A neighbor asked me a short time ago what she should do with her clothes dryer. It takes much longer to dry clothes than it used to. She didn’t know whether to call a repair man or to just replace it.

As electronics move into every corner of our lives, most of them require batteries to operate. As these batteries die, the consequences can be from a minor annoyance to catastrophic failure in your house when the heat goes off and the pipes freeze. To avoid these problems, large and small, you need to know where all the batteries are located and when to change them.

With the new year the scammers are out with a new batch of scams designed to take your money or your personal and financial information. They contact you by email, text message, or phone. They can easily disguise their caller ID, so don’t believe what you see.