Author: Mike Moffit

If you have ever searched for that unique gift to give then you know how special this one is.

Made from recycled computer parts these earrings spell “Love”. It’s the perfect gift to give that special someone you do in fact love.

To help you out with that we are offering 50% off with FREE shipping.

Grab yours now before they are gone.

??TeckChick earrings are not returnable. Sorry but we just don’t like the though of putting used earrings into someone else’s ears. We hope you understand.??

Want to win an iPod nano? Tell us the worst Valentine’s Day gift you’ve ever received, and you’ll be entered!

Here are the rules:
* Email your worst Valentine’s Day gift/story to “*hello@smalldog.com*”:mailto:hello@smalldog.com by Monday, February 11 at 11:59pm.
* We will take the best of the worst and put them into a survey where others can vote. Whoever gets the most votes wins an iPod nano!
* Emails must include your name and address to be eligible.
* One entry per person.

Look for the survey here on Facebook on Tuesday, February 12. We’ll tally the votes by 11:59PM on Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day)!

“*Get to our Facebook page here.*”:http://www.facebook.com/smalldogelectronics

In my last article about saving space on your Mac titled “*Cleaning Up Your Mac: Detection,*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/cleaning-up-your-mac-detection/ we covered ways to figure out how much space is taken up on your Mac. There was one app in particular that I use called “*Disk Inventory X*”:http://www.derlien.com/index.html that will allow you to visually see the distribution of data on your hard drive. It also has the ability to delete files from within the app which is something we will get into right now.

First and foremost, you should never delete something unless you know what it is. It is all too easy to delete a large file that is essential to your Mac rendering it inoperable. Always proceed with caution when you are attempting to free up space on any type of computer.

With that little disclaimer out of the way, I have a few ways that I like to free up space on my Mac.

*Empty the Trash*
The first and easiest is to simply empty the trash. You might chuckle at this one but I am notorious for dragging files to my trash can and never emptying my trash can. This is partly due to the fact that I prefer to do a *Secure Empty Trash* rather than your standard empty, which takes much longer. I like to use the secure method because instead of making that space available to be overwritten, it resets that memory block back to 0. Both the Secure Empty and standard Empty will free up space and give you more room on your drive but the secure way will also increase the efficiency and speed of the drive. These gains are only marginal, but I am the type of person who likes to keep my Mac in tip-top shape.

*Keep iTunes Clean*
Another thing that I find happens often in my iTunes library is the duplication of songs. In fact, I looked at my library last night and had some 90 duplicate songs there. Sure, some are songs with the same name on different albums, but the rest were just the same song on my hard drive twice (and even triplicate). iTunes is fairly smart when it comes to duplicate songs, which is a great advantage to us all. To display duplicate songs in iTunes 10 (that is what I am running, which is not the latest version) go to the *File* menu and click *Display Duplicates.* Doing so will change your view to list all songs that have the same name as another. As I mentioned before, this will include songs that have the same name but are on different albums so keep an eye out for that when selecting which songs to delete. The other thing to note is that it lists both the “original” and “duplicate” songs so you will need to leave one of them behind or you will delete that song entirely from your library. Don’t forget to empty your trash once you have removed the songs from iTunes.

*Delete Unwanted iOS Backups*
With iCloud becoming more and more usable, the need for a copy of your iOS device’s backup on your Mac is less and less important. This means that if you are using iCloud backups, you might have some old iOS backups saved on your machine. Fire up iTunes and go to *Preferences* in the *iTunes* menu. Once you have that open, go to the *Devices* tab. There, you should see a list of every iOS backup you have saved on your hard drive with a date and time stamp. Simply select the backup you wish to delete and click the *Delete Backup…* button.

*Clean out the Downloads Folder*
Often when browsing the web you might need to download a 3rd party plugin or you might be downloading apps from websites rather then from the app store. Well eventually your *Downloads* folder can get filled up with installers and other miscellaneous files that were intended to be temporary. Simply navigate to your *Downloads* folder and filter through it to ensure nothing needs to be kept (though nothing should need to be). Once you know what you are deleting go ahead and move the files to the trash and make sure to empty it.

