 Welcome to Mackie Cab folks and today our quick tip of the week comes from PC Unix and our discord says a small tip I wish I'd had I wish I thought of years ago I made a notes folder called where did I put it and he puts pictures in that folder of things that he has put in drawers like he has you know clips for the shades and he takes a picture of the open drawer that they are in and then closes the drawer puts that note there and he labels it with what the thing is in notes and so now when he puts things in a safe place and years later he wants to find it he can find it more tips like this plus your questions answered today on Mackie Cab 987 for Monday June 19th 2023. Greetings folks and welcome to Mackie Cab the show where you send in your tips like that cool stuff found your questions we answer your questions we share your tips your cool stuff found we share some tips of our own sometimes we even often in fact we even answer questions we ask questions of our own hopefully being answered by the community because that's what this show is all about all of us helping each other sponsors for this episode include piavpn.com slash mgg that's where you go to get 82% off your VPN service plus four free months on a two-year plan and collide with a K O L I D E dot com slash mgg zero trust security tailor made for octa we'll talk more about both of those in a minute here for now we need to get to this agenda so that we can each learn at least five new things and intending on learning at least five new things here in Durham New Hampshire I'm Dave Hamilton in here with my mic off mute in Pali bonjour everybody say your name again cuz I had you muted as well so oh there you go and here well I unmuted myself but they won't let me talk all the time so here I am pilot Pete greetings from Paris no Paris I was trying to say Paris and I just need to stop yeah so yeah but I'm stoked I love I love it at this layover in Paris gonna do Singapore later this week and then a few days in Liège Belgium actually Maastricht Netherlands with my family nice coming over to visit yeah that's cool you're up in the spring time it's a good place to be yeah yeah yeah it's coming oh right yes that's that's just a few days away yeah yeah all right well let's get to some quick tips I need to figure out I built a new keyboard maestro macro to archive notes yeah you know when when a question is done because we're using the notes app and I never tested it up here in the studio I thought it would sync up but no it didn't so I need to figure that out but anyway let's continue with the quick tip quick tips man both of us today pie the pirate yeah anyway Rob shares a tip he stumbled across he says I I thought this was a fairly obvious but I heard on another tech podcast asking if there was a way of keeping messages and photos of a message thread when switching phone numbers or emails for that contact he says because if you try to message a number or an email from contacts it starts a new thread the old one still there but it can get lost or deleted over time the solution is from the iPhone and you can do this from the Mac but on the iPhone he says add or make sure the new phone number or email is added to the same contact second leave the contacts app and go to messages and to the message thread you would like to change and then third tap the name at the top of the message and then tap the info tile now long press on a message bubble and select the new phone number or email you would like to use okay so I'm gonna say this again go into messages to the thread that you want to change and then you tap the person's name and then tap the info tile the little info thing and then long press on the messaging bubble and select the new phone number or email you would like to use he says this keeps all the history and photos of a message for that contact to one thread I've done this many times and it works to switch from phone to email or the other way around it also works if the contacts which is to Android with a different number all previous photos and messages remain available so this is interesting I've certainly experienced this before Rob's not wrong but it sometimes does this automatically in fact this week Pete you texted me from a number that I had never seen you text from and I knew it told me it was you because it was like this person shared their contact information with you you know that little bubble on the top and I was like okay so this is Pete and the message was it was clearly you and so I was like oh all right and so I just went in and to this new phone number that's there up in the top I clicked on the number I said add to contacts and then I chose existing contact instead of new contact and I and this was on my Mac I did this by the way and I said add it to the pilot Pete contact and then immediately it merged the two threads so that it they would like messages will merge them this was messages on Ventura on my Mac down in the studio for anybody you know if there's if there are nuances between say Monterey and Ventura or whatever but but that did work it just like you know it all the messages were then together and merged and happy and all that good stuff I know what happened okay that is my data sim that I used for Europe so and it's a so that's a Hong Kong number that you saw so you have a data sim with a number which is not always the case right which I didn't realize I had but let me tell you I then at some point so I wouldn't inadvertently get charged on my mint mobile yeah said we'll make that my default voice number and boy did things go to oh you don't do that no don't do that because text to anybody it wouldn't let me receive texts and all that fortunately I had a WhatsApp as a backup but it went crazy and I finally got it all sorted out and sent it back to the way it was but it made my life particularly difficult for a little while and there was some other point I wanted to bring up there so don't get old all right for your memory yeah so okay so that's good to know like from my standpoint I probably should remove that number yeah I'm not gonna be sending to that number any or from that number and if I wind up sending to it you won't get it so oh and that was well wait wait wait you might you might because that number is now attached to your iCloud account in Apple system so if I send to it as an iMessage you'll probably get it for a while oh no it's not I pulled it I pulled it I did yeah I did not want that in there but that was the other point was it's the all those scoundrels out there using Android devices I couldn't send them anything correct yeah exactly right because you didn't have SMS service on that number right that's interesting all right cool all right well that mystery solved it's gonna be all right another self-inflicted stupidity wound that happens I mean this is why we do what we do here it's not so much stupidity it I mean sure we could call it that some yeah but sometimes not so much but yeah it's we're trying different things with tech and and often they don't work out exactly like they like in your case right the reason you switch to that number is because you didn't want your mint sim live when you were not on Wi-Fi and and therefore would start getting charged for inbound because mint charges you five cents for every inbound and outbound SMS so okay fine like I get and and the it served its intended purpose right like you you did that however it had a ripple effect and you know we we can't always this is really truly this epitomizes perhaps my favorite thing about what we do here on this show is we teach each other about these ripple effects right like right and and it's handy to know like in the back of your head like wait wait wait if I do that I heard about this or or Pete shared or you know somebody shared and and so it's like oh maybe I don't want to do it and so the next time that you're in that scenario the right thing to do is to turn that sim off the mint sim off during a day right that's the key to that is just turn it off or if you don't have any roaming credit on your mint sim then you're fine because it won't let those texts in anyway that's a very good point charge you but but you can't you can't just like decide you can't tell mint don't like pretend I don't have any roaming credit if you do so right turning it off the key and you can turn it even if I leave men on I think you can go in and put cellular data on that other line and say don't allow automatic switching correct but that won't change SMS or phone calls because that's not cellular data so if you want to avoid this the SMS is you just turn the sim off until you get back to Wi-Fi because mint like most carriers but it's worth checking with your carrier mint when you're when you're not in the US if you are on Wi-Fi and have Wi-Fi calling enabled you will get your SMSes and phone calls over Wi-Fi and you get that comes in for no charge no additional charge like there's no roaming charge for that so yeah all right that was good like this is what we do what we do