The [Disco Chives] Misplaced Parrot Complaint Thread
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Good luck, I've been waiting for a new CPAP machine for a month. My 10-year-old stalwart is still plugging away, but I can tell it wants to be humanely put down.
I fixed a printer once... it was an early 00s Epson stylus of some sort that had a translucent turquoise case that matched my "Blue & White" G3 Mac, which according to the internet there is no trace of such a printer ever having existed*...
I had no idea precisely how it worked, but using the same approach I've always applied to fixing alien technology, I disassembled it looking for something that looked "broke"...
I honestly suspected what the cause was before I opened it, and ultimately it turned out to be accurate to some degree... who ever designed the printer decided that the motor that moved the print carriage back and forth should also be strong enough to launch F-14s off the deck of an aircraft carrier... which wasn't a problem while printing, but Epson printers liked to clean themselves frequently, often while just sitting there in standby mode, at 3AM... I seriously think that think would clean itself ever 2 hours...
Apparently, the working theory was that inkjet ink is bad for the printer so if it emptied it out, the printer would last longer and you would declare bankruptcy and when your assets were liquidated, the printer would likely be thrown out and end up in a dump where it would be safe from harmful ink.
The real conundrum was that, okay, that's a sound strategy, but when the printer would go into cleaning mode, it would do so with such violence you'd think it was about to transform into some small printer based Transformers type robot and attack the dishwasher in the other room, probably because it was one of the Decepticon Appliancebots, up to no good... which made sense because it was always breaking glasses, and making loud angry noises.
The violent thrashing about of the print carriage eventually misaligned the print rails and the stop and caused the little calibration strip it used to figure out the print coordinates, to fall off and get covered in ink...
There was a lot of ink inside that printer.
I felt like Jeb Clampett when he discovered oil... only I wasn't shooting at a walrus (I never really watched the Beverly Hillbillies, so I have no idea what he was shooting at, probably one of those famous Texas Walruses, I imagine and then he discovered oil)...(maybe walrus oil), so I was very confused by the amount of viscous non-walrus based liquid inside the machine.
There was a little felt pad inside which I didn't know was inside, because it was coated in a thick layer of ink... the pad was meant to absorb excess ink from the cleaning process and apparently the engineers who determined that a one inch by four inch pad would be sufficient to last until I was bankrupted by the cleaning process were wrong... Apparently I stuck with it way longer than anyone at Epson figured I would.
Most people would have just complied with the design intentions and dumped the printer in the garage or set it on fire... I executed an HP printer by throwing it out a window because it did something just as bad (there's a story about that in one of my Readmes)... but to destroy that Epson would be what the printer wanted, so I was determined to fix it...
Actually fixing it wasn't that hard... cleaning it was beyond awful... apparently a tiny dot of inkjet ink, smaller than this period→ "." can magically transform into a smudge the size of the state of New Hamster... (I'm leaving that there because spell check insists that's the name, so I must be wrong)... (Apparently it also thinks "Vermont" is either "Vermouth", "Vermin" or "urmom")..(but anyway)...
I've handled a lot of jobs where avoiding chemical cross contamination or spreading around toxic materials was a big deal... but somehow that got way out of hand instantly... like so instantly, it began before I even opened it, because apparently so much ink was inside, some got outside through various seams that probably were never meant to convey wayward ink (I feel like that would have been too much effort to be intentional)...
That went from "ugh... what the hell?", to full blown Chernobyl level ink fallout instantly.
I'll never fix another printer again because as crappy as that thing was, printers have become even flimsier now... I don't know if they still waste gallons of ink that's more expensive than vintage Dom Perignon (and gold or human blood)... (apparently blood is a bad substitute to refill the cartridges with).
I got another year or thereabouts out of that printer, but eventually it broke down and I put it aside to set on fire at some point and forgot about it... I recently saw it somewhere at the back of my garage's attic and was too lazy to set the whole place on fire to get to it, so it'll probably stay there until I die and my wife hires a bulldozer company to plow everything under... only the joke is on them, because that'll probably rip a hole in the fabric of space-time.
