I just bought Neat’s NeatReceipt scanner. I travel for work and my husband will soon be a pastor who needs to keep every receipt. There’s no WAY we’re going to have boxes and drawers and files full of paper receipts – I’m all about the UNcluttering, not the stockpiling of worthless paper.

Anyway, this scanner is fantastic – it scans then reads receipts, business cards, and documents, then stores the data and allows you to export into various useful formats – while keeping the files readable instead of just images.

I got the software up and running on my XP machine pretty quickly (after a few restarts I didn’t expect). But when I tried to install it on my Vista machine, I had some drama.

The installation took several restarts and I had to download a couple of different versions. The only problem I was having, I had consistently. And it blocked me from using the program. Finally, I broke down and emailed customer service (forums and the interwebs weren’t much help).

So: If you’ve installed NeatWorks on a 64-bit Vista , and QuickScan won’t work for you – specifically if it crashes during Calibration, here’s something to try. My oh-so-quick fix: download and install http://files2.neatreceipts.com/tools/CalibrateTool.exe.

No promises, but it worked for me – like a charm. =)

So, I use iTunes almost exclusively as my media player. I also have an HP laptop (a dv6000) that has QuickPlay buttons. These buttons work to control media players from my keyboard (instead of having to find the application window and use the play controls from there).

The catch: these buttons only work with software that comes installed on a new HP. Not with iTunes (unless iTunes is the active – on-top – window). Such a pain!!

So, after a day of searching, I found what I was looking for – an iTunes plugin that allows you to use your Quick Launch/QuickPlay buttons as play controls!

Most of you don’t care, but for the few folks as ANNOYED as I have been, I present to you the easiest solution:

mmkeys.dll

Voila!!

I’m a girl who doesn’t use a mouse if she can help it.  I prefer using keyboard shortcuts – it saves me a lot of time (and some wrist pain).

Sometimes, though, I inadvertently command the computer to do something that makes a drastic change.  Case in point:  while working in Notepad (I was stripping formatting or coding some html/css), I accidentally set my computer to display ALL text right-to-left, instead of the American/European default of left-to-right.  I gotta tell you, it’s bizarre trying to type like that.  And frustrating when you don’t know what key command caused the behavior.  Or how to reverse it.

Fortunately for you folks, I’ve done it several times more.  I use CTRL and SHIFT + arrow keys quite a bit when I type (for selecting text).  Here’s what I learned:  Holding down CTRL + the right SHIFT key will toggle right-to-left typing/reading.  If you accidentally set your text to read RTL, just hold down CTRL + the left SHIFT key to reset.

I discovered another way (one of many) to toggle between RTL and LTR -

1. Open an Explorer window to view the contents of “My Computer.”
2. Right-click on the words “My Computer” in the address bar.
3. Select (or deselect) “Right to left Reading order” from the menu.

David bought me a Zune!  =) 

I came home from work, he took my laptop bag and lunch box from me, and said, “Do you want a present?”  Of course I responded in a very excited affirmative – a surprise like that from my husband is a BIG deal (he’s a planner and very practical – not much into surprises).  He gave me a pair of scissors, and I said, “Thanks!  Scissors!  Just what I always wanted!”  He laughed and pushed me into the living room, where a box sat on a chair.  We opened the box and there it was – my very own Zune!  (For you non-computer folks, a Zune is Microsoft’s version of a video iPod.)  I’m so pysched – it’ll be PERFECT for the flight to Hawai’i!

Yay!  I’m still excited about it.

Techno-babble (disregard, moms):  I’ve been playing with it for the last few hours and have figured it out – all but ripping DVDs to Zune formats.  I downloaded several applications (shareware-style stuff) and the best I’ve seen so far is called AnyDVD Converter.  The DVD to .wmv conversion is fast, and doesn’t require a DVD to .avi step before going to .wmv (a big plus on the speed side of things).  The video quality is stellar, the audio quality is good and rich – the only problem (and I imagine this is something to do with me and my computer, or else this program wouldn’t be rated so highly) is that my audio and video aren’t syncing up.  I only tested one DVD (but several times, from scratch), so I’m in the middle of ripping another DVD to see if it was the disc’s fault (fingerprint, or something else that would cause file reading drama).

Techno Update:  The issue is the video conversion – it’s dropping frames.  It’s very subtle, but very consistent – it’s dropping 1 or 2 for every 30 or so.  =)  So, now to figure out how to stop it dropping frames.  I’m hoping it’s just a resource thing on my machine, but I’m not completely sure it is.  *sigh*