07:52 – Today is Barbara’s and my 29th wedding anniversary. Barbara has now been married to me for half her life. I’ll have to wait until our 30th anniversary next year to have been married to Barbara for half of mine. Neither of us makes a big deal about birthdays and anniversaries, so we’ll just go out for dinner tonight.
09:25 – Back when I was in college, one of my friends had a car with a fuel gauge that was next to useless. When he filled the tank, the gauge would read full, which it would continue to read for a long, long time. Eventually, it’d suddenly drop to a quarter full, where again it’d remain for a long time. When the tank was really nearing empty, maybe a liter left, the needle would start falling precipitously toward empty, and he knew it was time to stop at the nearest gas station. Either that, or get the gas can out of the trunk and start walking.
That gas gauge was far more useful than the gauge on my Brother color laser printer. Last night, all of the status lights and the screen were perfectly normal. I printed one black-only page. As it came out of the printer, the Data fault light came on, and the screen told me it was time to replace the black toner. I powered down and powered back up. No joy. So I opened the cover, slid out the black toner cartridge, tilted it back and forth, put it back in the slot, and powered up the printer. No joy. That toner cartridge wasn’t nearing empty. It was empty.
So this morning I checked the web site where I buy most of my office supplies. Their prices are always competitive, so I didn’t bother to check elsewhere. Replacing the four toner cartridges with Brother TN210 cartridges would have cost me $213 plus shipping. That was for the Brother-branded cartridges, so I checked for aftermarket replacements. Four of those would have cost me $252 plus shipping. I thought maybe the after-market cartridges were rated for more pages than the branded ones, but they weren’t. Hmmm. So I went over to Laser Monks and ordered four after-market cartridges for $136.76, including shipping.
14:02 – Geez. Cable companies wonder why their customers hate them. We switched to PhonePower on Wednesday, 29 August. They gave us a choice of cut-over dates. I chose the ASAP option. I’m sure they sent the number porting request to TWC immediately. So, Saturday the 8th we got a bill from TWC, billing us in advance for service from Friday the 7th through 6 October. That bill included VoIP service, which they’d just increased from $35/month to $45/month. I told Barbara I’d call them and get it taken off our bill.
This morning, I called their billing support number and was told that they were experiencing unusually high call volumes and that the expected hold time was 30 minutes. I hung up and tried again periodically throughout the day, getting the same story. Finally, I decided just to hold as long as necessary, with the cordless on speaker phone while I cleaned up the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher. After more than 20 minutes on hold, the call was finally picked up by a singularly unhelpful woman who claimed that there were “no notes” on our account and that as far as they were concerned it was active. I told her that was pretty strange since I was talking to her from that number using a different service provider. She finally admitted that we might in fact not be using their phone service. Finally, after much back and forth, I got her to reduce the invoice they’d just sent us from $116.36 to $73.79. I then asked her what our new monthly bill would be. She said $67.44 without tax and $68.24 with tax. I asked her why then we had to send them $73.79 instead of $68.24. She said it was because they’d been providing phone service to us from the 7th through today. I explained to her that she’d just admitted that they hadn’t been providing phone service during that period, since we’d already cut over and that we’d been using our cell phones since then because we had no service from them. She went back into her “there are no notes on your account” spiel. I finally told her that it wasn’t worth my time to argue with her for the $5.55 difference, but that this kind of shit was why people hated cable companies. I just wish we had a good alternative for broadband. Of course, people hate phone companies just as much.
Congratulations! My wife and I never really bothered much about celebrations or presents either, and tended to use those events to “justify” expensive purchases we would have made anyways.
Yeah, ours was the new deck.
Congrats. You seem like a practical kind of guy, so you ought to buy
something practical as a joint present. Vaccuum cleaner bags. Vaccuum
cleaner bags are practical. (Let me know how that works out for you. If
you abruptly stop updating, I’ll take that as evidence that it didn’t.)
Let’s see. I’ll be in my mid 80s before I’ve been married half my life
to my current wife. Even assuming we can put up with each other that
much longer, a questionable proposition, it won’t happen anyway. I have
a little girl, and I have every intention of being long dead before she
becomes a teenager.