That whole ink thing got Epson sued (not by me because apparently I'm too lazy to burn a printer I was very angry at), but by lots of other people and eventually everyone who saved ever single ink receipt they ever got, was entitled to the princely sum of $45, $20 of which had to be spent at the Epson store... I got a whole $5 which could only be used at their store and declined to do so because it was ridiculously more expensive to shop there.
I guess the takeaway from this is it's probably not worth it to take apart a printer... and that Epson makes robots, which wasn't something I was aware of until about five minutes ago...
Which I'm now realizing makes a lot of sense when you incorporate other tidbits together with that fact... that last part wasn't part of the "takeaway", it's just that I paused and forgot what the other part was and then found out Epson makes robots that are probably going to turn against mankind... I don't know how effective that'll be, because they just look like industrial robotic arms, but I'm sure they could slap someone around if they got too close... Still, it could be a subterfuge to draw attention away from printers that will transform into small deadly robots that will waste all your ink and smear it it all over everything making a huge mess... I have to work on that one because I'm feeling it's missing a few details and a connection to Texan Walruses.
* I often fact check myself before I write stuff, so often I'll look stuff to see if what I remember matches the record and reality... which is annoying because over the last few years the internet has become no better at providing accurate information than that guy at the bus station who wears a trench coat and likes to flash the pigeons...
His memory is pretty limited to the last few pigeons and that's pretty much the internet now... especially with any product over four or fives years old... you can literally have all the information, model numbers etc, and the internet is like "nope, never existed... look at all these other things that don't remotely match what you are looking for..."
When I eventually do come across the information I wanted, it's often way after the point is moot and it's almost always by accident or some convoluted intersecting rabbit hole.
I find it weird because so many major companies have no easily accessible records of their product lines... its literally no better than the 70s or 80s when you had to deep research information using libraries... there was a small chance you might find the information if you looked long enough, but in the end it was really about how much the effort was worth.
I really find it pathetic, because the promise of being able to find "any" recorded information pretty much evaporated when search algorithms deferred to popularity and paid placement.
Search for something like "Epoxy encapsulation kit" and you'll get ten pages of "Does viagra come in capsules?"... No... just no, don't do that Google, stop it... I'm starting to look back fondly at Jeeves.
One has never lived until one has gone to pick up one's printout, and sees a quarter inch diameter, slimy grey slug about 3/4 of an inch long sitting on the paper, with a 4 inch long broad swath of gray smudge left by the sledding slug. Yeah, yeah, it was just a piece of foam saturated in ink, but the shock was no less.
I suspect that the foam was part of the head cleaning mechanisms, or dripped ink repository, or whatever, but it is a good indication that not all is well in printer-town tonight.
I also had problems with the old printer needing to have its heads cleaned frequently (like once every couple of days), but not until the printer was at least 9 years old, up until then I loved, loved, loved my printer. But it was only the black ink that would give me trouble and would stop flowing. Even with new ink. The color inks never gave me any trouble. I suspect what was happening was that the "foam" or something in the head cleaning mechanism wa torn or otherwise not up to snuff, and not cleaning the black head properly for the last year. And now the foam has started disintegrating (as foam does with age). Yay for planned obsolescence.
I had a Canon printer that fell off a shelf. Never tried fixing it because it got replaced for free (for some reason I can't recall). When the replacement died I was planning to take both of them apart and see if I could frankenstein a working printer out of them, but eventually I forgot what each of their problems was so never bothered.
