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 bags of crap arrived!

I guess the old adage of “you get what you pay for” really rang true for us on this one; we did not do well out of the bag of crap sale! My bag was almost decent – an Oakley shirt, and a pair of socks! Unfortunately, both are large sized, hence both are far too big for me.

If anyone wants a large Oakley shirt or a large pair of blue and white puma “team socks” (no idea which team), go ahead and leave a comment and I’ll endeavour to get them to you.

Sadly, Kristy’s bag was worse! You know those crappy tourist t-shirts that say (something along the lines of), “My [relation] went to [famous city] and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”. Yeah? Well…

So clearly the lesson here is, don’t buy an $11 bag of crap. But you know what? I don’t regret it, and should there be another $11 bag of crap sale, I will once again be participating! You never know! Maybe I’ll get something else that I don’t want, though slightly less than an oversized t-shirt and a pair of socks! You just never know.

I assure you, it’s not as unpleasant as it sounds. On the contrary! I’m totally addicted to the 1-day website, where each day at 11 AM, they offer up three new products at heavily discounted rates. Truth be told, I’m even more addicted to 1 day tee, which does the same thing each day with one (or more) t-shirts. It’s embarrassing how excited I get about finding out what the day’s shirt is going to be; most days I end up checking multiple times just to make sure I haven’t missed anything!

So far I’ve bought three shirts from them, and I’m extremely impressed with the quality – they’re all very heavy cotton, and they don’t feel like they’re going to fall apart or become misshapen after only two washes. Contrast that to rags that you get from threadless, which are only good for a handful of washes at best, and end up costing about the same price.

Anyway – back to the bag of crap. On Tuesday, this is what 1-Day’s offerings looked like:

Mysterious! I clicked the “blokes” link to find out what it was all about, and they went on to explain:

Life is like a Bag of Crap, you just never know what you’re going to get! You get to choose the category you want your crap to come from – This category is for all the blokes out there, so if you want something guy related you’ve chosen the right category! But aside from this you have no control over what you get and we have no control over who gets sent what, it’s a lucky dip.

This year we’ve been busy beavers hiding 10 x Golden Tickets in our Bags of Crap, find one and score a bonus $500 1-day gift voucher – keep your eyes peeled!

For all of you 1-day newbie’s out there, the $11 Bag of Crap Sale is random, mystery products with a minimum value of $11 and a maximum of $800.

Intriguing! Of course, it sounds like something only a fool would buy (“Magic beans? Take my cow!”), so naturally I bought two of them – one from the blokes, and one from the chicks for Kristy. Hey, who was the one laughing when he had a bag of gold coins, a hen that laid golden eggs, and a harp that played itself?! Actually, that would probably get pretty annoying after a while.

We’ve been having some trouble with our media centre PC that I so proudly built only a few years ago. More pacifically – the computer refused to boot, and instead complained that it couldn’t find the hard drive which contained (amongst other things) the operating system and all program files.

Thankfully, we’re pretty diligent about backing things up, so I knew there wasn’t really anything on there that we couldn’t afford to lose. And, figuring that the best way of getting windows to run faster is to format your hard drive and install clean, that’s exactly what I attempted to do. It was a total failure! The computer still didn’t want to recognise the drive; at one point, it disappeared completely from the BIOS. I got in touch with OCZ support who gave me a number of things to try, but unfortunately none of them worked either.

It was looking suspiciously like I was going to have to send the drive back to OCZ for replacement. There was no way we could handle watching commercial TV for however long it was going to take for the drive to be replaced though, so I decided to do a “temporary install” of Windows on the media drive as an interim solution. Guess what? That failed too!

At this point, the only answer I had left was that we were suffering from total hardware failure, and its reach extended beyond the hard drive to somewhere around the MoBo, CPU, and RAM. And that only meant one thing – time for an upgrade! So, after a quick jaunt to UMart with Ben (where we were called some very rude things by a rather rude lady from the Entertainment Book company – but that’s a story for another time…), I came away with:

• MoBo: Gigabyte GA-A75M-D2H
• CPU: A triple-core AMD A6 3500, which draws only 65W under load!
• RAM: 8 GB of pimped out G.SKILL DDR3 PC-14900

Having spent a large portion of the weekend preparing the computer for an overhaul – thankfully with a second machine available for life support – it didn’t take long to perform the transplant operation on Monday night. Everything was back up and running by Tuesday morning! Unfortunately though, our troubles didn’t quite end there; whenever we tried to watch live TV, Windows Media Center reported:

Viewing or Listening Conflict – no tuner available to satisfy the current request.

Huh? A bit of googling around told me that I simply needed to install a certain Windows update and the problem would be solved – however when I ran the update, Windows told me that it didn’t apply to my PC! Finally, I eventually stumbled on to a post which had some sage-though-a-little-desperate sounding advice:

1. Open regedit
2. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video
3. Delete the key named “Tuners”, then reboot the PC
4. Start Windows Media Centre, and re-setup the TV Tuner card

Fumbing around in the registry is generally a very bad idea indeed, but at this point I was willing to try anything – and guess what? It worked!

Huzzah! We are back in the land of media centre, TV on demand, commercial free bliss!

It wasn’t long after I started riding to work that I decided I had done enough trips to justify a new set of wheels. I think I lasted maybe five journeys on my mountain bike before deciding that an upgrade was in order. Say hello to bike number two:

I believe this is classed as a “commuter” bike – similar to a road bike, but without the dropped handlebars. It’s wonderful! It’s a 2012 Merida Speeder T3, and you know that any bike whose model name contains the word “speed” has got to be fast. In fact, the first day I rode it home, my trip time was 25% faster than it was on my mountain bike!

