Best way to store all your digital photos.

dslr camera
Photo by Jan Bittger on

Seems like everywhere you go during the year you take a thousand pictures of whatever place you visit. It used to be that only a few people had a camera and now everyone has a camera on their phone. How do you manage all those photos? Do you delete bad ones? Do you get them printed? Do you wait until your hard drive fills up and crashes so that you lose all of your memories? I say lose your memories because you were too busy fiddling with your phone rather than actually enjoying the event you attended.

Here’s my process and I keep it pretty simple. For the DSLR  I download pictures to my Windows and remove the undesirables. I sometimes will delete pictures off the camera if I know it’s already terrible. I pick a few that I really like and adjust the image to make it pop using Adobe Lightroom. Once a year I send our “school pictures” to and get them framed. I also use my favorite photos for my screen savers on my computers. For my iPhone pictures and video I download them to the Macbook and do the same process there.

Once everything has been sorted and adjusted everything gets backed up onto an external drive on my home network. I went with Synology because it has an app that runs on my machine that will automatically backup my files to the NAS. If you are an Amazon prime user, and who isn’t these days, there is a free app that will store unlimited photos. So if you segregate your pics and video like I do, you can have that extra layer of security.


Hottest Christmas Gifts of 2018: The GrandPad

This is hands down the most condescending ad of the year and worst gift idea at the same time. Maybe they want to be isolated from technology. Your older family members prefer you come to visit them in person rather than seeing your digitized face on a screen. You can’t hug a tablet and get your oxytocin.

They don’t want to see you on a vacation they weren’t invited to. They don’t want to watch you bake cookies, they want to be in the same room with you. I know some families live far apart, but what kind of person lives far away from a family member who can’t operate an iPad.  If it’s so easy, then why does it have a support feature? Let me get this straight, you buy your family member a GrandPad that’s simple to use, but you won’t even help them if something goes wrong?

Another thing, if you are going to share big news about your upcoming pregnancy over facetime video then I hope your elder family member can handle the emotional surge and doesn’t have a medical emergency right in front of you. Maybe that support button will come in handy if it ties to LifeAlert.

Be careful when buying a new 4K Television

auditorium chairs comfortable concert
Photo by Pixabay on

It can be addictive and expensive. As Black Friday deals are tempting, you have to be careful and cautious of a few things.

First, you buy a new 4K TV, then you have no 4K content. So what do you do? You go buy a 4K Movie Player with a few movies. Then you find out that your audio receiver isn’t 4K compatible with your new player and TV.  So you have to buy a new receiver. Oops, your old HDMI cables don’t support Dolby Atmos or DTS-X. Oh yeah, when you have to pull out and re-fish all the wires into the walls because you are a neat freak that doesn’t like to see cables hanging from your mounted TV. Oh yeah, the TV is heavy, get a buddy to help lift it so you don’t herniate a disk.

Driving to rent Digital movies

What’s more convenient than downloading a digital movie? Buying a code online, driving to a box, getting a disc, and then downloading a movie and then throwing away some trash. The whole reason I go to Redbox is to get a high-quality physical media disc for a second rate movie. I cringe when I watch a movie on demand or Netflix because of buffering and pixelation of the dark backgrounds. I wonder how many movies are streamed at the theater? Would the average moviegoer notice the difference?

How to screen your calls the right way.

black rotary telephone on white surface
Photo by joenibraw on

Caller ID has made our life so much easier. It’s hard to imagine a time where we had to lift a receiver, listen to a voice, and make a decision to hang up. Today, we are just a button click away from avoiding a call. We see a contact who we know is going to take at least a half hour away from our life, and we can silently click to voicemail. However,  don’t send the call directly to voicemail. Let the phone ring to completion. If you double-click your iPhone, they will know you’ve purposefully avoided the call. If you are using the toilet you can send a custom text message as a replay saying you will call them back. No sense in interrupting your Disney eMoji Blitz game in between movements.

How do you handle unknown callers? My general rule is this. If you don’t recognize a number, send it directly to voicemail, if the call is important they will leave you a message. If they don’t, add it to the block list. Mine is currently over one hundred numbers.

How to hide your birthday on Facebook

I typically try to hide the fact that it’s my birthday. I go as far as to block people from posting on my Facebook wall. I also hide my birthdate in my settings. Mostly so I can see who really remembers. I thought I had it disabled today because I got a few messages from people who I would expect. But then the birthday well wishes started flooding in.

Facebook is really good for remembering people’s birthdays and guilt tripping you the next day that you forgot to wish someone a happy birthday. But let’s not forget the main purpose of Facebook is to go on religious and political rants so you have no friends left to wish you a happy birthday.

How to:


Find your birth date and click the lock.


Enjoy your loneliness.


Text message response time

My text message response time is quicker than ever before because of the new iOS features. But as you can see there are still ways to distract your driving friends. Just type “urgent”, really? That’s all it takes to derail your friend into the ditch? The easiest way to drive yourself into oncoming traffic is to simply turn off the feature.

But how quickly do you respond to text messages?

  • Spouse and Children = Within 30 seconds
  • Parents and siblings = Within the hour
  • Coworkers = within 2 hours (if you are dumb enough to give them your personal number)
  • Friends = Depends on if they need something, if they do, then never respond.