all right I mean it's a seven-minute quick tip but you know whatever it was a good one Neil shares he says a quick tip which might be known to everyone but I just discovered no Neil I learned this from you this week on Ventura and I think this happens in other operating systems when I open a print dialogue the button that says PDF which allows you to open a drop-down menu to save the print job as a PDF or save post script or to mail or web receipts or whatever else you put in there he says seems to have a feature I never noticed before if you click on instead of clicking the drop-down if you simply click the word PDF in the in that drop-down menu treat it like a button instead of a menu it will jump automatically to the save as PDF dialogue saving a step not the biggest quick tip in the world he says but he says since I print a PDF a lot helpful I agree with you Neil I I think that's a great tip to use that is and then I've got one to add to that that are not so that one you need to use your mouse and click on it the GUI you have to use the GUI I'm a huge keyboard shortcut guy makes my life go much faster so I use this one and I set it up it's slightly different in Ventura than in Monterey and previous editions but all credit to Sparky Max Max Sparky David sparks for this quick tip I use command PP so I hold down the command key and I hit PP and it brings up my save as PDF dialogue the quick way to set it up is system settings keyboard keyboard shortcuts app shortcuts all applications and in the menu title window you have to type save as PDF and you have to do that exactly as it appears in that menu item or it won't work so it's capital S save as capital PD capital D capital F and then the ellipsis and the way to get the ellipsis is the option key in the semicolon because if you just type three periods it doesn't sometimes it's smart enough sometimes it's not option semicolon I learned a thing okay you go that's how you get your ellipsis and then when you save out of that all you have to do is hit command PP and it brings you immediately to the save as PDF dialogue without having to move your mouse around the board the reason what Pete's describing is is the like like he said in either system settings or preferences in keyboard shortcuts app shortcuts you can create your own keyboard shortcuts for any item that appears in any menu and so when you are in an app command P brings you to the print dialogue as I think most of us probably know what Pete is doing is adding a menu shortcut for this new menu that appears in the print dialogue and assigning that also to command P so that he doesn't have to do anything different he just says command P the first time he does command P it brings up the print dialogue the second time he does command P while the print dialogue is up it chooses save as PDF and you could do this with anything like I have I have that same shortcut set to our PDF we have a an Apple script that we wrote that puts that PDF into notes as a PDF and then that's what we share here and by the way my other script is working now I got it I got it working so I can archive notes yeah it's great yeah so you get it to save as post script or correct you choose whatever you want whichever menu selection correct and I added a second one there just to mail a PDF so I can do command P command M and it now mails that PDF because whatever's in that menu you can do and again this isn't limited to the PDF dialogue or the print dialogue rather anything in any menu that you use a lot that doesn't have a menu shortcut you can add one in system preferences or settings keyboard shortcuts app shortcuts so that's the the the the key there so yeah hopefully that's helpful yeah man yeah all right let's Larry these are these are the weirdest like the least quick quick tips we've ever had but it's fine it's not your fault I'm the one that built the today's agenda helping I'm helping stretch this out welfare that's what we do Larry shared he was having trouble sending pictures to Android people via messages meaning his MMS was not working right the multimedia whatever it is I don't know I forget what MMS stands for somebody'll tell me but you know he could send SMSes to them but anytime he sent a picture it would you know he get the little red you know dot that said it couldn't send fine he did all the things he went in and made sure that SMS and MMS were turned on in settings messages on his phone like all this stuff still wasn't working he said he finally was able to get it to work this morning says I first called up Apple and they asked me to check my Wi-Fi settings I have two Wi-Fi networks at my home blah blah blah and they that didn't work he says then I called I got sick of dealing with Apple tech support and I went to the Verizon store immediately the guy seemed to know what the issue was and that I needed a and here's the term I can't Google and find this term folks by the way but he said the guy told him I needed a network sync he said that it solves a lot of problems with iPhone to Android issues so it's something to keep in mind he said just call up Verizon tech support and ask for a network sync there's probably another term that will show up on the Google's that this is actually but for now calling Verizon text if you're having these problems calling Verizon tech support and asking for network sync might not be a bad thing to do once a year sort of as a matter of course if you're a Verizon customer yeah I don't know like it I've never heard of this before but the different carriers call it different things because it would be too easy to call it the same yeah exactly yeah but like I know that there is a way like when I was with AT&T they would occasionally tell me I needed to download the new version of their profile and they said the way to do it was to go into settings general sorry settings yeah general about and scroll down to the part where you see the details about your SIM or your eSIM and by going down there it would like refresh something and when AT&T would text me and tell me to do this I would go do it and then on that screen once I got down that far I would get like a little dialogue that popped up that said restart to apply the new you know settings or whatever and I was like okay like it was it was completely like there was nothing to do other than sort of scroll through this the about screen but that works so maybe that's the same thing I don't know but like that's also something that's just worth knowing that works with some carriers it definitely was a thing with AT&T so if you know stuff like this weird things that are like don't seem to make any sense but actually do have results feedback at MacGeekEv.com we'd love to hear from you whoa whoa whoa where feedback at MacGeekEv.com that's what we said feedback at MacGeekEv.com and unless you're a premium subscriber in which case you get to use premium at MacGeekEv.com and you can learn more about that at MacGeekEv.com slash premium I was on a zoom call with with one of the folks that it works for me I was actually doing some I put I put out a TikTok video with a quick tip this week I think I'm gonna start doing more of those because it's a great way to sort of show things and and I I'm not a TikTok expert so but thankfully I have people who work for me who are and so both Sadie and Skylar my daughter showed me all kinds of things to make my video that I had created into something that appeared at home on TikTok which is great but it was like I want to share my screen with you and so the first time I was on a call it's like ah I know how to share the iPhone screen and I did the whole dance where you launch quick time player you create a new movie you make the screen you connect your iPhone first via sorry I did this out of order you connect your iPhone via USB you know lightning whatever and then launch quick time player create a new movie and choose your iPhone screen as the camera from the little drop-down thing that that's just how this works and and it was great like it worked and I could and then I shared that screen in zoom it was like yep there it is I could do everything I needed to do it was awesome and then later in the day I went to do the same thing and I saw right there in zoom screen share that you could share your iPhone screen either using USB cable like I was doing with the extra step of quick time player or airplay so I learned a thing and now you get to do it too because it's right there zoom screen sharing window is it's just cluttered with everything it could possibly share yeah there it is the sound it's cluttered with everything and so I give myself a half of a pass for for not just knowing it was there but that's the beauty of the stuff is sometimes just knowing it's there is the key yeah so yep hey Dave as long as we're on quick tips can I throw one then it's not on the agenda and I promise in 30 seconds I told you pre-show there's no I terrified myself last week we shared and cool stuff found keyboard clean tool I like to clean my screen with a dark