The Canon was replaced by an HP that reputable sources like Consumer Reports claimed was cheap on ink (printers work on the Gillette model, where the printer costs practically nothing and it would be cheaper to buy a new one than to buy more ink (which just reminded me of the old "I Dream Of Jeannie" episode in which Jeannie's sister says her master only lets her out of the bottle when the ashtrays in the Rolls Royce get full so she can blink up a new Rolls)), which turned out to be far from true, or else no one ever tested it on my daughter, who likes to print out characters from whatever web series she's infatuated with at the moment (which is very educational, actually -- when she was into "Axis Powers Hetalia" she memorized the flags and chief exports and who knows what else of every country on Earth, and now she's into one where the characters are planets and moons and such, so she's memorized vital facts about every lump of rock in the Solar System, and recently she's been playing the Alphabet Song in every language on Earth and printing out the letters those languages use -- did I mention that she taught herself Japanese?).
Anyway, when the HP developed a need to be cleaned, which to my surprise it didn't do itself, and I found out how much the needed parts would cost, I found a great deal oin an Epson Eco-Tank, which really does cost virtually nothing in ink (I've never bought ink for it, it's still half-full with the ink that came with the printer, and there's still some left over from when I filled it originally).
OK, so now that I've committed myself to a new printer, and it's on the way, the old printer has, of course, taken the hint, and is now flying right. Scared it I guess.
That's OK, I'll use it until it mucks up badly again, or until I use up my existing ink. How many people can say they have a brand-new spare printer, still in the box, sitting, just waiting to be called to duty?
I too had a printer fall off a shelf... well, fall off a dresser. A Canon printer, which apparently can be tipped over by a cat if even two inches of it is over the edge. I also got a replacement printer free, but the replacement was an HP printer. I ended up paying for another Canon printer regardless of the HP one being there because the HP had all of the color ink combined into one cartridge and I hate that. Like, if you run out of blue then you have to get a new cartridge even though the red and yellow are still in there, I think the using tons of ink for head cleaning is still a thing.
I was a bit shocked by hearing of an inkjet printer lasting ten years. I don't think I've ever had one go that long Maybe I would have if I didn't make it so easy for the cat to knock it off the dresser.
I stopped buying the "Genuine Canon Ink Tanks" a long time ago. My shining moment was when, due to the pandemic-induced supply shortage, Canon couldn't get the cips required to make the DRM work in their ink tanks. So the "genuine canon ink tanks" didn't work but my generic third party ink tanks had chips and did work. Nice. Canon ultimately had to release instructions on how to bypass the DRM. I would not be surprised at all if they made the ink out of walrus.
i always thought Jed Clampett was somewhere in the eastern part of the United states, like Tennessee. I just assume every character from the "rural america" era of TV is from Tenessee.
Missouri borders both Tennesse and Arkansas, so you're not far off....unless you didn't pick up on the strong hints that the show takes place in California.
You know, that's what happened to mine. Apparently either Canon or one of its competitors has cats on the payroll.
I bought an Eco-tank Epson recently to replace a dying Canon... well, technically I think it just stopped working via the router, because it printed fine from my computer which it was physically connected to...
I liked the Canon, it had good vibrancy and colorfastness... the Eco-Tank Epson has the refillable tanks, but the color is not that great unless you fiddle with the setting and do some test prints... I used to print up my own decals and graphics for stuff I made and the Canon did a great job... it lasted about 6 or 7 years, maybe a little more... (actually, I just remembered why I retired it... Costco and Staples stopped carrying the ink, and it was too expensive anywhere else, the router thing I fixed)....
My favorite printer was an early 2000s MD series ALPS printer... it used print tapes and could print in white, chrome silver, chrome gold, metallic cyan and metallic magenta... that was a crazy difficult printer to use, but the results were amazing... I printed up a bunch of mockups of clients packaging and everyone would always be amazed I did it at home, especially when I used the chrome and metallic tapes... it still works, but the tapes are next impossible to find... plus I can only use it on my old Mac G4 at this point.
