Category: Geek Stuff

A while back I needed to move some stuff from a storage facility in Atlanta to my home in Charlotte. I’d had pretty good luck with Penske in the past, so I went to their site to see what kind of trucks I could get.

I had some leeway about when I was going to move the stuff, so I played around with a lot of options to see what kind of prices I’d get. I got estimates for picking the truck up in Atlanta or picking it up here in Charlotte and driving it to Atlanta. I played with the dates, to try and see if I could get a cheaper rate on a Monday versus a Wednesday, for example. At one point, I accidentally entered the previous day’s date into the “pickup date” box, and received this humorous error message:

OK, so the next time I need to rent a truck, I’ll be sure to visit Penske’s site 1,901 years before I actually need it!

(NOTE: I’m just having a little fun at Penske’s expense here. They’re a great company, and I have nothing but good things to say about them!)

One of the best features of Firefox is its support for extensions. Extensions are kind of like WinAMP plug-ins; they allow you to do everything from tweaking some of Firefox’s built-in annoyances to enhancing your web browsing experience by making life just a few clicks shorter. I’ve been meaning to post this list for some time, but thanks to the new site (and one helpful Firefox extension), it’s much easier to do now. Here’s a short list of some of my favorite Firefox extensions:

AdBlock Plus – My absolutely favorite extension, AdBlock Plus not only blocks 99% of the ads you’d see in your web browser, it also re-renders the page without any kind of placeholders for the ads. I’ve gotten so used to this extension that it’s almost jarring to use a browser on someone else’s computer. While the original AdBlock extension was great, AdBlock Plus has automatic updating of block lists built right in, so you always have the latest and greatest protection against annoying ads!

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EBay and other online auction sites are great places to find rare and collectible items, clothing, electronics and a million other things. But even the eBay website itself will tell you… caveat emptor: buyer beware. You as the bidder enter the auction place with visions of buying things for pennies on the dollar. The sellers know this and work it to their advantage. Certainly there are bargains to be had, but if you’re not careful you’ll end up paying more than retail for an item. Case in point – I once bid in an auction for a copy of this book. It is not rare; in fact, it can be bought at just about any Barnes and Noble or Borders anywhere for $6.99. But someone decided to top my bid and paid $8.50 for it, plus $2.00 shipping – that’s $10.50 for a used $6.99 book. I paid $7.47 with tax the following day at my local B&N and didn’t have to wait 5 days to get it.

Anyway, since I understand online auctions like some people understand poker, I’ve decided to whip up a quick buying and selling guide that distills my years of experience in online horse-trading. Tips for buyers are immediately below. Scroll down to see the tips for sellers!

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When you attach a USB mass-storage device to a computer running Windows XP or Windows Vista, the operating system assigns the device a drive letter – usually the first available letter. However, Windows reserves that drive letter for the USB device until your next reboot. So if you have a single hard drive (C:) and a CD\DVD drive (D:), and you attach a USB flash drive, Windows will assign the drive the first available letter (E:), but if you remove the flash drive and attach a USB hard drive, Windows will assign the drive the next available letter, which would be F: in this case. Windows won’t “give up” the flash drive’s E: until your next reboot.

This is all fine and dandy, unless your next available drive letter is a mapped network drive. Using the previous configuration as an example, let’s say that you have a network share mapped as F: on your system. You attach the flash drive, which gets assigned the letter E:. But then you attach the USB hard drive and… you don’t get a drive letter! Windows will show that the device is connected to your computer, but the device simply never shows up in Windows Explorer.

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I can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to write this! You see, one thing I noticed over and over when doing desktop support is that most people don’t know how to use Google! It’s not their fault – after all, it’s not as if there’s a “Google Class” or anything. But I’d see people get frustrated because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Now and then I’d try to teach them a thing or two, but since most third-party desktop support is metered, most employers don’t care to pay $85/hour to have their employees schooled on how to use a search engine. Which is a shame, because more and more people are using the Internet at work – and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, the Internet is useless!

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Icons used to be something of a black art in the Windows world. Few graphics programs like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop handled the ICO format natively, so one was typically forced to use specialist software like Microangelo to create icons. And while using Microangelo wasn’t especially difficult, it was “different” enough that many people downloaded a demo, installed it, spent 10 minutes playing with it and then decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

Those days are gone though, thanks to a free Photoshop plug-in from Telegraphics. All you need to do is download the plug-in and install it per the instructions for your operating system and software (the plug-in works in most other programs that support Photoshop plug-ins, such as AfterEffects, Corel PhotoPaint, Paint Shop Pro, etc.).

Continue reading “Making Icons The Easy Way”