screen so I used keyboard clean tool locked out my keypad went on my track pad turned the wind in displays turned the brightness all the way down and clean my laptop and then went oh yeah you could do where the mouse is and how to turn the brightness back up you the quick tip is go ahead oh yeah how would well wait let me so your trackpad works yes it doesn't lock out your track pad it locks out your keyboard okay so so I went into system settings and I went to displays and I turned the brightness all the way down so I had a nice black screen and I could clean the keyboard and the screen with my alcohol wipes that are special for glass and all that and then I had no way to turn my brightness back up because I didn't know where my house yeah so and you can't use your keys because they're locked because they're turned off yeah so the quick tip is press and hold your power button for about 15 seconds the machine will power down and when it powers back up keyboard clean tool is disabled and you can use your keys again so it's a brain so often flicked it's stupidity wound so in a shot of terror because I'm thinking well I'm not going to be able to record make a gap later today because my computer is going to be locked and the battery won't die for about a week on these MacBook Air 2s especially with the screen off with the screen I was just trying to think like what would you normally do but your laptop has brightness keys on it right like if you didn't have brightness keys then then if I had the touch pad I think maybe you could the touch pad may work to bring your brightness back up but yeah but the what the brightness keys were just as disabled as every other key so yeah a couple of I have some thoughts about this Kiwi Graham in the in Mackey comm slash discord while we're recording the shares could you have used Siri to do it if you had Siri enabled on your laptop so probably right that's that's one way yeah I don't know if I have her listening or not I think I have a double pump the control button so that wouldn't work but would never she'd have been listening maybe I don't like I don't know maybe that would be one thing the other thing I mean these are just ideas that are coming to mind would be if you had VNC like remote screen sharing turned on on your Mac and you ran like screens on your iPhone you could see your screen because your screen's not off it's just right it's just not bright so there's that you could also I'm trying to think like yeah I guess that's it really we need the folks at Fully Vora who make keyboard clean tool or screen tool whatever it's called and also make touch bar the touch bar tool a better touch tool better tool that's it what we need is for them to put this functionality in that app where it's like it set my screen to dim my screen for 90 seconds and then bring it back up to full brightness there you go right listening guys that'd be awesome right that would be that would be the way that'd be one way to do it or to say you know if you screw this up just hold the button just hold the power button yeah but I feel like that wouldn't be a difficult thing for them to add to the app you could write an Apple script that brings the or chat GPT could help we're gonna say with the help of Mac GPT I could but yeah you could you could you like an Apple script could bring the brightness back up keyboard maestro can bring the brightness back up so you could set you could create a macro and keyboard maestro or an Apple script that says wait 90 seconds and then bring the brightness to full yeah now wait 90 bring it up yeah exactly yeah let it do the whole shooting match for you so like yeah but but again all of these require advanced planning which I had done which right you know the ripple effects are the ripple effects you know in Tennessee Papa says you can shine a flashlight on the screen and see the cursor oh no you can yes oh I was thinking that because I tried I tried at least well yeah my I thought it wasn't bright enough I thought it was there yeah I thought it was just it was more reflective than anything else that makes sense and yeah you might you might be better off not shining a light on the screen but turning the ambient light down and see I was in it I was in a dark room it was I tried okay well it fortunately I only tried for about three minutes before I went well you know what I'm just gonna hold the power button and see what happens speaking of three minutes this this 30 second tip 30 second quick tip has taken five now five minutes yeah it's what we do so Rod sent in a quick tip you know we've been talking a lot about different ways of cleaning up audio and the whole voice isolation thing that you do on the Mac and you know all of that stuff and Rod says that while you're on a call on your iPhone you can go into control center and select mic mode and then switch from standard to voice isolation to mute and suppress background noise picked up by your iPhone's mic during a call and there is an article about this and we'll link to that from the show notes a keyboard knowledge based article about it and how to do it but it it the trick is it only shows up during the call you can't turn it on when you're not in a call and I think he did it with his AirPods so I get works with a variety of microphones I believe but I am I I believe that whatever you set it to sticks and persists and you know was my question good yeah okay yeah yeah because I use those vacuum packed bags to get everything into a tiny suitcase yeah and when I when I'm doing that on a phone call with my AirPods in everyone's like what are you doing you know you're crunching rocks with your teeth or yeah yeah yeah yeah so hopefully that would be something to look at cool I know those vacuum packed bags are helpful for travel they are and I'll see if I can get you I saw you put it in the show notes I'll find I get them on I get them at Walmart I get them at Amazon sure that sort of thing and they're really nice essentially I put my clothes in the vacuum packed bag seal it up and there's two different kinds some have the valve on them some you just roll it until you squeeze all the air okay but it makes it so much smaller it'll take what's normally five or six inches and it takes it right down to a heavy vacuum pack yeah and so the only the only drawback to these would be this is great if you are packing into a carry-on if you're packing into a checked bag this is an easy way to ensure right yeah but but for packing into a carry-on and perhaps avoiding the need for a checked bag this is a great idea yeah yeah and because of what you do you basically have to avoid checking a bag yeah I'm on a two-week trip in a 24 inch bag carry-on that's amazing yeah so that's that's I feel like I like we need we need an episode of so there I was where you and Fig share all your packing tips oh there you go seriously yeah that that would be something to something to think about like the things that are obvious to you it's just like what we do here like you know these quick tips every one of them is obvious to some segment of this audience it might might be you know you or me we might have already known about it it's the things that if you already know it's obvious but if you don't know it's voodoo and when you shared this it was like when I saw you doing this in Vegas it was like oh I see the value of this now okay yeah yeah so I also I also do it alone because when I have to use that vacuum pack with the valve and I have to suck the air out with my mouth yeah I don't do that in public you're not gonna do a YouTube video showing us how it works Pete okay so Rob shared in discord I finally figured out something in the macOS mail app that I've been stumped by for a while in most Mac native apps like the Finder you can use option and the up key or the down key to navigate to the top most or bottom most item in a list however which is which is its own quick tip because I had forgot if I knew that I forgot it so now I know how to get to the top and the bottom of a list and finder so that's option up and down so thank you for that sir Rob he says but that's never worked in mail instead I figured out that you need to do command an option and then up or down to go to the top or the bottom of a mail list and he says I don't know why mail app diverges from the standard keyboard shortcuts here but it does so thank you for both of those tips Rob sir Rob my apologies and we just had Rob and Rod and man yeah it's the R-day and you have you have something to add to sir Rob a quick a quick action to that as well is to take your hold your option key down if you have a email with a string in other words several emails back and forth if you hold down the option key and tap the up or down arrow then you quickly move to each separate email that's why you need command option you answered sir Rob's question yes because he was like I don't know why mail is different mail is different because you're using it to navigate within a thread with the option key and if you want to navigate