I have multiple Plantronics wireless headsets (on different phones). Mostly, I love ‘em. When I use the speakerphone, the headsets give three beeps – often. This triple beep gets annoying pretty quickly.

What happens is that the microphone in the headset lifter, which is supposed to recognize that the phone is ringing, is picking up the sound from the speakerphone, and it is signaling that the phone is ringing and should be answered.

OK. How do I make the headset shut up when I’m on a day long speakerphone conference call? Plantronics provides no way to do this.

I found an easy way to install a simple on/off switch. Connect the power supply for the headset to a power strip with a switch. Plug nothing else into this power strip. When you want to disable the headset, turn it off at the power strip. When you want to enable the headset, turn the power strip back on.

Brute force – but it works.

I usually use decimal degrees to specify a position in Google Earth (e.g. 30.12345, -83.45678).

Google Earth allows you to search using degrees/minutes/seconds notation too. Enter your coordinates with a space between each component (degrees/minutes/seconds), and a comma between your latitude and longitude (e.g. 30 12 34, -83 45 23). Remember to include the negative sign for western hemisphere.

Here’s where I capture my (evolving) thoughts on topographic maps.

I’m making lots of hiking trips into the north Georgia mountains lately. Many of these trips include travel on obscure dirt roads, trails, and bushwhacking. Consequently, I’m making use of lots of maps.

Some options:

• USGS quadrangles
• Forest Service Road and Boundary Maps (FSTopo7.5” Quad Maps) - http://fsgeodata.fs.fed.us/index.php
• Google Earth
• http://caltopo.com/ – this integrates Google Maps, USFS, and USGS topos. The USFS maps include trail data not available on USGS.
• Delorme Topo 9 or 10
• Garmin Basecamp
• Garmin eTrex 30 GPS
• National Geographic Trail Maps on the iPad
• All Trails/National Geographic
• MappingSupport.com
• Assorted paper maps I’ve collected through the years
• http://www.macgpspro.com/
• http://topomapsapp.com/index.html - iPad/iPhone
• http://www.gelib.com/store/shaded-usgs-topographic-maps.html - Paid topo overlay for Google Earth. I don’t like the effect on their sample.
• http://mytopo.com/ - custom printed topo maps mailed to you for a price
• http://map-pass.mytopo.com/ - $30 per year subscription access to topo maps
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mytopo-maps-by-trimble-outdoors/id478007253?ls=1&mt=8 - iPad topo
• http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1 - free topo map online. Very nice, except the colors are too light.
• http://www.topoquest.com/ - viewer that uses data from http://www.libremap.org/

I use multiple topographic programs. I use Garmin’s BaseCamp because I use a Garmin GPS and because BaseCamp uses a typical Windows/Mac user interface. I use Delorme because, despite the non-standard U.I., it has trails and roads which exist in reality but not in Garmin’s maps. (I also use National Geographic maps on IOS devices, but that’s another story.)

Aside: I just don’t understand why some vendors, such a Delorme, find it necessary to re-invent the U.I. paradigm, and as a casual user, I can’t possibly remember how to use a unique U.I.

Anyhow, sometimes there’s a trail/road I see in Delorme, and I want to follow it on my Garmin GPS, so I need some way to export it and import it. I can’t export a trail, but I can put a route on the trail and export that route as a .GPX file. Then I can import the .GPX as a trace into Garmin, and convert it into a route.

Here’s how to export a route from Delorme:

1. Create your Route
2. Select the Route tab
3. Right-click on the route (trail – on the map), select Manage Route, select Save as GPS Log.
4. Export a .GPL file
5. Select the Draw tab
6. Press the File button
7. Press the Import button
8. Set “Files of Type” to .gpl. (This must be done BEFORE selecting the file.)
9. Set “Import as” to Track
10. Select the desired .gpl file and import it.
11. Press the Export button
12. Set the Save As type to .gpx
13. Enter a file name and save the trace as a .gpx file

I wanted to create some pages on a Drupal blog and I wanted to control pagination when printing to paper. This blog is using the default "bartik" theme. I found two ways. Both work with recent versions of IE and Firefox; both fail with webkit (Safari and Chrome). In order to use the following, you must use the "full html" text format (not Markdown, not filtered html, not plain text), and you must use the plain text editor.

