It used to be the joke that if you worked in IT, you somehow – perhaps magically – acquired the skills to fix printers. I for one have been asked to fix more than my fair share of printers over the years – and yet somewhere along the lines, all those requests dried up. Perhaps people finally understand that “people in IT” don’t have any idea about how to fix your printer – beyond reading through the manual and pressing a load of buttons, that is.

Recently though, I’ve wished that it was all a lie – that working in IT really does give you a special bond with hardware, and that merely gracing a problematic printer with a loving touch was enough to bring it back from the dead. For the last week, our printer – a Canon PIXMA MX870, for the record – has been spitting out error codes this way and that, most of which are useless. The most useful error message – and I use that term generously – was:

U052: The type of print head is incorrect. Install the correct print head.

Huh? I haven’t touched the print head, why is it suddenly incorrect? What’s more, until very recently, I didn’t even know what a print head was! The other super informative error message I received was:

5000: A printer error has occurred. Turn off power then back on again.

What?! That’s like the first thing you learn for troubleshooting in IT – try turning it off and back on again. Printer, I find your advice insulting!

Anyway – after a week of frustration, I called an authorised Canon service centre for support, where a lovely lady informed me that (sure enough) the print head probably needed to be replaced, and that I’d need to replace all of the ink cartridges with genuine ones, too. Here’s how that cost breakdown goes:

    Cost of new print head:         $120
    Cost of new ink cartridges:     $100 (approx)
    Labour cost:                    $ 80

Using my friend mathematics and some simple addition, I determined that I was looking at about $1,726 to repair the printer! It only cost $217 to buy new! Again, with the help of my friend mathematics, I came to the only logical conclusion: fixing the printer was totally not worth it! And hence, in retrospect, I believe that Canon should update the error codes in its troubleshooting guide to the following:

    U052:  Your printer is dead, throw it out and buy a new one.
    5000:  Your printer is dead, throw it out and buy a new one.
    Other: Your printer is dead, throw it out and buy a new one.

Using this newly reworded troubleshooting guide, I determined that the printer was dead, and that I should throw it out and buy a new one. This really irks me, because the old printer was only 18 months old, and we barely used the print function at all – we mainly used it for the scanner. And, even though its scanning unit is perfectly fine, since the print head has an error, the entire printer is unusable! How ridiculous!

Anyway – after far more research into printers than I ever thought would be required, we decided to go with the Epson WorkForce Pro 4530. It has all the features that we wanted – namely an ADF (auto document feeder) duplex scanner, plus the ability to do duplex printing automatically. And, the running costs (as reported by independent testers) are impressively low, which is a good thing given that printer ink is more expensive to buy than human blood.

Here’s hoping that our new printing/scanning/photocopying/faxing/latte-making friend will have a long and happy life on top of the filing cabinet in our office! (OK, it doesn’t really make lattes, but is anyone still reading?)

Our PC is dead. Well, hopefully it’s not totally dead; it seems more likely that one component has failed. Unfortunately, that component is either the motherboard, the RAM, or the CPU, and I have no idea which one it is! And wierdly enough, this is exactly the same problem that happened to our Media PC earlier this year!

Lucky for us, UMart have been very good about getting it repaired, even though the PC is well outside their warranty period. See, each of the three components listed above are still within the manufacturer’s warranty period – so, as long as the broken part could be isolated, there’s no reason it can’t be fixed. And, given that the support desk at UMart has a near unlimited supply of parts to substitute and test with, it’s much easier for them to isolate the part which is broken!

The net effect of all this is that we are currently without our main PC, and boy do I notice its absence! As much as I love our MacBook Pro, I much prefer working on a full sized PC with dual monitors. As such, things in the electronic world are happening a bit slower than they usually would – so consider this an apology for my slow blog updates, and slow replies to e-mails! Hopefully service will be returned to normal soon!

I recently managed to blow up the front tire on our pram (a Phil & Teds sport) after over inflating it just a wee bit. I know what you’re thinking – surely, inflating the tires on a pram can’t be that difficult? Well, I beg to differ! And here, in one photo, is the reason that it’s not as easy as you think:

See the problem now? On the rim of the tire, it clearly states that the maximum pressure is 22 PSI, and yet the tire itself is bold enough to claim that anything up to 35 PSI is just dandy! My my, what a discrepancy we have here! So I figured that if the tires on my road bike run at 100 PSI, and the tires on my mountain bike run between 35 PSI and 65 PSI, then surely 35 PSI seemed like a good choice for pram tires?

