I’ve been using TrackMyShipments.com for some time to keep track of all the packages that arrive from Ebay, Amazon, etc. It was a handy tool to show you the status of shipments for USPS, UPS, FedEx and DHL in one place.
After creating an account with TrackMyShipments.com, it went something like this:
Buy something
Get a shipment notification
Forward that notification to Track@TrackMyShipments.com
I found out the hard way today that TrackMyShipments.com has ceased operations. A notice on their site said they could not discover a business model that produced enough profit to allow them to expand they way they wanted to, or something like that. It’s a shame as I don’t recall any advertising or freemium options on their site.
I set out to find a replacement and via Lifehacker.com found TrackThePack.com*. (Note to Lifehacker: Your new site design is much harder to use than the old one. Not a good change.)
A few notes on TrackThePack.com:
The interface at TrackThePack.com is much better than I was used to at TrackMyShipments.com
The e-mail parser at TrackThePack.com is MUCH more aggressive than I am used to. It created 6 shipments out of one notification that I forwarded to it today.
I wish that the TrackThePack.com e-mail parser would take the Subject Line and assign it as the Note/Description of the shipment. That would be handy.
If you find yourself tracking a bunch of packages, give TrackThePack.com a shot.
* Due to the wealth of information at Lifehacker.com, I can’t find the exact article that pointed me to TrackThePack.com, so I give you this link instead.
I recently found myself building an SCCM package for Adobe Reader 9.4. Sure enough, I got it tested, packaged and distributed just as Adobe Reader X was released. I mention that only as a disclaimer that I don’t know if the following works with Adobe Reader X.
After testing with a pilot group, some of them mentioned that the default toolbar in Adobe Reader 9.4 had a couple of things they didn’t want and a few items that the did want.
Here is the default Adobe Reader toolbar:
Here is what I wanted it to look like:
I set about trying to find where Adobe stored the settings for that toolbar and had the hardest time finding it. I finally stumbled across it here. Since the answer was not easy to find, I figured I’d use this as an excuse to update my oft-neglected site.
The location of the Adobe Reader toolbars are found here:
So customize your menu to your liking and then export that reg key and you’ll be good to go.
The other problem I ran into is that I had set the regedit /S “myregfile.reg” command in SCCM to be run under an administrative context. Because Adobe stores the toolbars in HKEY_CURRENT_USER, you have to make sure that your program is set to run Only When a user is logged on so that you can force it to Run with user’s rights.
If you at all think that the federal government has reached its tentacles too far into much of American life and hope for a way to suppress the constant growth of government, this book provides very factual, very rational means of doing so from the perspective empowering the States in the way and means that the framers intended.
Perhaps the best look at why our economic house of cards almost came crashing down. Unfortunately, trillions in money we don’t have were squandered to perpetuate the myth that our economy is back on solid footing by politicians seeking to avoid being in office when it comes crashing down. This book was very well written and very easy to read.
I actually read this and “The Know It All” by AJ Jacobs. Both are entertaining books. If only I had thought of putting myself through the torture of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (now obsolete thanks to Wikipedia), or living as literally, the Bible, for one year. I’d have probably shot myself in the head before day 365.
I’ve always been a big passive index fund investor, but this book confirmed that which I already believed. It also introduced the idea of Value Averaging, which I will be researching more into the future. VA provides a boost in investment returns over my normal Dollar Cost Averaging, but requires a bit more calculation.
NOTE: The links above are through my Amazon Associates account, so if you pick up any of these titles, please use the links above.
The home opener in St. Louis is practically a holiday. No one gets anything done as anticipation of the impending season distracts everyone from St. Louis from even a modicum of real work.
In honor of that, I bring you Harry Caray, sort of.
My house is in need of a new roof and I am stuck picking out a shingle color. Thus, I turn to you, wise Internet, to lend your assistance to help whittle down the choices of shingle color.
I recently realized that most of the books I own will never be read again by me (if I ever read them in the first place). As such, I’m selling them all. Please see below for a list of books for sale.
I’m willing to ship books (via UPS), provided you paypal me the money, but this will be a better deal for those of you in the St. Louis Metropolitan area.
Contact me if you are interested in any of the titles listed below.
So the nerd level of this post is slightly higher than normal, but I have recently been working on a couple of Windows Server 2008 R2 systems. The machines are running on VMWare ESX 3.5.
Randomly, and usually while browsing the Start Menu or Windows Explorer, the system would hang. It was still responsive to ping, but I could not access the system through VNC, Remote Desktop or the VMWare console. Read more…
