Learn Something New Every Day

Every day, people learn something new that adds some kind of value to their lives. I am going to try to post at least one thing that I learn every day. I’m in law school, do some IT work, and just generally get around (who doesn’t?) so this shouldn’t be too difficult to do, right? We’ll see…
March 19

Infringing a Design Patent

To infringe a design patent, the alleged infringing design must only have the “sameness of appearance…or effect upon the eyes” as the patented design.  Egyptian Goddess v. Swisa (Fed. Cir. 2008).  Slight variations in configuration will not destroy the substantial identity.  Id.
March 17

Align Shapes in Visio

  1. Select the shapes to align
  2. “Shape” menu —> “Align Shapes”

Stick with OmniGraffle when at all possible.

March 4

Copy/Paste Date Between Two Excel Workbooks

[W]hen I copy and paste dates, they end up one day/four years wrong.

One workbook is using 1904 calendar, the other one 1900 (in the first example, years are not displayed, but definitely present). Go menu Tools>Options, Calculation and make them equal, preferably also correct if you know what the dates was supposed to be.

via http://www.contextures.com/xlfaqDat.html#Date1904

January 31

Track Flight Prices By Email

Yapta.com

Yapta will email you when your flight is cheaper than the last time you viewed the flight.  And, if you booked a flight at a price higher than its current price, it tries to get you a discount to the current cheapest price.  Pretty cool and very useful.

January 26

Compare the Text of Two PDFs

In Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional (possibly other versions):

  1. Go to “Documents” in the top toolbar.
  2. Select “Compare Documents…”
  3. Select the two documents to compare and the two of comparison you would like to see.

It’s that easy.

I don’t think Standard has this feature; Acrobat 8 Standard doesn’t at least.

January 24

Sell Items With Free Shipping on eBay

  1. Select shipping rate as “Flat”
  2. Select “Free Shipping” next to shipping option.
(via http://pages.ebay.com/help/pay/questions/free-shipping.html)
January 16

To Install Flash in Firefox Portable

Surprisingly simple, and no install required…

  1. Download the extension http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi by right clicking and selecting “Save Link As”
  2. After this open the file using either WinRar/WinZip and extract the
    lashplayer.xpt, NPSWF32.dll files to Mozilla Firefox\plugins\

via http://www.acidlabs.org/2006/09/05/installing-flash-in-portable-firefox-with-no-installer/, January 9, 2009 comment

May 23
FAIL: When booking tickets on Broadway.com, the site does not know if the seats you are booking are filled.  The service allows you to book any seat, regardless of whether it is filled or not.  The service pings the box office, after submission, and then determines if the seats are available.  If not available, you get an email.  When you call to re-book, they tell you that they do not know when a specific section is available and that you have to basically keep trying to find availability without ever knowing, until you get a later email, if the seats are available.  VERY BROKEN.  Get up on your technology Broadway.com, it’s called pinging on-the-fly — think about the customer. Learned something new today — don’t ever use broadway.com

FAIL: When booking tickets on Broadway.com, the site does not know if the seats you are booking are filled.  The service allows you to book any seat, regardless of whether it is filled or not.  The service pings the box office, after submission, and then determines if the seats are available.  If not available, you get an email. 

When you call to re-book, they tell you that they do not know when a specific section is available and that you have to basically keep trying to find availability without ever knowing, until you get a later email, if the seats are available.  VERY BROKEN.  Get up on your technology Broadway.com, it’s called pinging on-the-fly — think about the customer.

Learned something new today — don’t ever use broadway.com

May 5

Prison for Three Years is Grounds for Divorce

In New York, if a spouse is in prison for at least three years, then the non-imprisoned spouse has five years from the date of the imprisoned spouse’s release to bring a divorce action, claiming “prison” as the divorcee’s fault for the divorce.
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Constructive Abandonment

A spouse is deemed to have abandoned their significant other when the married individual refuses to have sex with their spouse.  There is no need to physically leave the marital home to abandon the spouse.  Refusal to have sex constitutes a “constructive abandonment” in New York and is grounds for a divorce.