Ricky Says

Setting up a mail merge using Word and Excel is fairly easy and can save you a lot of money at the print shop by doing it yourself.

Kinko's charges a $45 setup fee per mail merge and they use a proprietary 33-per page label format that doesn't work with Microsoft Office's built-in label templates that only print 30 labels per page.

If you follow the steps in this article or video, you'll learn how to create a custom mail merge template that works with Kinko's proprietary 33 labels per page format. You also won't have to pay Kinko's $45 setup fee since you'll be handing them a completed mail merge file in Adobe PDF format that's ready for printing!

To get started you'll need to create an Excel spreadsheet containing addresses for each mailing address. You can use any column labels that you like, but make sure they're in the first row of your table. These labels will be used later when we create the mail merge in Word.

Open Word and select "Mailings" from the toolbar ribbon. Click "Start Mail Merge" and select "Labels" from the popup menu.

Choose the 30 per page Microsoft label template to use as a starting point and click "New Label" to create a new template.

Question: I traveled a lot in 2009 and am wondering if my rewards miles and hotel points will carry over into 2010?

Answer: Yes and No - Redeemable miles roll over but miles that were accrued towards elite status do NOT roll over.

The miles you accrued for redeeming flight rewards will carry over into the next year, and your elite/preferred status will also be retained through 2010. So you'll be able to redeem miles for free tickets and will enjoy your flight status benefits throughout 2010.

However, you must earn enough elite qualifying miles on the program in 2010 to retain your preferred status into 2011 - and your elite point account balance will be reset to zero at the start of each new year.

So if you don't fly as much this year in 2010, then you'll lose your elite/preferred status for 2011.

Last year I racked up some decent frequent flier miles on the United Star Alliance program and also with Alaska Airlines (which includes Delta, and Northwest Airlines).

The elite qualifying miles I earned towards on United's mileage plan in 2009 were reset to zero miles on Jan 1st, 2010. Meaning I'll need to fly a full 50,000 miles to retain my Premier Executive status into 2011.

The same thing happened for Alaska, although it took a couple of weeks for the reset to happen (so initially I thought they were going to roll over the miles). That turned out to NOT be the case however, as you can see from the screen shot of my account balance showing that I'll need to fly a full 20,000 miles to retain my MVP status into 2011.

I had to drop my car off at Les Schwab this morning and realized I forgot to bring my cell phone with me, so I couldn't call my wife to let her know how long I'd be.

Fortunately I had my laptop with me and was able to send her a text message using email.

To send SMS text messages to any cell phone in the US using email, just use your 10-digit phone number including area code as the first part of the email address (without any dashes or hyphens).

Use the table below to figure out the last half of the email address for each major phone carrier:

Type your text message as the email subject and don't worry about entering a message body, but remember there's a 140 character limit to text messages so keep it brief just like you would if you were using your cell phone.

Text messaging fees still apply when texting via email.

I upgraded my wireless home network this weekend from an old Netgear 802.11b router to a shiny new Linksys WRT120N router sporting the latest 802.11n technology, and a much sleeker design.

The network speed difference is very noticeable and significantly faster on the newer router, and the units were on sale for only $39 at Fry's so it seemed like a steal of a deal... until I tried to install it.

I have Comcast internet at home with a standard-issue Motorola cable modem, and it turns out that Linksys routers don't naturally connect directly with these modems.

The Network Magic software that comes with Linksys routers failed on the first setup screen with an "Error 321", claiming it could not detect my ethernet network adapter. Apparently the Linksys routers require you to connect through a separate router that sits between the Comcast modem and the Linksys router (or at least that's what I found hidden somewhere in the documentation) - and in fact, it worked fine if I connected through my old Netgear router to the Comcast modem.

I was also able to connect directly from my computer to the Linksys router, which I was able to verify by running ipconfig and seeing the IP address assigned by the router. I was also able to log into the router's admin console screens by opening a web browser and entering the IP address of the router - http://192.168.1.1 using admin/admin for the username/password.

I've been snapping pictures left and right with my new Canon Powershot, especially now that the holiday season is underway and I've been on vacation all week - plenty of photo opps with Thanksgiving dinner and the kids helping me put up Christmas lights.

I wanted a way to share these pictures with friends and family using all free tools (preferably a single software program), and what better place to do that than Facebook?

Google's free Picasa photo editor can import photos from your camera's SD memory card, and you can install a plugin that will let you upload photos directly from Picasa to Facebook (notice the Facebook button in the Picasa toolbar shown below).

Here's how to install the Facebook plugin in Picasa so you can upload photos directly from Picasa to Facebook:

1. Open Facebook in your web browser and click "Applications" in the lower left side of your Facebook home page. Then click "Browse More Applications" in the popup menu.

2. Enter "picasa" in the application search field on the top left of the page, and select the first match named "Picasa":

3. Click on "Go to Application" to configure the Picasa plugin.

4. Install the Picasa plugin, which will install the Facebook button in Picasa.