Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Breakfast: leftover ginger chicken pad king with jasmine rice. Did some house cleaning. While still recovering from a cold I decided today to repair our Brother MFC-845cw inkjet printer. We've had this printer since December 1, 2006. A few months ago it started refusing to print and making screeching noises as the printer head moved. We stopped using it for months while I investigated whether to try to repair it or throw it away and buy a replacement. The market today for printers is terrible—lots of poor quality hardware and software and lots of overly expensive ink costs. The Wirecutter recommended an all-in-one that was perhaps six or seven times larger in cubic inches than the MFC-845cw. We have a small apartment, so their pick doesn't work for us. The Brother website makes it extremely hard to figure out what current model is most like the MFC-845cw. Hence the attempt at repair. I unplugged the device and moved it to the dining table. I had first spread butcher paper anticipating that I would need to take the printer apart and that ink might find its way to unanticipated places. I plugged in the printer. I ran a test print. It worked fine, which I did not expect. I also found that the printer tray pulled out easily. In the past it required extremely hard tugs and sometimes a hard push in before the hard tug out in order to remove it. I had lubricated it a while ago with a bar of paraffin—maybe that had helped. All seemed to be working correctly. I unplugged it, returned it to its previous location, plugged it back in, and then successfully ran print tests from various devices in the household, both Mac and iOS. All worked as expected. Problem solved. Nap with Patrick. Patrick recently started learning Spanish on a website called Fluencia. Lunch: superfast i(20 minutes!) delivery from Clay Oven Indian West Portal via delivery.com: onion naan, dal for Patrick, chicken tikka kabob, aloo sag, fish pakora, two chais. The chicken tikka kabob turned out very spicy. Organized via tags in Pinboard. Watched The Comedy Lineup: P1:E3: Taylor Tomlinson (excellent) on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. Watched Black Mirror: s4:e1: USS Callister on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. Adjusted my Nest Easy Breather Side Sleeper pillow to be more plump by adding more filling that I had removed when I bought it. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers from Clay Oven. I hadn't had the aloo sag earlier today and when I tasted it for dinner I realized it was way too spicy for me but I ate it anyway. Watched The Comedy Lineup: P1:E4: Sam Jay (good) and P1:E5: Phil Wang (good, needed better pacing). Recently I started taking notes on food deliveries so that we can more easily remember which restaurants and services screwed up. Patrick and I also realized that one big problem with food delivery today is that no one in our area has delivery time estimates that are both accurate and real-time. This is likely very hard to do but necessary if you want a service that will never deliver food in 90 minutes when it is promised in 45 to 60. We are looking at you, Alice Chinese Bistro and EAT24. Restaurants and services that don't care about this problem will eventually lose our business because they have already lost our trust.