TW105: Fixing Automation Fails, Renting Speakers, and Avoiding Scams

Michael shares some recent work slip-ups tied to automation and explains how a small formatting mistake threw off email quick links for thousands of people. He walks through how he’s checking Zoom links more carefully now using JAWS sounds and VoiceOver tweaks—and vents a bit about Apple's pronunciation settings and table editing headaches on the Mac.

Damashe jumps in with thoughts on where VoiceOver stands in Apple’s priority list (spoiler: not high), and they both trade tips for avoiding Safari freeze-ups and digging into macOS settings. There's also some behind-the-scenes talk about how automation projects are making them think more like coders, even if they’re just feeding prompts to GPT.

They talk about:

• Renting vs. buying speakers for events (and how hotel AV pricing is wild)
• Michael’s growing collection of smart appliances (yes, Sniffy McGee the vacuum makes a return)
• Network upgrade ideas, attic fails, and future cable runs
• Damashe’s vending machine script to automate reporting from Cantaloupe
• Using Hazel with GPT to build automation rules on the Mac

Toward the end, Michael shares a serious PSA about a family member who nearly fell for a phone scam—and why it's time to have a plan in place before you get a scary-sounding call. Damashe adds tips for protecting yourself as deepfakes and voice cloning get better and easier to pull off.

They wrap it up with a quick look at download numbers, what’s working with the “live to tape” style, and why Damashe regrets not buying that fancy Dyson fan when it was on sale.

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