Meh. Because I’m reading and commenting while at work while the computer
is generating code, it took so long to write that comment that you
already said what you did for a joint present. Well, you can keep the
vaccuum cleaner bags in mind for the 30th anniversary.
Well, one year I did buy Barbara a flank drive flare nut crowfoot wrench set.
Actually, I bought it for me, but effectively I bought it for Barbara. She covets hand tools. My toolboxes are invariably nearly empty. If I buy a new set of screwdrivers or wrenches, they somehow end up in her toolbox.
My wife told me if I got her anything to cook or clean with on her birthday or anniversary she’d hit me over the head with it. A card is nice, as long as it’s on top of jewelry.
Ah, ink, one of the most expensive commodities on the planet. We don’t print much in our household, myself especially, having a long time ago bought into the paperless office concept. I scan and shred more than print.
That said, I have always had higher-end “business” printers. I make do with a monochrome laser, but my wife needs color. Since my early Linux days, I have bought HP exclusively for driver compatibility, although now that might be less of an issue. Always had good luck with HP printers.
Our latest HP ink jet has four remote ink tanks and two print heads. The ink gauge warns annoyingly when the ink gets to about 25%, and gives a dire warning at about 10%. This warning has to be cleared on the front panel each time the printer is turned ON. The manual warns of harm to the print heads if the ink runs too low. Imagine the fun with one of the four tanks frequently demanding attention. Mind you, the print quality never varies, no matter the ink level.
I called HP, and asked about solutions to the warnings. I was told to ignore them, there would be no damage: just keep printing until the printer stopped, and then replace the bleeping tank. Still annoying, but no worry about needing a new print head (or printer, since replacement parts often cost more than new printers!)
AFAIK, the gauge is linear and informative, but the warnings are still annoying. I think lots of people just replace the expensive ink tank to escape the annoyance. More business for HP!
That gets me to my real plea: how about some discussion about quality aftermarket ink tanks. This printer’s tanks have “authentication chips” in them, so care in aftermarket supplies is important. So far, we use so little that I have bought genuine HP supplies, but that will change soon, because Costco is probably about to discontinue stocking them. Costco had the best price the last time I checked, a bit surprising, but I guess the real action is in the aftermarket supplies. Oh, and Costco won’t fill these tanks, which are HP 88 and 88XL.
This HP printer works great, and boasts that it costs less in supplies that a monochrome laser printer. While I doubt that, I really hate shopping for a new printer just because supplies are getting scarce. Thoughts?
I have not had good luck with aftermarket toner, both for my Brother color laser MFP and the HP color laserjet that is in my office. In both cases, I have had aftermarket toner cartridges dump prodigious amounts of toner into the guts of the printer, requiring a new cartridge and the use of the vacuum cleaner to resolve the problem.
My grandparents made the half life mark by the time they were 30 years old. Were married 70 years then they died. She was pregnant and my grandfathers brother chased my grandfather down and brought him back under threat of being shot. Celebrated their first son’s birthday about six months passed the actual date. Family only found out when he joined the navy during WWII.
I hit the half life point about 13 years ago when I reached 48.
I too never had good luck with aftermarket toner cartridges. I experienced the toner dump along with streaks on the output, poor print quality, etc. Threw away the last two cartridges and went back to using HP. The HP has been trouble free.
Congratulations on your wedding anniversary Bob and Barbara. Married 36 years ago, so far its been great!
Steve
I’m surprised Barbara has put up with me. I still sometimes introduce her as, “This is Barbara, my first wife.”
And, risking death, the first time Barbara objected that my introduction made it sound like we were divorced, I pointed out the alternative explanation: that I planned to marry additional women periodically without divorcing any of the senior wives.
Robert, I find myself impelled to raise a possibility for science education. It comes from my training, but it’s still vital where it IS important.
The subject is Soil Science. It is a subject that could be vital to many of the home schoolers, who are likely to have interests in agriculture and forestry. I can’t quite see how you’d manage kit sales for it (other than some basic tests of soil constituents and nutrients, and a microscope), but that’s your worry. I’d darned sure pay for an up-to-date accurate but readable book covering the subject. Heck, I’d buy two, and donate one to my local library.
