I suspected this. I knew that, were we to order a certain drink too many times, that it would immediately see a revival.
I recently wrote about a certain shared experience, wherein Liz needed a pretentious cocktail and after discussion decided upon the sidecar. It was appropriate for the occasion, being classic yet not terribly well-known despite its former ubiquity. This combination reliably produced a good drink devoid of embellishment, and reasonably priced. Yet this hidden gem apparently would not be content to stay in shadow, and as I perused the beer shelves at the grocery, saw this cocktail mockery…mocking me. MOCKERY!:
And like a fool, I encouraged this, because I bought it. Damn my curiosity!
But it was good. It was a hoppy ale with an orange accent, a significant improvement in orangy beer over that Blue Moon crap. Yet the seed hath been sewn, and I suspect that soon we shall see the humble sidecar rebirthed from ashes, off in a blaze of glory to mediocre Americana restaurants everywhere–ultimately to share in the cruel and adulterated fate of the Manhattan. Alas, sidecar, we hardly knew ye for what you were.
People are really weird about crystals. There’s the crystal cult goofs who I guess think they channel divine essence or something. And was it crystals that gave Merlin his magic? I dunno. I’m not terribly inclined to research it further.
But anyway, I was at some outlet with Liz and noticed a bin of geodes. I recalled geode-hunting once in New Mexico, an old memory from my Texas years, and while I found some fragments, no one in the group discovered an intact geode. And here was a pile of them as if they had been simply scooped up somewhere. Maybe they had. I didn’t know how common they were.
Wikipedia revealed the obvious answer: they are (the biggest one being a cave in Ohio) and no doubt $10 was a large up-charge for the small rock. Still it was cool and dredged up a childhood memory, so I bought it for the kid.
The cashier helpfully informed me that I should break it open gently, rather than wail upon it with a hammer, as they break easy and hitting it too hard would just crush it. Apparently that was a common complaint.
I had planned to saw it evenly in half, though it turned out that I lacked the equipment to do so. So I got a chisel and hammer. I held the chisel while the kid tapped the hammer, and the geode fell apart into 3 nice chunks.
It was a cool enough experience that even the kid exclaimed in delight, distracting her away from her tablet for minutes.
Then she put it back together.
Weird. OCD or something. I dunno where she gets that from.
To me, the printer is a medium. I use that word in a way that people who believe it’s possible to communicate with ghosts do. The printer in a means by which we can connect the material to the metaphysical. Information which only exists in digital form–a specific pattern of magnetized bits–can be made tangible via the printer. And despite everyone claiming that they want to live in a paperless world, the preference for paper media over digital for varying personal and/or practical reasons renders the printer a critical component to our collection of electronic devices.
So surely a device of such importance would be built well, with a reliable OS and hardware, built by trustworthy vendors.
Yet for anyone who’s ever used one of these machines, we know this to not be the case. Apart from the general user-end experience, when it seems invariably impossible to print something when it’s absolutely critical that that document be printed, printers are plagued by a number of more nefarious problems. Offhand, I can think of a few that have popped up over the years: proprietary ink cartridges embedded with chips to prevent the use of 3rd-party replacements, chipped cartridges coded with expiration dates that prevent their use after a specified date regardless the level of remaining ink, printers which cache all print jobs in non-volatile and unencrypted drives, printers with closed-source software containing obsolete encryption libraries…and so on. In short–printers are evil devices used only out of necessity, and this necessity is exploited by manufacturers.
Now for my personal story.
I needed a printer (see above). My laundry list included separate color ink cartridges and network operability, and after reading reviews I decided upon the Canon MP640.
Ultimately the scanner got more use than printing, amusing in that it more often converted analog media to digital than the other way around.
The device came with two NICs–ethernet and wireless, and from day one I had trouble with the ethernet. The wireless worked okay, but I’d rather of used the ethernet for the usual list of reasons. But the ethernet NIC was IP-sticky, seemingly ignoring NAT assignments and demanding that it be given .1–which was a problem because .1 was the router’s IP. So the wireless was used instead, but years later I wanted to explore the wired again. I disabled wireless and plugged in the ethernet. Then, for whatever reason, I became distracted with other things and never got around to fighting the printer.
Then, a few days ago, I noticed the main network switch downstairs furiously blinking. Every connected port’s corresponding status light was flashing simultaneously…as was the living room’s, and the center room’s. That didn’t seem right, obviously.
But the switches are unmanaged and data wasn’t passing through the edgerouter which does DPI, so I couldn’t readily deduce the problem. Still, everything had connectivity, so I let the problem go. But there was an obvious lag, so I had to figure it out.
So in the dark hours of the night, which is when I do this sort of work, I began my super-technical investigation by systematically unplugging cables until the flashy lights stopped. As this is a residential network, it didn’t take long to narrow down: the guest room cable. This jack is connected to an older router, which is acting as a non-NAT access point. Wireless devices jump on and off as they roam, but I had also plugged the printer into it. Recalling my past troubles, I unplugged it and the network instantly fell back into its normal patterns.
I’ve debated getting a new printer, but then I considered the work Xeroxes–multi-thousand dollar machines with regular servicing, and even those won’t cooperate with the network on a regular basis.
I don’t know why these machines won’t play nice. Maybe one day, when my consciousness has been entirely converted into a digital signature, I’ll no longer have need for a printer. For now, I suppose I’ll just have to grin and bear it.
