Cove’s Fried Shrimp

Most of our meals during our trip to Clearwater Beach, Florida, consisted of (really good) bar food or a sandwich or hot dog at the condo.  During one of our daily walks, we ran across Cove Kitchen and Bar at the south end of the island, and being impressed with the menu, we made dinner reservations.  Turned out to be the right call and will forever be our go-to restaurant on the beach.  

I had the Cove’s Fried Shrimp, which they describe as Syphon vodka tempura-fried, colossal shrimp served over sticky rice and topped with spicy crab and Kewpie mayo, ponzu eel sauce, furikake, fried onion, and garlic.  While I don't know what half of those ingredients are, the result was the equally beautiful and tasty creation you see below.  Yum!

https://www.shephards.com/dining/cove-kitchen-bar

Kettering Text-to-911

My home city of Kettering, Ohio, has introduced a new feature to its 9-1-1 service: the ability to receive text messages.  While they urge you to call if you can, there are situations where talking could make your situation more dangerous, or you just may have speech or hearing impediments that make regular 9-1-1 calls impractical.  

Kettering asks that you put 911 as the recipient and:

• Send your exact location first
• Briefly describe the emergency
• Answer questions from the dispatcher
• Don't use emojis or abbreviations

You can read more about the announcement at the following link.

https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/cincinnati/news/2026/06/01/kettering-now-offers-911-texts-instead-of-calls

Tailscale

If you don't know what the acronym VPN means, you can't hit delete fast enough.  

I have never been a fan of using a Virtual Private Network on my Mac, Pixel, or iPad, as the complexity it adds outweighs the benefits.  But I recently found TailScale, available on all my platforms (and more), a free (I love free), for personal use only, solution that is easy to install and configure, and doesn't require opening ports on my Internet router.  I run it all the time on my Mac and activate it on my iPad or Pixel when I need to access files on the Mac or route my Internet traffic through my home Internet connection when using less-than-trusted WiFi networks.

To test this, I used the https://whatismyipaddress.com website.  On the left in the image below, it reported my IP address as 172.56.125.79, one of a block of IP addresses owned by T-Mobile, which is the cell network behind my Google FI service.  On the right, now with the Tailscale VPN active, my IP address is 184.57.183.13, which is owned by Spectrum, my current home Internet provider, and I recognize as my home Mac Mini.  That validates that my Internet traffic was flowing through the VPN to my home before going to the Internet.

Learn more about TailScale at the link below.

https://tailscale.com

Elevate Your House

Two years ago, Clearwater Beach was hit by Hurricane Helene and suffered severe damage to many homes.  As we walked around the North Beach residential area, we saw the unusual solution you see below.  We talked to a local, and he said that some people opted to have their homes lifted instead of having a total rebuild.  The entire house, including the slab foundation, is raised and a new foundation is built.  How high it's raised depends on a number of factors to keep it safe and is ruled by FEMA and Pinellas County building codes.  

This house-lifting job was being done by JAS Builder, which you can learn more about at the following link.

https://jasbuilder.com

Using AI On An Excel Spreadsheet

I have a spreadsheet with names in column A, street addresses in column B, and city/state/zip in column C.  I needed to know which one(s) had the most characters so I could be sure that the labels I create from them would fit in the space I had.  I've done this before by using some Excel formulas, but then I thought maybe AI could do this for me.  I uploaded the spreadsheet, which has dozens of sheets, and asked ChatGPT, "Using the 'Summer 2026' tab, find the longest strings in columns A, B, or C."  In a few seconds, I had my answer, as you can see below, which was 34 characters.  Slick!

https://chatgpt.com

Garlic Butter Shrimp Pasta

This recipe takes less than thirty minutes and delivers the buttery and garlicy taste you would expect from its title.  All the messy details are at the link below, but the short story is you cook the pasta, cook the shrimp, make the sauce, add the shrimp, and add the pasta.  "Easy, quick, and delicious: my three favorite dinner adjectives."

https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a51270/garlic-butter-shrimp-pasta-recipe

Elemenopillows

We met Karen Larkin at the Columbus, Ohio, airport while waiting for our flight to Florida.  As we talked, I found out that she is the owner of a pillow cover business called Elemenopillows.  She came up with the name long ago when her son asked her, “What is an Elemeno?"  I'm sure you remember learning your ABC's by singing them, and like everyone, we smash together the l, m, n, o, and p together, and it comes out "elemeno p".  She decided to incorporate that into the shop name, and the rest is history.

Karen said she's sold over a million pillow covers over the years, and you can check out all of her amazing designs at the link below.

https://elemenopillows.com

Point-Of-Sale Advertising

Coco's Crush Bar, located in Clearwater Beach, Florida, is home to its famous Orange Crush cocktail, the drink shown on the right below.  Some smart lawyer figured out they could reach their target audience by supplying the paper coasters you see on the left.  Pure (and pour) genius.

https://cocoscrushbar.com

Doodie Calls

On our recent trip to Clearwater Beach, Florida, we came across another cute name for a porta-potty business, Doodie Calls, as you can see in the picture below.  They are one of Florida’s largest portable sanitation companies and offer standard portable toilets, high-rise units, ADA-accessible units, hand-washing stations, and luxury restroom trailers.  And you have to love their phone number!

https://doodie-calls.com

Using AI To Get A Proper Pronunciation

There are a few street names where it is not obvious how they are pronounced, so I turned to the Google Gemini AI chatbot for help.  I asked, "How is Schuyler pronounced?" and it not only gave me the proper pronunciation "SKY-ler", but also the information you see below on its Dutch origin.

The second street name is Lefevre, which is broken down phonetically as "luh-FEE-ver" in English-speaking countries and "luh-FEHV-(ruh)" in its native French (make sure to roll that "ruh").  

I have a bug about me that wants to know how to properly pronounce words, and AI makes quick work of that.

https://gemini.google.com