temptblspc
quota unlimited on &&usertblspc;

GRANT CREATE JOB TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE MINING MODEL TO &&dmuser;       — required for creating models
GRANT CREATE PROCEDURE TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE SEQUENCE TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE SESSION TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE SYNONYM TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE TABLE TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE TYPE TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE VIEW TO &&dmuser;
GRANT EXECUTE ON ctxsys.ctx_ddl TO &&dmuser;
GRANT CREATE ANY DIRECTORY TO &&dmuser;
— Grant the SH Demo table and package objects to the DM user
@?/rdbms/demo/dmshgrants.sql &&dmuser

connect &&dmuser/&&dmuserpwd
— Create the Data Mining Views against the  SH Demo table and package objects
@?/rdbms/demo/dmsh.sql

@?/rdbms/demo/dmabdemo.sql — Builds the Adaptive Baynes Model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmaidemo.sql — Builds the Attribute Importance demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmardemo.sql — Builds the Association Rules demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmdtdemo.sql — Builds the Decision Tree demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmdtxvlddemo.sql — Builds the Cross Validation demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmglcdem.sql — Builds the Generalized Linear model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmglrdem.sql — Builds the General Linear Regression model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmhpdemo.sql — not a Data Mining program – Hierarchical Profiler
@?/rdbms/demo/dmkmdemo.sql — Builds the K-Means Clustering model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmnbdemo.sql — Builds the Naive Baynes Model data
@?/rdbms/demo/dmnmdemo.sql — Builds the Non-negative Matrix Factorization model
@?/rdbms/demo/dmocdemo.sql — Builds the O-Cluster model Demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmsvcdem.sql — Builds the Support Vector Machine model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmsvodem.sql — Builds the One-Class Support Vector Machine model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmsvrdem.sql — Builds the Support Vector Regression model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmtxtfe.sql — Builds the Oracle Text Term Feature Extractor demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmtxtnmf.sql — Builds the Text Mining Non-Negative Matrix Factorization model demo
@?/rdbms/demo/dmtxtsvm.sql — Builds the Text Mining Support Vector Machine model demo

## End of Data Mining Demo user (DM) setup and configuration for use of Oracle Demo Data

2015-February Shinnyo Podcast – Taking A

2015-February Shinnyo Podcast – Taking Action – 2015-February Shinnyo Podcast – Taking Action         How Actions Lead to Perception         Consistent Form -> Consistent Results         The Rules of Engagement Require Actual Engagement         You Are What You Do         Taking the Next Step Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard From an address by Her Holiness, Keishu Shinso at the commencement of this … Continue reading 2015-February Shinnyo Podca… http://ow.ly/2UokCB

2015-February Shinnyo Podcast – Taking Action

2015-February Shinnyo Podcast – Taking Action

•         How Actions Lead to Perception
•         Consistent Form -> Consistent Results
•         The Rules of Engagement Require Actual Engagement
•         You Are What You Do
•         Taking the Next Step

Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard

From an address by Her Holiness, Keishu Shinso at the commencement of this year’s Annual Training period on January 25, 2015:

“Shinnyo refers to the qualities that we find exemplified in the lives of the Shinnyo Parents and the Two Dojis, most prominently in the way they demonstrated what it means to embody a spirit that is selfless, unbowed, and full of harmony. Shinnyo Ichinyo (oneness with truth) is about the effort that we make to express these qualities of shinnyo in our daily life, and by so doing, we are always connected with our spiritual masters”

Spirituality is often interpreted as being an internalized concept in that while various groups of people will have a common belief system, it is the beliefs and practices of the individual that comprise how the philosophy impacts the rest of the world.  We see that demonstrated in our contemporary life by the acts of a few individuals affecting the impressions that others form about a whole religion, or even simply the label of alliance with a philosophy. Whether or not the actions by those individuals are conscribed or taught by the actual philosophy are not part of the perception.

This is often illustrated in many idioms and proverbs:

•         Do as I say, not as I do.
•         Actions speak louder than words.
•         It’s the thought that counts (implying, not the action, or lack thereof).

