Daily Archives: April 25, 2005

D.C. next week for Devscovery and then Code Camp

Just Rambling

I guess this is the definition of a geek vacation, but I much prefer Dave Burke’s idea of a vacation!!

Next week I will be going to Washington D.C. for a variety of things. First I am going to get a Wintellect brain infusion at Devscovery. That will be 3 days of intense learning with John Robbins, Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter (I wonder if Sara has warned him that I’m coming. Maybe I’ll wear an “I Love VB” shirt. 😉 ) and some of the other Wintellects.

Then I get a day of rest with the Duthies and hopefully some real old-fashioned sightseeing! The next day (Saturday) is the Mid Atlantic Code Camp which I am sticking around for and was happy that the locals are letting me do some talks. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of my D.C. friends like Scott Lock and finally meeting Sahil Malek, Bill Ryan (unless he decides to go to Hooters or something) and some others that I have never met in person. If I’m super lucky, I’ll aslo get a chance to see some of my non-geek friends I haven’t seen in a while!

The line up looks awesome and there is also going to be a full day SOA track where they build an app. Heck, I’d almost skip my own talks for that! (Just kidding – I wouldn’t really do that).

YOu can register for Mid-Atlantic Code Camp here. It’s free and there’s still room!!

Posted from BLInk!

Staples Copy paper degrades

Tools

I have been struggling with a printer jamming problem for months. I even spent $400 on getting it repaired (it’s one of those big honkin’ LaserJet network printers) and still the paper was jamming.

I have had the printer for 10 years and have *always* used plain copy paper. For the past 6 or so it has generally been Staples brand copy paper.

I finally gave in and bought some multi-use paper. It costs more than twice as much and the legal size, which I have to use a lot of, seems to have no options except for one brand ($$ Hammermill) that we found at Staples. (I will do some further searches for that on the web) The jamming problem seems to be much relieved.

However, I was on the phone with a client who had been having the same problem and after many many visits from their repair guy, they finally started questioning the Staples copy paper that they have had no problems with for years. They ended up on the phone with Staples who apparently admitted that (this is just second hand and I could be incorrect on that statement) the paper had degraded and gave my client credit for their recent purchases.

That is annoying. I wasted hours and hours and hours dealing with the jamming problems and $400 too!

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