09:02 – The morning paper reports that a 32-year-old woman who was killed Thursday in a head-on wreck was shooting selfies and posting to her Facebook page immediately before the wreck. She should be a serious contender for the 2014 Darwin Awards. We even have her last words: “The Happy Song makes me so HAPPY.” Nice that she died happy. Fortunately, the driver she rammed was not injured.
The Dell laptop arrived yesterday. I fired it up and was immediately reminded why I hate Microsoft. But I got the Stamps.com software installed, and will use it today to ship packages. I did try firing up IE and connecting to the USPS site to try to pay for the labels in my cart. As expected, it refused to accept payment. Now I just need to get the Stamps.com software configured and get a bunch of postage labels printed and science kits shipped.
12:28 – Success! I was running out of space to stack outgoing kits, but they’re all ready to be picked up. The Stamps.com software worked, and I was able to get postage labels and customs documents printed.
I’m not completely happy with Stamps.com. For one thing, the woman I spoke to when I signed up a couple days ago flat-out lied. I asked her (a) did their service do postage only by using a script to send the postage label to my printer, or did it allow me to save the postage labels as PDF copies, and (b) did the discounts on postage that Stamps.com claims to offer customers refer to the standard Click-N-Ship on-line rates or the higher counter rates. She told me that their service did allow customers to save the postage labels as PDF files, which it doesn’t, and that they discounted postage from the Click-N-Ship on-line rate, which they don’t.
Furthermore, their site and software also flat-out lie. They claim that USPS allows only one reprint attempt, after which you have to apply for a refund. That’s clearly untrue, as anyone who has ever used Click-N-Ship can attest. You can print the label(s) as many times as you wish from the screen that comes up after you pay for the label(s). You can also go back later and reprint the label(s) as needed. And you can save each label as a PDF file. There are two icons on the page, one to Print and the other to Save as PDF.
On the plus side, only some USPS services are available with Click-N-Ship. I can (or I used to be able to…) print Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express postage labels, but not First-Class or Media Rate postage. Stamps.com supports all of those, which is a minor plus for me. I seldom use anything other than Priority Mail, but there are times when I need to send out a replacement item. That might cost $10 in postage with PM and only a couple bucks via First-Class.
If she was 32, odds are she’d already reproduced. Alas. And if she was that stupid, it’s likely she popped out stupid children like they were going out of style. Which, alas, they are not.
Bob, you know as well as the rest of us that the only thing IE should be used for is downloading a different browser. 🙂
My problem is that I hate Firefox more and more with every new release. I used to be able to keep dozens of windows open, each with multiple tabs. If I try to keep even four or five windows with maybe a dozen tabs total open now, Firefox slows down to the point where it’s completely unusable. And Chrome simply sucks. I don’t have much time in recently with Opera, so perhaps I should give it a chance.
How does Chrome suck? I’ve found Chromium preferable to Firefox for the past few years.
It’s not as configurable, lacks some important plug-ins, and doesn’t work with many sites that work fine with IE or Firefox.
I’ve gone back and forth with different browsers over the years and use whichever one at the moment works best for me and is the most secure. I’d have to say that the major percentage of this has been with Chrome, for years now. About 50-50 with Chromium and FF on Linux. But I don’t usually have a boatload of windows and tabs open; maybe eight windows, tops, at any given time, and that not often.
As for the woman operator with the selfie and the crash; it appears to be more evident each day that we could lose three-quarters of the population here and not be at any disadvantage. I see examples every day up here and can only imagine the levels of stupidity and laziness in Megalopolis these days.
48 here with light rain and the lake is across the road just to our north about two-hundred yards; actually the lake and the marsh together. Not driving that way today. We’ve had the flood warning in effect for a good week now here. Water up to the top of the embankment at the end of our street; on a windy day it’s surf, and looks like the ocean here.
I use Chromium for most things. There are a few MS-specific sites that work better with Firefox – I assume Microsoft does this deliberately, because they see Google and hence Chrome as a competitor. There are 1 or 2 sites where I really must have IE, so it gets run in a VM.
But then – I never do what some of you do, with zillions of tabs. At most, I may have 3-4 windows open, each with half-a-dozen tabs. If I’m not working, it’s a lot less than that – at the moment, one window with three tabs, and I’m about to close this one…
We’ve had the flood warning in effect for a good week now here. Water up to the top of the embankment at the end of our street; on a windy day it’s surf, and looks like the ocean here.
Dude, that is our water for Texas!
Success! I was running out of space to stack outgoing kits, but they’re all ready to be picked up. The Stamps.com software worked, and I was able to get postage labels and customs documents printed.
Your USPS dude / dudette is going to love you today.
“…that is our water for Texas!”
And every time, dude, that I hear a Texan waxing nervous about the droughts I remember the Arab oil embargo years and the amusing Texan slogan: “Let the Yankee bastards freeze in the dark!”
But bygones be bygones, and I hope y’all in the Great Lone Star State git some wottuh real soon now. We got more than we can use.
Here’s a funny weather forecast for tonight here:
“Cold; occasional evening rain and drizzle followed by a bit of snow and rain at times late.”
Went and saw “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” today. 4.5 out of 5 stars. And Emily VanCamp was in it as a SHIELD Security Officer for about 15 minutes for Bob.
There were two previews embedded in the credits. Never leave a Marvel movie until the screen goes dark.
The bumper sticker was, “turn on a light, freeze a yankee”.
We are still forecasted for 93 F on Monday with no rain in the 10 day forecast. We are very, very dry. I may have to fill the ponds with the well again which sucks. They have some fairly nasty looking scum on them now.
And the R party wants to turn Texas red:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/04/26/why-immigration-reform-isnt-the-answer-to-republicans-demographic-woes/
I’m sure that Obama will enforce that border with all diligence if we just allow those illegally here now to become legal citizens. Just ignore all the fake social security numbers, fake tax returns, etc. I’m sure that nobody got hurt in all this.