How many of you have used Spotlight (that little magnifying glass up in the right hand corner of your screen) to find files? You can use Spotlight to search for things like applications, documents, images, mail, or other files. If you are using Yosemite (and you all should be!) you have additional results from Wikipedia, news sites, Maps, movie listings, and more.

You can also use it to make simple conversions. Type in 45 pounds, for example, and you get the result: 20.41 kilograms, 720 ounces or 0.02 long tons. To open Spotlight, click on the magnifying glass icon or use the keyboard command of command-space. Spotlight will pop open right in front of you. To search for anything, just type words related to it like a file name, a person’s name, etc.

Spotlight also includes a dictionary, currency conversions, and other quick calculations like the unit conversions I mentioned. You can limit where Spotlight searches in the Spotlight System Preferences. There you can turn on or off results such as PDF documents, Bing Web Searches, Spreadsheets, etc. In the Privacy tab of this System Preference, you can also prevent Spotlight from searched in specific locations, i.e. folders or disks. One thing that I have found handy is that unless I want to search all my thousands of emails is to turn off mail in Spotlight so it doesn’t clutter up the results with every email that has your search term in it.

How do you use Spotlight? “*Drop me an email*”:mailto:don@smalldog.com and I’ll include some of the suggestions in a future Kibbles!

!http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4378.jpg!

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it in any of my other Kibbles and Bytes articles, but I’m pretty interested in cars and car technology. Sometimes it’s funny how we keep old habits we have based on older car technology that don’t apply with modern cars. One habit that’s fortunately going away is pumping the brakes when stopping on snow or slick conditions. ABS (anti-lock brake systems) make pumping the brakes completely unnecessary. The system effectively pulsates the braking action faster than you could ever pump the pedal.

It’s actually amazing how much technology is present in cars these days, and that’s before you even consider the gizmos inside the cabin like backup cameras, GPS navigation systems and bluetooth enabled stereo controls. Modern engines are extremely efficient and robust. They’re able to get more power from less physical space, operate more cleanly and safely than engines of the past. This is all thanks in large part to the computer controls that manage everything from air-fuel mixture to individual cylinder management. Most modern cars don’t even use a physical wire cable connecting the gas pedal to the throttle. It’s all done electronically. A smaller number of cars (mostly only higher-end luxury vehicles at this point) even use electronic steering. That means there’s no direct mechanical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels!

Then of course you have vehicle stability control systems. These systems consist of g-force sensors and wheel slip sensors all over the car. A computer can interpret these signals to determine what your car is doing every instant. Are the back wheels slipping and beginning to slide out? The computer is able to sense that motion (probably even before you do) and apply precision braking force to individual wheels in an attempt to correct the problem. You might feel it a little bit, but it’s usually very good at correcting the problem and all you’ll see is a little light turn on in the instrument cluster. (I like having a little fun with my car in the winter time, so I call that light the “anti-fun light”)

Even common problems that used to plague engines like knocking and pinging are virtually eliminated by computer control. My IT partner in crime, Morgan, and I were discussing this earlier in the week. I made the claim that running premium grade fuel in a normal un-boosted engine wouldn’t do anything except empty your wallet faster. I also made the claim that you couldn’t do the opposite of putting regular fuel into a boosted (turbocharged, supercharged, etc) engine. Well, it turns out with modern controlled engines, neither of those assertions are necessarily true. Because the timing and fuel-air mixture is all controlled by computer, if you put premium fuel in an un-boosted engine, it may actually be able to delay the timing enough to get a few extra horsepower. This isn’t always the case, and the marginal gain probably doesn’t justify the additional fuel cost, but my assertion that nothing would be different wasn’t quite correct.

Perhaps more surprisingly, many modern engines that are boosted are able to compensate for things like lower grade regular fuel. They can advance the timing to avoid pre-detonation and in some cases regulate and reduce boost pressure as well. Of course, that will mean you won’t get the power for which the engine is rated, but it will still run smoothly without knocking or pinging.

All these things have changed so rapidly over the past few decades. The computers involved aren’t even that smart, but it’s amazing that we can do all of these great things with them. Who knows what they’ll be able to do in another 10 years?

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Come on in to any of our stores to check out the new MacBook. We should have them on display soon and you can play with the Force Touch trackpad, marvel at the Retina display, or just admire the innovation and engineering that is apparent in this new Mac.

Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

_Don, Dean, Bronson & Mike_
Don, Dean, Bronson & Mike

We are fortunate to have a bunch of “veteran” Small Dog Employees who have been with the company for some time. This week I want to call out Emily Dolloff (pictured on the right). Art, Rob, and Tony have been here longer but Emily is quietly the heart of Small Dog, pumping up the team to give their best every day. A lifelong Vermonter, Emily first came to Small Dog as a shipper. She would lug heavy Apple eMacs up and down the warehouse stairs, sometimes carrying them to the store to deliver to a customer. She was a great shipper but we recognized that perhaps she had some other talents. We brought her up the the office to handle telephone sales back when the company’s sales were primarily on the internet. Again, Emily excelled and soon had customers requesting her to handle their orders because they knew she would do it right.

Emily became the Waitsfield store manager and then took what she and I call her sabbatical. Basically, she quit and went to work for someone else for a couple years. She must have missed us though because we were fortunate enough to bring her back on board. She is now managing our retail, service and marketing efforts and has a bunch of other responsibilities, too. We never have come up with an appropriate title for Emily but she is definitely my partner and someone I can count on for brutal honesty, responsibility, focus, and hard work.

Every company needs people that think and fret about the details and the everyday issues of running a company. Emily and I spend a lot of time on the phone or texting about little details and emerging issues. She does it without drama and always with a professional approach. When I needed someone to take the reins of our weekly radio show (Thursdays at 1PM on WDEV) it was obvious that Emily was the one. She is now a radio personality with people stopping her in the grocery store to tell her they listened to “*Small Dog Speaks.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/sdspeaks I can’t wait to join her on the show again when I get back to Vermont.

Emily does all this and has a family too! Olivia and Anna look and act like their mom although Olivia seems to be Emily’s husband Luke’s shadow. Oh yeah, she has some horses, too, and drives a big truck! It is simply amazing that she works as hard as she does at Small Dog and still knows to have that important separation of work and family that is essential. So hats off to Emily! I am sure many of you have talked to Emily over the years and if you are on the Small Dog team, you probably talk to her daily!