WRONG! Let me state this for you now, internets:

The tire pressure for a Phil and Teds sport pram should not exceed 22 PSI.

If you reason this out the same way I did, and you also come to the conclusion that 35 PSI should be reasonable enough, then be prepared for this to happen:

Yes, I tried to cover the hole with some tube patches, but it was so big that I had to use two; suffice to say, it was a dismal failure.

Perhaps I should be thankful that this lesson has taught me one thing – that you can buy replacement inner tubes directly from the Phil and Teds website. Seems like a pretty crappy silver lining though, if you ask me.

I’m not having any luck with commuting to work at the moment.

Fresh off the back of my scooter battery blowing up, this morning, my bike chain came off as I was down-shifting while riding up a (very steep) hill. No biggie – unfortunately, the chain coming off isn’t exactly a rarity – but this time it was so tightly wedged between the crank and the frame that I couldn’t get it out!

I tried for about 10 minutes to get it unstuck before giving up and wheeling the bike home, hands completely blackened from grease. Suffice to say I was in rather a foul mood by the time I got home; there was much cursing and yelling, and threats such as “I’ll never ride this stupid bike again!”, etc etc.

Sometime later and I’m a little bit calmer, though still underimpressed at how many problems I’ve had with the bike. I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with it – nothing that has happened is out of the ordinary – I just think I’m having a run of bad luck. Oh well – I’ll pull the chain off tonight and give it all a clean plus a fresh coat of grease; hopefully that’ll solve the issue and I’ll be back on board tomorrow.

This year, Kristy and I decided that since our anniversary (7 years!) is so close to both of our birthdays, we’d get each other a present for “around the house”. No, I don’t understand the logic there either, but I’m sure I was on to something when I came up with it.

So, come October 30th, and Kristy becomes the proud owner of a brand new toaster. Yes, I gave my wife a toaster for our anniversary. She loves bread! And, it’s not just any toaster, but a fancy pants, shiny silver one, which boasts such features as an “A Bit More” button (to add a bit more time to the toasting cycle), and “Lift ‘n’ Look” (to see how things are progressing without interrupting the toasting cycle). In fact, the “Lift ‘n’ Look” feature is so revolutionary that Breville listed it on the toaster’s Tech Specs page twice! Even Breville themselves stand behind this toaster so much that they included the word “hero” in the filename of the photo which I have shamelessly pilfered without permission for my own use here!

By now, it’s inevitable that you’re burning with desire to ask the obvious question: “How does this fancy pants new toaster perform?” Well, sadly, the answer is we still don’t know! See, I ordered it from Billy Guyatts, a self-claimed online electrical superstore. I wasn’t impressed with how long the toaster took to arrive; in fact, it was positively hopeless! Over a week! How much of this is the fault of Billy Guyatts versus Australia Post I don’t know, though I suspect that order status moving from “paid” to “dispatched” was somewhat short of instantaneous.

However, that’s not my main complaint; no, far from it. Unfortunately, someone in the Billy Guyatts warehouse was having a serious case of dyslexia when they were picking my order, because instead of sending us the BTA430, they sent us the lower model (and “A Bit More” button-free) BTA340! Yes, I appreciate that both models are made up from the same letters and numbers, but that does not mean they are the same toaster!

OK, so I’m human, and I can accept that people make mistakes, so I sent Billy Guyatts an enquiry asking how they were going to remedy the situation. Suffice to say, I was underwhelmed with their response:

Hi, we apologize, we will send you a post return label through email, you need to print this label off and stick it to the item.

Then take the item to your local post office. Once we receive the item back we will then send out the replacement.

My two main problems with this are:

1. The toaster that they mistakenly sent retails at around $30, which means they probably buy it for somewhere between $10 and $20. Postage is about $10.50 each way. Surely you’d write the toaster off and send out the correct product?
2. At the very least, I would have expected them to send out the correct toaster immediately, rather than waiting for me to return the incorrect one. Yes, I can see that that puts them “at risk” of me not returning the incorrect toaster – but see my previous point for my feelings on that particular matter.