outside of threads even if you're not in a thread you have to add command to it okay and I stumbled across that trying to figure out what he was telling me yes command oh so this isn't something you knew you just you just I was trying to look I was looking at the email going how does this work and I didn't hit command I just had option and I'm going it's just going through the different emails in that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I like it all right and that's only if you're using the threaded view which I believe is the default in mail these days listen I I I'm having an existential crisis here I don't have a lot to share about it other than we I think we referenced it in last week's episode that Mac OS Sonoma at least the first beta the mail app in that does not load extensions so mail extensions are likely dead for Sonoma that means that my beloved small cubed mail suite is dead come Sonoma time so they have I believe they call it mail maven they have been working on a mail app that includes all of the functionality that their plugins add I'm sure I've said on this show that I never want to use anything other than a first-party mail app because if I get you know entrenched in an app that's written by one developer or two developers or whatever then and it goes away and it goes away as they often do or or that like when when small developers or you know single develop small teams or single developers write a mail app they write it for themselves and and I'm not this is not like I've learned I've said and I believe I'm correct that I know more about how Steve Dorner's brain works than most other humans and I've never met Steve Dorner but Steve Dorner wrote Eudora the mail client that I used early on when it was the only mail client to use but it was it was I had to learn how Steve Dorner used a mail client and then I got to use the same mail client right and then when I switched to mail Smith which was written by Rich Siegel and I believe he still maintains it I got to learn more about how Rich Siegel's brain worked than I ever and I also I do know Rich in person but like you get a very and I'll use the word myopic but it's it's not in a negative way you know you get a singular vision on how a mail app could work and then that person brings that vision to life I so it like I've loved the fact that mail is extensible and I can have this sort of generic mail client that is guaranteed to work at the day of release of any macOS update because it's written by Apple and then what's sometimes not available on day of release are the plugins that I would add to mail to add the little functionality that I want but I'm so reliant on some of these plugins like signature profiler to pick signatures per email addresses not just per email accounts and the the like the the outbox rules which is amazing like when we when I reply from feedback at mac e-cab dot com it looks at the message in the outbox and decides whether it needs to add the CC back to feedback at Mac e-cab dot com so Pete can see it you know and like all of these things that I don't reply yeah you just that yeah it makes it smart for you see right it's like super and it's super flexible and I'm very reliant on it so like mail maven might in fact be the right app for me but I don't know and I'm gonna I'm gonna spend some time this summer messing around with you know the different mail apps there's spark and there's a lot of others so stay tuned on that if you have a favorite third-party mail app share feedback at mac e-cab dot com we'd like to know meanwhile we got a lot two more quick tips to round out the first you know 45 minutes of the show Pencicle yes we're just cooking along Pensacola Craig says if you liked the Mac OS OG style system report breakdown of your Mac it is still available in Ventura and Sonoma the way you get to this there's a several ways to get to this but the way you get to this is click the Apple menu with the option key held down and system information will appear right there this is one we've shared many times before but it's always worth a reshare so if you want that detailed system information report hold down option click on the Apple menu and choose system information and you can even watch while you have the Apple menu down you can even watch about this Mac change to system information when you press and depress the option key and then one last quick tip which is really a correction from something we mentioned last week I'm gonna let Louis I'm sorry share this hey guys this is Louis block block tech I sent the tip in this week show 986 about the iframex Kickstarter project and just a quick correction you mentioned how expensive it was and actually that number is in Hong Kong dollars so at 379 Hong Kong dollars that's actually closer to 48 dollars in US dollars so what that helps make a decision for me that was you know a low enough number to take a chance on anyway what that helps thanks thanks Louis thank you so much I got caught by that once yeah yeah was buying some software from a guy in and this store in Hong Kong sure and so I was I think it was PDF pen is what I was buying and it was I don't know 80 or 90 dollars something like that and gave him the money and he gave me most of it back oh no Hong Kong dollars it was like $7 I went oh okay this is probably not PDF pen authorized all right look you know because you listen to the show that your ISP knows literally everything you do online they can it's true you might as well be handing your laptop to a stranger and opening up your browsing history and just walking away while they sniff around that's why it's a great idea to have a VPN when you go online and I get to tell you about our sponsor today which is one of the best VPNs out there it's the one I chose it's the one I paid for before they became a sponsor and that's PIA PIA stands for private internet access and they take privacy seriously not only does PIA hide my IP address it encrypts my entire connection and of course it'll do the same for you and they're super transparent at PIA they never record or store user data and their no logs policy has even been verified in court it's available for all platforms across all your devices and you get endless entertainment options to not only does PIA work with 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then unsecured devices are logging into your company's apps because there's nothing there to stop them collide is the only device trust solution that enforces compliance as part of authentication and it's built to work seamlessly with octa the moment collides agent detects a problem it alerts the user and gives them instructions to fix it it's trying to help here right it's fantastic there's education involved in this everybody's on board and then if they don't fix the problem within a set time they're blocked collides method means fewer support tickets less frustration and most importantly 100 percent fleet compliance visit collide comm slash mgg to learn more book a demo that's KOL IDE comm slash mgg and our thanks to collide for sponsoring this episode all right Pete we spent every quick tip we did took about you know 14 minutes each so let's let's save some time and answer some questions shall we we could do that we can do that so the first question excuse me this week came in from Paul he says when I the problem when I create a calendar event I typically go to month view and then select date and then go into create but I used the list view instead of the hour view for daily views I also tend to scroll when I select the date so I have it one to two inches from the top of my phone so if I scroll at all a different date is at the top of the screen for example this means that I had an event on Sunday instead of Tuesday do you have any suggestions on how to add items to iPhone in calendar app to be less likely to give you the wrong date when creating new events like doctor's appointments and I wrote back my favorite method is to say hey yes lady create an event on Pete's calendar be sure to tell which calendar because I had several on Friday June 16th at 10 a.m. to go to Mac geek gab comm slash discord and listen to the Mac geek gab with there with all the other Mac geek gab listeners and she usually does a pretty good job of creating that event rarely misses never misses on the date but then occasionally you have to go in and edit it from there but you're gonna get very close by using the sly she does a nice job of creating calendar events start at 10 and at 11 yeah invite others she'll do all that for you huh I like that yeah yeah let's yeah yeah that's yeah yeah I have I have experienced the same thing that Paul describes and I use and it happens not just an apples calendar app it happens in busy Cal which is the one I also use on on iPhone and I've just learned to make sure that I go to either the weak view not that not the scrolling view but the sort of horizontal view that's either weak view or month view and tap on the day and then that sort of selects the day even