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I previously posted about a $50 (wireless!) laser printer I purchased (Brother 2170W).  I’ve been very happy with its printing, and it continues to please.  Today the printer initial toner cartridge ran out (we’ve been printing quite a bit to it).  The printer shines a laser through a little window on one side of the toner, which goes through the toner powder area, out another little window, and into a sensor.

In shaking the toner cartridge back and forth, it was obvious that it had more toner.  So even though the toner powder was below the laser line, there was still plenty in there for a few more pages.  So, taking an idea from a discussion group, I placed black electrical tape over the window.  I put the toner back into the machine, and it’s been printing like a champ ever since.

We’ll see how long it prints goes before the toner really starts to run out, but once again, I love the simplicity of the printer.  So far I’m quite a few pages into its extended life.  New toner: $50 vs. black electrical tape: $0.05!  Easy math for me.

I want a discount for sending text messages.  That’s right, I want my cell company to credit my account five cents each time I send a text message instead of making a call (perhaps up to $20 a month or something).  Any chance of this happening?  Yeah right.  They also have a bridge to sell me…

But despite the snowball’s chance of this ever happening, I feel fully justified in wanting it.  Why?  While I don’t know the exact protocol of each cell company’s text message format, I can make an educated guess at the size of an SMS.  If I send a 160 character message using 16-bit characters, I need to send 0.3 kilobytes.  I’ll generously double that for overhead information to 0.6 kilobytes.  Based on VOIP estimates I’ve read several places, a typical call is 50-80 kbps.  But even if I’m way high on this number (and cell phone companies are using some super duper classified compression algorithm) and the real bandwidth is 5 kbps, that’s still 5 kilobytes per second!  A 20 second call would be 100 kilobytes.  Compare that to less than 1 kilobyte for a text message.  My company can literally send hundreds (and probably thousands) of texts for the price/bandwidth of a single, short phone call.

In other words, I am doing a HUGE favor to my cell company by choosing to text rather than make a quick call.  How does it reward me?  By charging me $0.20 per text or $15 per month for “unlimited”.  It should be giving me $15 OFF my bill!

For this very reason, I boycotted texting for a long time, but I finally added it last month.  Too many of my contacts need me to be able to text.  I’m sure the companies know they have me, and that’s life with an oligopoly that knows it can get away something.  The executives are laughing all the way to the bank.

The potential national health care plan in the U.S. is making all the headlines these days.  With all the politics involved (and all the FUD being spread), it’s hard to know exactly what is actually being proposed.

Howstuffworks has a great podcast on this exact issue.  They try to keep politics out of it and just describe what the proposed plan would look like.  It’s a good 30 minutes spent to educated yourself.  It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a great introduction for the lay person.  Here’s the link if you are interested:

2009-09-22-sysk-health-care-reform-obama.mp3

For my part, I am not a fan of any kind of national health care system.  I know many things in the current system are broken, but since when did the government do anything right?  This will go from bad to worse.  Social security is an absolute disaster.  This is just another social security system waiting to happen.  Then we’ll have to pay the mandatory government insurance, plus additional insurance because the government’s part doesn’t cover enough.  No thanks.

Many things in this health care proposal scare me.  One example is how the government will have to decide what treatments are best (so they can provide “appropriate” coverage).  Even though this system keeps a private marketplace, I’m worried that it may be the first step towards something even more socialized.  When this doesn’t work, people will rally for more oversight, more involvement, and more spending.  It’s a step down the wrong path.

Our government needs to go the opposite direction. Companies need to “reboot” every few decades to stay fresh.  Look at IBM in the 90’s.  It went from a (failing) hardware company to a consulting/services company.  It’s a whole new animal, and it’s now very successful again.  Chrysler did the same in the 80’s.  Companies go through a life cycle, just like we do.  They go through birth (startup), teenage years (early successes), middle age (cash cows keep bringing in the money but bureaucracy creeps in), old age, and death (or rebirth to a new type of company).  It’s a natural process that keeps our economy fresh and moving.

The sad thing is that our government can’t do the same thing without a revolution.  And revolutions have serious consequences — we’re certainly not at that point yet.  The government keeps growing; more people go on state money; taxes keep raising (not just the percentage, but the addition of various taxes too); programs start and have to be kept up.  What happens when so many programs get put in place that over half of us work for the government?  Who pays taxes then?  Our politicians may publicize the cutting of certain spending or programs, but the government is not getting smaller.  Overall, it is getting larger.  Spending is more than ever.

Wouldn’t it be nice to “reboot” the government?  All programs could be cancelled.  All welfare.  All military.  All road projects.  All spending.  Then representatives could meet to put the bare essentials back in place: the treasury, the military, etc.  We’d get a reboot with a small, efficient government.

Obviously, we can’t reboot the government in this way.  It would cause mass chaos here in the U.S. and around the world.  But I still keep hope that congress or the executive branch will start making serious cuts.  I have hope, but I don’t see either party doing it soon. However well placed or poorly conceived my hopes may be, this health care system is a step towards larger government, more oversight, and less efficiency.

Car seats are one of the best inventions since automobiles.  They have saved countless young lives, and they make travel nice.  They give the kids a place that is “theirs”, they provide a nice place to sleep, and they keep kids from crawling all over the car.  I’m a big fan of car seats.

