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  • Camping with the versatile Torch 250 Flashlight

    Despite the heat wave we are currently experiencing, I am seeing the signs of summer’s departure become more evident each day and as much as I love fall, I am just not ready to say goodbye just yet.

    It has been a goal of mine to do more camping this summer and working at Small Dog has only fueled that desire. With all of the cool outdoor gear from companies such as “**LifeProof**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=LifeProof, “**Outdoor Tech**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=Outdoor+Tech and “**Goal Zero**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=Goal+Zero, I just want to try it all. This week, I was feeling extra ambitious and decided to take an overnight camping trip to “**Lake Willoughby**”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Willoughby for my birthday. Due to the spontaneity of the trip I found that I was grossly unprepared, and going through the camping essentials checklist, I was coming up short. I was lucky to find a small store nearby with things such as hotdogs, water and even firewood. All that I needed for the quick trip were the basics: tent, sleeping bag and lantern. With the tent and sleeping bag covered, all that was left to get was a lantern or light source of some sort to carry around the camp site. That’s when I remembered the “**Torch 250 from Goal Zero**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86294/goal-zero-torch-250-flashlight-backup-battery-solar-recharging. I had been wanting to try this lantern/flashlight/backup battery tool for a while now and this served as the perfect opportunity to do so.

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4493.jpg!

    Being that this venture was on a weekday and about an hour and half away from home, I wasn’t able to arrive at the ideal time and ended up getting there around 6:30pm. This gave me enough time to set up camp but it was just late enough for it to start getting dark in the cover of the trees. It was not long before I was using the Torch 250 as my lantern, preparing “dinner” and getting my sleeping arrangement together with plenty of light (250 lumens). As I was winding down for the night by the fire, I was flipping through the photos that I took that day on my iPhone and was prompted that I had less than 20% battery left. Normally, I would not be too upset with replacing the glow of the screen with the glow of the fire but in this case, I needed my iPhone to wake me up at 6am for work. After a little bit of stressing, I remembered that the Torch was also designed to charge devices such as my iPhone and was there to save me again. I grabbed my Lightning Cable, plugged into the Torch, and by the morning I was up for work with 100% battery.

    Though this camping trip was just an overnighter, next time I would love to really put the Torch to the real test on a multi-day trip. One of its most unique features is its many ways to recharge its lithium battery. Designed with a solar panel on top, foldable hand crank on the side and integrated USB charging cable, you can recharge in virtually any situation.

    Looking at the calendar, Labor Day is right around the corner and there is still plenty of time to gear up for the last hurrah. Swing by any of our locations and ask about a “**250 Torch by Goal Zero**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86294/goal-zero-torch-250-flashlight-backup-battery-solar-for your recharging needs today. It’s awesome!

  • Triple Bottom Line

    As I spent hours riding through S. Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota, getting bored by the flat, straight roads and corn fields with occasional highlights of rural wind farms, I thought a lot about what makes Small Dog Electronics different. I am very fortunate that Hapy and I are on the same page as we measure the success of our venture by the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit.

    When Hapy and I started Small Dog Electronics, it was both because we had discovered that we could not work for anyone else (so we had to roll our own jobs), and that we wanted to demonstrate that a business can be more than simply a money machine.

    We have described before how we measure success by using the triple bottom line of socially responsible businesses — People, Planet and Profit — in equal measures. Early in my business career, I learned that profit was the key to being able to make meaningful change and achieve our goals for People and Planet, however, even in the hardest times, we have maintained the commitment to be a different kind of business.

    As you know, we speak out on issues that are important to us and our “*Charitable Contribution Program*”:http://www.smalldog.com/charity/smalldog-com-charity includes donation matching, where we match customers’ contributions to featured, diverse non-profit groups. We concentrate our efforts and funds in the following areas:

    * Women’s rights
    * Human rights
    * Relieving Hunger
    * Protecting the Environment
    * Gay & Lesbian Rights
    * Dog Welfare

    We have also been leaders in recognizing the important task of keeping electronic waste out of our landfills. We have held numerous eWaste collection events and I am pretty sure we are still the only electronics retailer that can claim to have recycled more electronics than we have sold (is that a good thing?). Our solar array at our headquarters here in Waitsfield, Vermont provides 100% of the electricity for our S. Burlington store and about 80% for our offices and warehouse here. We have an electric truck to ferry goods from warehouse-to-store and have regular discussions on how we can further reduce our carbon footprint.