though there's multiple days on the screen and it that that works better for me when I'm scheduling events because I know that it's gonna put it on the right day so yeah yeah yeah interesting I am I'm I mentioned answered quicker than the quick tips yeah I know this is great yeah alright we'll save the mail thing there's some mail conversation happening in the in the chat I well I've acknowledged it porthos John says I was talking about of course my my Apple script that I wrote this week for notes to archive archive things and porthos John says yeah I do the same thing in mail he uses spark email and he says I hit shift command enter to send an email and when I do that it sends the reply and archives the original which is kind of nice and then I I wasn't sure what email client he was talking about like always are you doing with that with Apple script and he says no but I could either Apple script or shortcuts can interface with mail and I thought huh I've never used shortcuts for it in mail I've never used shortcuts for mail I've used Apple script in mail but it's been a long time but it makes me wonder if maybe my world is better like writing a series of Apple scripts to use in mail instead of moving to a third-party email client I don't know like I'm this is like I said existential crisis in the meantime sorry Pete go ahead knows it yeah this this is this is not a good thing it's just gonna change things it's you know but I need to find a path like I am so reliant on being efficient with email that I need to find a way to continue to be able to be efficient with email that's really like the the meta problem to solve right well just for what it's worth I use canary on one of my accounts and that's I think that's in set up I think that's where I got it canary mail canary all right well we got it we got it we'll start it I'll start a thread on not a cap discord about mail it needs it and we need it yeah we need it yep Steve has a has our next question for us about network drives he asked do you have a recommendation is to the best way to automount my network drives every time I log in or turn on my Mac I see that there are a bunch of apps in the App Store but I'm wondering if there's another way to accomplish this either through a terminal command or system settings so the answer is yes and you might not want to you certainly can run a terminal command to mount a disk and it would be like I think disk you till is probably the right one to go after on that but you're gonna want to automate that somehow so that it happens when you log in and also when your Mac wakes from sleep because sometimes these network drives go away when being woken from sleep the way to do it when you log in is to mount the network drive and then put an alias of it essentially just by dragging it into the login items and then that will most of the time especially if you've saved your password for it most of the time that will do it and just log you in and you're you know good to go but if it will only do it at log in it won't do it when you like if your Mac wakes up from sleep and has lost the network drive during sleep which seems to happen more often than not at least for for me for this user and so I had to come up with another way of doing that I wrote I believe it was an Apple script it might be an automator action I can't remember I think it's an automator action to mount the network drive that I need and it I use keyboard maestro to trigger that action both at log in and also whenever it notices that that particular drive is not mounted and so if it sees that the drives not mounted it will try and I have some other triggers on there especially for my laptop where it says hey if you're not on your local network at home don't try this kind of thing because otherwise it would alert me like I tried to do this and it won't mount the drive it's like yeah I don't really want to mount it all the time when I'm you know on some foreign Wi-Fi network that's slow or whatever but don't those are the ways of of scripting it it's sort of on your own although I realized one of them uses keyboard maestro the other one is to use an app like automatter from pixel eyes and that's PIX EL EYES.co.nz but of course the link is in the show notes and that is what every time we have mentioned this on this show in the past that's the advice that we've gotten is why are you like reinventing the wheel just use automatter it doesn't great so someday I might even take that advice but you know my system it ain't broke and it it means I need one less app because I already have keyboard maestro so I just do it that way but yeah that's the that's kind of the the key there if you will so yep all right speaking of having your password in the keychain Jim had a tip for us about the keychain the iCloud keychain and he said I've recently become aware of the fact that when I authorized keychain to automatically fill a password or credit card data on my Mac that authorization think it stays it lingers for a long time seemingly until I reboot next even a couple hours later I'm not required to reauthorize keychain access to fill in data on a website or in an app the more I thought about it the more I realized that this could pose a security risk even though it's probably minimal not being overly familiar with keychain controls and settings I did a web search of how to set the time and I found an Apple support article that helped out in the keychain access app on your Mac click login in the keychains list choose from the edit menu change settings for the keychain login and then change the or click the lock after checkbox and enter a number of minutes if you want to require a password each time the computer goes to sleep select the lock when sleeping checkbox and then hit save says I've only been using this for a day before sending you the guys this email but it seems worthwhile as a security measure he's like I've got it set for 15 minutes and it seems to work out okay so yeah I actually like that that's never considered that before yeah same yeah that's that's pretty good so yeah thanks for that Jim that's a good one I want to take Gary Pete I can do that so Gary wrote in he was having a special time with his computer he says I don't know if this has been an issue with Ventura or one of the latest fixes still I noticed that from time to time I will be in the middle of typing an iMessage on my Mac then all of a sudden the program will close and when I open it I am asked to sign into my Apple ID account when I provide my credentials I get the spinning pinwheel screen which never goes any further I've tried quitting the program and starting it back up and that doesn't fix it the only way to get it back is to restart my whole Mac it seems to occur every week I notice the I notice behavior I notice other behaviors before it as my keys advancing and pausing and music and Apple music and on my keyboard and my keyboard will also stop working I hope Apple fixes this in the Mac new Mac OS version I announced at WWDC I wish Microsoft had their phone app in the Mac Store Mac App Store new eyes today I guess Dave trying to read sorry I wish Microsoft had their phone app in the Mac App Store or a version I could download to stop me from going on the dark side stop me from going on the dark side Gary PS I checked the progress of the program after I got typing this email and it still hasn't moved and I wrote in this look the this stuff is always frustrating and I send them a bunch of basic troubleshooting options basic solutions for fixing messages crashes on the apps which I Google to do some Google foo there when you're done with the primary solutions restart your Mac I said it depends if you've got a Intel Mac reset the PRAM or the NV Ram the SMC that sort of thing that's all on the chip now on the M1 chip and the M2 chip so you don't do that with the newer ones so there's some other quick troubleshooting force quit all apps running on the Mac go to the Apple logo force quit select all the apps command a and then force quit check the credit date and time go to the Apple logo system settings general date and time and set the date and time automatically to set time zone automatically using your current location toggle some of this is my Google foo stuff that I sent to deep into it okay then for and then try booting it as the other one that was good though is try booting in the safe mode sometimes this is a lot of things for the M1 Mac shut it down turn it on after 20 seconds press and hold the power button until you see the startup volumes option on the screen and that's how you get into the safe mode select the startup disk you want and from the keyboard continue in safe mode yeah so the main thing here is also I sent a lot more than I probably needed to and this is not a criticism Gary but it's it's if you tell us up front hey I've got an Intel Mac or I've got an M1 Mac then I can go down one one rabbit hole at a time yeah so but yeah so hopefully some of these troubleshooting things got him there and I said I