Welcome to Mac Geek Gap episode 930 for Monday, May 30th, 2022. It's folks and welcome to Mac Geek Gap, the show where we take your questions, we take your tips, we take your cool stuff, found all this stuff that you've sent in to feedback at MacGeekGap.com. And we answer your questions, we share your tips, we share your cool stuff, found with the goal being that each and every one of us learns at least five new things every single time we get together. Easy for me to say. Today we're going to be talking, we've got some quick tips to share with you. We've got a bunch of cool stuff found, some new portable screens, some places to find when apps are on sale and even free. And some other fun stuff because that's what we do. And then we've got a bunch of questions and comments about Wi-Fi and Mesh and the new discussion of the new Synology Router. And yeah, fun stuff on deck for today. Here, oh, our sponsor for today. Almost forgot to read that because I did something a little different here. But it's a company that we will never forget about. It's Otherworld Computing and their new Envoy Pro Mini. Can't wait to tell you about that, which we will do a little bit later in the show. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John of Prompt. And here, in spite of my very best efforts not to be. And Lee, New Hampshire is pilot Pete Dave. Can you come over to my house and teach me to turn my computer on please? You know, Pete, just just pack it up in the box and send it back.  Oh, man, but I made it. Yeah, I tried not to be able to log in today. But I find I finally did make it in spite of my best efforts. So I'll always fun to be here with you, Jensen. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad I'm glad we're all here. Yeah, you're that that reminded me. I did when I when we ran computer nerds down in Texas, I remember one of our nerds hearing him on the phone and I will leave his name out of it. Telling a client, like, OK, yeah, no, like, and I could hear it like the frustration mounting. I think he probably used the mute button on the phone to like, you know, do a little bit of primal screaming into the air to relieve some tension a few times. And finally, I heard him tell this woman listen, do you still have the box your computer came in? And I'm like, no, he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. And he did it. He he's like, I think you just need to pack it up in and send it back. So we had to have a conversation about what not to do with customers. But, you know, it was a teachable moment and a learning experience for us all. So yeah, this show is meant to be a learning experience. John, you want to take us to listen to Bruce with get some quick tips kicked off here? Absolutely. All right, Bruce. Uh, here we go. OK, Bruce says today, I inadvertently pressed my finger on the background of my iPhone screen. And to my surprise, all the icons started wiggling. I had always pressed and held on a particular icon before, which brings up a contextual menu, but to just get the wiggle going generally, this works. This is also known to many as jiggle mode. Yeah, I this has been driving me crazy for some reason, just in the last week.  And and this whole like long press turns into a contextual menu and doesn't necessarily get it into jiggle mode has been driving me crazy. As soon as I saw you put this quick tip in the agenda, I was like, oh, that's the secret. So you click, you tap and hold where there is not an app. I like it. Good stuff. Yeah. And the follow on to that is you can to hand this now. Once you've got it in the jiggle mode and you pick up an app, if you want to move it to the last screen, swipe with your thumb across or even touch the dots at the bottom and it'll take it to the screen you want it to. So you don't have to try and hold it on the edge of the screen and hope that it moves over to the next menu. Yeah, good screen behind it. Yeah, yeah, I always forget about that one. But yes, yeah, great stuff. That's why I love doing these because they remind us of things. Or they teach us things to let people know. Jiggle mode is when when the icons are wiggling, you can either move them or you could delete an app. Just people know what jiggle mode is. Very cool. Nice find, Bruce. Thanks for surfacing that, John. You're on a roll. You want to take us to Gary? Yeah, no, I think Gary's on a roll. He sends us a lot of good stuff. Well, he linked to an article here. I remember them talking about this at a prior keynote, but I never really tried the feature. But he links to a lifehacker article called you can now use your iPhone to identify animals, plants and landmarks. And you certainly can. In a nutshell, if you go into photos on your iDevice, you're going to see, I think you have to. Lisa was doing this in the car. They're showing me this in the car the other day. You if you go to a photo individually and start like scrolling up, it's kind of the UX kind of reminded me of all the hidden things that are underneath a song when you're playing it in the music app. Right. It's like all this extra data. And if there is something that the phone thinks is identifiable there, it will offer to do exactly that. Like so you can look up if it sees that it's a dog, it will let you look up what breed of dog it is or what breed of cat it is. And it'll do the same with plants. I think that's what it is, right? It's the animals, plants and oh, and landmarks, too. Right. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So if the phone thinks it's something interesting, I believe what happens is you will see the info icon add something saying, hey, there's more information here.  I'll tell you what's going on. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. I didn't have it find many things. Though I don't have any. Well, actually, yeah, I didn't have it. It wasn't an animal plant or landmark. Right. Right. Yeah, you're right, though.  That's that's it. It's not scroll up. Sorry. It's it's info button. And then, yeah, it'll like like it, you know, mine. Pulling up is like it. I'm sorry, didn't mean to yell. No, pulling up is like hitting the info button almost. It is. Yeah. So I have a picture of Puck our cat and it put a little paw on the cat in the picture. And then I can tap the hook up and it says, look up cat. And when I choose look up, it'll well, it lets me acknowledge that it's OK to do that. And then it it shows that it's either that Puck is either an American short hair or a British short hair. And it shows me other web images of cats that look like Puck, but none of them are as good as Puck. Yeah. Yeah, it depends on his accent. This is this is why we love having you here. Sorry, brother. I love it. I love it. All right. That's what we have for Quick Tips today, right? I think we're we're out of Quick Tips. So you can send yours into feedback at Mackie Keb.com. And then we will share them in the next episode. Feedback at Mackie Keb.com. I think he said feedback at Mackie Keb.com. Oh, OK. Yeah, he did that. And he meant it too. He did. Let's talk about some Wi-Fi stuff. It's been a while. Let's start with Ed because I think that's going to lead us into a couple of discussions here. And Ed says I need some help making some config changes to my Synology home router. He's running the RT2600 AC, which is the almost recently current router, even though it's six years old. We'll talk about the 6600 AX, which I have here. And I can share some initial experiences with it. He says I have a lot of smart sensors and switches, which I control with the Home Assistant hub that I run on a Raspberry Pi 4. This allows me to completely remove them from the cloud and control them locally. Very cool. Nah, I never quite understood. I love when there's these unintentional explanations of things. I never understood why I'd want to use Home Assistant to do something that I can already do with all of my other things. But this decloutifies some things. OK, got it. Anyway, back to his question. So thank you. He says I've set all of them up with DHCP reservations and using Safe Access, which is Synology's filtering methodology and app. So he says I put them all into a single profile and use the Internet scheduler to completely block them from the Internet 24-7. OK, so he he only wants these smart sensors to talk locally on the network, but they need to be on the network. So he has simply blocked those devices from from seeing the outside world. Smart, OK, smart. I like this. He says all is good. Now what I want to do is also block them from my entire internal network, except for one fixed IP address, which is the Home Assistant Hub. I can't seem to figure out how to limit internal traffic between devices on my land using the router. Help me, Obi-Wan, he says, you are my only hope. Well, we hopefully will all be Obi-Wan. The trick, though, is I don't think your router can do this yet. The simplest, perhaps even the best way of doing it is isolating them on what's called a VLAN. And if you have a router that understands VLAN tagging and switches, which understand VLAN tagging, you can assign a VLAN, a virtual LAN to specific devices. And then your routing hardware, your network hardware, your switches and your router will see this tag and do the things with it that you've told it to do, which can be isolating. It can be only allowing certain devices to see a tag or not allowing it on the Internet. All the things that you're describing are sort of what VLANs are built for. And many, I know that the term VLAN sounds like it might be, you know, sort of pie in the sky. Many of us have already had experiences with VLANs, even though we might not know it, via the