add a signature in Lion

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Every so often someone sends me a contract or something to sign and fax back to them. My days of owning a fax and having a second line for it are long gone. I end up printing the page, signing, scanning and emailing it back.

Here is a digital way to do it in Lion on your Mac.

1. open the pdf in preview 2. click on the annotate pencil 3. under S, create signature. write it on a piece of paper, hold up your sig to the window on your mac, line up on the blue line 4. accept 5. sig is stored 6. click and drag to where you need it on the pdf. resize if necessary 7. repeat process if you also need to date the form

at&t customer service

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Rae: I hope to make this my last post on AT&T. I am tired of talking about them. I am tired of paying them each month for sub standard coverage. To all of you not following our iPhone saga, in a nutshell we have 2 iPhones and no land line. Service has gotten much worse over the last year. I need a new phone very badly and my contract is up. John's contract goes until next August. I assumed that since AT&T can see our dropped calls and that we have called them at least 4 times this year that they would let John out of his contract.

What was I thinking?

Rae: After John's recent call it is now completely clear to me. This is all our fault. I had no idea that we only had to on occasion, sometimes for a little while receive a call outside of our condo. And that the fact that we can actually make calls most of the time from 2 locations (where we actually have a chair and it is near a window, so we have a nice view) should be a bonus. After all I work from home. Isn't that what it is all about, making your business calls from your bedroom?

John:  But Rae, their coverage maps "clearly indicate we have a 'best quality' signal at our location". And what really irritated me was after my last call I got an ASSURANCE from the Customer Service rep, that "they would resolve the issue within four business days and CALL me back". I emphasize CALL because they had been sending me texts. And I'm not a big text guy and think they are always trying to sell me something. Did they call? What do you think? Did they text? A tougher question but the answer is, NO! How's that for Customer Service 101?

Rae: And shame on us for not asking if the contract said that they do not guarantee coverage in buildings. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I was blinded by the iPhone.

And AT&T has proven to be quite the problem solvers. I think $180/mo. is too much money for sporadic phone service. More than one AT&T employee has had the innovative idea that we can reduce that $180/mo. by just reducing our plan minutes. Now why didn't I think of that? Several people at AT&T have offered this exact solution to our problem so I can only assume that would be a good idea.

John:  I do have to give credit to AT&T's training regimen. It's clear to me that everyone drank the cool-aid because the solution to our problem always had something to do with upgrading or buying something else. And Apple...listen to this!!! This AT&T rep told me, and I quote, "The iPhone is notorious for bad signal reception". That's when he took another sip of cool-aid and suggested I sell my iPhone on eBay and buy something cheaper...one of their (AT&T's) phones. (Folks. You just can't make this stuff up!)

Solution: John will have to pay the $185 fee to get out of his contract. We have a MicroCell that we paid nearly $200 for which I suppose I will ebay. John has a working AT&T phone that we will have to replace with a $99 Verizon phone. And I will get the brand spanking new iPhone... in white... maybe with a Kate Spade polka dot case.

Bonus: I will quit talking about AT&T. Well Reader I will quit boring you with my story. But I will gladly share my AT&T experience with anyone who will listen. An unhappy customer can tell an unlimited amount of people. And has the motivation to do so. I wonder why AT&T does not understand that? All we wanted was for them to waive the $185 fee and let us out of the contract. They will get their $185 and a whole lot of bad press.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The END.

Plz repost. Friends keep friends from using AT&T. 

app store

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need Apple software? buy it from the App Store. Use the icon in your dock.

I've learned a lot of new things from buying a new computer and getting all 3 laptops in good working order. And this is one of them.

At some point I did notice the App Store icon in my doc and I did look there a time or two but really have not paid much attention to it.

Early in the year I bought Aperture 3 at the Apple Store where I go weekly for my one-to-one. It was $199. I noticed that Aperture in the App Store is $79. I asked my trainer if this was the Lion upgrade and it is not. Apple is offering their software online for MUCH cheaper than if you bought it with the disk. Now I do like to have my software on disks in case I have a problem. But for a Aperture savings of $120 I can go without the disk.

I recently bought Numbers for only $19.99 from the App Store. I thought this was a good deal and I was happy to not have to buy the whole iWork package when I don't use Keynote and don't need to upgrade Pages.

Now if only Adobe would do the same thing.

find a lost password on your mac

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Lost passwords are the worst. And it happens. After I got all 3 laptops working Apple suggested I wipe my Time Capsule clean and start over with fresh back ups rather than trying to link new computers to old back ups. Gulp.

Somewhere along the line we had to give the Time Capsule a new password and we did not write it down. I think we mistakenly thought we'd remember it. Right.

The following instructions work IF when you are asked if you want to save your password to your keychain you say yes.

Go to the magnifying glass in the far right corner of your screen.

Click on it.

Type the word "key".

You will see your keychains. Click on that.

You will see all your passwords. Click on the item you are looking for such as Rae's Time Capsule. Look at KIND and you will see the AirPort base station password.

Double click on that.

Check the box in front of Show Password.

It will ask you for a password. Use the one for YOUR computer.

Knowing this feels like pure magic.

instagram

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The above photos were enhanced using the toy camera type app Instagram. It's fun, it's free and you can get it in the iTunes store. There is a new version that I can't use until we solve the AT&T issue and I get a new phone. But I am looking forward to it. Looks like there are lots more fun options.

 

compressing files in Lion

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Being a Stuff It fan I was not happy that it did not work with Lion. I assume at some point they will upgrade or maybe they have by now.

I asked my Apple trainer which program he would use and he suggested I just compress the files on my Mac and not use another program at all.

It is really simple...

Using my magic track pad I two finger click on what I want to compress. (I think that is right click with a mouse but I don't use a mouse so I don't know.)

A menu opens and I scroll down to Compress. I let go and it is compressed.

So simple. And another program I didn't have to find and buy.

2 wisconsin iphone apps

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free app from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism. We hope to take a little Miata trip to see some Fall color and I think this app could be quite helpful. Looks like it is loaded with info... attractions, events, overnight and dining. We will know more after we've used it on a trip. If you are interested in a weekly color update sign up for the email every Thursday at www.travelwisconsin.com

 

And here is a Madison app. It cost $1.99. It is also loaded with information from hookah bars to tea houses and all in between. It gives you distance from where you are, cost and neighborhood. Looking forward to spending some time with this. Love the screen shot above. When we lived DT for almost a year this was our view. If we walked outside the Madison Mark and turned left this is what we saw.

beware whining...

Since I am on the subject of iPhones I need to whine a little. Actually I want to talk about extremely poor customer service. We came to town, moved DT and got iPhones and all was well. We had good service. We then moved less than 2 miles away to our condo. After a bit we noticed dropped calls. We then spent $150 on a MicroCell. That is a piece of AT&T equipment that we BOUGHT to try and get adequate cell coverage in our condo. That seemed to work for a while and now service is worse than ever. Anyway John spent 2 hours on the phone with AT&T trying to get them to let him out of his contract so we can switch to Verizon. Long and short of it is that is will cost him $200 to get out of his contract. And they are going to test our MicroCell and call us back.

In the mean time there are 2 chairs in the condo where we have to sit to make calls. That means I need to make business calls from the bedroom. Even there if I move to reach for something I drop the call. Oh and I desperately need a new phone. And of course if I get it from AT&T then the contract extends even further out. This is all so, so wrong.