Okay honesty time here. My name is Tyler and I am an Apple fan boy… Now that we have that out of the way do not fret this is not an Apple blog page. This particular blog will be Apple heavy but that is because I live in the Applesphere both at home and at work. I have a lot to say about each individual piece of tech that I use everyday but I wanted to start with a broader overview of the items that I carry and interact with on a daily basis. The easiest way to lay this out is to go through a typical “Tyler” day. 6:00 am Monday morning the Reflection ring tone on my iPhone X soothingly wakes me. After shutting off my alarm I use my iPhone to check all 5 of my active email accounts. Then I jump on Facebook for a couple of minutes. Sometimes I play Pandora through my phone while I am getting ready. I used to use a small speaker in my bathroom but the speakers are so good on the X that I just turn up the volume on the phone and rock out. After getting dressed its time for the Series 1 space grey 42mm Apple Watch with a saddle brown band from Amazon. I then make a cup of coffee on a single cup Keurig. On my way to work I stream Podcasts through my car speakers. Podcasts are a great way to wake up in the morning and to pass the time on my 1 hour commute to our dental office. So far my day has been all about the iPhone but once I get to work the focus shifts. At the office I fire up my 27inch iMac 5K and pull out my second generation iPad Pro 12.9 inch. My iPad is paired the the Apple Pencil and Apple Keyboard case. The iPhone has gone in the drawer and will stay there until lunch, if I get one, or until the end of the day. My iMac runs all of our software systems for the office. My iPad is used for web browsing and content creation for the office and for my consulting job. On all of my devices I use Pages, Numbers and Keynote for content creation. To organize that content I use a program called AirTable, which we will get into more in a later blog. Again the Apple Watch is being used for notifications. I find using it for apps is difficult due to screen size and the load times are slow. Maybe because I have the first series. While I am gone during the day some of the notifications I get are from my Samsung security system at home, my thermostat, and my Ring style doorbell. It has been a great day full of amazing patients but it is time to go home. I fire up the podcast and destress from the day on the ride home. At home my amazing wife has picked up our daughter from daycare (which texts us pictures of her playing during the day) and is watching Netflix or playing music on her 2nd Generation iPad while cooking HelloFresh. After family time and the kid is asleep it is time to clock in for job two. HIPAA consulting. For consulting I work out of my home office. We will go into a lot of detail about my home office and my office when I travel in the future. In my home office my iPad plays a small role as well as my iPhone. Here is where my 2013 13inch MacBook Pro Retina shines. My MacBook Pro becomes screen #1, I have a 2018 Samsung 32inch LCD television mounted in the middle of my desk as monitor #2, next to that is a Dell UltraSharp 21.5” LCD monitor as the #3 screen. The TV is connected via HDMI and the Dell monitor is VGA to a DisplayPort dongle. I have an inexpensive Logitech wireless mouse with USB receiver and for right now (soon to be an Apple keyboard) a wired Logitech keyboard. I have a Altec Lansing 4.1 speaker system hooked up to the tv (old but works). But because the tv and MacBook are connected via HDMI audio from the laptop or the tv will play through the speakers. I think I have worked enough today, its time to have some fun. Outside of my office I have a 2017 Vizio 65” M Series 4K HDR tv, running an inexpensive Vizio sound bar with 2 rear wireless speakers and a subwoofer. They do not get much use since I tend to play the connected Xbox One X with the Plantronics RIG 800LX SE wireless headset with Dolby Atmos. The tv is also sporting a passive lighting kit from amazon. Now I am super exhausted, time for bed. The house arms itself for the night. Lights and other devices can be controlled via the Samsung App on our devices. My alarm is already set to reoccur every work day. All of my work from the entire day and from every device is synced via iCloud. No more flash drives!!! If I still have enough energy I pick up a book. A paper book. Yes paper, not an e-reader or an app on the iPad. Sometimes you need a break from technology. Your eyes and brain need to rest from the stimulus. The soft reflection of the light off a real piece of paper soothes my eyes and soon I am off to sleep. Ready to start the next day all over again. There are a hundred topics that can be pulled from the text above and our goal is to do just that. Logan has a different routine using different devices and programs as well. This is just an insight into how I function and where I am coming from. What does your tech flow look like? What devices and programs do you use to get you through the day? We’d love to hear from you. Thanks for reading.
