Modern Simple Living

TECH LOG — IOS REFLECTION The Missing Save to Files Button, and Where It Was Hiding After months of searching, the fix for a vanished iOS action turned up in an app that had nothing to do with the problem. 2 Apps Involved Photos Fix Location 1 Setting Toggled Table of Contents ① The Button That Disappeared ② Looking in All the Obvious Places ③ The Answer Was in Photos ④ Why This Bothers Me Section I The Button That Disappeared At some point, Save to Files stopped showing up in one of my apps. I didn't change anything on purpose, and I have no idea what removed it. It was there, and then it wasn't. It's a small action, but I use it often enough that its absence became a steady low-grade annoyance. Section II Looking in All the Obvious Places Naturally, I started with the app itself, then moved on to Settings. Nothing. No toggle, no list of actions, no hint that such a thing could be switched off. I checked on and off over the course of months. Each time I...

WATCH LOG The Zodiac Sea Dragon I Sold for Too Little A $120 quartz diver from 2017 now sells for $300-500, and I'm still working out how I feel about that. $120 Paid $300-500 Now Selling 2017 Year Owned Quartz Movement Table of Contents ① A Quiet Surprise ② What It Was, and What It Wasn't ③ A Small Regret ④ The Lesson I'm Taking Section I A Quiet Surprise I recently noticed that the Zodiac Sea Dragon ZO2219 I owned back in 2017 is selling for $300-500. I paid about $120 for it. That still strikes me as a little incredible. I can see the appeal, though. It was a well-designed, well-made watch, and it's easy to understand why people now pay several times the original price. Section II What It Was, and What It Wasn't To be fair, it had a mineral crystal and was more diver-inspired than a serious tool. It wasn't a perfect watch, and I don't want to pretend it was. Still, there is something simple about a quartz movement. It does its job, ask...

FOOD & DRINK — REFLECTION Building a Home Bar Catalog, One Cocktail at a Time Four spirits, four decent drinks, and the slow realization that a good cocktail is mostly ratios. 4 Core Recipes 4 Spirits Covered 3 New This Round 2026 Year Table of Contents ① A Growing Catalog ② The New Additions ③ Refining the Margarita ④ What's Next Section I A Growing Catalog 2026 has quietly become the year I learned to make my own cocktails. It started with a couple of bar tools and a curiosity about what actually separates a good Old Fashioned from a mediocre one, and it's turned into something closer to a small, deliberate catalog. I'm now at four drinks I'd call decent rather than merely drinkable, and between them I've got rum, vodka, tequila, and whisky covered. That's not a lot of ground, but it's enough to make most requests at a home bar without apologizing for the pour. Section II The New Additions The Mojito is fussier than I expected — a lo...

TRAVEL — HOTEL STAY A Weekend at the Gaylord Texan A deal-driven stay in Grapevine turned into an unexpectedly productive little retreat. Grapevine, TX Location Weekend Stay Included Breakfast $360 F&B Credit Table of Contents ① The Deal ② Where I Actually Spent My Time ③ Everything Under One Roof ④ Would I Go Back Section I The Deal I booked this on a whim, mostly because the price was right. I wasn't expecting much beyond a bed and a pool. Turned out to be one of those cases where the deal undersold itself. Breakfast was included, and on top of that they threw in $360 in food and beverage credits, which is basically covers everything. Section II Where I Actually Spent My Time I didn't do much sightseeing. Most of the weekend was spent finding quiet corners of the resort to sit and decompress. The standout was the Silver Bar near the main lobby. Good drink, good ambient noise, and it turned out to be a surprisingly solid spot to sit with a laptop and get...

GEAR REVIEW — TECH Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8: Retiring the A32 5G A mid-tier workhorse finally hands off work-phone duty to a flagship flip. A32 5G Replaces Flagship Segment 2 Screens Flip Form Factor Table of Contents ① A Venerable Warrior, Finally Retired ② Why the Flip 8 ③ Early Impressions ④ Form Factor, and What's Next Section I A Venerable Warrior, Finally Retired The A32 5G was never supposed to last this long as a work phone. It did anyway, and in the process gave me a genuine soft spot for both Samsung's hardware and Android as a platform. Its battery life, in particular, still outpaces phones released years later, including my personal iPhones. But battery life alone doesn't make a device usable when the processor and RAM start buckling under company chat and email. Section II Why the Flip 8 I wasn't shopping for a flagship experience so much as trying to fix a bottleneck. The A32 could no longer keep up with the basics of a work phone, and th...

GEAR REVIEW — TECH Why I'm Trading the iPhone Air for the iPhone 17 Two weeks in California taught me that battery life and a second camera aren't optional extras. 2 Weeks Trip Length 6.5" Air Screen +1 Cameras Gained Vapor Cooling Pro Exclusive Table of Contents ① The Trip That Exposed the Gaps ② The Air's Charms — and Its Limits ③ Where the 17 Pro Line Loses Me ④ Living With the 17 Section I The Trip That Exposed the Gaps The Air had been fine for a year of ordinary use — email, texting, the occasional photo. Two weeks driving around California with GPS running most of the day was a different story. By the second day I was hunting for a car charger just to keep the screen on for directions. And more than once I handed my phone off and borrowed a friend's 17 Pro Max just to get a usable second shot of something worth remembering. Section II The Air's Charms — and Its Limits I want to be clear: the Air is a genuinely nice object. The 6.5-inch...