However, as with everything, they work best when used with a little moderation.  For example, I know some parents that leave their kids in car seats for 8 hours at a time, with almost no breaks in between.  Some parents even “lean over” their babies to nurse because they don’t want to take them out of the car seat.  Are you kidding?!?  Kids can’t sit that long, and it’s certainly not safe for a parent to lean over a car seat without a seat belt herself.  How do you burp the baby afterwards?  Use a little wisdom.  Stop in a small town and let them play on a playground for an hour.  Let them out for a few minutes to let energy on safer stretches of the road, then put them back in.

Here’s the latest: kids are now supposed to be rear facing to age two!   I have five kids, and I can tell you they travel 100% better facing forward.  There’s no way an 18 month old would enjoy a long trip facing backwards, away from everyone.  Should babies face backward?  Absolutely.  Should they be in the back seat away from the airbags?  Absolutely.  But where do we draw the line between safety and common sense?

The problem is many in the world want to make everything perfectly safe.  They want a Disneyland experience with life. In fact, we have legislated things to be so safe, we can’t enjoy family trips in the car anymore. Families don’t take trips together because it’s too difficult.  Boy scouts can hardly shoot guns anymore.  School teachers cannot discipline students anymore.  We’re losing a generation because we’re going beyond the mark.

Should we throw safety out the window?  Of course not.  Do I let my kids play with firearms?  Of course not.  Is an “accidents happen” attitude an excuse for negligence?  Absolutely not.  But the way things are going, we’ll soon have to wrap our kids in three feet of bubble wrap anytime they leave the house or ride in a car.  Of course, if that were to happen, we’d then find out the bubble wrap caused cancer in 0.0001% of the kids, and we’d then be legislated into keeping them home until 18 years old.  :)

I’ll admit it.  I spill the bleach every time I do the wash.  I just know, going into it, that I need to clear the area of anything with color because a few drops will splatter as I put liquid bleach into the washer.

So here’s my question: why don’t they make spill-proof containers for bleach? It seems that every other chemical in the house, from toilet cleaner to liquid wash detergent, comes in a bottle specifically designed to make things easy.  Not so with bleach.  It comes in the same basic bottle it’s been in for decades.  Wouldn’t you think that that Clorox and other companies could design a better bottle?!?

I know there are other solutions that don’t involve real bleach.  But nothing whitens up the whites like the real thing.  And bleach is incredibly cheap.  C’mon companies — this is your chance to shine!  Give us a better bottle!

I just went to our local Costco to check out the TV’s, and it was closed!  The nerve of that store — to actually close down on Labor Day!  When most stores have huge sales to woo the customers, Costco gives the day off to its workers — as intended by the holiday.

Did I leave upset?  Nope.  I left with a greater respect for Costco.  I can always stop by tomorrow.  It’s good to see there are companies with strong morals and values.

I had one of those “well duh!” moments yesterday.  I had a good laugh on myself. :)  I set up Linux Mint on a new Dell desktop computer yesterday for my sister-in-law.  It was fun to start from scratch on a new machine.  I was impressed that everything worked perfectly, right out of the box.  No special drivers needed, no config files, no settings, no terminal.  Linux has come a long way.

The problem was although the BIOS reported the machine having 4 GB of memory, the OS only reported 3.2 GB.  The computer has an onboard video card, so 128 MB of the RAM went to video.  But that still left nearly 0.7 GB of memory missing!  I rebooted, I messed with the BIOS, I checked the process viewer.  Still, I had no idea where my missing RAM was hiding.

So I did what every decent computer user does when stumped, I turned to the web and started searching.  And the first hit answered my question: I had installed the 32-bit version. Some software is still more compatible with 32-bits, and I didn’t want my sister-in-law to have issues.  While 32-bits can theoretically access 4 GB of memory, most motherboards and components limit things to 3.2 GB.  I reinstalled the 64-bit version, and my missing memory came out of hiding.  I had a full 4 GB of memory.

Of course.  That was probably obvious to everyone but me.

I’ve been on Blogger (Blogspot) for a few months now.  It’s a great service, but as some of my students predicted, I’d soon want more control over my blog.  So today I moved everything back to my server within WordPress.  Sorry for the move everyone.

As a big fan of the Drupal movement, I thought you might be interested in a quick comparison of Drupal to WordPress.  While they are certainly competitors, they are different products that meet a different specific niche.  The primary difference is WordPress seems to be excellent for a site with strong blogging focus.  It truly had the 5 minute install, and it’s beautiful.  Drupal is more module-driven.  Drupal is better at customization — it almost begs to be customized upon install.  It takes longer to install, requires more learning, and is more complex.  Drupal fits the bill best when you want more control over your web site.  For example, installing the OG (organic groups) module in Drupal redefines the entire site.

Both are great products.  We use Drupal for our Island student site, and I’ve now got WordPress for my personal blog.  I think both are a great fit for where we have them.

Compiling Python programs in Windows requires a manifest file to be present as well as several DLLs. This is not well documented yet in the py2exe documentation for Python 2.6.2. Tonight I bundled up Picalo for Windows, and as part of it, got the manifest file working. All I had to do was follow this set of instructions. Enjoy.

A colleague is trying out a Mac, so I sent him the following email of things I use regularly on my Mac. I’ve left out all the obvious things, such as MS Office, iPhoto, iTunes, Firefox, etc. This list contains less-known software that I find useful.