Gretchen Rubin: The Balanced Life: What Mac-and-cheese, The Sopranos, And The Harry Potter Books Have In Common

With a constant flow of notifications and alerts on my Windows 11 laptop, staying focused became a challenge. So, I decided to take control and customize notifications to suit my needs.

You’ll get plenty out of ChatGPT if you feed the app simple prompts, but it’s sometimes worth going above and beyond. Custom GPTs are my favorite in-app feature, and even if I didn’t use any other ChatGPT tool, I’d get the subscription for this alone.

If you like playing around with different operating systems, trying out new programs that might break your PC, or simply need an isolated system to run some programs, a virtual machine (VM) can come in quite handy. I always keep several VMs handy, and they come into use quite often.

As much as I love taking photos with my Samsung phone, that loud shutter sound every time I snap a picture gets on my nerves. I also didn’t want to be “that guy” who constantly annoys everyone around them with the camera shutter sound. Thankfully, I found a way to disable it for good.

Dear Eric: My father passed from cancer in 2020. He and my mother were married for 53 years. One year later, my only sibling died suddenly from a massive heart attack. So, it’s just my mother and I left. We have never had a good relationship. Very tense, lots of jealousy (her, not me). Both my parents were very close to my children growing up.

Traveling is exciting, but it often brings its fair share of challenges and inconveniences. To enjoy a more comfortable and stress-free travel experience, here are my essential gadgets, which you can easily fit into your carry-on.