I wrote them a reply to this effect, and thus far have not received another response. Neither have we received the correct toaster yet. We are underimpressed! And our bread is undercooked! Billy Guyatts, you’ve got some learning to do!

PS: Happy Anniversary, wife!

We came home from Kingscliff to the very unpleasant realisation that our house was infested with fleas. Yuk. Even thinking about it makes the skin on my legs start to itch. Mom and Dad had warned us that they found the dogs covered in fleas (for the first time in their lives!) after taking them back off our hands, and so clearly the blame is on us; though I don’t know what we did wrong – we followed their regular routine to the letter!

At first, the problem at our house seemed to be localised to the laundry, though we found a few in the playroom not far from the laundry door, which meant they were migrating. Worse, the playroom floor is carpeted (as opposed to tiles in the laundry), which makes them harder to get rid of (as they burrow down into the carpet to lay their eggs). We set a couple of Mortein Flea Bombs off in the playroom which certainly seemed to help the problem, but the fleas were still hanging around (loads of them outside), and worse still, seemed to be migrating upstairs!

As luck would have it though, we were due for our annual pest control treatment, so we called our friendly Pest Control company, and had Anthony come out to spray both inside and outside the house. Apparently, to have maximum effect, we now need to stomp around every room of the house for the next three weeks, which will encourage the fleas to come out of hiding and for the eggs to hatch! The residual effect of the spray will then kill off any fleas that hit the floor. Suckers!

Of all the pointless creatures in the world, fleas have now taken my number one spot for most hated. I can’t wait for this whole episode to be behind us!

Lots of people seem to have fond memories of the vaporizer running when they were sick as a kid. For some reason, that’s not my memory – in fact quite the opposite, for some reason I seem to remember hating the vaporizer being on. I’m not sure why this is; if I were to guess, I suspect that like so many of my opinions as a kid, this was actually my brother’s opinion of the vaporizer, and I was merely mirroring how he felt about it.

Anyway – some twenty (or so… *cough*) years later, I’m even more surprised that I could have ever disliked the vaporizer. They’re so good! And that eucalyptus serum (which judging by its price must be made on lion’s tears or something) smells so refreshing! Little Moo certainly had his fair share of clogged sinuses this year, and so we bought him his very first vaporizer near the start of winter. As it turns out, there’s not much choice when it comes to vaporizers, and there’s even less choice when you want something that day from Stafford City Shopping Centre. And so, we became the proud owners a very trending looking Vicks V188.

Trendy looking though it might be, what you’re actually looking at here is one of the worst designed products that you could have in your home. As a vaporizer, it seems to do the job – once it’s been running for a little while, Oscar’s room gets as humid as a Finnish sauna. But in terms of practicality, it’s a total failure. Lets take a look at how it looks when it’s not sitting together all smugly like in the photo above:

There’s two major design flaws that you can see here. Well, maybe you don’t see them, but now that you’ve read my rant this far, I feel it’s my job to point them out to you. Both of my gripes are to do with the big hole in the middle of the base unit where the boiler gets inserted.

Firstly, notice that there high sides around each part of the boiler insertion hole thing. These sides are hollow, which means it is nearly impossible to tip any remaining water out of the base unit when cleaning it. It is ludicrously frustrating! You end up having to shake it up and down like a maraca trying to coerce the water to jump into the middle and thus out of the hole. But try as you might, that water ain’t goin’ nowhere; there’s only one way to get it out, and that’s by mopping it up with a sponge.

And, that brings me on to complaint number two. Notice how the edge of the hole has a plastic lip around it to hold the boiler in place? It’s ridiculously sharp! Putting your hand down there to mop up the water you inevitably couldn’t shake out nearly guarantees that you’ll be drawing blood. OK, perhaps it’s not quite that sharp, but it’s certainly not a walk in the park for my delicate, soft skin. You’d be surprised at how little resilience you build up from typing on a keyboard all day.

And so, would I buy this vaporizer again? Definitely, if I was starved for choice as I was the first time. But otherwise – no, and I also wouldn’t recommend it, unless you’re a total sucker for punishment.

Sorry Vicks, it’s a total design failure!

Dusseldorf is covered in a blanket of snow, and the whole airport is closed!