These are just a few of many ways to keep your Mac’s hard drive clean. They are regular maintenance procedures I like to do for my Mac every now and again. What I suggest everyone do is stay away from programs or apps that claim to free up space (these apps will remain nameless but you know who you are). Frankly, I just don’t trust them since I don’t know exactly what the program is doing automatically. I prefer the manual control I have when I am deleting files since things can easily go south when deleting from a computer.

I hope that this two-part article will help my fellow Mac users be a little more knowledgeable when it comes to how your computer stores data and the best way to keep that data from piling up. A final word about cleaning — do it early and often and it won’t be such a pain in the butt when you do.

Lance is one of the newest members of the Hammerhead and Chill Pill team, joining us as the Brand Manager just a few weeks ago. He was a perfect fit for our Wholesale division as he has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and I can already see the big ideas a-brewin’ up there!

Lance was born and raised in a small town in Alaska, so he is not a native Vermonter, but if there is a place in this world more extreme than Vermont, it’s Alaska. Lance grew up like most Alaskan kids, riding ATVs without a helmet, living in igloos, riding his pet moose to school, fishing and hunting, skiing in the winter and of course, wrestling grizzly bears. Pretty much a normal childhood.

After living the Alaskan dream, Lance decided it was time to move to warmer climates, and ended up in Arizona for about 10 years. Here, he met his wife, Meghan, (via an online dating site) and they eventually moved to her home state of Vermont.

When Lance isn’t brainstorming a million new ideas for our Hammerhead and Chill Pill lines, he can be found on the slopes during the winter months and on the lake during the summer. Lance’s favorite thing is skiing and snowboarding (he does both — I guess you have those kind of skills when you grow up in Alaska). He also loves to practice being an amateur film maker and video editor. Lance is also trying to write his first novel (Science Fiction, baby)!

Quickly, here are a few “Lance Stats”:

* Hardest job: Commercial fishing in Alaska
* Worst job: Telemarketer for a mortgage company
* Most exciting job: Bouncer at a nightclub in Phoenix
* First motorcycle: 1988 Suzuki GSXR-750
* Dream motorcycle: Triumph Thunderbird Storm
* Favorite places include: The Outer Banks, NC, San Diego, CA, and Scottsdale, AZ…and of course, Burlington, VT
* Favorite Ski resorts: Mammoth, CA, Snowbird/Solitude, Utah, Heavenly, CA, Alyeska, AK
* Most awesome skill: Can put together anything from Ikea without looking at the instructions — it may even be considered a “super power”
* Pets: One awesome and crazy dog, Bubba the basset hound

Lance brings a great energy to the team and we are all excited for the tricks he has up his sleeve. Look for exciting new things to happen from the Hammerhead/Chill Pill division!

_Dear Friends,_

It’s Kali, writing this from beneath about three feet of snow. Well, not really, but buzz about Winter Storm Nemo (snowstorms get names now?) is high, and we expect to see a couple of feet here in Vermont. Don was in Cupertino earlier this week meeting with their Board of Directors, and he flew back to the east coast just in time to catch a Celtics game on his birthday (yesterday) and prep for the impending storm.

Winter in Vermont is shaping up to be more traditional than last year, in that we’ve seen steady snowfall and colder temperatures thus far. Even though living in New England means we should all be prepared for driving in this kind of weather, I’m grateful for the ability to work remotely when conditions are too bad to warrant driving 20 miles. This got me thinking about how much easier it is now for people to stay connected without having to be in the same place. How many of you work from home in your daily job? What do you use to do it?

We still have a great selection on refurbished and used laptops (err, “notebooks”, as Apple likes to say) in stock, from the basic “*MacBooks that start at $699.99*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/76023/macbook-2-13ghz-2gb-160gb-white-mid-2009-used?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=MB to the professionally-minded “*17-inch MacBook Pros at $1249.99*”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/81505/macbook-pro-17in-2-53ghz-i5-4gb-500gb-white-box?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=17-MBP (plus, there are some 15-inch models thrown in, too — “*see everything here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/Apple_Refurbished_and_EOL) Take your work (or play!) mobile.