think I said lastly you may want to reinstall the OS and I believe that that's not on the male version in notes but I believe he did in fact wind up reinstalling the operating system to solve yeah we used to call a maintenance reinstall where you're just reinstalling it on top of itself so you're you're just putting the files back out there putting all the ones and zeros in the right place yeah this seems like a either a corrupted cache file or a corrupted preference file so I like I'm just thinking about like you know in the the grand scheme of if I were there what would I do next yeah and that I would I would log my Mac out of iCloud entirely not just message because its messages keeps getting logged out right so log messages out manually then log my Mac out of iCloud entirely reboot log things back in see if that helps because that is going to rebuild some preference files and some cache files when you do that if that doesn't help then maybe like you said safe mode is great because the process of booting into safe mode also clears out it runs a lot of the maintenance stuff which clears out a lot of those you know cache files and that sort of thing if that doesn't help run onyx is yeah so like those would those would be the things I would jump to but now when you sign out it am I correct that it's been a while since I've done that doesn't it ask you do you want to save these things on your computer locally do you want to delete them generally speaking would you want to delete them and let iCloud re-sync them making sure you had a good backup first yes yes exactly with that caveat yeah that's fine although you feel lucky it it will take you longer to do that because the process of deleting things is is often lengthy when you tell it to do that like calendars especially so I might skip that I might tell it now just keep the local copies and then it'll re-merge them when it comes back it's gonna like it generally does a pretty good job sync is hard but Apple's gotten way better about it I mean if I think if we rewind 10 years and listen to an episode from 10 years ago you'll hear us ranting about how Apple's sync was not not so good the only people that had any idea then it seems to me was Dropbox yeah in the early days yeah because Dropbox was just syncing files and I don't mean to trivialize that but when when you're syncing things like you know individual calendar events and contacts and like those sorts of things it gets even trickier settings you can't be bothered on the phone but you can be bothered on the right no no I wanted to cross all devices right so yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't know it's just how it goes all right so Rob had another question for us in I believe in Discord and I think we're all gonna learn something from this my guess is you folks are gonna have things to send to us too so Rob asked can anyone recommend a product or service that allows me or you to make phone calls from a device that has Wi-Fi but does not have a SIM card enabled and therefore no Wi-Fi calling ideally something where you can pay once to make the call this is I recently ran into an issue with the eSIM pin on my iPhone where I guess I entered the wrong SIM pin too many times and my SIM card got blocked and needed some PUK code from AT&T to reset it they eventually gave it to me but I it was kind of an issue and Rod in Discord replied with my first thought was Skype because Skype can do this and you can launch Skype on your phone and you can use Skype calling and pay for minutes and get a phone number and if you want and all of that stuff right it can work great Rod suggested a service called my sudo mysudo.com and of course there's a link in in the show notes for this and my sudo it's a pretty cool service in that it you pay a fairly trivial amount I think it's like 10 bucks a year and it's they have a lot of different features there's a free plan where you can get some email addresses from them and messaging handles I'm not sure exactly what that means and private browsers but then there's the $9.99 a year plan $9.99 a year plan where you get a phone number with 30 minutes a month and 100 text messages a month in addition to the the other things and you get three virtual credit cards too that you can use so you got kind of burner card numbers if you need to use that but for 10 bucks a year that's not a bad idea so so I'll throw that out there KiwiGram points out that Skype is if you have Microsoft 365 you get 60 minutes of Skype included per month which could could be the magic answer here but I think that's only outbound calling I don't think you get a phone number that you can receive texts or messages too with that I could be wrong but I think that that costs a little bit extra with Skype to have an actual inbound phone number because we did it we did it all right right I thought you were talking about with suit my sudo oh no with my sudo it's part and parcel of this $10 a year thing yeah yeah you have to pay extra for in a Skype phone number I've done it before we did it our Mac geek a number was a Skype number for quite some time 206 666 geek that's not what it is anymore that was through case though that was through K7 okay the the phone number now is 224 888 geek and you can leave us a message there that's a Google voice number yeah yeah yeah but K7 I think K7 still works if you didn't let it expire which evidently I did so yeah yeah that's on me but but yeah I'll call that poor person and ask him if you're geeking out or not yeah I probably don't though just call us it's fine it's much better yeah yeah yeah so yeah hopefully that helps and and you know this is an interesting thing like my daughter for example a Google voice would be the other thing to use I mean here we are like why not you can get a free Google voice number just mentioned it and didn't realize we had yeah you can send and receive texts for free if you need to make a phone call I believe you need to buy minutes I think but but I think you're right but I don't think you need I don't think you need it to receive that may be true yeah yeah so Google voice might be like the top answer here like my daughter when she moved to Italy she did not need her US phone service anymore for obvious reasons she has you know service that she pays like you know four euro for hundreds of gigabytes or something over there but I was like wait wait we should preserve your phone number in case you get like you know two-factor text messages to it or whatever like you you don't want to give up this number that you've had for a decade and so we just ported the number into Google voice it cost to port a number in cost 20 bucks Google voice charges for that but to just get a new number costs nothing you just go and sign up for a number and they'll give you a number and I think you can even sort of pick your number like we were able to pick one that ended in four three three five so that we could have it ending in geek but yeah Google I also presume that she then forwarded that Google voice number to her cell phone in Italy no she didn't bother she'd know she just lets the voicemail come in she gets an email about it obviously okay yeah but she could have friends locally could call her still for no charge yeah right I mean they face timer or whatever yeah that's true yeah you know what kids kids don't use phones no not that way no no correct yeah yes Kiwi Graham I believe Google voice is only for the US but but once you have a US number you can use it elsewhere so yeah yeah alright where are we here maybe we do some some cool stuff found Pete and oh we could do that so we wind up I have technology I have one that I'm really stoked about it is from the folks at Smart ish and it is the cable wrangler which is it it's I've used things like this and now and now they have the bigger cable wrangler which is even bigger what it is is it is something that sits either on your desk or your bedside table or wherever you might have a slew of cables and it is like we've talked about things like this before this one's heavy enough you don't need to use like sticky pads or anything it sits there and it is magnetic on the top and you just drop your cable down onto it and your cable stays there until you grab it so your your cable is not falling down behind the bedside table or behind your desk and you don't have to do that hang under the back from remover you know or maneuver to to get it up back on there or whatever it's 2 30 in the morning at 2 30 in the morning and it comes with a a couple of these like these little clips that you can put with clips magnetic clips that you can put on cables that don't have enough metal to stick to the you know to to be magnetically attracted to the pad and of course you can get more of them but it works with most of my cables I think I had one cable that was that did not work and so I put the little the little you know magnetic clip on it and it works out great they also have the bigger cable wrangler is the new thing they also have cables just