Treated rigorously, Soil Science is a damned tough subject. There is not just the geological development of soil profiles, and the analysis of the constituents. There’s the macro- and microflora and fauna (all the way down to nematodes, bacteria, fungal mycelia and plant root hairs). There’s also soil chemistry and physics; and there’s sometimes damned little difference between those two and even biology as well, when you get down to interactions occurring on the surface of clay particles. Things happen at that level, enabled and catalysed by surface effects and microscopic electrical charges, and worming their way through 3D networks of particles, which are just plain impossible at a larger scale.
Incidentally, you may be approaching the stage where you need to think about kits without the microscope, then offering it as a separate option, because it is duplicated in different kits.
When my Beautiful Niece #B graduated from high school this spring, I got her a nice printer for a present. I also got her a set of spare ink cartridges, explaining that the accursed things would always die at the maximally inconvenient time, and that when she did have to replace one she should buy its follow up at her earliest convenience.
Regarding soil science, I’d love to do such a book and kit. I’m not entirely sure where homeschoolers would slot it in. Presumably as a grade 11/12 elective science, just as some do marine biology. As a generalist, I do enjoy doing books/kits that synthesize numerous fields. Forensic science is an obvious example, but it’s considerably less rigorous than soil science.
I debated getting into microscope sales. I have neither the desire nor the ability to stock them, but National Optical (the Chinese-made brand/distributor we recommend) does have a drop-ship program. The problem with doing that is that it would take time and attention away from kits. I’d rather just recommend brands/models and tell kit buyers to find them on-line.
Awesome 5 minute video explaining why the USA government needs a balanced budget amendment. This video is non-partisan, truly. Not anti-Obama, not anti-Romney, not anti-Bush. It is well worth the couple of minutes it takes to watch it, and puts our country’s problem in a nut shell. This is a non-partisan video produced by an accountant, Hal Mason, retired after 27 years with IBM. He looks at the budget, its revenues and expenses, and very simply illustrates the problem. Amazingly, we get all the media talking heads blathering and shouting for hours and never get clarity. This guy provides all the clarity you need in just of couple minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/EW5IdwltaAc
That video understates the problem pretty dramatically. He’s taking government figures and even projections at face value, which is absurd. He considers only federal debt and assumes our debt will be $26 trillion in a decade. In fact, it’s over $100 trillion now, assuming you count unfunded liabilities. And even at that, we’re in relatively good shape compared to, say, the EU.
I am in 100% agreement that the problem is understated. Just wait until the interest rates triple or quadruple. Then the interest payments will be higher than the defense budget. And quickly too as the majority of the tbills mature in less than a year.
As a starting point, we need a Balanced Budget Amendment. That is our only hope of righting the ship. Unfortunately, I do not think that the Republicans will do it and I know that the Democrats won’t do it either.
BTW, congrats on 29 years. The wife and I hit 30 years last January. I am continuously amazed that these women will put up with us and our nonsense.
His astounding statistic about the US having 32 times the debt load of Greece, isn’t all that astounding. The US also has darn near has 32 times the population, and with governments, there are never any efficiencies because of size.
Yes, it’s when you calculate the debt per capita and then divide by GDP per capita that things get really scary for Greece. Not to mention Portugal, Spain, Italy, et alia.
As I’ve said, I expect things to get bad here, as well as in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But for us it’ll be a walk in the park compared to what’s going to happen elsewhere.
It sure would have been more convenient (for me) if yours and Barbara’s anniversary was just before mine and my wife’s, rather than three days after. We both clean forgot it – again.
“Neither of us makes a big deal about birthdays and anniversaries, so we’ll just go out for dinner tonight.”
Dinner out is considered our big deal here for such events; we rarely go out anywhere.
“I have a little girl, and I have every intention of being long dead before she becomes a teenager.”
Man, you sure hit the nail on the head there! Too late for me, of course. I LONGED for death, courted it, paid suit to it, took it dancing, bought it stuff. When I finally go to Hell, they’re giving me a free fucking pass down there. For everything. No torture, no torment.