Effectively, these are saying, “Take my advice, even though I am acting contrary to it.” (Sometimes used as an apology for behaving hypocritically.) – McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

What most philosophical schools teach is that individual actions should always strive to be in alignment with the principles of conduct, or the laws of commonly decent behavior. In Buddhism, these are illustrated as the Dharma, which comes in many different expressions:

Four Noble Truths

•         There is suffering
•         A source of suffering.
•         The cessation of suffering
•         Attainment of Nirvana

Five Cardinal Sins

•         Killing one’s father,
•         …mother,
•         …a saint,
•         Injuring a Buddha,
•         Disturbing the Sangha

8-fold Noble Path

•         Right views
•         …thoughts,
•         …speech,
•         …acts,
•         …livelihood,
•         …efforts,
•         …mindfulness,
•         …meditation

And others.

Nonetheless, memorizing the guidelines becomes pointless if actions taken aren’t in alignment with what performance is expected. We know children pick up on this concept rather quickly at a young age. If parents always say to do something, but either don’t do it themselves, or don’t make efforts to correct or demonstrate desired behavior, kids figure out, “they say it, but they don’t really mean it.” And likewise, so do our pet dogs and cats, and even our co-workers.  We learn from the actions we observe, and much less so, the words we read or hear.

Similarly, we also learn more from our own actions (and mistakes) much more than from what we write, or say. Repeated actions reinforce memory. Learning how to golf takes practice, and that doesn’t mean watching videos or reading books about it. The “muscle memory” comes from repeated guidance in the correct form (or conversely, incorrect form repeated over and over leads to really lousy golf scores.)

Returning to our sales-related analogy, once you have assessed the needs of the customer and figured out a solution that would address them, you have to actually finish the transaction (“seal the deal”, follow-through, make it happen.)  In a nutshell, if you don’t take action to write the sale up, you go home with less pay, thus there’s a direct positively correlated relationship between taking action and personal gain.

In life, the relationship is not so clear to those who don’t take action. But as in physics, not taking action is in and of itself another action. And there are consequences for inaction, too. And every action should emanate from a compassionate source or it tends to have an opposite effect.

In Shinnyo Buddhism this belief in action has been distilled into three basic practices:

•         Connecting to others (jpn. otasuke)
•         Making voluntary effort (jpn. gohoshi)
•         Contributing time or value (jpn. kangi)

Just as the symbolism of cleaning things and places is also referred to as “polishing our hearts”, it is the actions that when repeated and reinforced through positive guidance that lead to actual transition, and transformation.

Java 7 (1.7.0_) and Java 6 on the Same Workstation for R12 e-Business Suite EBS and other Apps

The challenge: We have a number of 3rd party Cloud applications that are still on Java 6, so we have that version (1.6.0_26 specifically) deployed to our workstations. We configured R12 to use 1.6.0_26 on the server side to minimize impact to the users. We are now implementing Informatica Information Lifecycle Management (an archive and purge technology), which has a component (the Enterprise Data Manager – EDM) which is a Java 7-based application used by certain administrative and analyst users. We needed to have those users support both Java 7 and Java 6 on the same workstation for the browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome).

Starting with a Windows 7 (32-bit) workstation with a working Java 1.6.0_26 installed (and 1.6.0_7 disabled).

Used the Java SE 7 SDK from the Oracle Java Archive (staged to the DBA Share /Software/Java because the 7 downloadables will be pulled from the site as of April-2015):

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/archive-139210.html

Chose: Java SE Development Kit 7u25 (includes the JRE runtime edition) – newer versions (post- and including update 40) contain an non-bypassable Security Warning message for using Java 6 applications.

Installed Java 7 using default parameters and completed successfully.