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First off, thank you for making it to my blog page and welcome! Lets address the first question that will be on everyones mind. Who is Tyler and why should I take my valuable time reading his blog?
As you probably have already figured out by now my name is Tyler. I am what is considered an Early Millennial, rather than the typically thought of Recession Millennial. Early Millennials such as myself grew up as much of our modern technology was developed and brought to the masses. We remember getting internet in our homes. We remember the adoption of cell phones, not smart phones. We used MySpace and Napster. We are considered the Upgrade Generation because of these advances in tech. Moores law was never more true than during my youth. The reason that we are called the Upgrade generation and the reason that we have adapted to tech so easily is because we had to. In elementary school for example we had mid 1990's Macintosh's. By the time I was a sophomore in college the first iPhone was released. That was a lot of adapting and adopting of technology in just a decades time. I was fortunate enough to grow up with technology. I remember my parents having the first Motorola flip phone and then a pager. We had a word processor computer before home computers were an affordable option. Then 56k dial up internet with AOL. My future wife and I chatted nightly via AOL Instant Messenger (RIP old friend). In high school my first car still had a car phone built in and I knew all of my friends telephone numbers by heart. College came and so did my first laptop, a 2006 white MacBook. 2009 I got an iPhone 3GS, my first smart phone. I still remember downloading my first app. I am pretty sure at the time I was still using my Palm Pilot... I never really gave much thought or interest to technology until I started selling electronics are Sears. My focus then became TV technology. It was 2005 and flat panel displays were just coming onto the scene. Which was great because carrying a tube tv to someones car was lets just say not fun. I used technology in college but to a limited extent. Most of my notes were in paper note books. Most professors still made us take written tests and we all went to the computer lab. Do they still have those? My technology revolution did not begin until after college and after a short stint in the Army. Side note they do not have the most advanced tech for the common solider. Here is where the story picks up and how I got to writing this blog today. In 2012 I was hired by my parents to work in the front office of their dental practice in Michigan. The practice had seen better days and the recession had taken its toll. After about a year I decided technology would lead us to a better future. I learned HTML coding (took some in high school as well) and built a website. I created Social Media sites, again I had to buy the Social Media Marketing for Dummies Book. We swapped out our Windows based system an all Mac based system, which by the way is unheard of in the dental world. Six years later we are paperless, we have iPads for patient forms, we have digital radiography, and a VoIP phone system tied into our practice management software. As virtually no one else in the country had done any of this for a Mac based dental practice I was left on my own with little to no outside IT support. But I read, researched and made contacts. And today we are still around and still implementing new technology on a regular basis. Technology and dentistry combined together for me recently and shifted my future. Anyone who has been to any medical office in the last almost 20 years has heard this acronym, HIPAA. Basically its how your private medical information is kept safe and distributed, to put it dangerously simple. Having an ever developing interest in technology and dentistry I began to find my niche helping offices conform to HIPAA regulations. This lead me to an opportunity that has altered my life and its direction. I was offered the opportunity to come on board with Mary Govoni & Associates as the HIPAA specialist. This opportunity allows me to help offices with technology and HIPAA. But it had a profound effect on how and what technology I use on a daily basis. I now have a ever growing home office infrastructure and I am currently developing my traveling office, as I spend a lot of time in hotels rooms and working while away from my home office. This blog will span my use of technology in my personal life, my home life, and my work life both in a dental office, at home and on the road. Nothing is off the table as long as its technology focused. The goal of this blog is to give education and guidance for people like me who use technology but do not need to become computer programmers. This is a blog about living live with technology both at home and at work. I am the first one to admit, I am not tech expert, and I rely greatly on those who are. I am open to discussions and guest authors. I hope you all enjoy the blog. Our future goals are to expand into YouTube and Podcasts as well. Thank you for reading my intro. I promise future post will not be this long. Welcome! |
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AuthorI am an everyday person who has a passion for technology. I am not a technology guru but rather a everyday user of technology. #techwithtyler is focused on technology that is used by everyday non tech people. I hope to pass along my knowledge to help you better live with and through todays technology. Archives
April 2020
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