All Apple All Day

  As promised, we went ahead and installed HomeBridge on our QNAP NAS.  And we connected our Ring Doorbell and cameras to HomeKit.  It worked. It worked SO well.

The last couple of years have been kind of a mess for everyone. We moved into a new house, and then immediately got locked down in it.   Here's what we've been up to on the HomeKit front.

Our new house came with an August Smart Lock Pro already installed.  We've written about it in this space quite a few times.  Now, we've upgraded to its successor - the 4th Generation August Wifi Smart Lock.  It's a worthy upgrade, and Pro owners should consider making the switch. 

I'll get the "review" part out of the way immediately - the EGO steel-deck mower is the best lawn mower I've ever owned, by a long shot.  There isn't any competition, really. Certainly not from gas-powered mowers, not from EGO's electrified competition, and not from EGO's plastic-deck mowers, either. 

When we moved into our new house, we inherited an August Lock Pro.  It's generally worked out as advertised, but a few issues have sprung up from time to time.  First off - as we discussed in the earlier article , the lock occasionally spins without turning the deadbolt... and the only way to open the door is to remove the August Lock entirely.  This may be specific to our door. It only happens when the door isn't completely closed, so the deadbolt is a little bit misaligned, and there's too much friction.  Still, it's embarrassing when your friends and family can't open the door from the inside. A door should be open-able!  I'm ASSUMING that the fix here is to replace the deadbolt adapter, which is a little worn. They're $10 from August - I'll report back. The second issue is more of a "pet peeve" than an actual issue... You need to use your phone to unlock the August Lock Pro.  And by the time you've pulled your phone out of your pocket,

Back in the early days of AAAD, our late-2009 iMac was the center of our connected home. It held all of our photos, our iTunes library, and our documents.  We replaced the late-2009 iMac with a 27" retina iMac a few years ago. My dad took the old iMac and used it in his office.  Last week, he let me know that the iMac was having issues, and that he'd bring it to me to check it out. It would only boot to the White Screen of Death. No Apple logo, no cursor, no pinwheel... not even a bomb icon.  I'd never repaired an iMac before. Was it worth trying to fix this one?