It’s rather annoying that computers like Dell and other big brands always give you extra junk which I never use. There is talk that Dell will soon offer a slimmed down version of XP or Vista without the AOL sign-up links or other stuff nobody really uses.

So here’s a list of 15 programs I can’t live without and immediately download after a fresh install (which I do once a year) .

1. NOD32 Antivirus - Not many people have heard of a company called ESET but in my opionion they make the best anti virus software. It’s a very lightweight program, doesn’t take over your machine, and is perfect for those looking for another alternative. In the past, I used Norton or McAfee mainly because the computers I purchased or the reviews I read recommended both of them. It shows that if you’ve got money, you can market the heck out of your product and people will think you’ve got the best solution.
2. Mozilla Thunderbird – It’s an email client like Outlook Express but much better. I actually used Yahoo web mail but it’s so darn slow. This is a great solution if you want a local client on your computer.
3. Firefox Web Browser – This is an obvious one and I’ve got a bunch of great extensions I install as well. I’ll have to write another post about those.
4. FoxIt PDF Reader – Lightweight pdf reader and writer alternative to Adobe. Only 2MB compared to Adobe’s 25MB download.
5. CCleaner – Removes unused files from your system. It’s a great free ware product that should be run at least once a week. It’s also got a nice way to remove items hidden in your “startup” which I love.
6. Roboform -Tired of manually filling in forms? I was and Roboform was my new best friend. This program allows you to fill in long registration and checkout forms with one click. It’s also a time saver when trying to submit to multiple web directories or search engines.
7. SnagIt – This is the ultimate screen capture utility. Not only can you easily capture images, but it’s got a great image editor. You can even capture an entire web page including the links and email it as an attachment.
8. FinePrint (limited trial or full version $49.95)- What the default Windows print system doesn’t do, FinePrint makes up for it (and more). You can do things such as combine print jobs and even print 2, 4, or 8 on a single sheet of paper. If you’re one who wants to save ink and paper, this is for you.
9. Disk Keeper -
10. TweakUI -
11. SmartFTP – I do a ton of blogging and need an easy and quick ftp program. SmartFTP is free and accomplishes everything I need.
12. Trillian IM -
13. OpenOffice – For those of you who can’t or don’t want to buy MS Office, this is the 2nd best solution.

Bonus:

1. GoToMyPC – This is an amazing program that gives you remote access to another PC anywhere in the world. For example, I have a desktop at home that I leave on all the time. If I’m in Europe in a cyber cafe, all I need to do is login at 5 and I can quickly access my desktop remotely!
2. Notepad ++ – If you use Notepad as regularly as I do, then you must download this instead. It’s Notepad on steroids and great for quick, simple text editing.
3. Picasa – An easy way to share and manage your photos. Google bought this company last year and has done a great job evolving the product. I just love being able to pop in my SD card and Picasa automatically copies over the pictures. Then a few clicks later, I can upload my pictures to my Picasa Web Album.

If you download and install one or everything on this list, I promise you won’t be disappointed. It’s great that computer companies like Dell allow you to configure your system but it would be even better if you could select these types of add-ons as well.

My next post will be about 5 Steps to Speed Up Your PC when dealing especially with a new installation. There are tons of methods out there but the 5 I’m going to talk about are some quick ways to turn up your PC’s speed a notch.

1. Turn off all uneeded windows services – Blackviper.com is a great site that lists all the Windows services and tells you what’s needed. Disabling several of the default services will free up your memory and also speed up your computer. Fair warning: Be careful when playing with your services since disabling certain ones can cripple your computer. Blackviper however, gives you great detail so as long as you follow his list, you’ll be fine.
2. Check “startup” folder – This folder is what Windows loads and is usually a bunch of junk (i.e. MS Office Fast Find, Acrobat, etc). Removing these from your startup folder doesn’t mean they won’t run, it just might take a little longer to load if you ever use them. Compukiss.com has a nice article on this.
3. Choose “Advanced or Custom” installation – Most software you install almost always adds a bunch of bloatware or creates shortcuts, new home pages, etc which I can’t stand. If I wanted to make Yahoo my home page after I install Yahoo IM I’d do it on my own.
4. Unclutter your “Start –> Programs Menu” – Whenever you install a new program, it creates a new folder in your programs folder. That’s great but what happens once you’ve got many many programs installed? Your programs menu becomes a mess and you’ve got to scroll to find anything. Here’s my secret: I create a “Misc” folder and drag all program folders I rarely ever use like Nod32, Yahoo IM, etc and plop them in there. That way you keep your main programs folder clean and still have all folders!
5. Tidy up the Taskbar – I’m not a fan of the XP default Start Menu so I make several changes including the following:

