This print server has become an obsession. I was at it another eight hours, including research on the Internet. What a strange product. Of the twenty odd reviews I’ve read, half say it is junk, the others praise it as flawless. The current barrier is that the port configuration is not recognized by Windows. Put another way, I again know exactly what the next problem is, but there are never any instructions or directions to help out. I could have built two new computers in the same time. Anyone who wants a printer server from me is going to need big bucks. The toll on the Information Highway is $500.00.The temperature dropped into the comfort zone, around 58 degrees. There was no business at the shop all day and the guys were complaining about freezing. It is the same weather typical of Seattle in the late Fall. I biked in wearing short sleeves. When I say no business that doesn’t mean no interruptions. Some Canuck was today wanted to know why his format icons had disappeared. I picked up he was a fried-brain when he walked in, but I took two minutes and showed him how to activate the tool bar. Anybody who says there is no such thing as a stupid question has never worked with Canadians. It took longer to get rid of the guy than to solve the problem.
Let’s get one thing straight. Within seconds after you begin to speak on the topic, I know exactly where your computer knowledge stops. Don’t try to siphon free information, you won’t get it. This bozo kept trying to engage me in a conversation about his email, and could not follow that I wanted money to continue or I was going back to what I was doing. He had one hell of a hard time with that. I dispense computer smarts in tiny samples for, as [somebody called] Vern Howard once remarked, “Who asks a King for a penny.”
It is also the exciting time of monthly backups. Just glancing back is always enough to make me regret not having a photo filing system. Since mid-2006, the blog jpegs follow a rough pattern where I can locate them within a day or two at best. This is not a good substitute and the blog will likely never have more than a tiny percentage of what is there. Another inevitable step into the untrustworthy computer future follows this, because I am going to make my first real data DVD backup copies of these thousands of pictures. I still do not trust DVD burn technology for good reason.
Later. No way. Do not trust DVDs for data backups unless you 100% test for verification. Good thing I was wide awake. That entire burn system can fool you, flashing repeated false positives. There is obviously something wrong because data DVDs should be just like higher capacity CDs. I will figure it out tomorrow, but I may have a DVD burner that is smarter than the disks—that is a figure of speech. It just looks like the laser cannot burn DVDs [it burns CDs just fine].
Okay, maybe I am onto something. My Mad Dog burner is capable of dual layer burning. I don’t use that feature because DVD Shrink is friendlier. Is it possible there is some obscure default or disk formats that are incompatible if the Mad Dog tries to dual burn without permission? It sure seems like it. We are unquestionably headed for computer adventure.
We can’t leave out Quickbooks these days. I don’t like their system and I’ve begun to notice their annoying ads on late-night Pudding-vision. They imply that if you are disorganized, purchasing Quickbooks will make things better. Which, in turn, implies if it doesn’t, you must be one of those recalcitrant deadbeats that nobody can help in the first place. “Hey, Zeke, grab an extra fork-lift and let’s work through lunch break so’s the new lady in the office can work her computer okay.”
The fact is, to use Quickbooks as intended, a large trained information gathering mechanism must be in place. I’m saying most shops have a fair enough idea of how many widgets are in the store room. Paying to have the exact number tracked on a transactional basis is hardly worth the extra effort. My main objection is the way Quickbooks is geared only to such batch processing, making it tiresome to process a single item at a time.
Well, the important thing is progress. And food for the cat. Mustn’t forget “Cat Café”.
Say, that reminds me of today’s trivia. Who invented Kitty Litter? I don’t know, but it was some guy who asked for sand from a neighbor to use in his cat box. The neighbor only had powdered clay, so he tried that and noticed how it clumped. Now we know why half the world wants to sneak past our borders. The year was 1962 which is also the year 0 C.E.. Stands for “Cat Era”.
