Tag: automation
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Gate Automation
Our gate is the most important motor in our home. It’s critical for security, and if it’s open, the dog escapes. As all our kids cars go in and out, it’s always the gate opening and closing. It matters. The problem is that we have to open it and we don’t always have our phones…
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Quick(ish) Price Check on a Car
So, is it a good price? With my oldest daughter heading off to college soon, we’ve realized that our family car doesn’t need to be as large as it used to be. We’ve had a great relationship with our local CarMax over the years, and we appreciate their no-haggle pricing model. My wife had her…
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Kids Lego table: Case study in Automation for Design
Motivation I had to upgrade the Lego table I made when my kids were much smaller. It needed to be higher and include storage options. Since I’m short on time, I used several existing automation tools to both teach my daughter the power of programming and explore our decision space. The goals were to stay…
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Some tax-time automation
I often struggle to find the right balance between automation and manual work. As it is tax time, and Chase bank only gives you 90 days of statements, I find myself every year going back through our statements to find any business expenses and do our overall financial review for the year. In the past…
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Family Photo Management
Post still in work Our family pictures were scattered over several computers, each with a unique photo management application. In an effort to get a good backup in place. I moved all my pictures to one computer where I accidentally deleted them. (Long story.) I was able to recover them all, but I had numerous…
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Excel Sorting and Grouping
I had two tables downloaded from Amazon: Items Order Date Order ID Title Category 1/26/14 102-4214073-2201835 Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook 1/13/14 115-8766132-0234619 Awesome Book A 1/13/14 115-8766132-0234619 Awesome Book B and Orders Order Date Order ID Subtotal 1/6/14 102-6956821-1091413 $43.20 1/13/14 115-8766130-0234619 $19.42 1/16/14 109-8688911-2954602 $25.86 I’m building our Q1 2014 taxes and needed rows…