Wayne D's Blog

I always seem to get my great ideas for blog post when I'm in the car. I figure I won't forget them but when it comes time to sit down and write they have vanished from my head.

I have recently been looking around for a new printer to help break my families addiction to Lexmark ink-jet printer cartridges. More expensive than the finest perfume I keep finding exhausted printer cartridges strewn all over the house. I was looking for an inexpensive monochrome laser printer and have pretty much settled on the Brother HL2040 which Tigerdirect sells for about $120 but last time I was in the store they didn't have any in stock. I was in Grand and Toy last night and found a Lexmark E120N network printer marked down to $117 and I almost bought it until I realized that the toner cartridge it shipped with was only good for 500 pages and refill cartridges are $85 and are only good for 2000 pages. The Brother cartridges are $62 and are good for 2500 pages. I have never been able to get our Linux computer to connect to the Windows XP home box where the Lexmark ink-jet was installed so I was looking at network printers but wasn't prepared for the big step up in price. Tigerdirect had the network version of the 2040 on sale for $122 yesterday but I didn't have the time to make it to the store and I figured that they wouldn't have any in stock anyways. I had went in there previously to look at the Brother 2040 and they didn't have any printers on the floor at all. Imagine my surprise when I went on their website today and saw it still at $122 which is $60 lower than the normal selling price. I decided that it was worth the drive. Image my surprise when I get to the store and see a stack of printers. Imagine my disappointment when I see the price is $185. I pulled out my trusty Crackberry to make sure that I had seen the price from the website correctly, enter the Tigerdirect.ca URL and wait, the screen goes white and nothing happens. Sigh, the previous night the same thing had happened when I had tried to look up printer information on the Lexmark at the mall. The Crackberry said I had signal but the page wasn't loading. The previous night I had pulled the battery and reset the Crackberry which had seemed to help but I was suspicious of the signal meter. I went outside to see if I could get a better signal but it was still unresponsive. While waiting oldest son was fidgeting as only a 15 year old can. He was with me because I had taken him to have his hair cut before he looked too much like cousin It from the Munsters. I resorted to the low tech method of calling my wife and getting her to look it up on the website for me. She verified that I had not been imagining things so I went back inside and asked the sales guy. He took the price sign with him and told me that I was right and that the correct price was $122 and we are now the proud owner of a networked laser printer that works great from both Windows and Linux. I expect it will have paid for itself in 6 months.

I have four full garbage cans in the garage that I dragged out to the curb on Friday morning expecting to be picked up. Evidently I had my weeks wrong because when I came home from work they were still there. We are now on a biweekly garbage pickup schedule with recyclable and organics picked up weekly. I would have been much happier with two cans every week. Separating out the organics seems to have attracted fruit flies. I bought a package of new high tech flypaper today to try and keep them under control. It's a sticky plastic square with pictures of fruit on it. I was hoping to find one of those old retro coils that hang from the ceiling but was unsuccessful.

By the way, the Crackberry seems to be working fine now.