You have a little piece of scotch tape on your finger but don’t realize it.

Your finger is a little swollen from being scratched.

Lucky for me I a) noticed that little piece of tape that day and b) can use my other index finger until my right one is better.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

My old HP Laserjet 4si had buttons on it that allowed you to control a lot of it’s settings. The new fangled printers do this through html based application that you install on your computer and it is driven by java. I didn’t mind that it was Java but it was definitely the source of many problems

After installing this for our new Laserjet 1320, I was having a number of odd problems on my computer. Lots of hanging, for example, when attempting to open an Word doc attached to an email. As soon as I killed the javaw.exe process, word opened right up.

It was also creating problems with some old foxpro 16bit software with the same symptoms. I would attempt to start up that software and it would do nothing, until I went into the task manager and ended the javaw.exe process again.

It was also a bit of a memory hog.

I finally uninstalled the HP toolbox software and hopefully I can do what I need through the WinXP drivers, although the toolbox does control a lot more stuff.

So far, things have been much better.

There is one other problem that is not HPs, but the fault of our Canon LiDe35 scanner who’s CanoScan software is incompatible with this printer (and according to tech support, others as well.) I am no longer able to use my scanner as a copier with output to the printer and have to scan to pdf’s then print the pdfs. Uggh. Canon said they are revising their software.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have an old HP Laserjet 4si that I bought a looooooong time ago. I think the retail price was $5000 and I paid about $3500. I can only remember that it was when I was living with a certain guy and we broke up when I was 33. So it is at least 11 years old! It has really been a die-hard and has MORE than earned it’s keep, even with having to lug this 125 lb beast through three household moves.

It actually still performs like a trooper but it’s no longer 100% dependable. I get paper jams that drive me batty when I have to print out lengthy reports – whether it’s the 100 and 200 page reports I have to print for a client  about 10 times a month or even just a 10 page document. I had the printer serviced last winter and started using better quality paper in it. The jams are back again though and yesterday, under duress, I had to send out a 100 page report with pale streaks through it (which the client was able fade out when they made their photocopies). Apparently this is either the (not very old) fuser or something suddenly wrong with the print cartridge causing the streakes. Solvable, but dumping more money into it.

So I gave in and bought its’ replacement today. A 38 pound, $400 (after rebate) faster (22ppm vs 16 ppm max) LaserJet 1320t. It also does duplex printing (which I occasionally would love to have). I never needed the network capabilities so I don’t have to pay for that now. And the paper trays hold 250 pages instead of 500. No problem there for me.

It’s a hard thing to do. I always have better things to spend my money on, but I realized that at this point, it will cost me a good $100+/year to keep it going in addition to the aggravation of those occasional paper jams which are very costly in their own way.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

This newest version is built and compiled in .NET 2.0.

I suppose this means it’s time to get serious about porting a particular app that uses Infragistics controls to VS2005…

Congrats Jason, Devin et alia…

I finally take the dual monitor plunge…. read more

[A DevLife post]

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Want to find out who is mucking with your computer? Would you believe it is one of the biggest corporations on the planet? Thank goodness for brains like Mark Russinovitch! [Read more….]

[A DevLife post]

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have thought about getting one of these for a while but didn’t do anything about it. When I read Dave Sussman’s blog post about his experience with it, I knew I had to have it. I just set it up and I love this. It will really save me when I’m paying bills and logging into lots of different websites. Dave says “Very, very useful, for both the terminally forgetful (me), and the lazy (me again).” Me too!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Unfortunately, much of the effort behind this latest version of dasBlog is to deal with spammers. I mean, it’s fortunate for us users, but it’s such a pity that Scott, Omar and their elves have to spend so much of their valuable time dealing with this nonsense. As I’m getting about 200-400 referral spams a day now, I am definitely grateful.

Scott lists a host of other fantastic changes to dasBlog on his website.

www.acehaid.org

Christian Weyer announces a major release of their Web Services Contract First tool, WSCF, as well as forums for discussion.

www.acehaid.org

I don’t do a lot of work with RegEx, but I had to yesterday and needed a way to ensure I was writing it correctly. That means I finally downloaded and used Roy Osherove’s great utility, The Regulator. That surely made my task a LOT easier! Thanks Roy.

www.acehaid.org