The easy way -- put the following line in your blog posting body, wherever you want a page break on print:

<div style="page-break-before: always;"></div>

</code>

The hard way -- edit drupal/themes/bartik/css/print.css and append the following:

 .page-break { page-break-before: always; }

</code>

Then put the following line in your blog posting body, wherever you want a page break on print:

<div class="page-break"></div>

</code>

So far, so good -- so long as you use IE or Firefox. Chrome and Safari will respect page-break for some people on some sites, but they are really touchy about other elements of your CSS. Something about bartik or Drupal prevents them from processing page-break. Since Chrome and Safari will ignore our page-break code, I thought it might be nice to warn users of those browsers. But not every user of my pages will print them, so I decided to display the warning only for Chrome/Safari users who actually try to print my pages.

I appended the following to drupal/themes/bartik/css/print.css:

@media print and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) { .warnwebkit {display: inline; } } 

</code>

and at the end of each of my printable pages I add the following:

<div class="warnwebkit"> This story will paginate properly with recent versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer. They paginate poorly with Chrome/Safari. Sorry about that. </div>

</code>

I upgraded from Parallels 7 to Parallels 8 and it messed up my Windows guest keyboard layouts.

I use a Dvorak keyboard layout in Windows and in OS X. After the upgrade, some Windows programs would use Dvorak and others would use Scholes (QWERTY).

This is caused by a failed attempt by Parallels to synch keyboard layouts between guest and OS X. To disable it:

• Shut down the virtual machine.
• Go to the folder where your PVM files live.
• Right click on your VM file and select ‘Show package contents’
• Edit config.pvs using TextEdit
• Find “KeyboardLayoutSync” and change the value for ‘Enabled’ to ‘0’ (zero).

I enabled the BillMeLater feature on PayPal, in order to get a $20 credit. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing. It appears that BillMeLater and PayPal are two entirely separate accounts, and they appear to be two different companies, in that they have separate customer support numbers and a call center agent for one can’t help with the other.

It also turns out that it is entirely too easy for a payment entered via PayPal to get sent to BillMeLater when I intended it to go to the credit card associated with my PayPal account. Way too easy. As in, when I place each order I specify that it should go to the credit card, and some of them go to BillMeLater anyhow.

So I went to BillMeLater’s online “Contact Us” and I told them I wanted the BillMeLater feature removed from my PayPal account. They sent me to PayPal. (This was my clue that maybe PayPal and BillMeLater were separate companies.)

So I went to PayPal’s online “Contact Us” and I told them to cancel BillMeLater. No response. After a few weeks, I tried again. Still no response.

Today, I called BillMeLater, at 866-528-3733 and asked them to cancel my BillMeLater account. “Nika” agreed to cancel my BillMeLater account. It took a little while for her to find my account, because she needed a BillMeLater account number, and I can’t get the BillMeLater or the PayPal web sites to give me this mystical number.

I hope Nika succeeds in canceling my BillMeLater account. If not, my next step will be to send a certified letter to both PayPal and BillMeLater, directing them to cancel both my PayPal and my BillMeLater accounts.

I bought a Garmin eTrex 30 GPS, bundled with Garmin topo maps. I expected the bundled maps to come on a CD/DVD. To my surprise, they were on a micro SD card, tucked inside an SD Card adapter.

I want to use the maps on my computer via Garmin BaseCamp and on my GPS. Garmin’s idea is that you’ll insert the micro SD into your GPS, and tether your GPS to your computer. I want to use the topo my Mac, even when it isn’t tethered.

1. Create a 3.5 GB, FAT32 disk image, using Disk Utility. I named mine Garmin-Topo-for-Mac.dmg and the partition was named GARMIN_IMG.
2. Copy the Garmin directory from the SD Card into GARMIN_IMG.
3. Un-mount GARMIN_IMG.
4. Start BaseCamp.
5. Open Garmin-Topo-for-Mac.dmg, mounting GARMIN_IMG.
6. The map should appear in BaseCamp. If it doesn’t, there are actually a couple of things I did beforehand, while tinkering. Some might be important.
   1. I formatted a USB flash drive FAT32
   2. Copy the Garmin directory to the USB drive.
   3. Unmount and remove the USB drive.
   4. Start BaseCamp.
   5. Insert the USB drive.
   6. Wait. Wait. Wait. Lotsa LED flashing on the USB drive, while BaseCamp loaded the entire map.

I own a Brother HL-2170W laser printer. I also own Delorme Topo North America v9. Using the Win XP built-in “HP Color LaserJet 8500 PS” driver for this printer gets better results than the Brother drivers (from the \USENGLIS\install\usa\inst subdirectory of the Brother-provided zip file).