• Turn on the Classic Start Menu – cleaner look and easier usability
• Uncheck “Group similar taskbar buttons” – I don’t like how XP stacks my windows into one item.

To be honest, it was a real pain to read and try to figure out how to set it up via PayPal. Their site has too much information and it’s very clear what features come included with my current account setup. I spent a few hours searching Google and the PayPal website only to eventually find the best solution which I’m not sharing with you.

So you basically have to choices — you can setup subscription buttons and place them on your website or create email links and send them out to your customers. Since I’m selling ad space on my blogs, I decided to be more personal and email each customer and include a link. Here are the steps you need to take once you have a PayPal account setup.

1. Login to your PayPal account
2. Click on the Merchant Services tab at the top
3. Then under the “Create Buttons” section, click the “Subscribe” link
4. This page is where you setup the subscription information. This link explains it in detail.

If you’re setting up payment via email, make sure you change the last option “button encryption” to “No” otherwise you won’t get the email link. Also, the email link is really long and will break if you just paste it directly into your email. So what I did was use a free url converter called TinyURL and created a much smaller url which I then included in the email.

That’s pretty much it. I hope this post saved you time and you were able to easily and quickly create your PayPal subscriptions!

I’ve read other horror stories on the web from people who had similar problems so I know I’m not the only person having to deal with such crap. I am actually writing this post as I wait on hold with Expedia (one of the many many times). I have also attempted to collect each persons name and call center location I speak with from Expedia. So here’s how the story goes….

On December 30th, 2006 I purchased a round-trip ticket from San Francisco to Tokyo on Japan Airlines (JAL) from the Expedia.com web site for $876.52. My flight was scheduled for January 25th, 2007 but I had to cancel the ticket because I could no longer go. I called Expedia in January a week before my flight and let them know I needed to cancel. I spoke to someone in their Philippines call center and they had no problem canceling the ticket. They informed me I had 12 months to reuse the credit of $871.52 and there will be a $100 re-booking fee per the airlines ticketing rules. Fine with me…I’ll just re-book the trip next time I plan on going to Japan.

The time finally came in September 2007 when I needed to book a flight to Tokyo. Here are the events that occurred while trying to book the flight. Each bullet represents either a call or email exchange I had with Expedia or Japan Airlines.

