My Daily Smile

Life is short - begin every day with a smile!

How (and when) to clean the gunk from your iPhone’s Lighting port

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Do you have an iPhone that has a Lightning connector instead of the newer USB-C port?

If so, there might come a time when you have difficulty getting the battery to charge like it should.

For example, the phone might fail to start charging at all or it might start to charge and then stop if you somehow manage to jiggle the charging cable.

When these types of charging issues pop up most people mistakenly believe the problem is with the battery, but in the vast majority of these cases the battery is just fine.  [Read more…]

13 fuel saving secrets gas stations don’t want you to know

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Do you get heartburn every time you have to pull into a gas station and pump your heard-earned money into your vehicle’s gas tank? Yeah, me too.

While it’s true that the price of gasoline and diesel have dropped considerably over the past year, it’s still a significant expense for anyone who does a lot of driving.

Luckily, there are several things you can do to reduce the amount of fuel your vehicle burns. And the less fuel you have to buy, the less money you’ll have to spend on it.  [Read more…]

Q&A: Is Colonial Penn life insurance a scam?

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Question from Carol:  My mom is 75 years old and she’s worried about my brother and me having to pay her burial expenses after she passes on.

We’ve told her that she doesn’t have to worry about that but she insists on getting insurance to cover her burial expenses.

I keep seeing ads on TV that say Colonial Penn will sell life insurance to anybody for just $9.95 per month, even if they’re as old as 85.

They also state that your premium will never go up. It’ll always stay at $9.95 per month.

How can they do that? If it’s true that sounds like something we could get for her. But I’m leery because it sounds like it has to be a scam. Is it?  [Read more…]

I’ve found the answer to one of my greatest frustrations

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Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

If you’re like most people there’s probably a variety of things that tend to frustrate you at times.

I’m talking about relatively minor things that don’t mean a lot in the grand scheme of life, but are annoying nonetheless.

One of my greatest frustrations has always been trying to use drywall anchors to attach pictures and other things to a wall.  [Read more…]

How (and why) to use an electrical outlet tester

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I frequently feature a super-handy electrical outlet tester as my Daily Tech Gadget Pick on my tech blog, but it just occurred to me that I have never explained how (or why) to use one.

In a nutshell, these devices tell you whether any of your 120V electrical outlets are wired incorrectly and are unsafe to use.

An incorrectly wired outlet can cause all kinds of problems, ranging from surge protectors that don’t work all the way up to a serious fire hazard.  [Read more…]