guest networks on our routers. Guest networks often, but not always, use VLANs to segregate that traffic and keep it from connecting and seeing your other local things. You might even have seen a checkbox in your router when you're setting up your guest network that says, do you want to let guests see devices on the local network? That's configuring the VLAN to either allow or not allow the networks to cross over. That's but that's a very limited VLAN interface, right? It's going to get like three options at most. Your router, your RT-2600 AC, does not have full VLAN support yet. But Synology has their router software. It's called SRM, Synology Router Manager. And version 1.3 adds VLAN support. We can't get version 1.3 on our RT-2600 ACs yet, but we will be able to this summer. I think July, maybe August is what they're targeting. They don't want to give a firm date because things change. So it's coming, though. The support will be there. And that's probably given what Ed described as his home network. This is well within the same geek level as what Ed's doing already. And that's one of the things I like about the Synology Router is it just makes life. They take all these geeky options and wrap them inside a fairly easy to understand interface. And that's what I love about it is it can be a simple router if you want to keep it simple, but if you want to dig deep, there's a lot of stuff there and they're adding more as we've seen. The thing that they are adding more to initially is the new Synology RT-2600 AX. And this is a brand new router. We've talked about it coming, but it is here in that you can order it or maybe it's kind of a pre-order at this point in time. The AX is it's a tri-band router. It's 802.11 AX on the 5.9 gigahertz band. So it's actually using the full spectrum of 802.11 AX. What's that, John? No, go ahead. OK, and and it's it's got it's got three three radios in it, a 5 gigahertz of 2.4 and a 5.9 gigahertz radio. And it supports all the wide channels. They've got a new quad core processor in there. They say for fast connection speeds. I'll talk about that in a minute.  I have not been able to make the 2.5 gig WAN port work. It only connects to my devices at one gig. But we'll see how that evolves. The things have been things have been wonky with my experience with the RT-6600 AX so far. Yes, it has VLAN support. I honestly think that's the the core of my wonkiness and wonkiness is a technical term. But, you know, I've got a bunch of smart switches here on the network and things just haven't been great with this new router like devices coming on and offline in weird ways that I never experienced before. I literally just swapped out the 2600 AC with the 6600 AX and it's been it's been a trying week. Let's put it that way. It's so much so that this morning before recording this show, I punted and I said, fine, I'm going back to the 2600 AC. And so that's what I did. But it like speeds are weird. You know, I'm on this fiber connection here and I have a gigabit symmetrical, meaning gigabit up and down on my 2600 AX. With their traffic control enabled, so packet shaping and all of the things that require a little bit extra CPU. I get full 940 megabit per second, you know, speed tests in both directions. All good. No problems with traffic control disabled on the AX.  There's no and I can look in and see the CPU is just totally pegged and if I turn on traffic control, it's at best half that. So I think there's some optimizations that need to happen in SRM 1.3 and they're working on these. You know, I have a review unit of this. Yes, it's technically been announced and you can buy it. But I don't think you can get one shipped to you yet. And I have a feeling that's why. Which is fine. They I have no doubt they will figure this out. They've they've done, you know, great work in the past. And the testament to that is the fact that my preferred router is the RT2600 AC, which is a six year old router. Like and it still does more for me than any other router I could get that's targeted at consumers. So it and performs gangbusters. Like it just blows everything else out of the water, including at least for the moment, it's younger brother, younger, more powerful brother. But I think that'll change. I think it's just SRM 1.3 that they need to to do some tweaks on. And the only thing that was even close, I think, was some of the. Prosumer grade routers that you then had to flash with DDWRT. That's exactly right, Pete. Yep, I used to I lived in DDWRT on the sort of higher end consumer routers to turn them into what Synology did with SRM. Yeah, that's right. You're right. I totally forgot about that. I was running DDWRT right up until Synology came out with SRM. And it was like, awesome, I can actually run factory installed firmware on a router. This is amazing. And it's been that way for six years. But but you're right. Yeah, for the first 10 years of this show, I was running, you know, third party, wonky firmware that works great. But they still sold 1900. I haven't looked in a while. I have one sitting in a box. It was kind of a backup, I suppose. I was running it in Florida and I don't know if I had a lightning strike or what. They actually wound up swapping it for me. And yeah, and I had a consumer router down there now. Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, you know, I I like the the interface for the and there haven't been many changes to the interface of SRM. If you're used to either SRM on the on the 1900 or the 2200 or the 2600, then it will feel very much at home for you on the 6600. And if you've never used a Synology router, but you've used Synology distation, it will also feel at home for you because it's that same web interface paradigm. It works very well. They've they've massively enhanced the feature set of the app for your iPhone. So you can control a whole lot more. You can control the VPN server now and it really it like it's great. And the VLANs are really well done. They're spaced out in the network center in a way that makes good sense. But but it's just like performance wise. It's just been a little scene. It needs some tuning, I believe, or I have a bad piece of hardware. We haven't ruled that out yet, and that's entirely possible. Like that happens. These are consumer electronics, you know, they're mass produced. And so it's possible. I just have, you know, I was the lucky one. But don't let this turn you off. I think it's going to be fine. I have all the faith in the world that they will get this there. But at the moment, it's work in progress. The the other thing that becomes a work in progress for the Synology sixty six hundred is meshing with the older Synology units. You could use, say, twenty six hundred as your main router and then also a twenty six hundred or their mesh point, the M.R. twenty two hundred AC as mesh points. And they would, you know, it would create a Wi-Fi mesh like we're accustomed to. In order for that to work, all of the devices need to be on the same version of SRM. And right now, the only device that runs SRM one point three is the sixty six hundred. So if you get a sixty six hundred, the only things that can mesh with it are other sixty six hundred. However, as I noted when we were answering Ed's question, the other devices, the twenty two hundred and the twenty six hundred will be getting SRM one point three later this summer. And when they do, they will then be able to participate in the meshing with with the sixty six. So you could take your old twenty six hundred. I think you might even be able to take your old nineteen hundred feet. But I don't have the specs for the proposed devices for SRM one three in front of me. Maybe somebody in the chat room at live.mackykev.com can can tell us before the show ends. But but yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. It's getting there. It's getting there. I'm excited. I'm I'm really glad that Synology is taking part in the continuing to take part in in the router side of their business. You know, there was some question with the twenty six hundred having, you know, sort of sat there as their flagship router for, you know, more than five years, there was some question as to we think we think there's a maybe this is the end of the line. And it turns out, no, they just didn't need to update it. And they waited until they could do the full 802.11 AX on the five point nine gigahertz band, like they didn't want to jump the gun and just get in, you know, with just the five gigahertz stuff they wanted to wait until they could do the whole thing, which is which makes sense. I like it. So any questions on that while we're still here on this? It's kind of like they have the philosophy if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or wait, our philosophy is it's very similar to that here. It's a if it ain't broke, that's what it is. That's right. I got a question. Yeah, man. Why would you want to isolate your IoT devices from your network? That is a good question. And I don't know if you're asking that because you have an answer or if you are. No, I'm just asking questions here. Yeah, OK. I make no additional effort to isolate my smart devices because as far as I can tell, it's not something I'm really worried about. I don't either. But I'm in a relatively isolated area. I would imagine in an apartment setting or condo setting or someone with a lot more people close by provides a vector into your network that well, no, I mean snow. No, no, no, I mean, I get what you're you're saying. But the only way people are going to get into your network is if they have control of a device that knows your Wi-Fi credentials, right? So yes, your