Open the Java Control Panel (available in the Toolbar, as the Java coffee cup icon, if a Java application is already running – e.g. EBS; or via Control Panel -> Java)

Preferred Enabled settings under the [Java] tab -> View…

De-select the Java Plug-in (next-generation) features (due to co-existence with Java 6) – we also turn off Automatic Java Updates, and default the automatic JNLP MIME/execution association setting to make it easier for users:

Launch Informatica EDM:

Java Update Needed – Check (Do not ask again) -> Select -> Later

Choose default launcher for EDM’s JNLP (also can be defaulted in the Java Control Panel -> Advanced settings)

EDM Launches:

Launching R12 e-Business Suite under Java 6:

Launch Forms Session (Profile -> System used as an example)

Security Warning – due to Java having incomplete Certificate Authority trust to the Aramark Hosts (can be addressed also via Control Panel -> Java -> [Security] -> Manage Certificates -> Import Certificate -> add certificates provided by AUS Server Team (password required).

The Java 7 update 25 warning looks like this (click the Activate Java link; then on the next pop-up click Allow and Remember – to suppress future warning messages):

The post-Java 7 update 40 warning looks like this (select – I accept the risk; click [Run]):

Ref: http://java.com/en/download/faq/signed_code.xml

Why don’t I see the option to select Do not show this again for this app in the security dialog for an unsigned application?

Starting with Java 7 Update 40, the option to select Do not show this again for this app is no longer available. Unlike previous versions a user cannot suppress the security dialog for an unsigned application and will have to select the option, I accept the risk and want to run this app, each time to run the unsigned application.

Security Warning – these will come up twice in a row – once when the R12 forms servlet is instantiating and a second time when the actual Forms launch. Once Allow this application to run with the requested version (1.6.0_26) is selected, these warnings should be suppressed in future sessions.

R12 and EDM simultaneously launched successfully.

2015-January Shinnyo Podcast – Awareness

2015-January Shinnyo Podcast – Awareness of Needs – 2015-January Shinnyo Podcast – Awareness of Needs Defining Selflessness Qualifying our Conversations Know Yourself as You Get to Know Others The Difficult Task of Acting as Themselves Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard From the Shinnyo 2015 Annual Guidance notes: This year’s items of practice: Contributing to the world through selfless … Continue reading 2015-January Shinnyo Podcast – Awareness … http://ow.ly/2SRP2S

2015-January Shinnyo Podcast – Awareness of Needs

2015-January Shinnyo Podcast – Awareness of Needs

• Defining Selflessness
• Qualifying our Conversations
• Know Yourself as You Get to Know Others
• The Difficult Task of Acting as Themselves

Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard

calligraphy by Shinso Ito

From the Shinnyo 2015 Annual Guidance notes:

This year’s items of practice:

1. Contributing to the world through selfless acts
2. Nurturing good roots through practice

Guidelines are simple, until you read them. Let’s take a look at “selfless acts”  By definition those would be acts for anyone (or anything) other than yourself.  But if you thought someone needed something, isn’t that a selfless act? When you look in a mirror are you able to see yourself as others see you? This is why doctors and scientists invest so much of their education learning diagnostic and forensic routines, because really what you see and perceive is being filtered through a mind that was produced as the sum total of your entire life’s experiences (good and bad), and that results in an alteration of the perception.

The observation that “we are our own worst critics” is another way to see the same dilemma. We can’t judge ourselves very accurately nor constructively, so how good can we be at judging others? How can we possibly guess what the other person’s need is if we can’t trust our own perception of that need? We listen to the other person. By listening carefully and with clarification of what we are hearing, we can come much closer to an accurate, if less self-satisfying answer.

[reit: the model of the sales cycle is used herein because the accuracy of the communication cycle directly and measurably relates to the satisfaction level of both parties involved, whether material, financial or even emotional satisfaction with the process – in other words, it’s simpler to study and understand]

Continuing the discussion of the principles of selling, in order to “qualify the customer,” we intend to determine several things; () will indicate the sales-related concepts:

• Identify the person’s needs (what do they want to achieve)
• Determine if anything we have to offer would fulfill any of those needs (what do we sell that meets that want)
• Establish ability for the person to adopt fulfillment of the need (are they willing to buy it)
• Find out if the person is willing to pursue the change needed complete the transaction.(write up the sale)

Note that not one of these asks, “Can the person afford what we are selling?” “Does the person have actual skill or talent needed to use what they are buying?”  That’s the big difference between basic selling and the basis for this podcast – setting a good example for others through living. Selling is about addressing immediate needs, often because in a competitive market, you can never be sure how loyal a customer can be for each and every sale. We might feel better as a customer, if the salesperson simply said, “You know… I don’t recommend you buy this. You’ll never really be able to do with it what you want to accomplish.”  But that salesperson’s livelihood depends on the sales dollars, and not so much good (or bad) advice.