cables on their own that they call the crown jewel and they have they come in in variety of different things but but there's one that is the crown jewel it's USB a on one end and they call it universal on the other that's USB see lightning and micro USB so this is it's it's super handy I'm a fan of the crown jewel next to my bed I and and when I travel I like to have one sort of three and one cable with me because that way I always have the ability to charge that like oh I need to charge this thing that's you know micro USB fine alright so I have that cable and it's like great but I don't have to carry an extra cable I don't have to have an extra cable by my bed for the you know three times a year now that I need to use micro USB or whatever but but yeah it's it's nice so highly recommend that I've been very happy with it checking it out for the last couple of weeks so nice yeah Pete I have a another audio experiment but it it's it's in the form of a cool stuff found that listener Aaron sent to us it is called the ultimate vocal remover and this is a it's an open source thing it's available you download it from github I believe it's cross platform for everything you know I obviously downloaded it for the Mac and they have separate builds for Apple Silicon versus Intel they have Linux I believe they have a Windows version yes and it is it takes an audio file like a piece of music and it splits the it creates two files from that one that only has the instruments and one that only has the vocals and it preserves all the reverb on the vocals and everything so I I played with it and here is a sample of basically the same segment of a fling song called botched amalgamations it's on our new EP called uncorked and so I will play the original of this segment it's it's it's got some harmony so it's it's like the the verse going into the the final chorus and then I'll play the two split outs so let's let's see where we go with this alright so that that's as we mixed it here it is with just the instruments it's amazing it's like we just muted the vocals like it just took it out this took maybe it took two minutes and 18 seconds for this app on my M1 air to split this five-minute song apart and now here's the vocals if you listen deep in the background I heard singing back there oh yeah you hear Dave singing the harmony that's correct yeah yeah yeah that's Jamie Bradley singing the lead on that one I was singing the harmony but if you listen in the background you will hear we had a horn section that we that played on this song for us and you hear the trombone and it's not surprising that you hear this very faint trombone because the trombone was built to be to mimic you know it to instrumentally mimic the human voice correct and and so it doesn't surprise me that the algorithm doesn't entirely split that out I mean it's buried like you can barely hear it but it is there and I've done it with other songs since I created these files where it you know it's like the vocals are just alone it's so it's pretty cool thing thanks for thanks for sharing that Aaron so my question in recording typically when you do the master the vocals are on a separate track and the instrumentals are on the track and in fact some of the instruments on on many different tracks but oh yeah this was one track and this software pulled it all apart correct this was the final watering yeah I mean right I happen to have all of the tracks for that particular song but yeah you could do this with any song that you have you know a wave file or an mp3 file or whatever for you just you know just put it in so yeah I took the final stereo master the file that we like it was done done done and we sent to Apple Music and you know Spotify and all of those things that's the file that I just chopped apart because I knew where it was it was like what other files do I have like I don't well I have that you know I knew I had it because I created it so so yeah so I'm pretty sure we chatted briefly about this I see two new uses for karaoke is going to be a huge resurgent yep because now you've got your instrument and you sing along and if you put that vocal track in the headset then someone can use it as a I guess a guide or a learning track to make sure they sing on key people like me who don't sing on key all the time sure would have a better ability to stay on key when I'm hearing somebody else sing it in my ear just fair yeah yeah I like it because and there are apps that will do this too but I like it because it allows me to hear the vocal melody in the harmonies without the instruments obscuring it because a lot of times you will intentionally you know put the harmonies in the background right you know and it's like well if I need to learn the harmonies on a particular song and I did like there was there was a part I didn't play it on this song where Aaron another person in fling sang a thing and I never quite I didn't mix that part of the song so I didn't ever hear his soloed track and then I didn't it was like that's the melody you're singing oh I had no idea okay great you know it's like cool yeah because he never sings it live so I've started singing it I was like oh I've been doing it wrong but now I know so yeah so do harmonies come naturally to you Dave can you do that or did you work I mean well they do now I don't yeah I did they they didn't always but I spent a lot of time in college I actually I went to school for I didn't I never got my degree by the way but I went to school for computer engineering and for music and one of the most valuable classes I took was a harmony and theory class I took several of them but there was this one and we had a site singing lab at 8 a.m on the other side of campus in the winter semester right so yeah so I had to get up at like you know 720 so that I could like be dressed when I had to walk out the door at 730 to make it to this class at 8 o'clock and then I had to sing for an hour with no accompaniment right and and it was all just singing intervals like you know first third first fourth first fifth you know that kind of thing and and just learning intervals and it was at the same time that I was also in a band where I was singing a lot of harmonies and so having the ability to do that three times a week in a classroom and then you know Thursday Friday Saturday three times a week at night on stage with a band having a practical application of it the combination of those two and maybe some other factors really cemented in my brain how to see harmonies and so yes harmonies since then come fairly naturally to me yeah but the way that I learn how to find harmonies in a song is I learned the lead vocal part it like I it's way easier for me to know where to go if I know what I'm singing to right like if I'm it's so yeah yeah yeah as I was they say I'm always jealous of my sister who just could naturally sing harmonies from the time she was a little girl she'd sing the song someone said hey here's what a harmony is and she listened she went oh I could do that and she was hitting that's great yeah yeah I have I have um I don't have perfect pitch perfect pitch is is where somebody can play a note and you tell them and you and with someone with perfect pitch can say oh I I know that that's a B flat and by the way it's a little sharp you know that kind of thing like our friend Chris Breen has perfect pitch I am very in many ways thankful I don't because it would probably drive me a little bit crazy uh but I do have uh I have developed very good relative pitch meaning I know when uh like if if somebody you know is is singing a note I know where the third is I know where the fifth is again probably because of that that process I went through but I I am very happy having good relative pitch um and not having perfect pitch because all I need to know is that I'm in tune with the person who's singing or playing I don't need to know that it is in tune with you know A at 440 hertz so that makes it sound like you're not off key if you're all singing together correct a little off key and you're singing it together it sounds better and there are certain singers and I will not name names ever but there's people that I have sung with a lot throughout my life and every everybody has different tendencies I mean this is not going to be a great surprise right so um there are some folks who will always sing like right on key uh there are some folks who will always sing a little bit flat but not in a bad way there are some folks who will always always sing a little bit sharp but not in a bad way and I like sometimes yes but whatever uh I've learned that with certain people that I sing with it's like oh I need to sing because I listen to the bass when I'm singing uh the root note like of the chord and then that's where I see the rest of the harmonies and I know what to do but I know that if I'm singing with person A they're going to be 10 sharp when they sing this chorus and so I can't sing to the bass I need to sing to them and blend that vocal and make it sound good and it's