Uhmm, read _Inferno_ by Niven and Pournelle:
http://www.amazon.com/Inferno-Larry-Niven/dp/0765316765/
Hell is not a pleasant place and there are no passes. The sequel to the book, _Escape from Hell_, has roving suicide bombers constantly blowing themselves and nearby people to bits:
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Hell-Tor-Science-Fiction/dp/076535540X/
Nope. SteveF and I will have free passes. It hath been decreed. Any contact with a teenage daughter or the mere apprehension and terror of having one suffice.
And I read Inferno. I knew Inferno. And I am here to tell you that Niven and Pournelle’s is no Inferno. I read the original, by one Dante Alighieri, in the original late medieval Italian AND Latin. The Devil knows Latin, by the way.
Yah, N&P’s Inferno was a pale shadow of the original (which I had to read in English translation; my Latin isn’t up to the task). An entertaining read, but it was the Mr Magoo version of the real thing.
Well, duh. Why do you think so many legal terms are Latin-esque?
Hey Dave, I bet your cats couldn’t do this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stray_dogs_in_Moscow#Metro_dogs
OFD wrote:
“Man, you sure hit the nail on the head there! Too late for me, of course. ”
Dave, did you ever see the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life? You should just have threatened to sell Princess for scientific experiments… 🙂
I buy used HP printers from a place that gets them from the university up in Madison, WI and refurbishes them officially for HP. My b&w laser is an HP LJ1200 series. Have not had good luck with cheap toner. I buy genuine HP. The last el cheapo (which I ordered with the refurbished LJ1200) had the little lever that opens the door to the works (when you insert it into the machine) broken off, and the machine refused to work (quality control fault at the toner refiller plant, as both the box and the toner were in sealed by the toner refilling place; obviously they did not check it in a machine). For an LJ1200, one cartridge lasts a lifetime. I am not kidding about that. The LJ1200 we had in Berlin was bought in 2002. It came with one of those mini-cartridges HP puts in new printers, so they can cheat you out of a full toner cartridge. It lasted until mid 2009
After I bought the US machine, when the el cheapo would not work, and we did not know why, we went round and round about how to test the el cheapo toner. They suggested I go out and buy a new HP cartridge, but quickly realized that if they had to replace the el cheapo, then I would have 2 lifetime supplies of toner.
They sent a cartridge that was about 1/4 full that they used to test machines with, and said not to send it back. That was almost 3 years ago, and that used cartridge is not about to run out. I upgraded the order to genuine HP toner and they paid the shipping to make it good. From Jamie Dellinger who owns Madison Office Machines. Highly recommended.
So I went over to Laser Monks and ordered four after-market cartridges for $136.76, including shipping.
Hmm… http://lacrossetribune.com/news/local/article_fc7fcb6a-7852-11e0-b347-001cc4c03286.html
I bought a replacement toner cartridge once. It was for a HP something something something back in the 1990s – about the size of a large dorm refrigerator. The cartridge literally exploded inside the printer after about 50 or so pages. I spent the next couple of hours vacuuming the insides of the laser printer with my toner vacuum – something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/3M-497AJM-Portable-Electronic-Cleaner/dp/B00006HR5F/
I swore never again to buy non-branded laser toner cartridges.
BTW, I am not happy with my HP laserjet pro CM1415fmw here at the house:
http://www.amazon.com/HP-CE862A-BGJ-Laserjet-CM1415FNW/dp/B003VOVKE2/
It can print about 10 CD labels and then it does not fuse the toner to the labels anymore until it cools down. We still ship out about 100 CDs of new software releases per month and the wife burns them for me. I thought that the laser printer would do a great job on the labels but the loose toner does not make me happy.
Interesting. I’ve used third-party toner cartridges in many different models of printers over many years, and never had a problem.
Yeah, I was aware that LaserMonks is no longer associated with the monastery. Who ever heard of a monastery going bankrupt, anyway?
Who is that guy kidding? ‘Budget can’t be balanced?’ Here is how it will go down.
His figures: income of $2500 billion less spending of $3800 billion = a nice round -$1300 billion.
69 million people made $49k or more in 2010. Tax them all an additional $19,000/yr, and you have your $1300 billion.
Presto! Balanced budget.
300 million people minus 69 million who make $49k/yr or more, leaves 231 million who make less than $49k/yr. What a country!
And that Paul Ryan—what a friendly guy.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/13/who-was-paul-ryans-71-year-old-victim/
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-cracks-joke-as-71-year-old-citizen-is-forced-to-the-ground-videos/
What a police state!
