The Mandelbear's Musings

In marked contrast to Windows, I rebooted the laptop into Linux, reconfigured security on the CUPS demon so it would talk to the network like a real print server, browsed to port 631, clicked the administration tab, and saw the printer there, correctly recognized. Added it and printed a test page. Total time, about 10 minutes. Would have been less if I hadn't had to read the documentation on the config file.

The driver doesn't know about CD printing, but if the Mac or XP can do it over a network, I'm in. Otherwise I can always use the Mac laptop with a USB connection. Not going to worry about it much; I think I can get ABT pre-printed. (00:33 as it turns out, it does appear to know about CDs -- it's right there in the Media box on the CUPS printer options page. W00T!)

OTOH, I'm still struggling to make a CD-Extra (2-session CD/CDROM). For some bizarre reason the drive objects to using disk-at-once mode in the second session, and if I use track-at-once mode it works but the CDROM won't mount. GAAARGH! It's conceivable that the new Samsung drive I bought today can handle it.

OTOH I may very well end up spending $20 on Nero for Linux. It even comes as a Debian package.

Spent some time this morning looking at what remains to be done for ABT and realizing that, no, there's no fscking way I can have it done by Monday. And besides, I want the versatility of being able to have a mix of CDROM, CD-Extra, and pure-audio disks on hand. So I fired off an RFQ to proactionmedia.com (they're not open on weekends). Wish there was someplace local that did inkjet printing on CDRs.

After the usual weekend 4-mile walk I stopped by Staples, because I'd seen them on a web search for CD duplicators. What the heck; if they had the DupliQ I might just buy one. No duplicators, but they did have a shiny new HP D5160 that (wonder of wonders) prints on CDs! Apparently somebody's patent has expired, because it used to be an Epson exclusive. Filed the information away for future reference, and headed across the street to Fry's to see whether they had it for less.

It was the same price, $89, but there was somebody there from HP who, in response to my query, said that it worked fine in Linux. HP has been pretty good about Linux printer drivers, while the latest Epson (the R260, successor to the R200 that's been giving me grief lately) is listed as a "paperweight" in the linuxprinting.org database. That clinched it, and I brought it home just in time to spend the next hour trying to find some way of printing a character sheet for the Y.D. Turned out that not only was the Epson suffering from clogged jets, but the cheap print server it's attached to appeared to be hosed (or at least unresponsive, even after a power cycle), and the SMB server on Nova appears to be inaccessible to the Windows machines. Again. GAAAH! And in spite of having what I thought was a reasonably complete set of fresh ink cartridges, I was suddenly reminded that I couldn't find a magenta cartridge the last time I went ink shopping. Guess which one I need. Finally put the page on my keychain drive, hauled it over to the Linux workstation, and printed it on the laser printer.

There are lots of reasons why I do most of my reading on the screen these days, but a well-founded loathing for printers and printing in general, and Windows printing in particular, is right up there.

Still haven't installed the HP -- no useable print server at the moment -- but I'm hopeful. I've never had particularly good luck with HP equipment, but I really like the fact that their ink cartridges include the nozzle assembly, so that even if you haven't used it for months, all you have to do is change the cartridges to get a totally new, clean, print head. Unlike the Epson.

Spent the rest of the afternoon fixing ABT's Makefile to correctly (I hope) write cd-extra (pressed-multi-session) disks, because although it's perfectly feasible to add audio tracks to a CD-ROM, I don't think most of my customers will be amused by 20 minutes of silence on track 1.

HP: No Surprise

September 11, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Why was I surprised to hear that Hewlett- Packard spied on its own board members to find the source of a news story? I shouldn't have been. Last year, just after Carly Fiorina walked away with $21 million in severance pay, I ran a letter in my column from a demoralized HP employee. "After all these cost cuts, stealth layoffs, expense and travel reductions, no raises for years, no bonuses, here Carly walks away with all this money after basically running HP into the ground," the anonymous reader wrote. "Oh well, tap me on the shoulder for that workforce reduction -- I'll take the severance, the unemployment, and have a nice rest."

A week later, an HP manager asked me, "Who was your source?"

(from groklaw, which has very good coverage of the HP debacle.)

I must say I'm feeling a certain amount of schadenfreude over the whole sorry mess -- considering what HP did to Compaq and the remains of DEC (after Compaq trashed them), and considering that every piece of HP hardware I've ever owned has died suddenly and mysteriously, with no help from what HP jokingly calls their tech support (sample, to try to fix my dead scanner: try power cycling the computer five times -- no, it didn't work; maybe they forgot to tell me about the dead chicken)... Where was I? Oh, yeah: HP. The real HP is called Agilent, these days. Don't know where these imposters came from.