going to be fine if we're both 10 sharp the harmony fits yeah it's sharp from where the instruments are but it's okay like it's within the range of of acceptability and what really is going to sound good is if we are singing together so and I'm not perfect either in fact uh I that was the third verse into the third chorus from that song that I played I did not segment out the first verse into the first chorus because the first harmony I sang there we didn't catch it I didn't notice it until we did this but I am super sharp like I way overshot that no I have no idea how we missed that during the recording process but we very much did so anyway and that concludes this episode of the mac gig gap yeah exactly yeah no that's right kiwi grimm said welcome to mac gig gap yeah no that's five minutes of uh of that yeah for sure so let's uh let's circle back and do two maybe one maybe two more cool stuffs found the next one comes from listener neil we talked in the last episode about the kickstarter project that is available for uh a wallet sized find my card if you will and neil says yufi has a product called the smart track card for this you set it up on your i-device using the yufi security app and then it can be added to find my as well and uh it can also trigger your phone to play a tune just like you know it's so that you can kind of find it back um he says he has a little trouble with that because every time he sits down with his wallet in his back pocket uh the phone thinks that it's being triggered and so his phone makes a noise but uh but yeah that's the yufi smart track card and I found it on amazon I'll check the price again yeah it's 20 bucks on amazon at least as of the day we're recording this 1999 even so not a uh not a bad little not bad little little deal yeah awesome that yeah that is awesome because that's cheaper than than an air take that's fair and that's right yeah and but I had the same problem with my tile though I would always trigger my phone with my tile my flat tile yes yeah the flat right the flat tile yeah and then um we've had this this what will be the final cool stuff found around for a while um it it is something that we mentioned in 859 but listener jo brought it back and it is a piece of software for our max called al dente and it is built for advanced or enhanced battery management uh on our max it's the charge they call it the all-in-one charge limiter app for macbooks and it will stop your mac from charging at different points just to keep your um to keep your your battery sort of conditioned I am not sure I I don't leave my laptop plugged in all the time these days like I have so I don't know how necessary this is certainly in the old days something like this was absolutely necessary apples battery technology the physical technology has gotten better the software that's in macOS has also gotten better but there are a lot of folks out there including listener jo who swear by using this app and uh I certainly have tried it I don't think it's going to do anything bad for your mac so like if you are someone who winds up plugging your mac laptop in more often than not then uh then this might be a um this might might be a good thing to have I'm looking at what what jo said he says we know that apples tech in this regard is is lacking um and he says you can drag a slider to adjust the battery state of charge it also has a button to quickly top the battery up when you know you will be taking it off the charger there are all kinds of settings but the last one he wants to mention is the task of calibrating the battery and he runs that monthly so uh so there you go yeah yeah so um what's the uh can you see the price on that Dave because there's a free and a pro version yeah good question uh uh oh there is a yeah so free has the charge limiter and a discharge and then for ten dollars fifty nine cents which it says is a subscription license so maybe that's annually so it's yeah ten fifty nine a year or twenty two twenty nine lifetime uh you get to do all the other things which include automatic discharge heat protection um you can control the magsafe led well that might be worth the price of admission alone if you're in your bedroom right you know like you don't want that bright light on huh okay uh there's shortcut support calibration mode live status icons and email support so yeah so so if you're going to use this the the either the subscription to lifetime license is short money so yeah good question Pete thank you for uh for bringing us there yeah man and that does bring us to where we need to finally end things why to be for this week yeah what's going on here why oh that was weird the band on strike yeah there they come yeah maybe maybe i was singing out of tune too much right we're not playing yeah yeah or maybe you maybe you stripped the band out of the vocal track here maybe maybe it was just the vocal track of the instrumental yeah is do i have i know i don't have that that thing on there because there are plugins and stuff that will do this and so yeah thanks for hanging out with us again as always folks we love that we get to do this and it really means a lot to us absolutely having a ball and can i say a personal point of privilege thank you for all the nice comments from all the listeners i've gotten a bunch of comments this week that people are glad i'm here and doing the show with you and it warms my heart and i'm thrilled to do it so thank you every man yeah no you yeah you uh you know i it your your role on this show it the most your most important role on this show is exactly what you just it was exemplified by what you just did well we were talking about al dente where you asked about the price it you playing and representing the listener uh to make sure that the things that that we might miss and of course you know we do this for each other for sure but you really brought that to this show when you when you first joined was that that concept of hey wait wait wait you just glossed over something real fast what's that again you know explain that a better way and uh and i i i i know everyone appreciates it as much as i do and and i also know that you uh especially over time we always say you know you don't have to be a geek to listen but if you listen long enough you will become one and i think you also exemplify that too so which is a great one yeah yeah it's a great thing yeah yeah so no it's been it's been a fun ride and i hope to keep riding for quite a while keep riding we're 18 years now right now we're we're into our 19th year this is the first episode of our 19th year so uh so yeah it shows old enough to vote it is old enough to vote i wonder what it cares about what what are the important issues i'm thinking maybe make america great britain again uh i think that might be a good discussion to have at max stock now that the show is old enough to vote what are the issues the tech issues that are important oh there you go tech issues not political right we don't we don't we have gotta be a political yeah we are a a political i i'm always thinking about uh lol george's famous song a a political blues which is a great tune and if you want to really nerd out because we already did the nerding on music thing um the that song has two grooves going simultaneously it's like this bomb like this bump and grind kind of blues thing and then there's a halftime and a double time groove going on at the same time it's it's brilliant you don't hear it it's just a great song it's just a great song but you can dig in so we have cookies t and papa absolutely thanks for hanging out with us thanks for uh yeah i'm sending in all of your stuff thanks for listening if you aren't subscribed please subscribe that way you'll get the new ones and if you aren't subscribed to our email which you can do at mackeekab.com go do that too because that way you get the show notes with all the links to all the things that we mention and some notes and tips and stuff right there in the show notes they are sent every single week we are happy to be able to do that and we're happy to have you so yeah thanks for hanging out thanks to our sponsors of course piavpn.com slash mg g and collide.com slash mg g of course you can see all the current sponsors at mackeekab.com slash sponsors but you also get any deals that have ever been uh available to you even if the people aren't sponsors anymore we keep those alive so that you get the discount pete i've been all day i've been here looking at your shirt and you know it inspires me because i think i think it's important that that we we share like we share a lot of specific sort of nitpicky advice and answers on this but if you were to have sort of one piece perhaps the very best piece of general advice that one human could give to another what would that be well fortunately i don't have my camera in mirror mode so i'm not trying to read backwards i can see it right on my own monitor the front of my shirt has that advice for the world to see so until next week everybody don't get caught made