    There is so much more that we would like to do both for the world we live in and for our employees, vendors and community. We are very proud to measure our success not solely on the number of dollar bills on the table but also upon who we are, what we do, and of course, how much fun we have!

  • _Dear Friends,_

    It is definitely my year for apples! After years of trying to grow apples, my trees are loaded and I’ve been grazing the mini orchard each day after work. It must have been the lack of a late spring frost that helped me out. We had a glorious trip out to S. Dakota with a major assist once we got there from Small Dog customer, Bonnie London who got us into the VIP section at Buffalo Chip so I could have my hearing totally destroyed by Def Leppard. But it was a great time with awesome riding in the Black Hills and the Badlands. We ended up logging over 4700 miles in the 2 weeks.

    We did end up in Chicago for a couple days on the way back and we got to catch a Cubs win over the Brewers. We grabbed some nice seats behind the Cubs dugout and for the first time I caught a foul ball that was sky high. I caught it in my bare hands and got a bunch of high-fives. I gave the ball to a young girl sitting nearby and it made her day as much as catching it made mine.

    We used our iOS devices a lot on the trip from planning out routes to finding hotels to stay at on the road but still my favorite “killer” app for my Apple Watch is Apple Pay. While I have used Apple Pay with my iPhone, the watch makes it so easy and is the way it should be. No more struggling to get my iPhone out of my pocket, just tap and hold the watch to the terminal and bingo I have paid for my groceries or that Vente iced Black Eye at Starbucks.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive features the 11-inch MacBook Air. This Apple Certified factory refurbished MacBook Air has a 1-year Apple Warranty, just like new machines. We are bundling it with the AppleCare Protection Plan that provides 3 years of warranty and technical support and with SafeWare accidental damage coverage for those 3 years as well. This bundle normally sells for $1599. The MacBook Air comes with 4GB of ram and a 256GB SSD drive. This week for Kibbles & Bytes readers the “*Factory Refurbished 11-inch MacBook Air with AppleCare and SafeWare protection is only $1499*”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001931/special-save-100-on-macbook-air-safeware-applecare-bundle!

  • Jason Bayne

    Pets: None Hobbies/Interests: Music, Skateboarding, Snowboarding, Art, Running Favorite Books: Dharma, Raptus, Everything That Rises Must Converge, Favorite Bands: Metal, Punk, I love…

  • Yes, Mac User, Viruses Do Exist!

    There is really big MYTH that Macs don’t get viruses. We know today that this is false. Apple malware has existed for Mac since 1987 with the appearance of the nVIR virus, which started with the sharing of floppy disks (remember those) that were infected. This is when the first anti-virus tools began to appear.

    Fast forward to 1998 when the AutoStart 9805 spread very rapidly in the desktop publishing community, once again using removable media. With the release of OS X just around the corner the bad guys would have to go back to the drawing board with their attacks. When OS X was released, the first malware script Renepo worm, also known as Opener was unleashed. This was a nasty one. It would disable your firewall then download the hacker’s dream software tools including but not limited to, password sniffers and crackers. This would give hackers admin-level access to your machine. The latest baddy was BlackHole RAT in 2011. This was a Trojan, and a lot like Renepo, it allowed unauthorized users to take control of your Mac.

    The most common malware I see is fake anti-virus or system maintenance software that boast they will speed up your mac or clean your mac. When it runs it finds all types of “problems” with instructions to call a number to get a resolution for problems that don’t actually exist. Enter the heroes of this story: the anti-virus software. This tech has two recommendations. The first one is Sophos. “Sophos”:https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx stands out from the crowd with its light weight and updated virus definitions. It also looks for Windows based virus so you don’t inadvertently send something nasty to your DOS-based buddies. The next is ClamXav which is basically the same thing as Sophos, but it does not have the virus definitions update like Sophos.