I am on my fourth inkjet sine about 1990 (HP Deskjet 500ish, Epson Stylus 500ish, Epson Stylus 1200, Canon Pixma 8750) so that isn't far short of ten years each - espeically as the HP was still working when I passed it on to my sister (not sure about the first Epson, whether it failed or whether it was working but I wanted A3).
HumptyDumpty was a cannon, just saying
North Carolina is Andy Griffith territory. That's pretty rural. There's lots of rural in every state.
Complaint; Stuck at home... My 250ft driveway is covered in over a foot of heavy new snow, deeper in drifts. The first time in 13 years that I'm not even trying to get out.
... apologies, but just ome week of snow, ice, and and cold windy days here in Portland convinced me not to. Going to hate seeing my power bill after this.
...yeah I felt it was actually easier in th old days using a real brick and mortar library than searching on the Net because a real library wasn't loaded with a bunch of crap, adverts, and paywalls you have to sift and sort through as well as search engine that thought you entered "this" when you actually meant "that".
The other day I was looking up the history of an old coffee shop I used to hang out at. the shop is still there but changed owners a couple times. Even when I entered parameters to narrow the search down like history of" or "former owners" an a date range, (I forgot the original name as it's been so long as well as I also have that short term memory issue) it would just give me references to the current owner/occupant of the building or a place on some other state. By the time I finally was able to find what I was looking for, several hours had passed
Had I simply got on the tram and gone to the library, headed to the newspaper/periodical department archives, and used the date range of when I used to go to that location, I likely would have found the information I needed in about fifteen maybe twenty minutes tops. Yeah the tram ride would have added a bit of time, but I would have been spared all hours of frustration and aggravation being sent down one blind alley after another to the point I felt I was looking for a pair of rim glasses on a beach (the latter which actually happened last summer).
I used to be a library geek when I was a kid spending many a Saturday and sometimes Sunday afternoon at the main downtown Milwaukee Library, On weekdays I also used to at a nearby branch library a short walk away during lunch hour at elementary school. I'm experienced with both the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress system and how to use an "old school" card catalogue (today it's all on computer) but on the library's local internal network instead of Google or Safari, or IE,(or what is it now, "Edge"?).
The more I think about the claim that computers and automation were supposed to make our everyday lives easier, the more I shake my head and then chuckle afterwards..
Oh and after 44 years living in what we affectionately refer to as the "Pacific Northwet", I find the state of Vermouth a bit too dry for my taste,
...in the apartment I had here in Portiand years ago, it wouldnt be unusual to find it was a real slug on the page d,smearing the toner
...where I am many of the streets and sidewalks even in the city centre are still covered with sheets of ice.
I had to go to the nearby Safeway this evening and got only got two blocks from my building (the Safeway just another block away) when the intersection I had to cross at looked more like a skating rink than a street.. Given that arthritis already makes my step a bit unsteady I wasn't about to chance it . Fortunately; I saw that the walk way along that cross street was clear so I went down a block and discovered the rest of the way to the market was relatively clear . .
It was supposed to warm up into the mid to upper 40s today and rain which would have melted and washed away all the ice and remaining snow by early afternoon. When I left for the market ait was t 18:30
Hopefully we will be rid of thus mess tomorrow, but I have my doubts as it won't get out of the 30s for the next couple days. Temperatures wont be back to normal (upper 40s to mid 50s) until next week. This is why I left Wisconsin 44 years ago.
Non complaint; After I had texted my superiors, that I'm stuck until spring thaw, the vice president of the company came and cleared my driveway
Winter has hit with a Vengeance. We've had temperatures as low as -4C (25F). Awful.
Riding any distance on a 50cc scooter in that is a little bit of a trial even though the roads are frost free due to tons of salt.
It's nice though, our Maine Coon loves it, bounding all over the frosty garden like he's never seen white stuff before. He has, he's just a bit kittenish in the frost & snow. Then he comes in after 30 minutes slaughtering every rodent he can find, and spends the rest of the day snuggled up on a bed in the warmest part of the house. Our other cat stands on his hind legs to look out of the window and huffs. Never goes out in white stuff. Lazy fleabag. Yes, that was a complaint.
