Technology | At Home with Tech

November 23, 2025

Do You Know Where the Red Reset Button Is Located?

My home’s furnace quietly stopped working last week. I didn’t notice the specific moment, but it was shortly after dinner. I thought I felt a bit cold, and I stopped what I was doing. My ‘Spidey Sense’ told me something was wrong.

I turned to glance at a little digital thermostat I keep near my home office desk. The temperature was four degrees cooler than it should have been.

My new Google Nest Learning Thermostat runs a tight ship. So, I knew something was off. (If I were starring a science fiction movie on a spaceship, the next scene would show a pinhole leak in the hull as oxygen vented out.)

My Furnace Wouldn’t Fire Up
I listened for the normal background hum of our heating system. Nothing (no comforting purr of my warp engines). I hurried down to our basement to check the circuit breakers. All good there.

I rushed backed up to check out my gleaming Nest Learning Thermostat. It knew that it was too cold but reported that my furnace was actually running, and my house would reach its desired temperature in 45 minutes.

Houston, we have a problem.

My furnace just wasn’t firing up, and it was 38°F out. My family didn’t know the situation yet. But the clock was ticking.

There was only thing I could do. So, I made the call…

The Big Red Button
I called for an emergency repair. Yes, I pay for an annual plan to protect against this specific moment.

Ninety minutes later, the technician showed up.

The first thing he asked me was whether I had pressed the red button.

“The red button?”

“Yes, the big red reset button. Do you know where that is?”

I did not.

The technician opened up the side of my furnace and pointed. I had to look closely. It wasn’t exactly a bright red button, but there it was, red enough to see… if you were looking for it.

Red Alert
I’m not sure how I didn’t know about the red reset button after all these years. There have been plenty of opportunities during the annual maintenance checks of my heating system. But clearly, I wasn’t paying attention. (Or perhaps no one ever told me.)

The technician reached forward and pressed it. The system started to chug to life.
(Really? How embarrassing if this was the simple fix.)

And then my furnace coughed and conked out.

I felt a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t the red button. (I dodged that reputational bullet.)

The problem clearly ran deeper.

Warp Power Restored
The good news is twenty minutes later, my Scotty had my warp engines running again. Something about nozzle misalignment and carbon build up. (I processed his explanation as my “dilithium crystals” were out of alignment in their chamber. My Star Trek brain would understand that.)

He was on his way, and my family had heat again.

I walked back into my home office, sat down at my desk and thought about my experience…

Hello, HAL
I felt a bit giddy. I was so happy this little emergency wasn’t somehow my fault. My furnace actually required a repair technician’s attention. Yes, I knew I had been oblivious to the red button fix, but I was worried I had missed another obvious sign, like a circuit breaker. (I hadn’t.)

Plus, as my story demonstrates, pressing the reset button doesn’t always work.

Ultimately, I think this all points to a larger issue. Don’t we all want some mastery over the various technologies that impact our daily lives?

Time to Upskill
Of course we do. But it’s becoming easier every day to allow that equation of control to drift further away from us.

And this certainly extends beyond running the electronics and systems in your own home.

It’s about how you interface with technology in just about every part of your life.

On most days, it’s simply a remarkable partnership. And to maximize that potential, we’ve all got to upskill and learn to use the new, revolutionary AI-fueled interfaces.

But sometimes systems break down, and you’d better know where that red reset button is located.

It’s equally important to remember that the red reset button isn’t always the fix.

Remember Your Backup Plan
So where does that leave us exactly?

Well, life is complicated. Always has been.

Things don’t always work the way you expect. User error is no excuse. So don’t abdicate your responsibility to understand the basics.

Have a plan. Then, have a back-up plan. The buck always stops with you.

And yes… it never hurts to know where that red button is located.

November 16, 2025

Here’s How I Finally Wrapped My 9th Grade Film Thanks to AI Video Generation

These are the AI characters I created to star in the big scene from “The Portal in Central Park,” originally written by me and a few friends decades ago and finally brought to life through Google’s Veo 3’s AI superpowers. Here’s how I did it.

When I was in 9th grade, I joined a school project with some friends. We were going to shoot a science fiction mini movie around Central Park in New York City. We wrote part of our time travel script, discussed the many logistics and locations we’d shoot in.