    The biggest thing you to protect yourself from this is user education on what is going on with your Mac. I recommend you read this article from “lifehacker”:http://lifehacker.com/the-best-antivirus-app-for-mac-488021445. Surf safe, friends!

  • iOS 9 Public, iPhone 4s and Battery Life

    The iOS 9 public beta came out several weeks ago and I’ve been running it on my iPhone 4S. iOS 9 is really attractive to me (even while using my older phone) because of the under-the-hood refinements. I was hoping those refinements would mean things would be more zippy on this old phone. Many of those improvements don’t really trickle down to me on this hardware that’s three generations behind the current hardware, but it seems features like control center and notification center are more responsive to their gestures.

    There are a few things I’ve noticed that have changed in the day to day operations. The keyboard is different. It now has lower case letters on the keyboard. The keys don’t pop up like they used to by default, but that is a simple flick of a switch in settings. Siri looks dramatically different with really cool and has multi colored waves.

    There is now an iCloud app, but for that to appear on the home screen it needs to be enabled in settings. I like the app. It lets me see what I’ve got in there and allows me access to everything, just like many other cloud services’ iPhone apps let me do. There is a battery section in settings. While this is really cool, it gave me some information that I’m still processing and reeling in shock and disbelief of. Under the battery section of settings there’s a really cool and useful low power mode. It not as aggressive as just putting the phone in airplane mode. The battery usage section is what has me so worked up. It gives a breakdown of what apps are using battery power and a percentage. In that breakdown there were apps that I hadn’t even launched in 6 months that had been doing stuff in the background and gobbling up battery power and processor cycles. It used to be that installing apps wouldn’t bog down the device, but apparently that’s not true. Another experience that further confirms that to me is how often my phone was freezing up after years of installing apps and downloading many many gigabytes of data into every app. I restored it to factory settings, meaning all data that’s not the OS was removed. I then reinstalled all my critical apps, but nothing else. My phone has been a little more reliable, stable and faster since I removed all that stuff. Another detail that I’ve been working with most regularly is the 6 (that’s SIX, as in 2 more than 4) digit security passcode. A four digit passcode never seemed like enough for me, now I’ve got a little more security, without much inconvenience.

    iOS devices are really becoming more and more like full fledged desktops and I’m excited about iOS 9 and wonder how long until the next update to the beta will be released.

  • What happened to all my space?

    It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me here in the Green Mountains. I have spent a lot of time this summer being away on the weekend with various summer activities. It’s been great for my summer bucket list but I can’t say the same for my garden. I have never been much of a gardener and I give amazing praise to those who grow a bounty year after year. I thought I had it down by the end of last summer. I grew a garden just big enough to produce only what we could eat in a few days and only had to spend a few hours a week managing weeds. I even managed to make some amazing dilly beans and pickles. Well this year not even the zucchini grew. The weeds took over despite my utilizing filter fabric, and my tomatoes grew but they fell to blight. Next year I decided to grow just a few things and whatever I can’t grow I will just pick up at the local farmers market. Perhaps I am better off sticking with things I know and gardening is not one of them.

    Gardening was not my only struggle this summer. I also found myself in a bit of a bind with my Mac Mini. Recently I discovered that my Mac Mini was utilizing almost 250GB of space. Not a big deal except for the fact that I thought I had transferred over pictures and music when I recently upgraded from a 2007 MacBook to the new mini. Like many of us, when I get any new Mac I simply use migration assistant. As many of us know migration assistant has made our lives incredibly simple but sometimes can also cause a bit of a headache. I downloaded “Disk Inventory X”:http://download.cnet.com/Disk-Inventory-X/3000-2248_4-47967.html which I have used several times over the years. I like this program a lot. It really helps when you discover that your hard disk space is being utilized but it’s just not clear what is taking up the space. In my case I somehow had a 90GB textedit file! I searched and dug but could not find the file anywhere. I also did some basic disk repairs (even though there was no issue with the drive) and several other tricks, including a fresh restore from my recent Time Machine back up to try and free up this phantom space. Ultimately I ended up erasing my drive all together, reinstalling 10.10 and manually migrated the files I wanted from my Time Machine back up verses using migration assistant. Sometimes the easiest option is not always the most efficient!