smart home devices would know your Wi-Fi credentials, but they're not going to share them with your neighbor, right? The the bigger issue and it and I don't I have yet to find reason to subscribe to this philosophy myself. But I know there's a lot of listeners out there that already do and people, of course, beyond the listening audience of the show who do who are, you know, concerned about the robustness of the security or lack thereof in their IoT devices and therefore want to segregate them off so that they don't have the ability. If if one of their IoT devices gets hacked and the way that it would get hacked is not generally not from your neighbor, but from someone online that knows how to root into, you know, your webcam. There was there was a your IP camera. Webcam is probably the wrong term to use. There was a there was a long, I don't know, if we rewind through four years, there was a rash of attacks on IP IoT devices and web. The web IP cameras. Yeah. Yeah, we're the we're the sort of the most popular vector for that because they're all running embedded Linux. And if the security updates don't happen the way they should, then any, you know, root options that could get into that could let someone into these things will just stay open. And so it's up to the manufacturer to to do their job and keep their devices secure so that someone on the internet can't use it as a as a tunnel into your network. So that's the reason that people would want to segregate off their their devices. And I know a lot of folks who put them on their guest network, right? But the problem with that is if you want local access to them, you can't have it, right? They only the only thing they get to do is talk to the internet, but it does isolate them from talking with your devices. So so this the idea of putting it on a VLAN allows you to have, you know, that granular control of, OK, well, I want these devices here, but I also want that one to be able to see it. So let's do it that way. So yeah. But I I I more work than it's worth, probably. I think so. I don't know.  I have a feeling I should be, you know, taking a minute and knocking on wood as I as I say these things. But yeah, John, I'm like you. I just put everything on one network. And the only time that's bit me in the butt was when I added more devices than I had carved out DHCP reservations, right? I had a hundred DHCP pool and I think I talked about this, you know, it was sometime mid early or early or on in the pandemic. I don't want to say mid pandemic because I don't know where we are in things. But anyway, you know, I hadn't had the band here at the house for a long time and they came over and none of them could get there or only one of them could get their iPads to connect to the Internet. And it was like, oh, I need to expand my pool. And I didn't. Everything was fixed. It was fine. But that's the only issue I've had with with putting my IoT devices on my home network. But I do run things that would tell me if a device was doing something completely out of the ordinary. My thing box does some rudimentary things. My Synology router does some other that has safe access and threat protection. And so there are some things paying attention. Maybe that's the right way to look at it. So hopefully if something was running amuck, I would notice it. And who knows? Maybe the issues that I'm having with the RT 6600 AX have nothing to do with the router and are some device on my home network that's, you know, running amuck that I don't know about. And it is sensitive to. Like, I don't know anything's possible. Could you run your 2600 configuration file into the new into the 6600? No, it won't import. I tried, Pete, so I manually put everything in. But no, when I tried to import my settings file, it said you can only import a settings file that was created with SRM 1.3. And of course, I don't have 1.3. I have 1.2 on my older router. So, yeah, I tried. But I I was able to pull them both up side by side in, you know, in different web interfaces and just manually, you know, here's all my DHCP reservations. Here's all this. Here's all that, you know, tedious, but also gave me an opportunity to be attentive to my settings. Review. Yeah. Yeah, review. Yeah, exactly. There's some DHCP reservations I didn't need to keep anymore. So, you know, it's like filtering things out all that. So. Yeah, it's interesting. But yeah, I'm like you, John. I've never I've never found the need. I hope that it doesn't happen to me retroactively. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Now, that's my spin. It's like, do I really care if someone can see the temperature of my thermostat or look in my backyard? So I don't have any cameras that are in the house. So. Yeah. And in the car, that's not. I just want to make I want to make it clear for the listening audience that that is generally not the concern. It's not that people could get your your your not that people could access the intended data from your device. I mean, for some people, it might be like with an indoor camera, like I can totally see where you would be. Like that might be the worst thing that could happen is someone getting access to that. But no, the issue is that these devices are little Linux computers with, you know, potential security Swiss cheese happening. So if someone could log into them and get a terminal on it, now they have unfettered access to your local network to talk to, say, your webcam that isn't even accessing the Internet, right? And or they could, you know, get into your router potentially and make some changes or mess with things. So that's the concern is that someone could just like it'd be like having, you know, shell access terminal access on your Mac. Like someone's playing varsity ball, obviously, to do that to your stuff, too. Correct. Just there's the comment from Brad, which seems actually pretty simple way of doing it. Change the password default default passwords on your IoT devices and routers, especially a router. Yes. Yes. Yes. Change. It's good advice. Thank you, Brad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good advice. And then he also said something about using different subnets for each category of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You need a router that will support that. But but yes, that's right. And that's what you would do with your if you were going to VLAN these things. The best way to do it would be with different subnets so that you can kind of keep track of things and route them the way you want. Yeah. All right. While we're on the subject of mesh, listener Steve asks a question. He says, it looks like it's time to replace my netgear Orbi and move on to something else. And I thought I would seek out your thoughts, ASAP, on what I should use as a mesh for my home. He says, you know, I've got a couple of Mac minis, a couple of iPads, a couple of Apple TVs, and a couple of iPhones, a disk station, some other smart Wi-Fi enabled devices. He's got about 50 devices all told. And he just wants to make sure he's got good coverage. You know, my my feelings on this have not changed much in the last few years back to when I was obsessing over it monthly and looking into mesh stuff. I'm still looking into mesh stuff pretty regularly. We just don't talk about it because the landscape has has solidified. My favorite two mesh platforms are Plume and Eero. And the reason for that is that they, in their own ways and differently from one another, do smart things with meshing. And what I mean by that is when you're connecting, when your iPhone connects to a network and there are three access points with the same SSID, right?  There, because you have a mesh network and there's three points. Your iPhone is the final. Your iPhone makes the decision as to which one of those three it would connect to. Now, it looks at signal strength and generally will just decide based on that because it doesn't have a whole lot of information from the network. A smart but the problem is a mesh network knows a whole lot more than your iPhone does. A mesh network can know, OK, well, yeah, I've got three access points, but one of them is super overloaded. And this other one that's not terribly far away from from his iPhone would be much better to connect to. And so a smart mesh is able to do some things to either provide hints to the iPhone to encourage it to choose the right network. Or some of them even go so far as to do Mac address blocking and say, OK, I want that iPhone on access point two instead of access point three. So I'm going to block it from access point three and force it to choose a new path and then it will choose to. And so all of these things are what I call making a mesh smarter. And Plume, I think Plume still does it the best out of all of them. And Eero is not too far behind. They are both cloud managed, which is part of what makes this intelligence happen. They have databases of device types so they know, OK, this is the right way to provide hints to an iPhone for, you know, the right kind of roaming. This is the right way to provide hints to a Samsung phone for roaming. And those things have been different over the years. I don't know if they're still different, but every device has its own little nuances. And so the cloud management of Plume and Eero really does contribute to what makes them my preference, and that's that intelligence of the mesh. You will pay more for Plume and Eero, although Plume, I see that you I think you can't even get their super pods right now. Somebody pointed out to me. So it's possible they've got something new coming. And I don't say that to be coy. I don't know anything. But, you know, usually when things go off the market, there's there's a reason for that. And I think we'll probably see something, some evolution from them. At least that's that's my hope for the reasoning there. But the the Eero stuff and, you know, I would get the Wi-Fi six stuff or you can get the latest and greatest with the in the AX and all that. But but that would be my my recommendation. If the pricing or availability there is not suitable for you, the TP-Link Deco line is absolutely my favorite. You know, it's my third choice and it's my favorite, you know, not super expensive choice. I don't want to call it the budget choice because that might it is the right word to use, but it might send the wrong message. It like it's a fantastic router. It has some of the smarts, not all of them, but it does a great job and TP-Links really committed to it. So at least they seem to be. So that those would be my three options. The Plume Superpods and the Eero both sort of holding a tie for for first place and then the and then the the TP-Link Deco for, you know, for second place, if you will. So that's my thoughts on it. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts or questions for Steve or for me. Yeah, I'm good. OK. Yeah. All right. I did notice something, though, John, and I think you caught this too. Eero up until very recently only allowed for one user to log in to manage it. And it was either tied to your phone number or your email address. So you you couldn't even share the log in. Like if you wanted to let me manage your Eero to help you with things or whatever, it was it was impossible unless you joined the Eero Pro Club. Like like me as the consultant or something joined the Eero Pro Club, which I did. And it was a major like I had to go through, jump through a lot of hoops to do all this just to be able to log in and manage other people's networks. Now, Eero allows for 10 additional people. So 11 total total, including you to manage your network. And all you got to do is go into the Eero app and send them an invite, which is so much better. Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. I'm I'm stoked that they are that they are doing this. Yeah, you go in and choose invite admin and they can it says they can access all the network features and details, including your name, profiles, connected devices, content, filter, analytics. They can add devices and profiles. They can change your Wi-Fi name, the password, adjust the content filters. So, I mean, they are truly admins, which is which is in theory, the thing that that one would want if you were going to invite somebody to manage the network, that's what you'd want to be able to do. So. Yeah. Yeah, I'm I'm stoked about them allowing that. Like I said, I wish they had done it a couple of years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Yeah, that's where we're at. Any other stuff on Wi-Fi or anything like that before we move on to some cool stuff found and things like that? OK. Hey, John, how about? How about we do some ads now? Is that that work for you? Sounds good to me. All right. Our sponsor, Otherworld Computing, has come out with something cool. It's the OWC Envoy Pro Mini. This is a pocket-sized SSD with full-sized SSD performance. We're saying pocket-sized SSD. This thing's a thumb drive, right? USB-A, USB-C, it's got both. You can use it interchangeably. Capacities from 250 gig to 500 gig to one terabyte. So you've got room for your audio, your photographs, your graphics, your gaming, your movies, all of that stuff. It works with USB and Thunderbolt Max, PCs, iPads, Chromebooks, Android tablets, Surface devices, transfers at up to 946 megabytes per second. Real-world speeds with plug-and-play ease. You can consolidate files from smaller drives for faster, more convenient access. You can put the thing in your pocket. You can migrate data from an existing machine to a new computer. You can schedule time machine to work with this thing. You can record tracks on a multi-track mixer because it's fast. This thing's amazing. And you're going to want to go to maxsales.com and look at it. It's the OWC Envoy Pro Mini. The 256 gig version is 79 bucks. The one terabyte version is only 179. So you're just going to want to go get one of these that you have it and you can just move your data and store your data when and where you want. It's versatile, it's protective, it's bootable, it's slim. Like I said, it's pocket-sized. It's a thumb drive. Go check it out. Otherworld computing at maxsales.com, the OWC Envoy Pro Mini and our thanks to OWC for sponsoring this episode. Let's let's talk about some cool stuff found in Discord. We have our Discord room at mackeycup.com slash Discord, which is fantastic. And there's been a ton of it's just a great community now. I think there's over 300 people here. And there's just constant questions and answers and tips and cool stuff found being shared all week long. Listener, I assume listener blurby in Discord contributed to a conversation we were having about tracking when apps are on sale or free, when their prices change. And he mentioned something called app sliced at app slice.co where you can sign in and it'll you can track which things you want. And yeah, I'm I like it. Thanks, blurby. It's good stuff. Cool stuff found indeed. What do you guys think about this stuff? Anything to share on this? I got one more of these two from the thing. Oh, that's awesome. I was like trackers like that to help help find the good stuff when you. Yeah. So no, that's that's a great tip. Gadgetcoma also in Discord recommended cheap charts for doing the same thing. It's cheap charts.info and it's not just I think it's not. It's more than just apps. It's movies, TV shows, music. So lots of things there. So yeah, it's good stuff. Thank you, Gadgetcoma. Thank you, blurby. Thanks to everybody who's sharing stuff and helping out in the Discord room. It's been fantastic. Next up is Alan. Yeah, Alan shares with us back to episode 925 about remote access. He says a great free option if you have set up, so free included in your set up subscription is jump desktop. He says I've tried all kinds of different options, including screens and Google remote access. And I think jump jump desktop is the easiest to configure and the most stable. I don't think the client machines even need a set up subscription, so you just need it on the on the host machine. And he says it's also available for thirty five bucks directly through or through the app app store at jump desktop.com. So thank you for that, Alan. Yeah, I love I love these things. Didn't know I had it. Oh, I love set up. That's my only issue with set up is like I need to intentionally go in and look at what what's there because we'll talk about things on the show.  Like if you don't tell us, I don't even think to look there anymore.  Hey, here's a new thing that's in there and that sort of thing. Another cool thing about set up is I think you get three machines free with OK, with your basic subscription. OK, then for a very cheap price, I mean, maybe two or three bucks a month. You can add on additional users. So my sister in Texas is on my set up account for twelve, fifteen bucks a year. Yeah, didn't much. Oh, maybe 30. But right, right. But still, that's a good deal. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. That's good to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The family plan, if you will. Yes. Cool. Speaking of saving money, this is the atypical of a cool stuff found segment where we're coming in and actually showing you ways to save. Gary shares with us that Costco members can save on Apple subscriptions. News, Apple TV Plus. And I think one other thing are are usable as yeah, Apple Arcade is the other one. So you get Apple News Plus, Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade subscriptions are discounted through your Costco membership. So we'll put a link in the show notes to a Mac rumors article that sort of walks through the the specifics of that. But I thought that was pretty cool. You know, yeah, it's good. If you don't if you don't need an Apple One subscription having the ability to to just, you know, pick and choose for a lower price. I like it. It's good. Yeah. Yeah.  