Hi Chuck, I guarantee you that if you raise an additional $1300 billion in taxes that the federal spending will go up another $1300 billion beyond that. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush found that out the hard way. The only way to get us out of this mess is a Balanced Budget amendment with teeth in it. And the President needs a line item veto also.
There are people in the Congress who will not be happy even when the federal government is spending 100% of the USA GDP. Romney’s platform is to get the federal government spending back to 20% of the USA GDP. I do not think that he can do it but I would like to let him give it a try.
Whatever raise in revenue will be spent double or triple. SOP. And soon the Great Default will be enacted, no other choice now. And NO ONE will talk about cutting significantly into DOD; utterly verboten. Ron Paul found that out, also any anti-war drivel will be shut down immediately.
Entitlements will be pilfered relentlessly and the only folks who will make out from now on, as we have already seen, are the so-called One Percent and the stooges, minions and lackeys in the corporate and State sectors who do their bidding. The rest of us will be left to eat shit. Anyone making too much of a stink about it or actually resisting will be quarantined at sites they’ve been building, or “shot resisting arrest.” This may work for a while, but eventually the State forces will stop beating on their own people, either from moral qualms, exhaustion and burn-out, or more likely, because they aren’t being paid anymore.
Things will get very interesting.
We have at least one other approach to reining in the tyranny: go after the enforcers and implementers. The self-proclaimed lords temporal are safe in their gated communities, but the ordinary police and the IRS agents and the child protective services drones who take kids from their parents all live amongst the people. Odds are good that you have several government employees living near you. There’s no pressing need to do anything with that information right now, but you never know when you might need it.
(As it happens, I’m writing a handful of short stories on that and related themes. I need need to kick it into higher gear so I can publish the collection while they’re still timely, before the wheels come off.)
There’s also going Galt. It’s difficult to do in such an interconnection, panopticon society, but you can produce no more than you need to get by. Starve the beast!
Meh. Interconnected
Hey OFD, sounds like you read Bruce Sterling’s book _Distraction_:
http://www.amazon.com/Distraction-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553576399/
It is 2044, the federal debt is $41,000 billion and the Air Force has blocked I-10 in Louisiana with a “cake sale”. Each cake is $1,000 and if you don’t have the cash then you and your car go sit in a armed compound for a day. Buy a “cake” for $1,000 and the blockade is cleared for you.
I have read Sterling’s other stuff but not that yet. It is 2012 and the Fed debt is already way more than that to the point we can’t and won’t even pay the interest on it anymore. But in that book, is it Air Force Security Police blocking the road? In my day, handing us a nice big spliff and/or a case of beer and Bob’s yer uncle! (assuming the lifer maggot NCOs and career officers weren’t around)
SteveF, I wouldn’t mind seeing drafts of them short stories, speaking as an English major, former cop, and ex-soldier. Also next-state-over neighbor….
It is Air Force LTs going from car to car asking for donations to the “bake sale”.
A balanced budget amendment is as useless as the one in the Indiana state Constitution: legislators pay attention to it only when convenient. As for getting one with teeth in it—who in Congress would EVER pass that? It is against their own self-interests, and we have no way to introduce laws from the electorate up, like California.
Have no fear; there will NEVER be a balanced budget amendment unless Libertarians are in charge. I’m doing my part by voting straight Libertarian in November.
And libertarians will be in charge when pigs fly and elephants whistle. Or is it elephants fly and pigs whistle? Whatever. A waste of your time, Chuck.
Indiana is one state where Libertarians are on the rise. Quite a few have become mayors and gotten into local offices. I had to drive from Tiny Town to Kokomo the other day, and the shortest route is using state and county roads. It was actually amazing to see several signs in rural areas supporting Ron Paul.
In the last few weeks, I have run into quite a few people who normally vote either Republican or Democrat, who are fed up with their choice this time, espouse the Libertarian view, but refuse to vote that way precisely because they are aligned with you: it will never happen. That defies the gains Libertarians have made in the last decade, and discounts Bill Weld’s governorship of Massachusetts and Gary Johnson in New Mexico. People are not voting their conscience; they are refusing to.