The odd thing is we often approach giving support to others in the same fashion. We take a guess at what they are trying to achieve, and immediately try to provide a solution that in our mind would solve everything. That would be akin to having a conversation with a friend such as,

“Hi, how are you doing?”

“I’m okay. Just a little depressed these days.”

“I know. Just follow these 12 steps, join this program, and start doing this training course, and you’ll be all better forever! Just follow me, and sign here.”

In our interactions with others, it always reinforces the likelihood of having a successful communication by listening first. If you feel motivated to start a conversation with a someone because you wanted to vent about how stressful life had become, or to listen to all of your recent triumphs and accomplishments, that conversation would probably be better received if you asked permission of the other person first, “I just had a horrible experience. Do you mind listening?” And be sure that response is an affirmative, “Yes, I’m ready to listen,” and not a qualified, “Yeah, sure.”
By starting with self-reflection, whether through meditation, counseling groups, journaling, or whatever works for you, the discovery of what makes you move, feel and grow (or conversely shrink, avoid and immobilize) leads to transformation of how you deal with others, and ultimately reinforcement of every relationship you share with others.

This reminds me of an interesting observation about actors and acting (which often comes up during the “Why do we want to become an actor?” portion of many introductory workshops on the subject.) Actors are often more comfortable being extremely detailed and emotionally-rich when playing anyone other than themselves. That’s not to say they don’t like themselves, or don’t like looking into mirrors. But they develop a certain skill at being able to portray a character with amplified attributes, and can emotionally invest in that character in a way which is not as simple to do with themselves.

Why does it feel safer to play a homicidal maniac (or hopelessly romantic) character than dealing with one’s own neuroses and troubles? Because actors have their own “safe word” – the director says, “Cut!” In life, we are the only ones who have the true capacity to tell ourselves, “Cut!” – meaning that’s enough, you did it, let’s move on.  Psychologically, when you know there’s an end to the pain, madness, sadness, endless joy, or any of these hyperbolic emotional states, it’s easier for you to “go there” and realize you can come back.  When you “go there” and don’t come back, we term that as psychosis, and identifying that by yourself is pretty difficult.

In buddhism, we talk about how we are the product of 10 prior generations of our ancestry. That’s how far back (or far forward) every action you or someone else takes, affects someone else, whether you know them or not (and most likely, not.) The reasoning behind the generations is because as a communal species, we reproduce generally with those whom have had a significant influence on our lives. If ten generations of lovingkindness and care-filled harmonious parentage produced you, the likelihood that you’re pretty worry-free and emotionally content is pretty high. For those of us with a less than perfect 10 generation lineage (which is about 99.999998% of people), there’s many reasons we feel the need for dependency, infidelity, lying, stealing or attraction to wealth, power, elitism and arrogance. We can point a finger at any of those 10 generations worth of individuals and declare, “Hah! That’s why I do that!”  Or, you can take action and do something about it.

For completeness, this year’s 2015 annual guideline is:

As we enhance Oyasono,
Let us further share the light of saisho—as revealed in shinnyo—
In the spirit of upholding the Dharma.

Replace a Yamaha PSR-S900 Keyboard LCD Display

Yamaha PSR-S900 Arranger Keyboard Full-view

I have one of these (Yamaha PSR-S900 Arranger Keyboard Workstation) and after 7 years, the display started going defective – half of the screen was duplicated, lines running through the middle of the display.

Yamaha PSR-S900 LCD Display Going Bad (defective)

This renders use of the keyboard relatively impossible (because there is still a composite video out that can be sent to a portable DVD/LCD player, which will still work for the purposes of reading what’s on the display – your patch selections, mixer settings, scoring, sheet music, file selections, etc.)