    I hope you are checking off many of your summer bucket list items and as always, thank you for reading.

    Emily Dolloff
    “emily@smalldog.com”:mailto:emily@smalldog.com

  • Driving to work this week I have noticed several Maple trees turning color already, a cold reminder that summers in Vermont will never be long enough. In looking at this weekend’s forecast and early next week it seems hot and humid weather will be making it return so I won’t let a few confused Maple trees get me down on summer just yet!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily, Dean, Scott_

  • Summer Product Testing with Will and Dean

    Summertime has been treating us well here at Small Dog. The weather has been a little less than ideal with colder temps and wetter conditions than usual, but when the sun is out, we are all sure to make the most out of it. With so many outdoor enthusiasts working under one roof, we try not to be too biased when it comes to the accessories we carry, but let’s face it, we have ALOT of fun gear for the outdoors.

    With all of the fun summer products in, Will and I decided to get our hands dirty and put them to the test. We see Vermont as being the ultimate testing grounds with all of its rugged trails and deep swimming holes. We had the perfect products at our disposal to test against the typical Vermont weekend.

    We found the perfect swimming hole to do our testing and started the session by putting on some music. In came the “**Outdoor Tech Turtle Shell 2.0**”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=turtle+shell. I have written about this speaker in the past and if you have read any of those articles, then you know that I am a fan. I will recap and say that some of my favorite features of this product are its long-lasting charge, its versatility (hooks for hanging, ability to be mounted on handlebars, etc.) and of course, its durability. This little speaker was put to the test when I (accidentally) dropped it while attempting to climb with it in hand. I also did not feel too on edge as it took a few splashes while playing near a waterfall. The reader should note that the speaker is water resistant and not water proof, meaning that it can take on some water but not full submersion.

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4485.jpg!

    With music playing in the background, Will was off playing with the “**LifeProof Nuud Case**”:http://www.smalldog.com/search?search=lifeproof+nuud for his iPhone 6. I think that we can both agree that this was the most fun product of the day to play around with. We found that we were able to push the limits of the iPhone 6 even further, especially when it came to taking photos and recording video. LifeProof prides themselves on the durability of their “**cases**”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/?mmfg%5B0%5D=LifeProof and the biggest draw for us that day was the waterproof capabilities. Will took this feature on headfirst (literally) and into the water he went, LifeProof case in hand. Before he took the plunge, Will had already tested the case without the phone in the case and it is highly recommended that you do the same. With the phone fully submerged, Will was able to capture some really great photos and video of a rarely documented underwater world. We also played around with some of the cool features of video on the iPhone such as slowmo and that provided some very interesting results which we will be sure to post on our “**Facebook**”:https://www.facebook.com/hellosmalldog, “**Twitter**”:https://twitter.com/hellosmalldog/ and “**Instagram**”:https://instagram.com/hellosmalldog/ soon.

    !{display: block;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4484.jpg!

    As Will wanted to do more swimming and less hand-held recording, we remembered that we brought along the all-terrain tripod, the “**Joby GripTight GorillaPod Stand**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/86939/joby-griptight-gorillapod-stand-black. The great thing about this tripod is its adaptable design. With flexible, wrappable joints and grippy rubber feet, the Joby GripTight GorillaPod was made for days like these. We simply found an odd-shaped rock to grip it to, mounted our iPhone with the LifeProof Nuud case still attached and hit record.

    Stop by any of our “**retail stores**”:http://www.smalldog.com/retail/visit-us-in-store-at-any-of-our-locations and and let us show you further on how these products to enhance your summer fun.

  • Monitor Your Mac

    Back when I had my very “**first computers**”:https://www.google.com/search?q=toshiba+t3200&espv=2&biw=1471&bih=927&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDYQsARqFQoTCMzKpNakpscCFQE1PgodOXoLxA, one feature they always had was a light that indicated disk activity. As the disk was written to or read from, a light would flash. I became very used to this light as an indicator of whether or not my computer was working hard. If it was, that might explain why it was acting sluggish.