• Called Expedia on 9/26 to book my new ticket. They started booking the fare but for some reason their system wouldn’t book it. They called the airline to ask what the deal was and according to JAL, the ticket isn’t valid anymore because it needed to be re-booked immediately once I canceled it back in January 2007. This is the exact opposite of what Expedia told me and even the Expedia system says I’ve got the credit to use. Now Expedia tells me to call JAL to resolve. Call time – 45 mins
• Called JAL and they said I needed to contact Expedia since they originally booked the ticket. Call time – 10 mins
• Called Expedia back and explained the situation. I was put on hold while they read the details on this case. They left me on hold and never returned so I eventually hung up. Call time – 53 mins
• Called Expedia back again and told them the same story. The woman read my case and told me I needed to contact the refunds department and gave me the email address. Here’s the email address she gave me “expedia.com-refunds”. I told her that’s not an email address and it won’t work. She assured me it’s what her reference paper says. What a joke. Call time – 24 mins
• Made another call back to Expedia and spoke to Sarah in the Ohio. She recommended I email the refunds dept directly since they are the only ones that can handle this issue. I was given the email address travel@expedia.com . Call time – 25 mins
• I spent the next 30 minutes preparing an email with all the details about this case. I sent the email and waiting for a response. Time spent – 30 mins
• About 1-2 hours later I received a reply from Expedia and they said I needed to call their 1-800 number and speak with a support rep to resolve this. Hello?? That’s what I’ve spent the last few hours doing and they referred me to you! How come nobody will take ownership and handle this issue? (At the bottom of this post is the actual email exchange I had with them)
• Called Expedia again and spoke with Dan Lewis from the Atlanta call center. He read my case and then called JAL and spoke with Kaori. Dan then got back on the phone with me and said he had good news. JAL will give me the ticket credit and I just needed to call them directly to book it. Finally! I thought it was resolved and I was starting to get excited. Call time – 22 mins
• So I called JAL and tried to get in touch with Kaori so she’d know exactly what to do but ended up speaking with another JAL rep. She said Expedia needs to handle this since they originally booked the ticket. What the heck??? I told her Expedia just spoke with Kaori at JAL and she said to call you directly. She said Expedia made a mistake and that’s incorrect. I was so upset at this point but I couldn’t get mad at JAL since it’s all Expedia’s fault. Call time – 12 mins
• Called Expedia back and told them JAL cannot handle this since Expedia was the ticketing vendor. Told them I want my refund or credit asap and need to book my ticket today. I was placed on hold while the agent read my case. I waited on hold for over 40 minutes and she never returned so I hung up. Call time – 48 mins
• Called Expedia back and told them they need to handle this now and I’m sick and tired of the runaround. I was put on hold while the support rep read my case. I explicitly told her to be quick so I wasn’t put on hold for more than a couple minutes. A few minutes later, I’m no longer on hold but connected to JAL! She didn’t tell me anything….just transfered directly. WTF? Call time – 10 mins
• Called Expedia back and spoke with Jardine from the Philippines call center. I requested to not be placed on hold while she reads my case notes. She agreed and instead put me on mute. She then read the case and got back to me. She now needed to call a different department and speak with a supervisor. I told her I do not want to be placed on hold because of my previous experiences of being left without resolution. She agreed to check back in every 5 minutes to let me know she’s still working on it. So far so good. She’s been checking back every 5 minutes to let me know she’s still trying to get in touch with her supervisor (Call time – 60 minutes already). After being on hold for 1 hour and 40 minutes, Jardine finally got connected to her supervisor. They are looking over the case and reviewing the details while I wait on the other line. (Fingers crossed) Great news! Jardine got back on the phone and told me my credit card will be credited in the amount of $823.37! It’s about $50 less than I should be credited but at this point I’ll take what I can get. Now I won’t believe it until I see the credit on my next statement (it could 30-60 days) but I’m done! No more Expedia….ever.

Summary: So after making 10+ calls to Expedia and JAL, speaking with several different call center reps from all over the world, and spending over 7+ hours of my personal time trying to resolve this issue (not to mention the new gray hairs I got) I finally got what I deserved.

Bottom line: NEVER book something with Expedia unless you definitely plan on taking the trip. Their customer support is HORRIBLE and you can just search google to read other people’s experiences. Try searching Google for “expedia refund” to see what I mean. This is not the first time I’ve had a problem with them but it’s the worst one to-date. I now use sites like Kayak.com and then book directly with the airlines instead. This allows you to cancel or call the airline directly if any changes need to be made. They can’t refer you to someone else to resolve the problem like Expedia continued to do.

Here’s the email exchange I had with them. They never replied to my last email.

Hi Andi-

Thanks for the coupon. So what should I tell the support line when I call this time? They just tell me they can’t help. I need this resolved asap….I’m tired of being thrown for a loop.

~David

—– Original Message —-
From: Expedia Travel Support

To: David Cowgill
Sent: Monday, October 1, 2007 4:44:57 PM
Subject: Re: Attn: Refunds Department – Case # 30864XXX – Case ID: [REQ:36659241]Dear David,Thank you for prompt reple as well.We would like to take this opportunity to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We understand how frustrated you are at having to wait. Unfortunately, we cannot handle your refund request via e-mail. We are limited in the information we can provide via e-mail. This is something that would need to be resolved on the phone with one of our customer service representatives and internal helpdesk. Thus, it is imperative for you to call our Customer Support line for further assistance.For the inconvenience, we would like to extend to you a goodwill coupon in the amount of $100.00 toward a future stay at any of our preferred properties. (For more information regarding coupons, please see the page titled “Using your Expedia.com coupons”)If you have additional questions regarding this issue, feel free to reply to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342 and reference case ID 36659XXX. You can also visit the Expedia.com “Customer Support” page (http://www.expedia.com/daily/service/default.asp ) for more customer service information.Thank you for choosing Expedia.com

