Thanks to the troops

This holiday season, let's not forget our men and women in the military. These folks are risking their lives and working hard to help the people of the countries they are serving in to have better, safer lives. In doing so, they are making America stronger throughout the world.

Click on these links:

• Donate to the USO
• Send a postcard through Let's Say Thanks
• Send a phone card through Operation Uplink
• Adopt-a-Platoon
  
• Help military families through Fisher House
  

Labeling holiday gifts

This is perfect for labeling presents for your kids or grandkids who don’t read. Use pictures of each child so they can see who the present is for and from.

For directions with pictures, go to my eHow article.

• Crop a recent photo to headshot size. Save as a jpg.
• Buy blank inkjet labels - Avery 5160 (Address), or 5930 (Return)
• In Word - Tools>Letters & Mailing>Envelopes & Labels.
• Click on Options, scroll to product number, click New Document
• Insert photo - Insert>Picture>From File
• Resize the picture, lighten it, border it, etc., with Picture toolbar
• Use text boxes for name & messages. Or leave blank.
• Change the font & color to reflect the season.
  
• Add clipart and borders to decorate the labels.
• Copy & paste for duplicates or for each child's labels
• Don’t forget to insert your picture, too, so they can see who it’s from!

For more complete directions with pictures, go to my eHow article.

Enough, already! Who cares about Mac vs PC?!

Is anyone else as tired as I am with the whole squabble between Mac & Windows operating systems? Who really cares?! Is it just me or does this whole thing seem monumentally silly? There are so few differences between the two these days - each OS has a couple of handy features that the other doesn't have, each has a few cosmetic enhancements the other doesn't have. Ho-hum...

I use a Vista PC at home and a Mac OS X at work. At the moment, my home machine is faster - it's newer and therefore has more memory and a faster processor. At some point, the company will upgrade at work, then those will be faster. And so it goes...

Now, let's talk about things that have real-world importance - like online banking systems. Bank of America is my favorite, New Bridge is my pick for the worst. Now this could be a real rivalry. Do the designers not see what a pain these systems can be? Well, no they don't. I once worked as a contract software tester for Wachovia. They were in the process of rolling out their online banking system. The bank personnel were all agog about their system, but I thought it would be horribly confusing for the average user. I told them their customers would hate it. Several years later I worked for a company that banked with Wachovia and guess what, we all hated their system!

These are the kinds of things that get consumers worked up, not whether the little icons to close or minimize a screen are on the right (Windows) or left (Mac). A crappy online banking system can make transactions difficult or even cause critically expensive errors. This is important. The gadgets or widgets on the desktop (or lack thereof) just aren't that damn important, folks!

So, shut the hell up, Apple & Microsoft - Mac vs PC! We just don't care!!

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