This issue of Kibbles & Bytes will mark my last as a member of Small Dog’s Marketing Department (AKA The Four Marketeers). It has been a great experience and I will miss being in the big office (AKA The Fishbowl) at SDE HQ.

While leaving is always sad, my sorrow is mitigated by the fact that I am only moving to the other end of the hall. I will now be working for Small Dog’s Wholesale Division, which manufactures and sells the “Hammerhead”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?x=0&y=0&search=hammerhead and “Chill Pill”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?x=0&y=0&search=chill+pill product lines.

In honor of my new position, check out the great Hammerhead deal below!

For those of you who are fans of my writing (I know you are out there): fret not. I will still be contributing articles from time to time. You can also scan “the archives”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles for some of my now classic articles.

Mike D. out!

Take Don’s advice and start backing up. It’s easier than you think!

While it is not often necessary to shut down your computer, it is not a bad idea to do so from time to time. For example, I am flying to Ohio today and will be shutting my MacBook Pro down completely before I send it through the scanner. Also, for a number of reasons, we shut our computers down every night here at Small Dog.

This means that I need to re-open all the programs that I always leave open each time I start back up. While not an especially time consuming task, it is a little annoying to have to do this every time. Thanks to today’s Mac Treat, I will be annoyed no more.

In order to automatically open programs upon start-up (or when you log in to your user account), follow these steps:

# Go to the Apple menu and select *System Preferences*.
# Click on *Users & Groups* in the *System* section.
# Click on *Login Items*.
# Hit the + (plus) button.
# Find the application you want to add (the *Applications* folder is probably where they all are), highlight it and hit the *Add* button.
# Repeat for all applications you want to add.

The Vermont Department of Tourism & Marketing is holding their 6th Annual Apples to iPods event in Vermont’s apple orchards again this year — it kicks off Wednesday, September 5, at Shelburne Orchards.

If you find a wooden apple in any of the participating orchards, you could win an iPod nano, touch, classic or even an iPad!

We’re thrilled to be partnering with them again!

Note that all prizes and information go through the Vermont Department of Tourism & Marketing. “*View their website for more details*”:http://www.vermontvacation.com/ or contact **1-800-VERMONT!**

Happy apple picking!

I updated to Mountain Lion this week and things seemed going smoothly. That was until I tried to launch Adobe Dreamweaver from CS6. Each time that I try to launch it, I get this error message:

!http://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/install-java-os-x-mountain-lion.jpg!

I run the installer, it runs for about 20 seconds and then returns an error message that the software can’t be found. The Dreamweaver would close.

Then I googled to find a solution and found out problem AND the correct software to download. The info can be found on this “*Knowledge Base article*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5267 and the software can be “*downloaded here.*”:http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1515?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Now, I am back to happily using CS6 and enjoying Mountain Lion. Especially the speed of Safari 6.

_Dear Friends,_

Labor Day Weekend is upon us, and while Small Dog Electronics has traditionally been closed on Labor Day. However, in the world of retail, that is not possible and is actually against our lease in at least one store. Manchester, NH and S. Burlington, VT locations will be open while Waitsfield is closed.

We use CTO (Combined Time Off) at Small Dog Electronics so our workers don’t really lose the holiday — they have the ability to take a day off when they want. We combine vacation, sick, holiday, and personal days into CTO and let our employees manage their time. I really don’t want to be policing sick days or personal days. We have only a few restrictions — we demand that vacations be taken as a block of time, not a day here and a day there, and we ask that our employees schedule their time off in advance whenever possible.

Labor Day celebrates the economic and social contributions of workers but is also the unofficial end of summer. The local snack bar at the Maynard Farm closes, football season begins and schools are back in session. It is also the start of new product announcements, too. Apple has something scheduled for September 12th and while it is not a product announcement, Small Dog Electronics will have a special press conference and announcement next Wednesday in Rutland, Vermont. We will report on both in Kibbles next week!

Do you back up your data? I was talking to my retail managers this morning about how we should be evangelists about backing up data. That is always one of the questions I ask customers, how are you going to back up your data? Do you know that hard drives spin at high RPM and that they fail frequently? With a Mac, backing up your data cannot be easier. Time Machine is a life-saver. (See our G-DRIVE Mini special below.)

I love telling about the time I was vacationing in Mexico and had my MacBook Pro stolen from my hotel room. I lost a couple of pictures that I had uploaded to that Mac, but once I was back in Vermont (with my check from the hotel), I grabbed a new MacBook Pro, hooked it up to my Time Machine backup drive and I was up and operating with all of my data in a very short time. As my friend David Lerner from Tekserve in NYC says, “may you have 1,000 backups and never need one…”