Andi
Expedia.com Customer Service Team

—–Original Message—–
From: David Cowgill
Sent: 10/1/2007 4:14:19 PM
To: Expedia Travel Support

Subject: Re: Attn: Refunds Department – Case # 30864XXX – Case ID: [REQ:36659241]Hi Claudine-Thanks for the quick reply. I’ve actually already spoken with several
customer support reps via the number you gave me and none of them are
able to handle my request. They told me the only way to handle this
situation is to email you this address.Please let me know how to proceed since everyone I talk to at Expedia
refers me to someone else. I’m a very frustrated consumer at this point.~David—– Original Message —-
From: Expedia Travel Support
To: David Cowgill
Sent: Monday, October 1, 2007 4:07:04 PM
Subject: Re: Attn: Refunds Department – Case # 30864XXX – Case ID:
[REQ:36659241]Dear David,

Thank you for contacting Expedia.com about your refund request.

Unfortunately, we cannot handle your refund request via e-mail. However,
we would be happy to assist you over the phone. Please give our customer
support desk a call at 1-800-EXPEDIA (1-800-397-3342). If possible,
please have your itinerary number and/or booking ID available when
calling.

If you have further questions regarding this issue, feel free to reply
to this e-mail or contact Expedia customer services at 1-800-397-3342
and reference case ID 36659XXX. You can also visit the Expedia.com
“Customer Support” page (

http://www.expedia.com/daily/service/default.asp

) for more customer
service information.

Thank you for choosing Expedia.com

Claudine
Expedia.com Customer Service Team

—–Original Message—–
From: David Cowgill
Sent: 10/1/2007 3:16:16 PM
To: travel@expedia.com
Subject: Attn: Refunds Department – Case # 30864XXX – Case ID:
[REQ:36659241]

Hello-

I’m writing in regards to a credit/refund I should be receiving in the
amount of $871.52 for a ticket I purchased which was never used.

Back in Dec 30, 2006, I booked a flight with JAL to Tokyo using
Expedia.com. The actual flight date was not until January 25, 2007 and
after I booked the flight my plans had changed so I needed to cancel the
flight. I called Expedia.com in January prior my flight to let them know
I needed to cancel this flight and ended up speaking with someone from
your Philippines call center. She told me that it would not be a problem
to cancel the flight and I would have 12 months to use the $871.52
credit on Japan Airlines. I asked her twice just to make sure and she
confirmed that the only extra charges would be whatever the airline
charges for a change fee (in this case she said $100 from Japan Airlines
and $30 from Expedia).

So last week I called Expedia to regain my $871.52 credit and the
customer service rep saw the credit and began booking my flight. She
then started having trouble and had to call Japan Airlines and put me on
hold. After speaking with them she said the ticket that was originally
booked was a discounted fare and Japan Airlines can not give me credit.

Since Expedia.com’s customer service rep gave me the wrong information
when I was canceling my ticket in January 2007, (she said I had 12
months to re-book this ticket) it is obviously the mistake of
Expedia.com so I demand a credit or full refund of the $871.52.

Please review the case and notes (case # 30864XXX) to see my pain,
hassle, and trouble (not to mention over 3 hours of either being put on
hold or trying to explain my situation to one of the many customer
service reps whom I spoke with). It’s very frustrating trying to deal
with a situation like this and spend my time chasing down money that
I’ve spent but never received a ticket or refund for.

I encourage you to pull the actual tape of our recorded conversation
back in January to prove to you that in fact this customer service rep
did tell me I had 12 months to reuse my credit.

I am requesting either a credit or full refund in the amount of $871.52
so I can rebook my flight to Japan asap.

