Homemade Hashbrowns

We made the homemade hashbrowns you see below using the technique shown in the YouTube video.  I peeled one potato and used a box grater sitting in a bowl of water to "hash" it into little pieces.  The potatoes are rinsed twice in cold water to remove excess surface starch, the culprit behind gummy or soggy hashbrowns.  I placed the rinsed potatoes in a sheet of cheesecloth and squeezed as much water out as possible.  I heated a little avocado oil in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat, spooned enough potatoes to make a nice-sized patty, and cooked them until you see the beauties you see below.  The YouTube video at the link below has all the details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUTc9XvsaE

Bird Nests

Last year, I installed gutter guards, and they have done a great job of keeping debris out, but with the ends not completely sealed, it gave some enterprising small birds an opening to build their nests.  That's a genius move on their part since the gutter guards are a great defense against other birds or animals.  But they made a poor choice on which end of the gutter to build on, since the nest was being built directly on top of the downspout.  So I reluctantly had to undo all their hard work to keep the gutters flowing.  On the happy side, they had not yet laid eggs in the nests, giving them time to rebuild before the chicks are hatched.

Tampa Trolley

The TECO Line Streetcar, pictured below, is a free (I love free) transportation option in Tampa, Florida.  It has 11 stops along a 2.7-mile path from downtown Tampa north and east to Ybor City.  We took it just a few stops to the Sparkman Wharf area, which features many dining options, including The Back Bar, where we ate lunch before walking the riverwalk back to our car.  The streetcar runs every 15 minutes, seven days a week, and the hours of operation are available at the link below.

https://www.tampa.gov/mobility/transportation/streetcar

Chevy Equinox

Our rental car for our recent trip to Clearwater Beach was a Chevy Equinox, and that ended up being quite the challenge.  Instead of a shifter in the normal place between the front seats, it was on the column, as you see in the first picture below.  It took a couple of minutes to figure out how to get it in reverse, which involved pulling the stick towards me, then pushing it up.  To go forward, pull the stick and push down.  Push the button on the right, and you put it in park.  

If that wasn't bad enough, operating the wipers was a totally confusing mess.  While shifting gears occurs when you're not moving and you have a moment, needing wipers happens while you're in motion, and you shouldn't take your eyes off the road, made even more important on unfamiliar roads.  The second picture shows the unusual design where you twist one of the two mechanisms for the front wipers and the other for the back.  And you push the button on the end for wiper fluid.

Finally, it took me a solid five minutes to figure out how to turn the volume up.  I looked all over for the normal plus and minus signs or anything else that might indicate volume.  Nothing.  I found the power on/off button you see in the final picture, with its typical power icon.  Then I thought maybe it was also a twist knob.  Bingo, that was it.  

I've driven many, many rental cars over the years, but nothing came close to the confusion this caused.  Having this very unconventional design in a rental is a really bad idea.

Labeling Alarms

We just found a great way to simplify taking medications, in this case, eye drops.  In the iPhone screenshot below, we used the Label field on each Alarm to indicate which eye received which of the three drops needed at that time.  The pink, tan, and gray refer to the color of the lid on the bottle.  After the initial setup, there's no trying to figure out what you need to do when the alarm pops up; it's right there on the screen.  Pretty clever!

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