I almost was because I was almost. And I forget what there was one thing in there that I went, it just doesn't quite work for me. I think, oh, I know what it was. It was the storage amount. So I'm paying the I'm doing the two terabyte. I think it's either one or two terabyte. OK, nine ninety five a month. And I was going to move to Apple One drop Spotify. But they don't they only give you like a small amount in Apple One. And you've got to really bump up the payment to get. Yes. Back up to the two terabytes. Yes. I wish they would offer. I think if you go on from the nine ninety five to the twenty nine ninety five, they should include what you get with the nine ninety five. Well, I think I I am. I'm getting. I think I pay twenty nine and I get the the two terabytes of storage for the family. I thought it was the storage. It could be something else. I'll have to. OK. And I'll circle back with you guys on figure and when I figure out once what it is that yeah, for me. But yeah, because I was all ready to go. And and I wound up not pulling the trigger when I went in to pull it and went, oh, that doesn't I need that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which I have now, but with lose. I was thinking it was the storage. Yeah, it could be wrong. So yeah, there are the individual plan is fourteen ninety five. The family plan is nineteen ninety five. And then the premier plan is twenty nine ninety five. And let's see. They aren't entirely clear. Yeah. So yeah, with two terabytes of storage, I think is what the premier plan comes with. I think Apple doesn't make it easy to look this stuff up. I wonder why that is. Yeah. Yeah, right. But I know that I have that we're paying the thirty bucks a month and we have two terabytes of storage. So for the shared amongst the family. So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's been plenty for, you know, for the five or four of us, whatever or many of us are on it. So interesting. OK. Because well, I don't have any of the Apple one. I see, yeah, it's individual family and premier. So what I've got now is basically for the storage. But I'll have to. I'll just have to figure it out and come back to you because I just don't know for sure what it is that I've I've managed to. Pull back on. Yeah, yeah, it. Yeah, let's see. The individual plan is fifty gigs of storage. The family plan at fourteen ninety five is two hundred gigs of storage. And the premier plan is is the one is the two terabytes of storage. So yeah, I wonder what I'm on, because I'm on a nine ninety five plan. So you're that sounds like not even there anymore. That's the individual plan, right? Yeah, I think that's what you're on. Yeah, so yeah, bump it up for the family and you might wind up saving a bunch depending on what they need to use and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Or maybe it makes more sense for you to do the Costco thing, although we don't we don't have Costco local to us here. Yeah, we have BJs, but not Costco. So right. Who knows? Maybe BJs is two into two. I don't know. I haven't looked. I should. Ari resumes our conversation about portable monitors with a recommendation of the you perfect four K portable screen. It's a fifteen point six inch portable screen and it's four K, which means, you know, thirty eight forty by twenty one sixty. It is it's he says it's available on Amazon for about a hundred dollars more than the non four K version. So it's about three hundred bucks as opposed to two hundred bucks.  And it's, you know, portable, all of that good stuff. And it's got multiple ports so you can plug power into the monitor. And then your laptop or even your iPad or even your phone into the monitor and power everything and all of that good stuff. Yeah, that's not bad for three hundred bucks for four K for a fifteen point six inch screen. That's like that's a nice that's a good portable screen. I like that. Yeah. Thank you for that, Ari. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Makes me think maybe maybe I should get one of these. Along the same lines, Paul D tells us about the espresso portable screen, which is a which which has some interesting features. He says it's the one that I use when I travel. And the fun thing about this display is that it is also touch sensitive so you can interact with apps with your fingers, which that is actually pretty cool. So, yeah, it's the espresso at ESPRES dot S O and they call it the world's thinnest portable monitor. It's got a little stand with it. I wonder how heavy it is looking. It's got it. It seems like it's got a pretty hefty base on it, like a metal base. So I'm wondering I'm wondering how that works. But but yeah, yeah, touch screen. Got to love it. Nice. Although I don't know. I I guess I'm not used to using my computer with a touch screen. So I'm not sure if that would matter for me or not. I don't know. I don't know. Have you?  You've been sidelined for a little bit. So a little bit. You haven't been traveling. Although I do have to laugh at myself with the. When we first put the. Electronic flight bags is what they call them in the airplanes. Yep. It was it was mostly menu buttons on the side, but you could use a stylus and drag certain parts of a chart around that sort of thing. Sure. You find yourself having been used to an iPad and or an iPhone. You're trying to pinch and open or squeeze and none of that ever work. It never did work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was limited touch screen. But yeah, no, this this looks pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. You know, last week, Pete, you were talking about wanting to use your work provided iPad as a second display as your sidecar display. And you couldn't because you weren't logged into the same Apple ID on both. Well, listener Kent. Yeah. Yeah. Says he says for years when I was working, I used an app called duet display at duet display dot com and which uses a wired connection to my MacBook Pro. Having that extra screen space was a real advantage over just my MacBook Pro and using a wired connection, he says bypassed any issues of latency or network wonkiness or anything like that. And he says duet display is still current in the app store. So that would be a good option for you or for any of us that, you know, want to want to do this with an iPad and sidecar is not the option. So I need to pull that out and try it. I've got the I know I've got a USBC lightning cable. So that's got the modus. Maybe is your iPad lightning. Oh, OK. So you have an older iPad with lightning. Yeah. Yeah. OK. OK. Six or seventh generation. So yeah, yeah, OK. About three or four years old. Yep. Yep. I wasn't sure how up to date they kept those. So yeah, interesting. And you have to provide six thousand guys with an iPad plus all the mechanics that starts getting expensive. Yeah, that's it turns into real money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are airplane or airplane dollars. Right. What do we what do we call those things? Airplane airplane box. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Similarly, in this same vein, listener Russell shares. He said, I heard on the show about the Luna display adapter that allows an iPad or an iMac to be used as a screen. I bought one, but I was unhappy with the long delay and slow and expensive delivery to Europe. But now I have it and it certainly works. My M1 laptop is the Luna master and it uses a 2017 five K iMac as a screen. Also possible to use the laptop to screen share the headless Mac mini that is on the same network and view control the Mac mini with the laptop on the iMac as a Luna display. So this is an interesting thing for all of us that want to use our retina five K iMacs in, you know, target display mode, but cannot. Luna display might be an answer for this. Kind of like this. He says, my main connection is a Thunderbolt three cable, which is decently fast and and yeah, he just set it up in network preferences with the right IP range and he's good to go. Interesting. John, I stepped all over that. That was your question that you prepared, wasn't it? That's OK. Sorry, I just kept rolling here. As I after I read the question, I'm like, hey, wait, that's John's. I said, John's I was going to say John's handwriting. It was your your your email font. I just kept us rolling here. So. My do you have anything to add to that, John? No. Sorry. No, it's basically Luna is it's a dongle that lets you connect another screen. Yeah, which is fascinating. I never thought about it to solve that problem before. I like this. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know we talked about it on the show, but yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Where are we here on time? Let's see. What else we have? Let's jump to Neil here. Neil. We're talking about backing up synologies on the on the Synology episode. And Neil says, I've been aware of Cloud Backup Solution iDrive for some time, but I hadn't tried it out. It turns out that there is an iDrive package for Synology, which provides a versioned cloud storage facility. I've been using Synology's hyper backup package with purchased online storage. But the cost as the costs go up with my increasing storage requirements, iDrive provides a great alternative. Since everything on my laptop and my wife's iMac is in folders synced via Synology Drive to my NAS, I can just let iDrive on the Synology take care of all of these backups. But if I needed to individually backup another device, I can just connect it to the same account. Another nice feature is that as far as I can determine, I can access the backup storage from the Synology from the web or from the app loaded on my MacBook Pro. So easy access to iDrive from anywhere and the backups just happen from the Synology or from your Mac, too, if you want. That's interesting. I. Huh. Huh. I love the. This is what I loved about doing this show. We get to learn things. Do you know what I learned? What's that, Pete? Remember, one of those shows back there, I said something about how I never get any error message from my Synology. Don't ever say that. You didn't knock on the wood, Pete. Brother, I didn't because I'll tell you what, I got I got the error message yesterday. So I went in and I shut everything down and pulled the drives to make sure, you know, what size I had so I could go get a new drive to replace the one that said, hey, I may be failing. Yeah. And when I started it back up, the web server of my Synology station is not properly working. I've reached out to support and but it's it's kept me now from being able to sync. I can still access the drive. Sure. Put files and pull them off, but it's not syncing with my wife's computer, with my computer and all that. So I'm waiting to hear back from Synology. So it's just like the Synology Drive app won't run. Is that what's happening essentially? Yeah, it says the the root problem appears to be the web server portion of the Synology disk station is preventing file station and the Synology Drive app from properly running. And when you click repair, it just goes package couldn't launch contact support. And are you but you're able to get into like the Synology DSM via the web interface. So the web server is running. Well, right, yeah, but but not properly somehow because it's been those two packages from running. Yeah, yeah, yeah.   