Thank you,

David

——————————————————–

Any time I make a purchase online let it be from sites like Amazon.com, 1-800-flowers.com, myfax.com, or one of the many others I almost always save money. When I order flowers online, I never pay full price. I always find a coupon for 10% off or free shipping at a minimum. I can’t tell you how many times this method has saved me a little bit of money each time I purchase something online. Now it may not seem like much, but if you shop online as often as I do, the savings add up quickly.

The method I go about doing this is not a fancy trick or cheating the system in any way it’s rather just a smart way to save yourself a few extra bucks. The secret? Go to Google and search specifically for something like “myfax promo code” or “1-800-flowers coupon code” and more often than not you’ll get a long list of several sites that have discounts or free shipping by just clicking on the links. Sometimes you might just have to copy down the promo code or coupon code and then type it into the site when you’re checking out.

So do yourself a favor — next time you’re shopping online before you actually check out — go to Google and try to track down a coupon or promo code for that specific site. Sometimes you might have to try several different coupon codes before you get one that is still valid but after a while you’ll figure out what works best for you.

1. no more waiting in unpredictably long lines
2. Travelers get a designated security lane
3. special concierge help you through the clear lane
4. you can use your clear card at any US registered traveler airports at no additional cost
5. the coolness factor. You feel like you’re getting special treatment even if you’re flying coach

So if you’re a business traveler, a leisure traveler, and or a frequent flyer, the clear membership allows you to be in control of your own time and schedule. The cost of this exclusive membership is available to anyone for $99.95 per year. They say you can lock in the rate with the two or three or membership for $199.90 and $299.85 respectively without having to worry about the rates going up. There’s no mention however, if and when the rates will ever increase.

Right now the Fly Clear program only has a limited number of airports it works in but I’m sure this will expand more and more over the next couple of years. The good news is a few major airports such as San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Orlando are already participating in the program.

I don’t know about you but I plan on purchasing this biometric card for the coolness factor and even more so to bypass the long irritating stressful cumbersome security checkpoints.

If you ever park in neighborhoods such as Cow Hollow for example, you’ll notice every street has street cleaning signs for specific times and days during the week in which you cannot park your car. Not only that but each side of the street has different hours and days. The city obviously makes it as difficult as possible for you to remember the day and time the street you actually parked on is going to be cleaned. It’s very similar to how Las Vegas casinos make it difficult to find the exit in hopes you stay longer and gamble more.

Now who really needs the streets cleaned that frequently anyhow? I’d be happy with street cleaning once a month if that will prevent me from additional tickets and save taxpayers money by not having to pay the street cleaners as often as they are paid. Of course the city will never change this because the more frequently the streets are “cleaned” the more revenue they make from writing tickets to the unfortunate hard-working residents who happened to oversleep that morning.

On top of that, the way the DPT meter maids attach the ticket to your car is ridiculous. You would think they would take the time and make the effort to get out of their little golf cart and position the ticket under your windshield so it’s visible and will not blow away. But no, they can’t even get off their butts and instead shove the ticket into your door jam crack which has a high chance of blowing away in this windy city. You have no idea how many tickets I’ve seen sitting on the ground or sidewalk and sympathize for the person this ticket belongs to because they don’t even know they received it.

Think that’s not on purpose? First of all it means chances of the car owner actually receiving this ticket are slim to none and won’t even know a citation has been written until a delinquent letter has been mailed. This means 21 days have passed and you’re no longer allowed to protest the ticket. That is great news for the ticketing officer since chances of this ticket getting protested and reversed are drastically reduced. Now the ticketing officer will be more likely to make his or her quota for the month.

So what can you do to deal with your DPT ticket? I see three options all of which I’ve tried and to be honest with you I’m still not satisfied since the city of San Francisco continues to take advantage and abuse their powers. Regardless, here are the options I’d recommend:

1. As much as you hate to do so, just pay your ticket and be done with it. I’ve spent more time getting angry and upset trying to deal with the morons that work at DPT that my energy and time is better spent doing something else. I don’t like them to win especially when I know they’re wrong but again it’s not worth trying to battle them over a $50 ticket.
2. Fight your ticket directly by mailing in a protest letter (free DPT protest template) to the citation review center. I’ve done this several times myself and have gotten tickets dismissed because of it. On the flip side however I have lost my fair share as well and had to pay the full amount.
3. Pay a company such as parkingticket.com who guarantees your ticket will be dismissed or reduced otherwise you get your money back. I’ve used them before and can tell you it works but it’s still a long and tedious process since you need to follow their steps exactly and mail in several protest letters to DPT. I’ve also had one ticket not be dismissed and am still fighting parkingticket.com for my refund.