I hit eBay and found a few replacement display units for about $150 (shipped from China, but made in Japan), and figured it would be worth trying (after all, a new PSR-S950 still runs about $2000.)

The replacement looks like this:

Example PSR-S900 replacement LCD image from eBay

There’s a single pair red/white power lead with a small white modular plug used to connect it to the high-voltage power daughterboard. (my plug had one fewer white connections, so I used a modeling knife to trim off the extra middle connector).

Example PSR-S900 LCD Display replacement – Reverse-side

The display itself connects via a 10-wire flat ribbon connector that is press-fit into the LCD’s connector. These are the somewhat fragile, but when carefully removed, basically easily re-inserted into the same receptacle (similar to re-wiring a video game console mod.) In the photo, this receptacle is on the right-center side of the display.

Since I didn’t happen to have the service manual, we dive in with the screwdriver (all phillips-head).  Flipping the keyboard over and laying it on a mattress (to avoid scratches,) you’ll find 14 3/4 inch panel screws,  4 slightly longer 1-1/2 inch panel screws used in the center holes of the keyboard, and about 24 larger headed 1-inch panel screws connecting 2 wood panels to the speakers and bottom frame.  You get to remove ALL of these to get the bottom and top shells separated (just keep them in separate dishes/jars.)

The bottom assembly sort of resembles this view from a PSR-1500 (for general reference – the PSR-S900 is more symmetrical in design) The larger screws are connecting the bottom boards to the 2 speaker enclosures and then attaching the wood panels to the bottom plastic shell; the smaller screws go into those taller pyramid-looking tower holes in the bottom case:

PSR-1500 Lower Case Assembly Diagram

This is an interior view of where the LCD is actually mounted (underneath the front panel; this view is of the bottom of the top half of the keyboard):

PSR-S900 LCD Display – front panel mounting (viewed from below)

To access this view, you will be removing the 6 mounting screws holding the CPU board box (the large aluminum vented box sitting on top of the LCD panel area.)  There are grounding wires on 3 sides of this box that are simply attached with more of the small panel screws.  You can either remove the screws that attach the box to the mounting posts, or the screws that hold the posts to the top assembly (whichever ones you can access most easily.)  The only connections I removed to access the LCD were the ethernet cable plugging into the CPU box, and the 2 white multi-wire connections that plug into the back-panel connector board (the one that has the USB plugs, video connectors and MIDI In/Out – it’s mounted to the top (silver) case assembly):

Back panel connectors – top (silver), bottom (black)

Once the CPU box is unmounted and moved aside (untaping the wires that are taped to the box), you can usually access the first 2 (of 4) screws mounting the LCD to the front panel (these are the 2 closest to the keyboard.) You can remove just the screws attaching the LCD to the aluminum mounts (you do not need to remove the mounts themselves).  To access the other 2 (the ones towards the back panel), if you don’t have a right-angle screwdriver that can fit under the back-panel connector board (about 1-inch clearance), you can remove the 6 screws holding the connector board to the top case assembly (4 of these have bendable wire tie-downs on them; the other 2 seem to hold the mylar foil shielding tabs.)  There is also a single screw that connects the coaxial video connector to the back panel that must also be removed to move the board.

Yamaha PSR-S900 Interior View Open Case Assembly

Inside my particular model (which might have been an earlier build than the one my replacement LCD was designed to fit) the high voltage board was connected with a longer set of leads to the defective LCD.  So I unmounted it, rotated it clockwise 90 degrees to move the connector closer to the LCD, and re-mounted it using a single screw to hold it in-place again.

After un-mounting the defective LCD, I removed the existing ribbon connector and before mounting the new one, re-attached the ribbon into the new LCD (drawing a line with a marker on the ribbon helps you remember how deep it was plugged in before).  Plugged in the HV power lead and tested the power up to confirm the new display actually works (the first time, there were a bunch of alternating shadows, indicating I hadn’t seated the ribbon connector properly.)