Young Filmmakers on the Streets of New York?
I remember we were going to feature a tall, black obelisk that at the time was found at the entrance to Central Park on 59th Street and 5th Avenue. The sculpture would be the ‘time portal’ that our characters would walk towards and disappear through. Clever editing would avoid the need for special effects.

We were in ‘preproduction’ that spring, and it would have been a spectacular time to film on the streets of New York. Though we were all inspired by the potential of our little project, most eventually realized the many complexities of making a movie and how long it really would take to pull it off. Still, I felt undeterred. But the others had a different (more realistic) view.

Our project started losing steam, and ultimately, our short flick never got out of development. It was simply too big a lift. A few months later, we all graduated, and that was it.

My Origin Story that Never Happened
This would have been my origin story as a fifteen-year-old filmmaker, but it was not to be. (Instead, a year later, I found a more structured opportunity to explore my video production interests in high school.)

But I’ve never forgotten about my first student movie short that never was. That obelisk scene is seared into my long-term memory. I really wanted to capture that shot. I saw it so clearly.

I still do.

AI Video Generation Can Bring Your Vision to Life
Over the decades, I’ve occasionally found myself returning to the nagging sadness that we never finished our movie. Heck, we never started it!

But if I could somehow go back to the future and capture that obelisk scene, maybe I could check it off my bucket list.

Well, now I can… from the comfort of my home office with a little text-to-video prompting and the power of AI video generation.

Yes, the magic of Gen AI is transforming our existence on a daily basis. And yes, it can now enable me to finally manifest my dusty vision out of thin air.

So that’s exactly what I decided to do.

There are multiple platforms that are up to the task. I decided to use Google’s Veo 3.1 and Flow/Scenebuilder. So, I signed up for the Google AI Pro plan for twenty bucks a month. I felt that would give me enough generative AI credits for what would be a 30-second scene.Text to Image Prompting
First, I created still images of my three main characters using Google Whisk and its text-to-image generation powers:

The Leader

Second in Command

The Nerd

Text to Video Prompting in Scenebuilder
Any remnants of our original script were long gone, but as I’ve said, the obelisk imagery remained clearly in my mind.

I’ve admittedly updated the characters (away from a few school kids) and added a few lines (current scriptwriter’s prerogative). Yes, these AI characters can talk!

Then, I uploaded the images of my AI actors and began typing in prompts for individual shots around this one scene. I relied on the ‘Scenebuilder’ mode to retain the same characters and background from shot to shot.

Veo 3.1 is impressive, but it also hallucinated a fair amount, adding in new scripted lines, a few of which I end up using.

“The Portal in Central Park,” My AI-Generated Movie Scene
And here’s my completed 30-second scene, “The Portal in Central Park”… finally ready for its premiere all these decades later.

Imperfect, Yet Simultaneously Stunning
Okay. This is not exactly going to win any awards, and it does look rather fake (Though not entirely fake… It could easily serve as an early draft for a pitch to do a real shoot).

And I also found myself struggling to get precisely what I wanted. (Perhaps that’s due to the limitations in my basic text prompting skills.) Strangely, I felt like a director arguing with live actors who didn’t want to follow my direction.

As I mentioned, I ended up accepting the actors’ improv in a couple of the hallucinations. So, this scene isn’t exactly what I originally envisioned, but it’s close.

The background music is also AI-generated through Google’s MusicFX platform. I just typed in… “A cinematic feeling piece of music suggesting that time is running out. Exciting violins. Medium tempo.”

Click. One try is all it took.

That’s a Wrap!
Ultimately, I found it amazing what I was able to accomplish in just a few hours. That said, I edited the clips together manually in Final Cut Pro. This part still required (for now) nuanced timing and a human touch.

Each clip took about a minute to generate using Veo 3.1 Fast mode. And yes, there were many that ended up on the cutting room floor.

But as imperfect as the results were, I can still say I successfully brought my teenage cinematic vision ‘to life.’

The Future of Visual Storytelling
But I must admit there’s more to this exercise than completing the big scene from an old school project that I’m sure my former classmates have long forgotten about.

The truth is I’m back to where I started as a teenager. I still feel the creative passion to bring stories to life, but I again need to learn how to use the tools available to me.