Regards,
Richard
Yes, Finland has it's attractions, but have you thought about Sweden?
Wi not trei a holiday in Sweeden this yer ?
See the loveli lakes
The wonderful telephone system
And mani interesting furry animals
Including the majestic moose
A moose once bit my sister...
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given her by Svenge—her brother-in-law— an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian movies: "The Hot Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Molars of Horst Nordfink"...
Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretti nasti...
-- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (credits) --
Last time I went to visit the States, we started off in Memphis and our airbnb had a container of Slap Ya Mama (cajun seasoning) in the cabinet. I never heard of it before, so I thought it was some kind of local thing, especially with the goofy name. Made my morning eggs absolute heaven! Posted about it, and my American friends back in Finland were all like "Oh yeah, that stuff! Bring me some!" Was sold out when we tried to get it on the way out of Memphis, no luck at all in Tulsa, but this wee town about two hours out did, in abundance.
So I grabbed a couple for my buds, and noticed they also have some in a red canister, a Hot variation, so I'm like "I'll take that one." Wish I'd have grabbed a normal one while I was at it, because let me tell you, it's raw pain powder. You shake too much of it on there like I did the first time around, and your whole meal is only good for some obscure Klingon initiation rite. I repeated that mistake tonight with my beans and rice. Tomorrow is gonna hurt.
I hate when that happens. I just can't find a way to be comfortable on those days so I hope better for you!
OKAY!. I thought I was on the last page when I responded to the above post... but now that I see I wasn't, I can't find the page I quoted it form...
Maybe I need more coffee... LOL
Coffee and that angry gorilla sitting on the sofa across from you... it's a bad combination...
Take a deep breath and just talk it over with the gorilla, they can be pretty reasonable if you both know where you are coming from... also they like cookies, especially chocolate chip... sometimes it's not just hearts and minds you wanna win over but gorilla tummies too.
Incidentally... JasmineSkunk... I couldn't find the quoted post either, so I just copy/pasted yours into a different one by SD.
I'm hella lazy.
Complaint: I'm looking at used cars again and the website I'm using to locate ones near me... but since I'm looking for specific vehicles, I keep getting further and further away... fine, but the website puts the vehicle mileage right under the distance to the dealership... I'm skimming over the info and I'm like "124,896 miles... where is this car, on the moon?" Well, technically that's closer to Lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit, but still, that's a terrible idea... The car is only $17,000 but like the shipping from LDRO has got to be around $187,000,000 give or take $10... plus they never guarantee it will survive re-entry... and if the delivery it right to the house, what if the parachute fails... I don't need those kind of problems... besides, buying a space car over the internet is stupid...
Also, I'd like to point out another thing the stupid internet ruined... the already awful experience of shopping for a used car.
The Kelly Blue Book value is absolutely meaningless now, because once enough idiots bought cars on the internet and paid top dollar because it was blue and came with a custom steering wheel cover from Dollar Tree, every dealer figured they'd base their prices on the internet's standard where people are willing to buy a car based on nice pictures of a vehicle they never drove or smelled.
Yeah, smelled... When we bought our Toyota SUV, I got almost $1k off the price because it smelled like Winston Churchill died in the back... mostly the cigars smell... whoever owned the car previously smoke cigars and it was overpowered... one of the salespeople made the mistake of telling me they tried to get the smell out, so I used that in my negotiations... I've actually successfully removed cigarette and cigar smell from peoples cars in the past, and it was a gamble it would still be possible if they hadn't changed the formula of the product I used... they didn't, and it worked brilliantly*.
But had I bought that and it was delivered smelling like that, oh hell no, that would have been such a ripoff without some compensation.
But I suppose the idea of picking your car up from a giant car vending machine or having it delivered to your porch, is more exciting than a reasonable price and having to test drive a vehicle.
