For whatever reason this is hard to find. Paypay.com offers delivery confirmation from USPS for 18 cents (vs. 60 cents from USPS). You just have to buy your label from PayPal.
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ship-now&info
You’ll need to have a PayPal account and it will ask you to log in before you’ll see the shipping options.
Maybe there is an easier way to do this, but I found myself desperately trying to change the permissions on a bunch of folders using XP Home. Turns out that unless your in Safe Mode (I haven’t tried this) you can’t see the Security tab for a given folder in XP Home Edition.
One solution for this is to install the Security Configuration Manager (made by Microsoft for Windows 2000). Then even if you are not in Safe Mode you can see the Security Tab and make changes to the NTFS permissions.
Here is the link I used to find this information with a little howto:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_home_sectab.htm
Are you curious why I couldn’t boot in Safe Mode? I was using Crossloop to remote into the machine in question.
Ok I admit it, I like IE 8. It runs good enough, looks good, InPrivate Browsing is good, and I like that one tab or window won’t crash all my IE tabs. However I won’t use it because it doesn’t have in-line spell checking.
Sure I can download a add-on to get spell checking but that’s not in-line either. As I type Firefox will underline misspelled words. With IE8, the best I can do is a spell check after I’m done typing and that’s using an add-on call ieSpell. If they can do it in MS Word why not in IE???
I installed Internet Explorer 8 this morning and noticed it checked for Malicious Software before installing. My guess is it used MSRT’s (Malicious Software Removal Tool) quick scan because it didn’t take very long. I don’t know why but I think that’s kind of cool.
I like this program. Stardock Fences will organize your icons into… well… fences. So if your the type that has a lot of desktop icons then fences is certainly for you. The best feature is the ability to scroll through icons in a fence. If the number of icons fills up the space you allow for their corresponding fence then a scroll bar appears when you hover over the fence and you can scroll through them.
Pictures speak louder than words, no?
This was a bit of a strange one. A client had an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop that was stuck on “Configuring Updates: 3 of 3.” The the laptop would reboot automatically and configure update 3 of 3 again.
Normally I would use the Vista Recovery disk but it would just boot to a blank screen. I would get to the Vista loading bar but then the optical drive would stop spinning and the screen would go blank. I tried multiple boot disk finally getting Ubuntu’s live CD to boot. In retrospect I wish I had tried an XP disk to get to the recovery console.
To stop the configuring update loop, I deleted the pending.xml file under c:\windows\winsxs folder. Details on that procedure can be found over at The Fake Geek. Initially it looked like it was going to do the loop again but it went past that to let me log in.
Once I was in, I noticed that Windows Updates wouldn’t run (Could not search updates). I tried a variety of solutions that existed on the net however in the end SP1 saved me. I had to enable a bunch of services that had been set to manual for some reason, including the Windows Installer. Then I installed SP1 using the standalone download.
That was all. SP1 fixed all the services and Windows Updates. I never did figure out why so many boot CDs go to a blank screen. One Linux distro had problems with the graphics card. Which lends me to think it might be a video card firmware issue but Linux distros often have problems with graphics cards.
Here’s a really detailed process to reinstall Windows by Alan Norton over at Tech Republic.
10 things you should do before, during, and after reinstalling Windows
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=794
I have a paid version of Roboform and I wanted to sync my data between my home and work PCs. I was able to accomplish this (fairly) easily using Live Mesh. I’d have to imagine this would work equally well for Keepass Password Safe (which is free for those of you who don’t want to purchase RoboForm).
Live Mesh is Microsoft’s, ummmm… well that’s tough. I would’ve called it a cloud computing platform but that may end up being something else. For now Mesh gives you a cloud desktop, remote access to devices and folder sync. Eventually I believe they will have applications that run on the cloud desktop and your various devices. Sign up for Mesh at http://mesh.com.
I already have a Live Mesh folder that syncs between my home PC and work PC. Creating a Mesh folder is easy. Sign up and install Live Mesh. Then create a folder or use an existing one, right click on the folder, and click Add Folder to Live Mesh. The sync options can be setup here as well.
Make sure the Live Mesh folder you want to use does not reside on your Desktop and the synced folder on the other PC is also not on the desktop. See the problems at the end of this post.
At home, I pointed my home Roboform to save all my data in the Live Mesh folder that is shared between my home and work PCs. This can be easily done in RoboForm’s options under User Data by clicking on Set Folder….
At this point Live Mesh will sync that data to my work computer. So now I needed to setup RoboForm at work.
At work I installed RoboForm, activated it, and then pointed RoboForm to the same location in that Live Mesh folder. So I opened RoboForm’s options, highlighted User Data, clicked on Set Folder…., and browsed to …\%LiveMeshFolder%\My RoboForm Data\Default Profile\.
TaDa, all my data, passcards and such appeared. If a change is made on either side you will have to wait for Live Mesh to sync the change before it will appear. Also if you’ve had the PC up for a while and thus RoboForm on for an extended period then you will need to Refresh RoboForm to see new data. That’s done in RoboForm under Profiles.
I did have some problems however. Live Mesh by default will sync to your Desktop. For some reason RoboForm balks at using a Live Mesh folder on your Desktop to save data to (see error below). So I had to make sure the folder on my home PC wasn’t in my desktop (it is in my Documents folder) and that the folder synced to a location other than my desktop on my work PC (I just synced it to the c:\).
Links:
So far I like the addition of Tasks to Gmail. The feature I like the best is adding an email to my tasks list. This is great for actionable items that come in via email. I use to put a star by emails that I need to do something about. Now I can add them to tasks and put a due date on them.
This morning when I got my Qwest bill notification I added it to my tasks. That put an entry in my tasks with the subject line of the email, “Your Qwest bill is now available online,” as the subject of the tasks and it also has a link to the actual email in the tasks window. I added a due date to it and now I can archive that email getting it out of my inbox.
Now for a few future feature requests:
To access this new feature log into your Gmail, go to the labs section and just turn it on.
For my own reference as much as anything here is a list of things I do when I have to wipe and reload a client’s PC.
Ta Da, generally they have a machine that is running better than it has in years plus any malware is long gone. Of course I can’t save them from themselves if they try to download those free ring tones.