And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

For twenty bucks, you and I can conjure up complete videos with stories and characters based on simple text prompts. It feels entirely like a fantasy. But it’s not.

The only part of the process that feels normal is this:

-The power of the written word is as strong as ever.

Keep It Real
We’re clearly in the middle of a creative revolution. If you want to keep up, there’s no time to lose.

Learn how to use these new AI-fueled creative tools, which will continue to improve… There are countless reasons why.

…Or else you may find yourself eventually becoming the hallucination on the cutting room floor.

November 9, 2025

How to Design a Photo Gallery Memory Wall at Home

I usually show off family photos at home through my digital screens. (I haven’t bought photo paper in years.) The pictures glow on my little Nixplay digital frames and on my family room screen via my Apple TV interface. For years, I’ve enjoyed the flexibility to rotate countless images through these little memory portals.

What I’ve mostly ignored is the art of analog photo framing where you make a print, place it in a wooden frame and hang it on your wall. That’s so 1925. Plus, you ruin your walls in the process with all those little nail holes.

Well, unless you want to live in a sterile environment with empty walls, you have to accept some damage across the years and include a little patch and paint planning for your home.

So, I recently embarked on a journey to return to this old-school approach and frame more photos to hang.

My goal was to create a memory wall/family history gallery featuring photos from past generations in our hallway.

The Best Archival Photos have Visual Markers
I turned to the collection of pictures from my parents’ old photo albums, many of which I had already digitized. So, I was off to a great start, but I was quickly disappointed with what I found.

Sure, my parents took family photos, but a lot of them simply weren’t that great. Those Kodak moments were turned into soft, mediocre images captured by inferior 20th century consumer tech. (I’m admittedly spoiled by today’s smartphone photography magic.)

More importantly, so many of these images couldn’t stand on their own and reflect a story. The backgrounds were simply too vague.

Visual markers are the key to unlocking the story in any photo. Without them, a photo’s archival value rarely lasts beyond one generation. (Food for thought as you practice your own photography.)

Going back a generation to my grandparents, I had fewer pictures to work with. That said, I could tell my paternal grandmother really enjoyed being photographed.

I never met her, but her vibrant personality glowed in all the photos she’s featured in.

I have just a couple of pictures of my great grandparents, and that’s it.

Other Factors to Consider
Once you select the best photos to work with, then you’ve got to figure out how they should go together. And that can be much harder than you’d think.

How you position archival family pictures can totally affect the story you want to tell. This is an entirely different skill set than I’m used to. (Remember, I just rotate pictures in digital frames.)

Plus, I was overwhelmed by the challenge to properly position a collage of photo frames on my wall and make it look organized and well designed (as opposed to a mess).

And then finally, the idea of puncturing my wall with lots of little nails almost pushed me over the edge towards inaction.

Display a Story in Groups of Four Photos
To help reduce my stress and solve for these complexities, I decided to make my photo frames do more of the work. I purchased wall-mountable frames that housed four 5″ x 7” photos each. (I picked up a few 25” x 10” frames from Target.)

This strategy reduced my clutter concerns by 75% right there.

And it also created a structure for how I would organize my photos. Each group of four pictures needed to represent its own story.

Suddenly, my project became much easier.

One group showcased portraits of three generations on my father’s side as well as my maternal grandparents.
Another group featured my parents over the years.

Easy, right?

The only functional limitation to this design was I needed to group photos by orientation: portrait or landscape.

Still, I was able to make it work.

A Photo Collection Reflects a Larger Family Narrative
I’m happy to report the grand opening of Barrett’s family history gallery
(7am-6pm weekdays and 9am-1pm on weekends).

But seriously, it feels great to have a few photos on our wall that display my family’s story. Previously, I’ve had some of these individually framed on shelves throughout our house. But they were effectively hidden from daily view.

Plus, I like that our son can see this new collection. He knew my dad (who passed in 2022), but he never met my mom.

Yes, there’s more work to do… There’s a whole other family history to reflect on our walls. That comes next.

Simple and Effective Design
How ironic. What’s old is new again. So obvious… yet still requiring me to (re)discover these mini ‘aha’ moments.

Until the day comes when I upgrade my hallway to wall-to-wall digital screens, relying on old-school frames with four photos each is my DIY photo gallery solution.

I’m keeping it simple.

Category: Technology

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