Yeah, I never say everything's working fine. I'm great. I don't need any help.  And and so, you know, that in most disk stations, the drives are hot, swappable and what and right. And so I wouldn't pull them out. I would just go into storage manager on there and look, it will tell you the sizes of each drive and where they are in the in the array. So you can say, OK, all right, it's drive three that's dying. That's a whatever, a 10 terabyte drive. So I need a 10 or larger.  That's when you yank it out. That's when you put it in. But hopefully, Synology support can log in and, you know. Yeah, well, they told me to send me an email and OK, and have me send them the debug logs that I could look at it and figure it out. And of course, I haven't gotten the email from them. And as we talked pre-show, I'm having some I think. Yeah, I think they sent the email because that usually comes immediately. That's like a yeah. So I'm going to have to call them today and say, hey, send it to my other email address, please. And then we'll go from there. But yeah, see, you do it the technologically smart way. I just I just pulled. I wanted to see what size drives I had in there. And I found out I think I've got three terabyte drives. In three of the bays, I've got an empty bay.   But no, you'll get there. You'll get there. What the reason?  So yeah, that's that's kind of the key. So my whole my beer and watch this. Yeah. So are you doing any cloud backups on your distation, John? Are you are you you said no? Is that right? Correct. OK, so you're just you're just backing stuff up to your distation and then backing that up to another distation is what I remember, right? OK, interesting.  Sure, that's right. Content. Yep. OK, so you have some cloud, but not from the Synology. Not from the Synology. Yeah, OK. Yeah, so you've got some of the sort of sort of mission critical stuff synced to some server that's not at your house. Yeah, OK. All right. Oh, yeah. We should look at our we should look at our disk stations, John, and see if we've got enough storage for one another to be our remote options. And then we can stop paying cloud for cloud storage. Like if we each carve out a, you know, a terabyte or two for each other, like, you know, we should have this conversation. I like this idea. Yeah, we'll round Robin thing. I was going to say, we do it for the three of us. And now we're we're in good shape. Yeah. Oh, all right. So for stay tuned. Now, for your issue, I'm wondering if resetting your Synology would be a way to go. I've restarted it twice, but I haven't reset it. Yeah, because they do have a couple of options. Yeah. Boy, that one is like a soft reset. And there's also one that will actually reinstall DSM as well. Well, maybe I should look at a soft reset or something because I've got some shared folders and some.  And I have no idea how some of that is set up. Dave was kind enough to help me set that up the first time. And it's working again. I don't want to fix it because that part ain't broke. But yeah, I mean, when I had to when I decided to migrate from what the old format of distations, which is EXT four to the new format, which is BTRFS, it's the it's like moving from HFS Plus to APFS, right? It has snapshots and there's things that can be done with it that can't be done with the old one. There is an unlike Apple. There is no migration assistant for doing that on a Synology. And so I had to set it up from scratch and a new volume and reinstall my apps and move everything over.  It allowed me to do a review like we were talking about earlier. But it was a, you know, it's probably a. You know, a couple hours a day for a week to get to the point where it was like, OK, I can stop thinking about this now. Well, would something like that, you know, that Delta Walker to app that we talked about that compares folders and files and volumes to move stuff over, it's almost like an FTP from one. How did the data wasn't the issue? It was reconfiguring all of the packages and, you know, what do I run and how do I do all these things?  And then you forget that you did it, even though it was a monumental and fundamental change that allows you to do all the other things that you're now doing, right, you know, and so like forgetting about what each of those things were was part and parcel of how I learned to use my analogy all over again, all over again. Yeah, I was like, why isn't this working? I know I've solved this before. Then, you know, you search on Google and find the article I wrote telling people how to fix this. It's like, oh, I guess I wrote this for Future Dave. OK, great. So yeah. All right. Hey, I am a one password fan as as many know. And now one password eight is here. And one of my favorite features of one password eight is what they call universal autofill. So, you know, when you're going to launch like an app or something and it asks for your password, like, say, logging into Zoom. If you've ever been logged into Zoom on one computer and you go log in on another computer, when you go back to the first one, you are logged out like they're really hardcore about it. Universal autofill will fill in passwords on your Mac for apps like Zoom. Regardless of like outside of the context of a web page, which is awesome. So that's my that's one of my contributions to cool stuff found this week. So yeah, good stuff. I like it. It's it makes it's a it's a nice improvement there. Yeah. Are either of you one password users? John, you're still what do you use nowadays? Last pass. OK, OK. And and like I assume they keep that up to date. I know there were some like security issues with last pass for five minutes, but I think they got past all that, right? Um, yeah. OK. As far as I can tell. Yeah.  Oh, because they're subscription based. Yeah, yeah, I've been paying for one password for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was one password until they went subscription based.  And and I went back to paying for it with the subscription. And I mean, I just love it. It's universal across all my devices. One of the cool things I even forgot I had is that it will do two factor authentication. It'll do one time passwords. Yes. So yeah. Yeah, it's which makes them no longer two factor, right? If they're stored in the same place as our regular password. But yeah, you know, it's fine as long as it's fine. I mean, Apple's doing the same thing now with iCloud, right? So like it's all right. It's fine. Yeah, it's just how it be. Yeah, I I. A good authenticator has gone away from authenticator. They're not sending it to like your YouTube account. Oh, hey, is that you? Yeah, it's different.  I don't like that. I like authenticator better. Yeah, yeah. And sending it to my YouTube. Yeah, but I like one password even more than authenticator because one password now syncs to all my devices, which again, technically makes it less secure, but it also makes it makes security more convenient. And I think making security more convenient is actually more secure in the end, because I will implement more security if I can do so in a convenient manner. Right. That's the key, right? I mean, that's the whole point of one password is you you don't want to have to use the same password everywhere, but that is the temptation because you need to be able to remember it. And so here we are. Exactly. And I've got some funky passwords now because of one password. So yeah, yeah, because I can because you can. Yeah, yeah, I have been tempted to move the family to Bitwarden, which is an open source password manager. Several listeners use it and have recommended it over one password. Like forget about the fact that it's effectively free because you can run it on your Synology Disk Station. And and now you not only are you not paying a subscription, but you control the data. It's all encrypted on one password's end. I don't mean to imply that there's any issue there. But, you know, control the data, control the data. That's, you know, there is an increase there. But I just I tried to do some exports and imports from my one password data into Bitwarden, and it was not entirely the most fruitful endeavor when I tried it. And I thought, oh, I need like extra time to do that.  That's what I used was Bitwarden when I was off of one password. And I liked it. Did you host it yourself or did you let Bitwarden host it? OK, I didn't know that I found it to be just a little clunkier than one password.  Right.  They do a really nice job. It's a slick interface. It's they do right up until you start having a family plan with vaults. And the whole concept of vaults in one password is terribly implemented. And that's one thing that that Bitwarden does better, because you just tag things and but it's one vault. Like I will routinely find myself looking for something in one password and it'll say you don't have any logins for, you know, for this. It's like, I know I do. And it's like, oh, I'm in the vault that I share with Lisa. Yeah, come on, guys. Like get got to get past this. And so that's just here. Yeah, search by default, always search everywhere, no matter what.  So that was a big part of my reasoning for considering Bitwarden. And so again, several listeners have said to me once you make the jump to Bitwarden, at least how it is today. I don't know how much how long ago it was that you did it. But they say a couple years. Yeah, they say that the improvements they've done make it so that it's like it's it's the best of them all for a lot, especially for families. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And organizations, too. So I don't know. I'll I'll I'll probably dive back into it. So someday, maybe we have more on this. No. Listener. Listener. Donna tells us about the something she saw on iOS today, the Satechi Quattro wireless power bank. It's a 10,000 milliamp hour portable charger and it's got a chi pad on it for your phone. It's got a puck on it for your watch and or, you know, and then it's also got a power out ports. So you can charge your phone with the power port and your AirPods with the chi port on the thing. 10,000 milliamp hour, 99 bucks on Amazon. We'll put a link in the show notes for you all. But yeah, thanks, Donna. That's cool stuff. That's why we so we're into the not saving money portion of cool stuff found and we're not sorry about it. It's all good. It's all good. I mentioned travel. Steve tells us about the cocoon grid it travel accessory organizer. He says I use it to carry and store all of my wires and charging bricks when I travel and it looks like a pretty cool thing. Yeah, I never I never they have all kinds of different ones that are built for it, you know, various various types of stuff.  And it's just a mishmash of all of these straps so you can choose. OK, I want a bigger one here and a smaller space there. And that seems pretty cool. What do you do you use anything like this when you travel, Pete? I don't. And I probably start should start doing it because particularly overseas, you still have to pull out your laptop and your iPad and your phone and take your belt off.  In the bucket and go.  You don't have to actually extract each thing. Right. Oh, yeah, you just reminded me of the headache. Every time I travel internationally and I'm I'm getting on a plane tomorrow to Greece, which is why we're recording a little early. I always forget coming home that I don't have TSA precheck. And I need to not only take my laptop out and maybe take my shoes off depending on what country I'm in, but I have to take all my liquids out.  So yeah. Yeah. I've learned actually when you if you can put put them all in one bag and check that bag. Yes, it's just that just makes life simpler. Yeah, that's true. I like to keep, especially for long international flights, I like to keep like hand cream in in my bag just to, you know, things get dry on the plane.  So I have those things in my, you know, in my carry on bag. But are you? Yeah, are you going business class? I am not, Pete. Yeah, I'm flying five people. So yeah, I don't I don't I don't pay for an extra thousand bucks.  I'm not going to spend a thousand bucks on that. OK, well, it's actually probably closer to three thousand. But, you know, yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, it was it was about I think it was going to be about four hundred bucks a person to upgrade us to business class. And somebody suggested that I do it for me and Lisa. But I I didn't I have not yet done that. There is still time. There is still time. All right. Maybe they'll maybe they'll upgrade us because they love us, you know. I hate to say this, but internationally, they just don't upgrade you.  And seriously, and I know this writing, not writing on Debbie's passes when we go flying internationally, if there are 10 seats of business that coaches oversold by five, those 10 seats in business are available to the non revs. They don't bump people up to the business or first class. Unless they've inconvenienced you. If you've got a ticket and they think it now, maybe on the next light, they'd put you up there to get to get you going. Yeah, but but on that flight. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. The non revs take take priority over the over the pain passengers that get upgrade because they I guess years ago, they figured out people learned how to game the system over book coach and get bumped. And yeah, now we're done with that. I used to do that all the time. Yeah, it worked great. Domestically, it works, though. It does internationally. No, no, I never tried it internationally. That's fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting. All right, we got time for maybe one more, if not two. Listener Elliott tells us about a shortcut called Glantz at glantz.broink.com. Don't worry. The links in the show notes at Mackie Keb.com. This will put a weather report overlay and complications, wind, chance of rain, battery, et cetera, for your current location on your lock screen with various themes over either a wallpaper or a random random picture or whatever. You can run the shortcut as often as you like during the day to update the update the weather location. Says I do it every hour via a personal automation in the shortcuts app. So it's building a picture like that. That's what this shortcut does, because your lock screen on iOS is pictures. So it's building a picture that then, you know, that has all that data on it. And yeah, I like what a great I like this idea. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And yeah, you can can lay it out whatever you however you want. Though the screenshot we're looking at here has, you know, it leaves room for the time and the date at the top, because obviously your phone's going to do that at the bottom. It has a little, you know, weather report that almost looks like a little notification badge, but obviously you couldn't tap it. And then, you know, you have your camera on the far right, that little camera button on the far right of the lock screen and the light button on the far left. Well, in the middle, they have made two similar looking buttons, obviously, unpressible, one that shows the chance of rain and one that shows shows the wind speed. So it really this is I might have to mess with this. This is good. I like this. Yeah. Yeah, that's slick. It is. Yeah. As as my friend pilot Pete likes to say, oh, it wasn't you that said this. It's slicker than a mouse's ear. Did you say that? Or was that my friend Sid Rich? Iron or frogs here? No, that one wasn't me. OK, my friend Sid Rich, who was something else that might have come out of a mouse or a snake. Well, there's that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leave it to pilot Pete. Maybe that is the right place to start to pull the plug on this episode before we go too far into crazy land.  Like any content to add anything before we get to the the very, very end of the episode? Any anything to add before we before we get into the outro here? Yeah, we can make this a cool stuff down. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, we've got to show you when I just went to. But it's a different version of the same thing, but I'm actually using it now. So the Lenovo smart clock essential. But this one has the lady built in instead of the G thing. OK, all right. But no, it's great. I actually replaced my a lady that I had in my bedroom with this because it does the same thing. Interesting. So now I have all these extra a lady devices. I wonder if I don't know what to do with it. I wonder if it's available because I looked on the Lenovo site and it's saying temporarily unavailable for this. Well, it recommends the a lady one. OK. Yeah, I think the G one is. Yeah, it's not available. Oh, OK. All right. All right. Cool. Well, no, it does as you expect. And when you and when you speak to it, it replaces the screen with two little eyes to make it look like a little person, which is kind of cute. That's cool. Oh, so you know what you're getting yourself into. Yes. OK, I've got the right link in the show notes now. The smart clock essential with the a lady built in. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that I noticed is so a couple of days ago, it has a little bar when it's listening to you. Yep. It was pulsing yellow because it had a notification for me. Oh, nice. So it'll even play your notifications. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I remember a while ago, I was like, I think it asked me. It actually asked me. It's like, hey, do you want to enable notifications for like when your stuff is coming? And I'm like, yeah, sure. Those might drive you crazy. I get notifications on my on my Echo dots all the time now. I drive some nuts. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Nice. Fine, man. I didn't grab one of those at that last show. Maybe I should have. I feel like I'm missing out now. It's a couple of years old now, but there was a just for entertainment purposes. A lady for elderly folks that SNL did. Oh, I remember that skit. Yes. Yeah, it was a screen. It was good. They never remember her name. Yeah. All kinds of things. What's the temperature? Temperature 72. Where? Outside. What? All right. Cool. Thanks for adding that in. I like it. Good stuff. All right. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. Thanks for joining our discord group at Mackey.com slash discord. We're always putting stuff in there, but you're always putting stuff in there too. It really it is exactly what we have always wanted for a community. And we tried it at Facebook. That didn't really get us what we wanted a Facebook group. We tried it at it, you know, at the forums and that never really caught on quite the way that I was hoping this discord community really is a community. And it it's our home away from home. I love it. So yeah, it's good stuff. Our next show will be released, recorded and released on June 7th, which is a Tuesday. Apple is having their WWC keynotes and State of the Union and all that stuff on the 6th. I will be on an airplane on the 6th, hopefully home from Europe. And then we will record on the 7th. So we're not going to be recording while I'm on the plane for a variety of reasons, some technological and others, probably because the flight attendants would make me walk the plank or something. So yeah, no recording shows, no streaming on the plane, but it's me. I'm just streaming, John F. Brown. It's all good. I can't, you know, I got to get my dose, my weekly dose of John F. Brown. All right. Yeah. But you can find all that on the calendar at Mackey.com, slash calendar, you can subscribe. And then you'll know when when we're recording and we'll release that episode also on Tuesdays, you know, shortly after we record it. All right. That's what we got. Make sure you go check out that new Envoy Pro Mini. From OWC, because that thing's pretty, pretty magical. Check out the rest of your egg, that thing. It's small. Yeah, that's a good idea. Oh, yeah. So you know, I like that. Yeah, I got to remember to put air tags and all of my on my suitcases before we check the bags that we're going to check. You mind if I plug my ear? So there I was, so there I was US. Our second show is recorded. It should drop before this show hits the air. Nice. I love this podcast. You guys want to listen? So there I was that US. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John, you got us into this mess. How? How can we get out? What can we? What do you have any advice to share before I before I embark on an international journey here? When you're traveling, Dave. Yes, just remember three things. Don't get caught. May the as always good advice. Thank you.


Real of 2k Episode number two this video is sponsored by the asmr section of twitch.tv My favorite section where I go and spend hours and hours of my day and countless Countless dollars my whole paycheck really my favorite asmr streamer because when I donate $1,000 to her She usually says thank you and my name. She fills me with joy. It keeps me pushing forward Be honest. I'm a little discombobulated I'm supposed to have my temporary tattoo in for the first six episodes hasn't come in yet But I still had to post wheel of 2k right so I had to make the video. I promise you though I said this last episode I promise it's coming but regardless Let's talk about the important things in life like the invincible Luca Donchich who went off and stays on my squad like our team captain endgame Michael Jordan who can off-ball clamp anybody Like LeBron who's no Halloween LeBron spooky LeBron and soon this LeBron could be a diamond if we play well today Sergeant I back at the Andre 8 and a bunch of randos on the rest of the squad for real other than weighing ZZ and Dean Wade So being that we are 1 and oh here's what we've got on the table 0 and 12 is off So well, we're looking at half marathon on a stream as the absolute worst thing I could do But I'm shooting for a 7 and 5 or better season. So right now. That's the section I'm looking at but want to make sure you guys saw this in case you haven't seen it yet But you know the rules for wheel of 2k Um, I gotta get I gotta get one wheel spin to add a player to this squad And then we got to go hop in and get a dump and I apologize I'm losing my voice a little bit, but last episode we did not get a wheel spin So this is technically my first ever wheel spin for the final season. Let's see if it's God Oh Sorry My whole brain shut off when I tried to get to the end of that wheel spin. So that sounded really stupid It's a playoffs jackpot I can get any single player in the game, but their team must have made the playoffs this season also It cannot be a historic player So it's got to be a current player and one of the playoff teams by the way, I mentioned this before I don't want to go like endgame crazy. I know a lot of these spins are jackpots But I think unless it specifically says I can get an endgame the best I can get is invincible Also end games are literally like a million plus mt I've already shredded like two and a half million mt on this team between Michael Jordan The LeBron that will eventually have and look at dodge it. So like that's just that's nuts So the teams that made the playoffs. Let's just go through each of them and see how we feel here Why don't we start with the heat? Do they have any of their current players with invincibles? I don't think so.  I feel like Siaco should have an invincible. Let me kind of see Sixers should have Embied right so there's invincible Ben Simmons. I don't know how to feel about that I don't really like Ben Simmons. Who do the Celtics have? Is there a Jason Tatum?  I have a burning hatred for Bill Russell. It's not happening. Grizzlies have nobody also surprising Madness have Luca. Oh, there is a Brish Babs Barbegas. Oh, yeah, the nuggets made it. There's only a mellow though I also don't have to do invincibles. I just like invincibles. Oh, there's a clay Damn, I did not realize there's an invincible clay that car goes kind of hard I feel like this is a good one to do because the Warriors like they won the whole thing It's be kind of cool to do this. I can't count the rant. Well, I can count the rant, right? Why can't I count Doran because Doran's on the nets? Even though his card is not on the nets Doran definitely made the playoffs You know what? I'm doing Doran. You know why? We only got to get 10 with LeBron after that LeBron comes out If I'm in a close game, I want an elite player in a small forward until LeBron becomes an endgame I've used a Doran card before and I hated it Well, guess what? I used a Luca Donchich card before too and I hated that Luca and we just went out and dropped 25 with Luca So maybe just maybe I'll do the exact same thing with Doran So I think invincible Doran was the move there I feel good about that decision even though LeBron will start the game So hopefully I can get him a few points before he goes and sits on the bench That just leaves a challenge will spin for us to complete and a dub to hopefully acquire our real 2k challenge Real is shoot 50% from three point land. I don't know if we did that last game I feel like we probably did I shot great with Luca Jordan out of three Honestly with that spin right there probably should have gotten a power forward or a center I technically could put Doranth in for a Baca and Doranth could be on the court with LeBron No, I'm not doing it. I want Doranth off the bench I want to be able to score when the bench comes in Also want to give a huge thank you to Vessie for continuing to sponsor my videos I know you're dying to see what's in the box Inside is Vessie's newest shoe the everyday move slip up Now let me back up Vessie makes incredible shoes They look amazing. They are absurdly comfortable They are perfect for long days on your feet and lightweight travel And they are 100% waterproof They will have your feet dry no matter the conditions Got to be the coolest part about Vessie's shoes And the new everyday move slip on is my absolute favorite Literally just slide them on and it doesn't matter what you encounter You're gonna stay dry That's why I wear my Vessie's every single time I walk Luna It doesn't matter if she's going in a puddle Doesn't matter if I'm going in a puddle Put simply Vessie's are my go-to shoes at the front door And I think they should be yours too So check them out at my link below It's Vessie.com forward slash mmg Vessie thanks as always for sponsoring today's video guys Enjoy the rest Ola Depot Westbrick Oh is that a thunder?  Red Oh LeBron what?  Are you kidding me?    I have no clue He had 18 with Russ 13 with Oladipo 11 with Mello 7 to Rant Michael fucking Jordan 38 points 13 for 23 6 for 10 from 3 Luca was only 3 for 10 I don't know if I was 50% up there Michael Jordan had 38 Are you kidding me?


Hello, my name is Mary Wynne Stanley O'Connor. It is my distinct honor and pleasure to seek another term as a member of the Arlington Board of Assessors to represent you, my fellow residents. I am a proud graduate of Arlington High School and have been an attorney for 40 years. In addition to my law degree, I have a master's degree in tax law from Boston University Law School. My education, professional expertise, and training enable me to contribute value to the Board of Assessors. We are fortunate to have an elected board which is well-balanced and highly skilled. The elected board includes myself as an attorney, Gordon Jamison, who is a community activist and business person, and William Zagata, an experienced and licensed appraiser. The Board of Assessors is required by Massachusetts law to assess all personal property and real estate at full and fair cash value. There are approximately 14,500 properties in the town the Board must assess. In the context of doing so, the Board must be transparent and accessible to residents so that they can understand the basis for their property valuation and be informed of relief they may be entitled to, such as tax abatements, exemptions, for seniors, the blind, veterans, among others. Other relief, such as the deferral of property taxes for seniors struggling to pay their real estate taxes, is also available. The Board of Assessors effectively serves both the town of Arlington in the form of assessing all property and the taxpayers who may apply for abatements or exemptions and who need to be satisfied that their properties are being fairly assessed. If you have any questions, please contact the Board of Assessors, or please feel free to contact me directly at my office,<PHONE_NUMBER>, via email at moconner at koilaw.com. Again, thank you for permitting me to continue to serve the town that educated me and provides a wonderful community in which to live and raise my family.