What’s That Charge?

My brother Jeremy recently launched a new website, whatsthatcharge.com, with a simple-but-useful premise: An searchable online repository, with explanations, of those cryptic merchant ID strings representing particular businesses that appear on your monthly credit card statement, like PAYBYCASH(ULTIMATEG.C) 877-703-6339 OH.

The idea behind the site is that if you Google search for one of those strings, one of the results will (hopefully) be a page on the whatsthatcharge site with an explanation of what the charge is.  The site doesn’t index or collect any personal information at all – it simply has a list of those merchant ID strings from credit card statements, along with community-sourced explanations of what business each one represents.

It’s always a good idea to review your credit card statement to make sure the charges on it are legitimate, and hopefully this site will help a lot of people with doing that -- especially for those businesses that use very cryptic credit card merchant IDs! 

Tip: Copy fully-specified file path to clipboard in Windows Explorer

In Windows 7, if you ever have a file open in Windows Explorer that you know you’ll want to manipulate in another application, such as attaching the file to an email (or embedding an image in a blog post!), a quick way to copy the file’s fully-specified path and filename to the clipboard is to hold Shift and right-click the file, and select the Copy As Path option.

Then, you can just press Ctrl+V to paste the path into the Open File… dialog of the target application! No need to drill down through your filesystem’s folder structure to find the file.

It’s nice that this is included as native functionality in Windows 7.  In Windows XP, it was necessary to use a 3rd-party utility such as ClipPath to get this same functionality.

Workaround: Wireless connection fails on “Waiting for Association” on Thinkpad T520 laptop

My work PC, a Lenovo Thinkpad T520 laptop running Windows 7, normally seamlessly switches between the wired network connection when docked, and the wireless network when undocked.

A few days ago, though, the laptop (without me having made any relevant changes to the machine’s hardware/software configuration) started failing at the “Waiting for Association” step when connecting to the wireless network after undocking.

Rebooting (while undocked) would work to resolve the problem, but taking multiple minutes to reboot the machine and reopen all of the programs/documents that I had been working with prior to the reboot was obviously a significant hassle.

This morning, I found a better workaround: In Device Manager, if I disable and then re-enable the wireless network adapter (“Intel(R) Centrino(R) Advanced-N 6205”), and then re-attempt the wireless connection via the Thinkvantage Access Connections system tray icon, the wireless does connect successfully.

I’ll update this post and/or make a new post on this blog if I discover a full fix.

Workaround: Google Calendar: “Unable to reach Google Tasks” when trying to edit an event

While working with my Google Calendar just now, although I was able to view my calendar and create new events with no problem, when I tried to edit an existing event, I was getting an “Unable to reach Google Tasks” error displayed in the bottom-right corner, and the “edit event” page would not appear.

Logging out of my Google account and then back in again worked around this issue for me; editing events on my calendar works fine now for me after doing that.

Logitech MX500 mouse replacement: Logitech G400

Quite a while back, circa 2005, I purchased a Logitech MX500 mouse.  It served me very well for many years at my primary mouse, both at home and at work.  I first used the MX500 at home, then later decided to bring it into work; I purchased a Logitech MX518 mouse, the successor to the MX500, for use at home.

Finally, this past week, after 7+ years of quality service, my MX500 flaked out: When holding down the left mouse button to drag something, the mouse button would randomly start “releasing", even though I was firmly holding down the physical button.  This quickly started causing me lots of problems when selecting blocks of text, reordering items in lists, and performing other operations. I decided I needed to replace the mouse.

Now, in 2012, the model MX500 has been discontinued; its successor, the MX518, has also been discontinued.  The modern successor to the MX500, as I found after doing some research, is the Logitech G400 mouse. 

As you can see, the MX500, the MX518, and the G400 all have the same-shaped chassis.  Despite the G400 being marketed as a “gaming mouse,” I’ve found that it’s perfectly suitable for office use, and is a seamless replacement for my MX500.  Having used the new G400 for most of this week, I don’t even notice any difference while using the new mouse between it and my old MX500. 

So if you’re in the same position I am, and your Logitech MX500 (or MX518) has recently died, and you’re looking to replace it with something that works and feels the same, I can recommend the G400 as a solid replacement.