In all honesty if the world was a fair place the San Francisco city government would properly train their DPT staff, reduce the frequency and sporadic schedules of street cleaning, and allow an easier way to fight and protest your tickets.

All in all if you end up getting a ticket is probably just easiest to pay it off instead of having to worry about spending your valuable time and energy trying to fight it. I wish I had a better solution for you but it least you have some options if you do decide to fight and protest your ticket.

I’ve provided a template you can use if you decide to protest your ticket directly. Just make sure you make a photocopy of the ticket and the letter e-mailed in as well as certifying the letter which will cost you a little over two dollars. This is just to make sure you have proof that DPT actually signed for and received your protest letter. If you don’t, they can easily say they never received it and then it’s your word against theirs.

Please feel free to tell me about your ticket stories below. I especially love hearing when people beat the DPT system!

What an amazing week. Seriously.

I experienced a camel ride at sunset in the middle of some of the most amazing sand dunes ever. I experienced day turn into night on the terrace of my riad with my fellow riad peeps while looking out onto an ancient medina. I drove through palmeries. I saw Kasbah after Kasbah. I had a guy wanting me to pet his monkey (much more innocent than it sounds). I headed out for a sunrise camel ride under a starry sky while watching shooting stars and looking at the Milky Way. I had lunch with a local family ‚Äì who happened to speak only Arabic and Berber (a bit of a challenge). I got scrubbed down (in every sense of the word) by a woman vying as a wet t-shirt contest winner who afterwards changed into her burka to head outside. I read my book in a beautiful park. I found a patisserie that I loved. I heard French accents all around me. A friend and I got swooped into the home of somebody we now call ‘The Spice Doctor’.

Such is life in Morocco…

It all started in Fes ‚Äì a word I used to solely associate with ‘That 70′s Show’. But no longer. Now I reserve it for the largest ancient medina in the world that doubles as a complete labyrinth. It was here I met Odine (sp?) who was my guide. Midway through the day he had me over to his family’s house for lunch. His family only spoke Arabic and Berber. He, himself, only spoke a bit of broken English. He used this to serve as translator between me and every non-speaker of English in the room. Things were going well. We were eating lunch. We were a happy bunch. Then I realized something. I was in the middle of committing one of the biggest faux pas in the Muslim book ‚Äì I was eating with my left hand. In my defense, I am left-handed. But these people didn’t know that. All they knew was that my left hand was dipping into the communal tagine. I apologized to Odine and had him tell his family that I was sorry and that I was left-handed so that is the hand I automatically eat with. He translated and everybody at the table laughed. Phew! Next awkward moment came when Odine went to have a cigarette. This left me and his Berber grandmother in the room. I was at a complete loss of words for what to say. Literally. It felt like Odine was smoking a pack of cigarettes. Where was he? There was only so long I could sit facing the grandmother with a goofy smile on my face.

In the evening I would go back to my riad and head up to the terrace and hang out with the other people from my riad as we watched day turn into night. So wonderful.

Then came Merzouga. Smack in the Sahara desert. Sand dunes as far as the eye could see. Ali was my camel guide. I joked to him that he was Ali Baba. He said Ali Baba wasn’t a Berber. Therefore, he was now Ali Berber. He would also take me out on a sunrise ride where I trusted his sand dune navgation skills in the pitch black. There are few things better than watching a sunrise from high atop a dune.

The only way to get to Marrakech from Merzouga was one of the regular local buses. This would have been roughly 14 hours…overnight….picking up anybody and everybody who waved their arm on the side of the road. With t minus two hours I pulled out the princess card and ended up paying quite a bit more to have a private driver. This way I also got to see the Moroccan countryside…complete with Kasbahs, palmeries and gorges…on our way to Marrakech. And I also had leg room. And space. And the luxury of being able to stop wherever I wanted. After zig-zagging our way around the Atlas mountains, we arrived in Marrakech.