Boooooo.
*The stuff I used is Ozium, the one that works like a "bug bomb"... it's best done in warm weather and the vehicle needs to be left closed for 24 hours minimum... Two treatments will even remove the stank of a dead squirrel... which apparently happened to someone I knew who left their SUV sunroof partially open... it doesn't get rid of dead squirrel stains on the floor mats though.
You are without a doubt the best free satirist I've had the enjoyment of reading.
Regarding unwanted critters in your home: In an apartment we rented in Washington , DC for a year, it was an old 3 story house, but refurbished into three apartments and quite modern looking inside, new kitchens, etc, We took the 2nd level and I even donated a crystal chandelier for the building entrance foyer. Nice house, on the surface.
But the guy above us on the 3rd level (a friend of ours and owner of the building) came down one night while he was tripping on LSD and asked us to please verify what he was seeing.
Upstairs in his apartment, the nice new kitchen ceiling light had been unscrewed and was hanging by the wires. Coming out of the hole and dropping to the floor, and crawling away were bazillions of white maggots.
Yep, not a thing you want to notice and investigate while your brain is in an amusement funhouse.
We verified for him that, yes indeedy, there were maggots falling out of his kitchen light. Theories then flew and we finally decided the recent efforts to eradicate rats had been successful, but only their lives, not their bodies. Ew. A few weeks later the smell was gone. Thankfully, we never experienced that in our apartment.
Incidentally, that same refurbished house was architected by Roy Mason, the guy who designed the short-lived tourist attraction "Xanadu" house in the Orlando area. We didn't own the apartment house, but it was right next to the house we had just sold, so we moved into the new apartment until we found another house (out in Reston, VA). We knew Roy and thought that he was an "on-the-ball" professional, but the apartment house had major electrical problems, and the rat problem, and shoddy work behind the walls. The building owner was trying to get satisfaction for the poor electrical work, and other problems he'd discovered. Local gossip was that someone else didn't like Roy's policies regarding houses that he designed and built, because one of his other customers murdered him just a couple years later.
Moral of story: Pick your contractors carefully.
Don't piss off your customers. And don't deal with druggies.
No angry gorilla or sofa here! LOL
I'm a singleton these days in a tiny studio appartment that barely has room for my art supplies, drafting table, desk, bed and tiny kitchen breakfast table! (see below!) But, if I did have a gorilla, I would definitely make him chocolate chip cookies because I would not want an unhappy gorilla in my midst! Nor unhappy hearts and minds...
Isn't it great? LOL
WOW!
That's a crazy story!
More on my tiny appartment...
You know what? It's tiny but, I kinda love it.
It's actually perfect for me. Not too much to clean, close to everything I need, (i.e : groceries, library, bus) and I like that it's all mine. LOL I like being single more than I would have guessed. When I got back to the States almost 10 yrs ago now, I told myself I'd not date for a year... but after that year, I found I didn't want to. My son keeps trying to set me up with somene and my dad keeps telling me I "should" open my heart again...LOL 
But, I don't think my heart is closed.... I don't dislike men, or love, or whatever. I just like my independance. I like seeing where life will take ME. Right now, I'm in NY, but before that I was in Michigan, Indiana, New Mexixo, and California... and I don't think I would have lived in all those places if I were "settled" in a relationship. Yes, for now, I'm content in my little studio, and looking forward to what's next...
Thank you... but I'm sorry you had to read that... Also, I forgot what I wrote, so I reread it and noticed how many spelling and grammatical errors spellcheck added because it clearly hates me... I have terrible grandma to begin with and stupid spell changes keeps chicken everywhere I wrote if I don't keep checking oh what it's wronging... it's exhausting frustrating to keeping happy to go backwards and correct whatever's it inserted implacable of what I wronged. You know how I mean?... Spelling change clearly doesn't have a class.
Sorry, but I didn't reap any of that about buttons I'm surly it turned out find.