4 screws back in to hold the LCD, 6+1 screws to re-mount the connector board, 6 more to remount the CPU box (and re-connect the ground wires, and 2 of them hold the box shut), then you can shut the case and replace all of those other screws you took out that hold the case together.

Nothing particularly technical – mostly a bunch of screws and tape.  And about an hour and an eBay purchase later, the keyboard is back up and running fine.

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introduc

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening – 2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening Why Do We Listen? Flat-lining Conversations Listening As-if Your Life Depended On It Increasing the Value of Your Time Spent Listening Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard In order to communicate effectively, we just need to listen. As much as we may like to … Continue reading 2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Li… http://ow.ly/2SpCHR

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening

2014-December Shinnyo Podcast – Introductions and Listening

• Why Do We Listen?
• Flat-lining Conversations
• Listening As-if Your Life Depended On It
• Increasing the Value of Your Time Spent Listening

Subscribe to this Podcast (RSS) or iTunes or via Flipboard

Hearing versus Listening

In order to communicate effectively, we just need to listen. As much as we may like to hear ourselves talk, it is the first reflections by our listening partner, whether a single person or an audience of thousands, that determine whether what we are saying is getting through, or politely being heard, but not necessarily understood. Listeners also need to want to listen. The motive that drives active listening could be psychological, emotional, technical, educational, financial, or even spiritual and metaphysical in nature. But divining the purpose behind the listening is later on during the conversation.  For now, we need to start somewhere, and that place is the beginning of any communication – the introduction.

Sometimes it is as simple as saying, “Hello.” But often that is met in return by an automatically polite response of another, “Hello.” Or, “Hi.” Notice how that sort of puts the conversation right back to where it started? The communication became a statement without an action, like saying, “I’m here.” And, “I am too.” Gets nowhere pretty quickly.

The same situation happens with the opening, “Hi, how are you doing?” if the respondent replies, “Fine.” If you left the conversation there, it’s already dead. Taking that one step further, let’s say the respondent is engaged in the conversation and replies, “Fine. And how are you?” If you replied to that with, “Fine.” Voila’, another dead conversation.

How do we fix this situation? You could read any number of books on etiquette, communication arts, or even dating and memorize a bunch of static conversation starters, but since we like getting to the point, it’s about listening – Active Listening. In order to have active listening, we have to care about the communication being sent.  We have to have a vested interest in hearing and understanding what is being said. Strangely enough – that interest or motivation does not have to just be compassion (though it’s a nice place to start.) Sometimes we listen because of fear, such as cases where, if we make a mistake in listening, it costs us something whether financial, emotional, or even physical.So when appearing in court before a judge, or a doctor talking to us about a disease or problem that’s been diagnosed, we tend to listen much more carefully than if the motivation were more cosmetic or political in nature.

We learned (at Guitar Center) that when a person comes in the door, there’s a purpose for their visit, and our job was to figure out what that person’s motivation was – and if at all practicable, meet it by selling them something, or providing a service. So, we’d start with the usual, “Hi,” but quickly follow that with something that would lead to giving us more information about the person’s motivation. That follow up was not always verbal (some people are naturally less talkative than others) so we also learned to observe behavior (Where in the room is the person looking? Are they touching particular items with interest? Does the way they are dressed give us any clues as to why they are here?)  Asking yourself, “Why are they here?” helps frame your own intent in the conversation.

For any interaction, if you start valuing the time involved, for both yourself as well as the other person, you start realizing the precious value of time and especially in service industries, when there are many people to serve, wasting time on chatty smalltalk not only wastes the time of the other people  in the conversation, but leaves everyone else waiting. They might need even more answers, or create the most frustrating situation, when someone just wants to get their transaction over with, and the service person is tied up in a lengthy talk with someone who will take hours if given the opportunity.

Your best interests are served for both of you in a conversation to become aware of what the other person needs, assess the situation with efficiency and determine an actionable path of solution. How many times have you encountered a conversation which started off with an innocent, “How are you doing?” and the other person immediately launches into a non-stop description of their problems, situation, troubles, tribulations and didn’t take a breath to ask if you actually were ready to listen to that?  Think about which words you are choosing during introductions, as there is often an implied nature to these innocuous commonly chatty ways to start a conversation, but the key to changing the value in these conversations is to start with words much closer to your intent.