To be fair, it’s not without its downsides – well, one downside anyway. The tires are much more prone to punctures than the mountain bike seemed to be. In the three months I’ve had the bike, riding on average one or two days per week (curse you, rain!), I’ve already had three punctures. Three! I never got a puncture on the mountain bike! But, I guess that’s the price you gotta pay for running your tires at a much higher pressure (100 psi versus 40-50)!

Anyway – it is overall a huge improvement for the commute to work, and I really enjoy riding it. And, I’m absolutely loving the selection of music that I have for my journey – basically I just put my phone on shuffle, and every song is a winner! Here’s my current playlist, for the curious:

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Lads, are you constantly frustrated that your razorblades don’t stay sharp for more than a few shaves? Ladies, are you constantly frustrated that your better halves (c’mon, you know it’s true) don’t shave often enough? If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, then I have to say: RazorPit is for you!

The idea is simple – properly cleaning and sharpening your blades after use will extend their life, and that’s precisely what RazorPit does. Using it is pretty simple too – first, put down a layer of your shaving foam/gel onto the surface (I just wipe off the inevitable blob of excess gel that is left on my hand after applying to my face). Then, once you’ve finished your shave, push your razor firmly against the surface, then stroke “upwards” (i.e. in the opposite direction to what you’d use for shaving). Repeat three times, wash the blade, and you’re done!

I have to admit that I was already getting decent life out of my razors simply by drying them after use; however, since getting the RazorPit the blades are obviously sharper, and do a easier/better job of shaving. Seriously, it’s such a great product, and it’s so cheap, you should definitely get yourself one! And no, I do not get any commission from sales!

Yes, it was an exciting weekend, because I bought some new shoes.

Not being a big fan of shoe shopping, and having decided (after about half a day of wear) that the gray ones were about as comfortable as a pair of shoes could be, I lashed out and bought a second pair of new shoes. Better still – the black and white ones were on special, so I saved myself $20!

That’ll be going straight into the new PS3 fund, me thinks!

How delighted I was to come home on Monday to find that a small red and white packet had been delivered to our door!

Now truth be told, I had very much been looking forward to this packet’s arrival. See, when I left the UK, I traded in a bunch of stuff at Game in exchange for a credit voucher, which I was assured could be redeemed online. Of course, skip forward a few months to when I try and redeem said voucher, and what do I find in the fine print?

Trade in credit vouchers cannot be redeemed online.

Suffice to say, this did not impress me one iota, but I wasn’t going to let them get the better of me. Instead, I sent the card over to trusty friend Amjad (who I worked with at Lloyds) back in old Blighty, with clear instructions of how it should be spent. And so, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting (anything more than about 7 minutes seems like an eternity when I’m waiting for new games), it was here!

But wait! What’s this?

A care package! Inconspicuously disguised as a very well wrapped parcel of games! Make no mistake, part of the care package was indeed the games which I have long desired, and I suspect that I’ll soon be losing many evenings to Killzone 3 and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. But our care parcel also contained some lovely new clothes for Oscar, and a microplane grater for our kitchen. Very nice! Finally I can make that butter chicken recipe that Amjad gave me many moons ago…

Thanks Amjad – love your work!

When we were living in the UK and we met up with visitors from Brisbane, we’d inevitably ask them, “So, how’s Brisbane going?”. And nearly always, the response that we received was one of two things; either: “Really boring since you guys left”, or, “Oh, the traffic is absolutely shocking!”.

We’ve done what we can to remedy both of these complaints though. Obviously the first one was pretty easy to solve, and our arrival on the 10th of August certainly brightened the city up; I’m sure the Lord Mayor will be presenting us with some sort of welcome home pack – perhaps a key to the city – any day now.

To help with the second issue – and also after some fairly heavy convincing by Ben and Jason – I decided to get a scooter for my daily commute. Did I also mention that I can park the scooter at work for free, as opposed to paying $8 a day for a car?

In Queensland, you’re allowed to ride a 50cc scooter with only a driver’s licence; but for anything higher, you need a bike licence (auto or manual). The training time is the same for both, so I signed up for a two day course, and after two days I had my motorbike licence!

It was a bit of a debate then as to whether I should get a motorbike (manual) or a scooter (automatic); I went with a scooter in the end simply because for the most part, I’ll be riding it in traffic, and constantly shifting gears on a motorbike is a bit pesky. That, and I was rubbish at hill starts! And so, I’m now the proud owner of a brand new Piaggio Fly 150 – not the one you see here, that was the test ride model. Mine is black!

Today was my first day riding to work, and for the most part it went quite well. Unfortunately, the scooter had some teething difficulties in the cold, whereby every time I came to a stop, the engine stalled! I took it in to the service department this morning, and they adjusted the idle mix (whatever that means). That seemed to fix the problem, at the time, but unfortunately, the scooter still stalled a couple of times when I started my commute home this afternoon. After the engine warmed up, it ran smoothly for the rest of the journey home, so hopefully it was just getting it out of its system or something.

Fingers crossed that it doesn’t stall tomorrow on the North Pine / Beckett / Queen’s Road roundabout like it did this morning!

Anyone who has ever heard me ramble on about speakers would know that I’ve been wanting to invest in some for ages. So much so, that when we were budgeting our money before our return to Australia, there was a line-item specifically in there for “speakers”.

And so, as of last week (yes, another new addition last week!) our lounge room is now home to a set of Sonique speakers, and they’re awesome! Specifically, we’ve got:

• Two SAV 4 SE floorstanding main speakers;
• A SAV C1 SE centre speaker, wall mounted above the TV;
• Two SAV DB1 surround speakers, wall mounted behind the couch; and
• A Thunderbox subwoofer, tucked away in the corner.

Movie nights are going to be amazing when our TV finally arrives from the UK!