Kristy and I lugged our bags out to the airport, stood in line for two hours, then got rebooked on the 7 A.M. flight tomorrow morning. But, if the snow keeps falling like it has been for the last 8 (or more) hours, then I don’t like our chances… Even getting back to John’s house from the airport was a mission – the roads are closed now, too!

Worst of all, we have travel insurance, but their cover for this type of situation is absolute sh*t! We get €25 each, for every 12 hours that we’re delayed – so in total, we should get €50. That will really help us pay for the €99 extra accommodation charges we’ve incurred, not to mention the extra meals we have to buy, as well as the transportation costs to and from the airport. It’s just so frustrating!

No matter how hard I try to avoid it, it seems as though I always end up getting the 08:22 train from Putney to Waterloo (though I bail after two stops, at Clapham Junction) in the mornings. I strongly dislike this train! It’s always super-duper crowded, mainly because of the huge time lag between it and the train before it (08:13).

Getting on and off is a nightmare – you can’t really move of your own accord, but instead you just have to accept where the crowd is going to carry you. I remember one time being jammed in there so tight, that I could feel six different people touching me. Eeewww!

This morning was no exception – both Kristy and I were on the train of death, and it was just as crowded as ever. We got about half-way to Wandsworth Town station, then the train stopped.

Nothing happened.

After about five minutes, the guard came on and said, “Sorry for the slight delay passengers, we’re being held here because a passenger has been taken ill on a train ahead of us. We should be moving shortly.” A likely story! I’ve fallen for those promises before!

I was jammed between a guy who needed a shave and the door – though not quite as bad as Kristy, who was only inches away from a Chinese hair flicker! Predictably, the five minutes soon turned to 10, which then turned to 20… and finally, 26 uncomfortable minutes later (yes, I was timing!) the guard came on the speaker again.

“Sorry again for this slight delay passengers, but we should be moving shortly. If you have any questions, please feel free to come down and see me – I’m in the middle carriage of the train.”

Now I have two problems with this statement:

1. 26 minutes in a sardine can does not constitute a “slight” delay!
2. How on earth did he expect anyone to just breeze down the train for a visit? No-one could move!

Just once, when a train stops unexpectedly, I’d love to hear the guard come on within one minute, and just be honest! “Sorry for the delay passengers, we’re being held at a red signal, but I’m not sure why, or how much longer we’ll be here for. I’ll try to get an update from the dispatcher, and get back to you shortly.”

Would that be so hard?! Grrrr!!

I had a bit of a run in with one of the BA’s at work today. He had an issue with an e-mail that I sent to an external client that I’m working with – which, for the record, was perfectly acceptable. I, however, have an issue with him being a seagull manager, and my response to his criticism was to tell him that from now on I will cease all correspondance with said client, and exlusively let him deal with them instead.

It would seem as though my e-mail ruffled some feathers, as he promptly came over to confront me about it. What worked me up the most was not his approach to the problem, not the fact that he misinterprets all of my e-mails, and not that he had no grasp on the underlying issues which were making me so frustrated. No, what really gets my goat is that after working “with” me for over six months, he still can’t pronounce my name properly.

Worst of all, he’s not alone; most English (as in “from England”, not “English speaking”) people seem to get it wrong, with very few exceptions. Almost every pom pronounces my name as either “JEH-raared”, or “jeh-RAAR-ed”. Both wrong! (Forgive my attempt at phonetics here!)

So for ther record, here it is: the way I wish people would say my name. I figure there’s two acceptable options:

• Americans/Canadians can say, “JEH-red” as it puts more emphasis on the “R” sound, which is what the yanks tend to do by default. Rest assured Cookes, you’re right on the money.
• All other English speaking countries should say it more like “jeh-red”, with equal empahsis on each syllable. Countries that do not have English as their native tongue should also attempt this pronounciation, as non-English accents are 100% acceptable (in fact, my name sounds best in French or Spanish!).

So is it really that hard? I don’t think so; the folks at the UN, with all the accent variations in the world, did a bang-up job compared to the brits. My only theory is that they think I have the same name as the infamous Steven Gerrard, which I most certainly do not.

Still, it’s all about perspective; old mate BA might pronouce my name incorrectly, but at least he doesn’t call me “Darren” like my yoga teacher does.