We were trained to become acutely aware when someone randomly came in and wanted to basically either tap all of our knowledge by asking every conceivable question, or was there to basically “vent.”  And if the time wasn’t appropriate to entertain such a conversation (whether we didn’t have the immediate patience to listen at the time, or there were too many other people waiting for our attention), we halted everything and set up an appointment in the future where we could reserve time to go through all the details needed (and pay the proper amount of attention to the person’s needs.)

As you begin opening your awareness to how other people communicate with you, you might find yourself being surrounded by more and more people seeking your advice or counsel, or simply looking for someone to listen.  Try not to sacrifice your own valuable time and quality of presence by feeling as though you need to make up for listening quality with lengthy listening quantity.  Develop your deep and thorough listening skills – listening with intent. At some point, your ability to listen may have more impact in another person’s life than your ability to talk.

What Happens When You Call the City/County to Take Care of a Bee “Problem”

[Image courtesy of http://www.dreamstime.com

The City (as most cities) doesn’t have any resources to perform the logistics of a relocation, so when anyone calls the City (or County) for help, they will exterminate (public safety reasons).

They usually spray Cypermethrin or Fipronil because it’s cheapest. – http://store.doyourownpestcontrol.com/pest-control-products/generic-insecticides

Bees are interestingly resilient because their lifecycle is so short (only the queen lasts up to 7 years – which is why people like eating/consuming/rubbing royal jelly on themselves hoping to live longer – but it’s a integral genetic modifying hormone in the food that does that).  Most bees last 3 to 5 weeks, so what is being observed is when a productive hive is sprayed in the daytime, 80% of the colony is usually out foraging.  They return and smell the poison and try to figure out what is killing their sisters (the males are only useful once in their lifetimes and that’s to pollenate/impregnate another queen, once. Then they die.)

What happens next depends on the numbers. They will not usually attempt to reoccupy a sprayed nest, but they tend to gather nearby, similar to what happens during normal swarming (when a hive gets too crowded and they generate one more queen and the old one takes 1/2 the colony with her to make a new hive). But in the case there is no queen (because she’s been killed by the insecticide), the existing workers will still swarm, and relocate and attempt to re-raise a new queen within that 5 week timespan.  If there were one or two drones left in the mix, they can impregnate a worker (who normally could only lay infertile eggs) and begin rearing a new queen (by feeding royal jelly and propolis to the larvae).

Otherwise, that particular colony just gradually dies off because the workers need sufficient numbers to maintain sufficient heat inside a new hive to raise the larvae. (workers can gather food, produce drones/males and build wax, but they can’t lay eggs as fast as a queen to regenerate an entire colony).

What you could do, if you happen to have a suitable backyard available, or another tree, is to make up a bee box home and place it up where it would be out of the direct path of anyone nearby (we even use cardboard boxes with a small 1-inch hole punched in it when we just want to relocate a colony).  Then you try to get a few slabs of the old comb from the old colony from the inside where it was least likely to have been sprayed and take half and just lay it in the box, and the other half and kind of rub the honey and wax around the inside of the box. (This procedure is based upon there being an absence of bees around, of course. If the bees are still active and you do not have prior experience handling bees, I would always recommend you let trained people handle this part – they can help you learn how to do it properly, if you wish to learn about bee management.)

The smell attracts the remaining foragers and they will usually try to rebuild the colony inside the box. (which is how we end up adopting new feral colonies, if it’s not swarming season.)  We can use the same technique to “capture” a wild swarm (they dont’ sting when they’re swarming because there’s no new home to protect yet). By basically taking an empty frame box and making it smell good to them and placing (or dumping) the swarm directly into the box with frames for them to build comb upon.

Without the frames, they will just attach their comb to the top of the box and build a naturally-shaped hive. You can also contact http://honeylove.org/ – which is our new parent organization throughout Southern California. Go Bees!

nb: a friend said this was useful to them, and thought it would be nice to have a permanent place to post it for people to refer to in the future.