Spriglet #12 – Merging PDFs in Windows

[pdfsam]

OK, so I have PDFs of several receipts that I need to fax into my health insurance company for flexible spending reimbursement.  The Windows Fax “printer” doesn’t allow me to string together multiple files, so I’m in a pickle.

I don’t have Adobe Acrobat, so I start Googling with “(combine|merge) (pdf|pdfs) -mac -apple -purchase -demo -trial -shareware -acrobat”

I find pdfsam, download & install it, add my PDFs, set the output file, click Run and, bam, a merged PDF.  Sweet.

I tried another option as well — pdftk.  If you’d rather go the commandline route, this’ll work just as good.

Spriglet #10 – Hiding Taskbar Icons in Windows

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If you are like me and often have a lot of apps open in Windows, here’s an easy way to get more room in your taskbar. If you’re wondering why my taskbar is dark gray, I’m using the Zune theme for Windows XP.

®= right-click, © = click, © © = double-click

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1. ® on an empty place on the taskbar, © Properties

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2. © Customize next to the “Hide inactive icons” checkbox

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3. Note the Behavior column

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4. Next to each “Hide when inactive” entry change it to “Always Hide”

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5. © OK twice and you’re done. Voila. Nice, huh?