The other thing that happens is Senior Technical Editor James Booth accuses me of taking the easy way out in writing my article. James writes the tough articles, probably the best we run in the magazine. I, in his opinion, tend to cop out, writing fun, easy, breezy tips that just barely make it in on deadline. I didn't even come close to meeting deadline on this one. But I still think you'll find it helpful.

If you're like me, you like to take pictures, frame them, and hang them on the wall so they can mock you about stuff you once did when you had a life. OK, so I've got issues. I like to say, "I've got issues, yep, five a week."

I'm an editor, you see. We send out five magazines a week... Yeah, none of my friends find it amusing either.

In any case, once you try to hang your frames on the wall, there's always this dance where you put in the nail, set the frame on it, and step back three steps to see if it's level. Then you step forward, tweak it a bit, dosey-do, and do the dance again.

Turns out there's an incredibly better way. Go out and get yourself a plastic "torpedo" level. I found mine for $2.38 (including tax) at the local home supply store. If you're not exactly sure what a torpedo level is, it's a little six-inch level like that shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

Place the level on your frame and level up. Click picture for a larger image.

All you do is place the level on the frame and adjust the frame until the bubble shown in Figure B is centered.

FIGURE B

Center the bubble. Click picture for a larger image.

That's it! Instantly, your picture is level. If you can't set the level on the top of the frame, just hold it against the bottom or just inside. In any case, in about three seconds, you can level your frame.

Just before my parents visited recently, I went through the house and leveled about forty pictures in about two minutes. I also begged the cleaning lady to come in and remove months of Dave-droppings, but that's a story for another week.

Hey, if you've got a really easy tip that's obvious-once-you-see-it, send a note to editor@ZATZ.com with the subject "EASY TIP". If we run it in a future issue, we'll say very nice things about you.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.