_Dear Friends,_

It is maple sugaring time here in Vermont once again with sunny days and cool nights. Some of my fondest winter memories are of sugaring up in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. We would sugar the old fashioned way by using a hand drill to tap the trees and hanging buckets on the taps and just waiting for the sap to flow.

I went to farm auctions to buy the equipment I needed, including buckets, taps and a small evaporator or arch. I had a big work horse at the time and a large sled with a gathering tank attached to it. We would wear long boots to tromp through the nearly waist-deep snow to gather the buckets and pour them into the tank while my horse patiently waited to pull the heavy sled to the next batch of sugar maple trees.

Once the tank was full, it was over to the make-shift sugarhouse where the evaporator was set up and where we had stored enough firewood to fire it up and boil away the water to make syrup. Tasting it at various points along the way was required and while I don’t think we ever made any syrup that would qualify for “fancy” grade, the best tasting syrup ever was our grade b homemade maple syrup.

March tends to be one of the slowest retail months, especially here in Vermont, but our legislature here in Vermont decided to spice things up a bit and provide some economic stimulus to the retail sector with this year’s first-in-the-nation tax-free holiday. We have brought in a lot of inventory and have been taking pre-orders for payment and pickup on Saturday and it looks like we are in for a great sale.

I’m doing the midnight to noon shift but will stay at the S. Burlington store as long as Katie needs me. She and Artie are planning to be there for the entire 24 hours of the sale!

In the Mac Finder, you can get info on any file, folder or application by highlighting it (by clicking on it once), and then holding down the *Command* and *I* keys at the same time. I use this all the time to determine the size of a file, assign sharing and editing permissions to it, and set the preferred application to open it.

I recently discovered that you can use the Get Info command directly within Spotlight. Simply search for the file you’re looking for in Spotlight, highlight it, and hold down *Command* and *I* at the same time. This is a very speedy way to get info on any file on your Mac!

__This is something I get asked about a lot. So here it is again; originally featured in__ “Kibbles & Bytes #531.”:http://www.smalldog.com/kibbles/kibbles_display.php?id=528

This is a two-part Mac Treat: First, we’ll go over how to stop an application from launching when you would like it not to, and secondly, we’ll show you how to make sure the right application for the right job launches every time.

If you’ve ever launched an application and wished you hadn’t, use the handy Option+Command (Apple)+Esc to Force Quit. Commonly used to quit an application that’s not responding, the Force Quit key command will also immediately stop the application from starting.

On to the second part: If you’re tired of automatically launching an undesired application when you double-click on a file, here’s a way to pick your chosen application every time.

I often end up with multiple applications on my computer that can do the same task–for example, both Preview and Photoshop will open my images. The way I look at it is that if I’m double-clicking on an image, that means that I want to just view the image, not edit it. (If I want to use Photoshop to manipulate the image, I’ll just drag the file down to the dock on top of the Photoshop icon to launch it.)

So, in order to change the way the applications act from here on out, you need to right click on the file you would like to train (that’s Control+Click for those with a one button mouse), and click Get Info. Then, click on “Open with:” and select the application you want (For my photos, I select Preview). Then, select “Change All…” to make sure it happens every time. (Note: if the Change All button is grayed-out, that means your chosen application is already the default.)

The result? Hopefully, no more (or far fewer) unwanted bounces!

Vermont is having a sales tax holiday tomorrow, on Saturday, March 6! There will be *no sales tax on items that cost $2,000 or less.* This could save you some serious dough if you’re upgrading your own computer, your family’s Macs, or just want to grab some fun gadgets. The savings can add up, as sales tax in Vermont is 6%, and even 7% in a couple of towns (South Burlington, Williston).

We’re celebrating with a 24-hour sales event at our South Burlington retail store. The store will open at 12:01 AM and close at 11:59 PM. Our Waitsfield store will be open with regular business hours on Saturday, we’ll have additional telephone coverage, and our warehouse will be busy packing orders all day.

We’ll be posting semi-delirious midnight tweets and Facebook updates from our Burlington store all night long. Follow us on “Twitter”:https://twitter.com/hellosmalldog as “hellosmalldog”:https://twitter.com/hellosmalldog or friend us on “Facebook”:http://www.facebook.com/smalldogelectronics

“Click here to read about the Vermont Sales Tax Holiday FAQ.”:http://www.smalldog.com/taxholiday

Note that everyone who lives outside of Vermont gets to order tax-free from Smalldog.com every day (we don’t charge sales tax on orders that ship out of Vermont).

Last week I wrote about how to save custom colors in the Mac color wheel that’s used for formatting text. “Click here to see this in the Kibbles and Bytes archive.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/?c=kb660

Quite a few people asked about how to get rid of custom colors they no longer use. The only way I’ve found to do this is to make a white square with the magnifying glass, and then drag the white square into the custom color block to give the illusion of clearing it out.

You can also replace any custom color you’ve created with a new custom color. It’s sort of a work-around, but it does the trick!

*Editor’s note:* __For those of you who use Notebook from Circus Ponies, a cool trick is to drag one of the colors from the Color wheel into your notebook. Notebook is formatted so that each cell can be a different color, and once you drag and drop the color you want into that cell, the text color will automatically change! -Kali__

Email “ed@smalldog.com”:mailto:ed@smalldog.com or “kali@smalldog.com”:mailto:kali@smalldog.com with other tips about the Color wheel!