“Fix It” collection
Master the art of household maintenance with practical DIY repair guides for appliances, electronics, and software systems. These tutorials focus on cost-saving troubleshooting techniques and hands-on solutions to keep your home and gadgets running at peak performance.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →September 3, 2014
How To Change the Default Browser on Mac with Chrome Canary and Chrome
Google recently released a 64-bit version of its browser, Chrome Canary. If you want what Google calls "the bleeding edge of the web" type of browser, you can download and install Google Chrome Canary for Mac (or Windows). It has the latest features and is targeted towards early adopters, developers and the like. I had been using the beta channel…
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April 27, 2014
Review & Giveaway: Honeywell WiFi Smart Thermostat (RTH9580)
A little over a year ago, I installed a Honeywell WiFi Thermostat in my home, replacing one of those traditional, "dumb" thermostats that typically comes with a furnace or air conditioner. It was great being able to not only remotely connect to my home's heating and cooling to turn it on and off, but also using the smart heating and…
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April 21, 2014
How To Install a New Hard Drive & Battery into a 2010 MacBook Pro
There comes a day in the life of every laptop when it simply isn't running as efficiently as it could be. This day came to my 2010 MacBook Pro recently when I looked to see that it only had about 18 GB of hard drive space left and the battery was only able to hold a charge for about an…
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December 17, 2013
This Amazing Fix Will Get Your MacBook Air Charging Again!
I have an older MacBook Air and absolutely love it. It has performed flawlessly and is well used by me and my kids. However, I have had a lingering issue that has appeared every few months or so that has often left me scratching my head. Sometimes, when I plug in my 45 watt power supply, the little green light…
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October 7, 2013
Which Apple ID to use for iTunes App Store, iMessage, iCloud and Find My iPhone
Apple's iOS 7 introduced some confusion when it comes to Apple IDs. But the change was intentional because Apple's desire was to make iOS much more secure. As part of the upgrade process, iPhone and iPad users are required to set up an iCloud account and associate it with Find my iPhone. This process will (hopefully) cause the number of…
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September 27, 2013
Site Performance Optimization: MaxCDN, Nginx, CloudFlare and WordPress Caching
My blog has a problem. Or rather it had a problem but I'm making some big improvements to it to make it perform better. For many years, my site has suffered from slow performance. Much of that is my fault though. I tend to overload WordPress with lots of plugins. Plugins are bad, but they are in many ways, quite…
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June 21, 2013
How To Fix “Login to server imap.mail.me.com failed” Issues on Postbox or Thunderbird
There is nothing more annoying than getting repeated email error messages in your email client from an email server. Sometimes this can be caused by issues with the server, or perhaps the connection, or because some configuration has changed or simply because you have not set up your email properly. Recently in my Postbox app (which is based on the…
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June 14, 2013
Instagram Users – How to Clear the Instagram Cache & Save Space on your Smartphone
If you are a heavy Instagram user, you might not know this but the more you use Instagram, the photo-sharing service and mobile application, the more space the app will consume on your iOS or Android device over time. Originally, when you install Instagram, it only uses about 24 MB (on iOS), but it can grow to use up literally…
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May 7, 2013
How To Easily Remove, Install & Replace an Apple iPhone 4S Battery (Video)
I'm such a heavy user of my Apple iPhones that it really seems like about a year after I get one, I'm doing a how-to article on replacing the iPhone's battery. I now have an iPhone 4S and this past weekend, I replaced the battery. Other smartphone users may scoff at the fact that Apple has made their hardware quite…
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April 25, 2013
How to Stop CHKDSK from Running on Every Boot Up
Recently, my Windows 7 computer started running a CHKDSK each and every time that it booted up. For those that don't know, the CHKDSK utility is a way that Windows validates the system file structure and integrity of your computer's hard drive. You can scan your hard drive with it or run it with a fix (/f) flag to correct…
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March 18, 2013
How to Remove Little Black Square Paragraph Formatting & Page Break in Microsoft Word
Recently, I received a panicked email from my step-mom wondering why a page break could not be removed from Microsoft Word. Normally, if you click on the "show paragraphs" button (¶), you can see a page break or section break. However, in this case, there was no line signifying a section break or page break when the formatting was revealed.…
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March 13, 2013
How To Fix a Broken iPhone Home Button – A Free & Easy Software Fix
Yesterday I received a panicked call from one of my daughters - "Daddy, my iPhone's home button is broken!" Tears and wailing ensued. But, as with any broken gadget, I was up for the challenge, knowing that I could either replace the iPhone home button myself or figure out some other way to breath a few extra days or weeks…
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