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In 2013, I weighed 210 pounds. In October of 2017, I weighed 136 pounds and donated a kidney to my youngest son, Ax. This is our story. Like most people, I wasn’t always overweight. I’m a pretty small guy—5-foot-6-inches and around 150 pounds for the longest time—and for years I worked a job where I spent a lot of time on my feet. But when I switched careers to write for a living, that changed—I went from walking seven or more miles every day at work to sitting behind a keyboard....

As of Chrome OS 69, support for Linux applications is a baked in part of the operating system. Once enabled, this installs the Terminal on your Chrome OS system, but what is it and how does it compare to Crosh? Don’t worry if all that sounds like gibberish to you—if you’ve never spent any time poking around in your Chromebook’s guts, then you’ve likely never used (or even heard of) Crosh....

Lutron’s Caseta dimmer switches are great, but if you’re having some issues with your lights flickering or turning off prematurely, you can adjust the dimming levels to eliminate these issues. RELATED: Smart Light Switches vs. Smart Light Bulbs: Which One Should You Buy? The Caseta switches let you adjust the low-end and high-end “trim” levels, which is just a fancy term for optimizing the dimming levels on the light switch....

Google Sheets lets you automate repetitive tasks with macros, and you can then bind them to keyboard shortcuts to execute them quickly. They work using Google Apps Script to capture your actions for later use. RELATED: Learn How to Use Excel Macros to Automate Tedious Tasks What are Macros? A macro—or macroinstruction—is a specific sequence of actions that let you automate a series of steps to increase productivity. They work by recording your actions and saving them into a file that’s bound to the spreadsheet in which they were recorded....

RELATED: What Is Python? How to Read the Python Versions A Python version consists of three values: a major version, a minor version, and a micro version. An example of a Python version is: In the above version, 3 refers to Python’s major version. The second digit, which is 10, refers to Python’s minor version, and the last digit, 4, indicates the micro version of Python. Python’s major versions are generally not compatible with each other, but the minor ones are....

Start by jumping into the Settings menu. The easiest way to do this is by swiping down twice on the home screen until the quick tiles are exposed. From there, tap on the gear icon. Alternatively, you can swipe up on the home screen to open the app drawer. Scroll down and select the “Settings” app. Next, tap on the “Security” option. Finally, locate and tap on the “Face Unlock” button....

Microsoft Edge shows a stream of articles on your Start and New Tab pages. These news articles include “sponsored” listings for dental implements and low APR credit card offers—in other words, paid advertisements. If you’re a Microsoft Edge user, you can disable this pretty quickly. Unfortunately, Microsoft may re-enable these news articles after Windows 10 installs a big update, so you may find yourself disabling them over and over....

There are few things more annoying than tourists ruining an otherwise great photo. You can painstakingly edit them out by hand but, with a bit of forethought, you can get Photoshop to do it automatically. Here’s a before shot… …and an after shot… …of what we’ll be showing you how to do today. How This Works The secret to this trick is that you’re not just using one photo. The after shot above is a combination of 15 photos taken 30 seconds apart....

If you want to extract a substring from the left, right, or middle of your text, you can use Microsoft Excel’s LEFT, RIGHT, MID, LEN, and FIND functions to do that. We’ll show you how. Which Method to Use for Substring Extraction? What method to use to extract a substring depends on where your substring is located. To extract a string from the left of your specified character, use the first method below....

Incomes Below $69,000: IRS Free File Program If your adjusted gross income for 2019 was $69,000 or less, you’re eligible for the IRS Free File Program. This program is a partnership between the IRS and the commercial tax software companies that make applications like TurboTax, H&R Block, TaxAct, FreeTaxUSA, and Tax Slayer. Under some situations, these companies let you use their software for free. Here’s the critical thing to understand: The free tax-filing software available through the IRS Free File Program is different from each tax-filing program’s standard free edition!...

Focusing is easy when you’re using an aperture of f/8 or narrower: most things in the scene will be pretty much in focus. When you start using wide apertures like f/2.8, f/1.8, or even f/1.2, however, you’ll start to miss focus a lot more. Here’s how to get the best results when focusing with wide aperture lenses. RELATED: How to Manipulate Depth of Field to Take Better Photos When we talk about focus what we’re talking about is sharpness....

The “Save As” menu option is hidden in macOS Mojave. Apple would prefer you “Duplicate” the file to make changes. That may be more intuitive for new users, but it’s confusing if you’re used to “Save As.” “Save As” Is Still There This option never left the file menu—it’s just hidden behind the Option key. In fact, Apple hides quite a few menu items behind the Option key without any visual notice....

When you have Philips Hue lights all across your house, physical light switches become less useful. If you want, you can hide them and use a Hue Dimmer Switch instead. RELATED: How to Get the Most Out of Your Philips Hue Lights Hue lights are awesome, and while you can control them from your phone using the Hue app, Philips makes the Hue Dimmer Switch for people who want a physical control option....

The Basics For this guide, we’re installing a Schlage Encode smart lock. Even if you have a different smart lock from another brand, most (if not all) the steps will be the same. You’ll generally find three main components in a smart lock: an exterior piece that may have a keypad, lock for a key, or both, an interior piece that holds the batteries and circuitry, and the bolt that secures your door....

There’s nothing quite like the connections you make when you play video games on the couch next to your friends. However, Steam’s Remote Play Together feature allows you to play local multiplayer games online, even if the game doesn’t support multiplayer. What Is Remote Play Together? A tremendous number of games feature online multiplayer, but not all. Some games are built for two or more people sitting down in front of the same screen together....

You can reorder the Wi-Fi network priority list from the Network section in System Preferences. The easiest way to get to the Network Preferences is from the Wi-Fi section in the menu bar. Click on the Wi-Fi icon from the menu bar and then select the “Network Preferences” option. This opens the Network section from within the System Preferences. RELATED: Six Alternative Ways to Access System Preferences on Your Mac...

When you mute iOS, incoming phone calls and texts vibrate instead of playing whatever ringtone you set up. Alarms, on the other hand, will always play the ringtone whether your phone is muted or not. If you’d like to be able have an alarm vibrate your device instead of making a sound, you can do that by creating a silent ringtone. Step One: Create a Silent Ringtone RELATED: How to Add Custom Ringtones to Your iPhone...

If you live in a bilingual household, you likely switch back and forth between both languages all throughout the day. Google Assistant can now seamlessly transition between two languages, offering a more familiar feel in bilingual homes. Currently, Google Assistant can transition between two of the five supported languages—English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. Support for more languages will be available in the coming months. So, let’s say you set up you Assistant for English....

Over the past few years, the quality of mobile cameras has become insane. Unfortunately, Facebook hasn’t quite caught up to this. By default, when you upload a photo to Facebook from your phone, it’s uploaded as a low resolution file. Here’s how to change that. On an iPhone Open the Facebook app, go to the Options screen and select Settings. Head to Account Settings > Videos and Photos. Turn on both Upload HD switches on....

While Superhuman has now removed location tracking, it still supports email open tracking. And other email tracking apps could let someone who emails you find out your geographical location, too. How Can an App Track Email Opens? Superhuman is using a feature that’s existed for a long time. It embeds a tiny tracking pixel image in the emails it sends. When you open an email, your email client requests the image....