    Eventually computers stopped shipping with those hard drive activity lights. I guess manufacturers figured that machines got so fast it wasn’t worth showing that information. It’s also possible that it went the way of the oil pressure gauge in cars (my Subaru doesn’t even have a coolant temperature gauge). Either way, I missed that light. I like knowing what my computer is doing.

    Fortunately there are ways to get that information, plus much more, and all displayed in a convenient way. When I was using Linux as my primary desktop I added in a number of menu bar widgets to monitor network traffic, memory usage, CPU temperature, and CPU clock speed. The menu bar in the version of Linux I was using is almost identical to the menu bar on OS X. Like in OS X, unless I had a full screen app, that menu was visible.

    Now that I pretty much exclusively use my Macbook Air though, I was once again without a way to easily monitor system functions. About a month ago I decided enough was enough and went looking for a solution. I found exactly what I was looking for in “**iStat Menus 5**”:https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/.

    This thing is really sweet. If there’s something your machine is doing, this app will let you monitor it. CPU temperature, fan speed (and fan speed control), detailed battery status, voltage at various sensors, network up/down traffic, detailed power consumption stats (Mavericks and Yosemite only), and so, so much more! It displays all this information in the menu bar so it’s available at a quick glance no matter what you’re doing. One thing I really like about it is the fact that it gives several different display options for each monitor widget. If you prefer to have your memory usage shown as a graph, you can do that. If you’d rather see it as a number showing free memory, you can have that too. If you’re not interested in showing the icon for CPU temperature at all, just remove it. The display is completely customizable. If you click on any of the menu bar widgets you get a huge amount of additional detail and graphs.

    My favorite widgets to have are CPU temperature, network up/down activity and speed, load average, memory usage mini graph and HDD status. The battery widget is also worth checking out since it shows a lot more information than the default battery indicator like charge/discharge cycles and discharge graphs.

    The app itself costs $18 for a single license and $25 for a family pack of 5. They have a 15 day trial which is what I used first to see if it could actually meet my (pretty demanding) needs. In an age of cheap $4.99 or $0.99 apps, $18 might seem like a lot, but after using iStat Menus for almost a month, I don’t think I could live without it. I would highly recommend giving it a try if you ever wished you had more information about what your computer was doing.

  • _Dear Friends,_

    It’s Emily, taking over for Don this week who’s making his way back to the Green Mountains from Sturgis. I was fortunate last week to spend a week away from the office as well and had a great week of camping with my family. We stayed at a great campground about an hour from our house and played tourist for a week. My kids got to go river tubing, swimming, hiking and a few day trips to visit some great local spots around Vermont. One of the stops we made was to the “**Quechee Gorge**”:http://www.quecheegorge.com/ and to “**VINS**”:http://www.vinsweb.org/. Living in Vermont I find that it’s easy to take for granted some of the great places to visit. My kids really enjoyed seeing all of the birds at VINS and reading about their individual stories on how they came to VINS. We even found a bird that was injured right here in Waitsfield and able to live out the rest of it’s years as one of their ambassadors.

    One of my adventures during vacation was to do some back to school shopping for my kids. While my oldest was thrilled to get tons of new clothes and a new backpack, the idea of school beginning again took a bit of the excitement of shopping away. We are seeing a lot of mixed feelings from students in our stores as well, so my daughter is not alone! While the idea of school starting again is not on the top of many kids and adults list for that matter, it is good to know there are a lot of great deals out there, including deals at Small Dog. We still have a few weeks left to our “**Dog Days of Summer**”:http://www.smalldog.com/dogdaysofsummer/summer-sales sales and if you’re in the South Burlington area some great events planned for our flagship location. This coming Saturday, August 15th, stop into any of our retail stores for exclusive one day only deals on Seagate or for Kibbles readers, order some great deals online!

    Emily’s deal of the week! Buy “**this MacBook Pro with Retina display and Applecare**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900001928, we will give you a Seagate 1TB slim drive for **FREE.** Just in time for back to school, send your student or yourself off to class in style.

  • Enjoy the Dog Days of Summer and thank you so much for reading Kibbles & Bytes.

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily, Dean, Scott_