Author: Jack Lail

  • Riding out Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina

    Riding out Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina

    Today, two weeks after Hurricane Helene it is hard to comprehend the scope, scale, and fury of the storm that hit western North Carolina, East Tennessee, the Upstate in South Carolina and parts Georgia and Virginia. Social media posts are little tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces, each with their own…

  • DIY: How I converted a dumb home security system to a smart system

    DIY: How I converted a dumb home security system to a smart system

    This month I replaced an ancient security alarm system with a combination of DIY solutions. The result is a cloud-connected system that can be armed and disarmed from anywhere and that sends push alerts and texts on an intrusion. And just like the old system, it has a loud siren to alert neighbors. An Ademco…

  • Taylor Swift’s Bench: A bench for Taylor Swift … where she’s never sat

    Taylor Swift’s Bench: A bench for Taylor Swift … where she’s never sat

    Here’s a photo of “a bench for Taylor Swift,” one of the odder features of the popular Centennial Park in Nashville. The bench was unveiled a year ago by then-Mayor John Cooper just before her “Eras” tour shows in Bridgestone Arena. But there’s no reports that Swift’s butt has ever used her bench. Nonetheless, it…