The main square here is like no other. Sensory overload with acrobats, snake charmers, storytellers (can’t quite tell you what these Arabic stories were though), guys making dentures (odd, I know), guys wanting you to pet their monkeys (I caved and got my picture with one and he literally climbed up and plopped his monkey butt on my head – gross but I was laughing too hard to really be disgusted until afterwards), dancers swinging their tassels on their hats, food vendors, etc. Yes, people constantly try to talk to you and get you to their stalls. But it always seemed friendly here versus in Egypt where I had people get mad at me when I ignored them (and you really must ignore them – it’s a rookie move to answer when they ask “Where you from?”). I actually came up with a winning answer when they would be eye-to-eye with me. I would look at them with an empty look on my face as they started listing languages. Then I would simply say ‘Deutsche’. Nobody speaks German here. And a winning answer was had!

A friend and I also got suckered into going into a man’s home in the Jewish Quarter. He showed us his full array of spices from every container in sight. Ethan decided he would buy a couple knowing he was being ripped off but feeling okay about paying for this crazy experience. Moustafa (the man) wanted us to buy this other stuff as well. The spices were 135 dirham. The other stuff was 50 dirham. He was going to give us a bargain price of…get this….200 dirham for both. This was an offer we could refuse.

Another experience included a Moroccan hammam. Let’s just say I let a woman take full advantage of me. Not only that, I more or less let her take full advantage of me with a scrubbing mitt that felt like I was getting a scrub-down with sandpaper. I could get more graphic. I won’t, though. Some of you might be close to eating lunch and I don’t want to ruin your appetite.

I never had a chance to make it down to the beach. But that’s okay because I know this is a country I will return to in the future!

I am actually pretty amazed by how well I was able to throw myself back into the ‘traveling’ life again after being in the U.S. for three months. My bag weighs much more this time – that is the only challenge I foresee for the coming months.

On that note, consider this the first email of a series that you will be getting.

Looking forward to hearing the haps with you guys.

xox,
Jen

I’ve been working with a client to build her new web site and we agreed WordPress was the best CMS available for the price she was willing to pay. As we got closer to completing the project, it was time for her to learn how to post. I walked her through a basic example and she found it very easy but wondered why the WYSIWYG editor didn’t have an H2 or H3 html tag available. Good question and so my quest began on how to customize the toolbar.

What I Discovered
The default WordPress toolbar uses TinyMCE and apparently there are more buttons already built in — they just need to be activated. Surprisingly, there’s not a solid solution out there and after trying out several plugins, I ended up finding my answer. A very detailed post on AI3 explains how to download and install the plugin. In a nutshell, here’s all you need to do:

• Download the ExtendedTinyMCE.zip from AI3′s site
• Unzip to a local folder on your computer
• Copy advanced-wysiwyg.php into your WordPress plugin directory
• Copy the 7 folders within the plugins directory to wp-includes\js\tinymce\plugins
• Activate the plugin in WordPress
• Create a new post and see if the advanced toolbar is visible

I actually had to ctrl+reload the page the first time before it showed up but then it was smooth sailing. Although the advanced TinyMCE toolbar worked, I still wanted to customize the buttons. Here’s what it looked like after installation:

The good news is this plugin makes it easy to customize. Just open the advanced-wysiwyg.php file and look for the “extended_editor_mce_buttons” functions. Just remove or shuffle around the names to get the layout you want. FTP the file back to your plugins directory and see if it’s what you wanted. Here’s what my final WYSIWYG toolbar looked like:

If you want the same exact layout, you can download my custom version of the plugin here. Please note, I am not the author of this plugin and cannot provide support. You should review the comments and FAQ on the AI3 site for help.

For example, I recently had to reinstall Yahoo IM and really hate their latest 8.1 version. It comes with ads at the bottom (ads are actually pre 8.1) which blink, rotate, and drive you crazy and also seems to run much slower on my machine. So instead of installing YIM bloatware 8.1, I went on over to 0ldversion.com and downloaded YIM version 7.0. 

OldVersion.com currently offers 1910 versions of 152 programs and continues to grow. It’s a great resource so I don’t need to keep an archive of all my previous program versions.