do-it-all printers

seems like the latest craze in computer printers is the all-in-one machine… here are a few things to consider if you’re shopping for one of those multi- printers that will handle printing, faxing, copying and scanning:

how does the “original” go in?
– otherwise know as the sheet feed, think about how you intend to use your printer’s fax and copy functions before you pick a printer. The style of sheet feeder is important. If you are just an average user who needs to make a copy once in a while, a flatbed style with a lift up “lid” is fine, but if your printer will be in an office where you need to fax or copy multiple pages all the time, you need something that handles multiple pages, not just that one-page-at-a-time flatbed style of copying.

how does the blank paper feed in?
– there is one rule i use for this since i seem to end up living in muggy areas where paper sticks together: i will never use a top-fed printer ever again. That instantly limits me to mostly HP printers since they are all fed from the bottom and the paper lays flat while it’s waiting to be used.

how does the printer hook up to the computer?
– almost every single printer manufactured today connects via USB port, so make sure you have an available USB port first. Also, almost every printer manufactured today does NOT include a cable, regardless of the interface style, so get a cable. If the multi-function printer you look at also functions as a stand alone fax, check to see if the phone cable is included.

how does the printer print?
– ask for a test print of the kind of stuff you plan to print. Id you want a printer to print out photos from your vacation, make sure the printer you get is advetised as a “photo” printer and prints at high resolution (at LEAST 4800 dpi both ways). And keep in mind that if you want to print photos, you should invest in photo paper - it DOES make a difference.

what are the scan specs?
– if scanning and copying are in your plans, you also want high-res scanning capability, at least 1200 dpi and 48-bit color depth.

do you take digital photos?
– several all-in-one (as well as home “photo” printers) include media slots that can accept digital media, allowing you to pull your media storage card out of the camera and put it straight into the printer without going through the computer first… if this option is important to you, look for a printer with a 7- or 8-in-one media reader built in. Some printers also have little LCD preview screens that are very useful in determining which photos off the media you want to print out.

Don’t be afraid to shop around and ask for samples - you should see what the printer is capable of before you plop down $200-300 for a multi-function printer.

My Walls are Suede

Ralph Lauren Paint… maybe the scariest paint on the planet. It’s some pretty kewl paint but jeeze, it cost’s a fortune compared to “normal” paint. However, if you want a wall that gets attention, Ralph Lauren textures are fantastic.

Hint #1 - BUY LOTS OF IT!
This stuff does NOT go a long way. If you get poor coverage with your expensive paint, it’s gonna look like $35 per gallon doo-doo. Figure your wall space and round UP. Remember, length times height gives you the square footage of a wall - if you have 9 foot ceilings, be sure to figure your coverage using that measurement and not the store’s estimate of a standard room, which has an 8 foot ceiling.

Hint #2 - PRIME YOUR WALLS
Waste primer, not paint, especially if you’re painting new construction. While you’re at the paint store, tell them you want a few gallons of cheap primer tinted to match the Ralph Lauren paint you’re using. This will keep you from wasting that expensive stuff on walls that simply suck up the first coat of whatever you put up.

Hint #3 - BUY THE Ralph Lauren ROLLERS
While it may sound like a ploy for more money, the fact is that you won’t get the finish you want if you don’t splurge on the accessories that are recommended. Not all the RL paints require them but there are special rollers that you have to use to get certain looks - if you are trying to match a photo in an ad or picture at the store, be sure to ask if the kind of paint you’re getting requires a special roller.

Hint #4 - FINISH THE WALL BEFORE YOU DECIDE IF YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
These finishes really do look quite different when they’re dry. If you’re going for the River Rock or Suede look, you have to complete the process almost down to the last brush stroke before you see the desired result

Hint #5 - HAVE FUN!
It’s only paint… if you screw up, paint it over. If you hate it, paint it over. If you like it, send photos!

Basic Auto 101

Basic Auto 101

Recent events concerning a certain automobile, known as the filthy red jeep, have prompted me to jot this article, even though I haven’t really fooled much with car repairs since I was a teenage tomboy (now I’m an adult tomboy, so why not, eh?)

What does it take to be a mechanic?
I’m not trying to tick off anyone - honestly, but seriously, when was the last time you had a competent mechanic fix your car correctly the first time? Back in 1993 when I wanted to get out of my Radio Shack geekdom and get into computer assembly and repair, I though, “man, how do you get into this business? Do you go to a special school? Do you have to get a license? Do you have to pass a test?” I was utterly surprised to find out that anyone could open a store and advertise themselves as a computer specialist. As long as you talked the talk, the average person never knew if you knew what you were talking about or not. Now, I’m not saying that’s what I did - I took my computer knowledge so seriously that within the particular shop where I worked, I became the “knowledge bank.” I was responsible for reading all the magazine articles, hunting down emerging technology, knowhing about device and software incompatabilities and basically anything else that might affect how we ran the business… but there was no means of “certification” back then for anything we did - we just learned as we went and it was up to our clients to decide if we were competent enough to keep a job.

Now back to cars… A few weeks ago, I noticed water leaking from my car… no, scratch that, a few MONTHS ago a friend of mine noticed water leaking from my car. When I got married, I took a haitus from car fixing so I reported the leakage and my observation of it and the man of the house ordered a new radiator right then, based on my telling him where the water appeared to be dripping from - even though it seemed to me like a rash decision… that weekend he took the car to his brother’s house and they prepared to “fix” it. Now to his credit, my brother-in-law said “hey, let’s pressure this up before we tear into it and see exactly where the leak is.” Guess what? It reportedly never leaked while they sat there with the engine running for over an hour. That’s what they told me anyway

“Maybe it was just overrun from the antifreeze reservoir.” Or not…

In mid-July, I moved about 200 miles west, in the dead of summer, and discovered, about two weeks after getting moved in, that my vehicle was indeed leaking again… and this time it was a little more serious - as in I saw a puddle in the rearview mirror after I sat for a couple of minutes at a traffic light!

The Mobile Mechanic Experience
Ok this seems too coincidental, but about three days prior to my major leakage discovery, someone left a flyer on my windshield for a mobile mechanic service, which is pretty handy when you live in an apartment complex and you can’t drive your car anywhere to have it worked on, and you’ve become lazy about working on cars. So I called the guy up and he came out to look at my car. He asked me a few questions, then we filled up the radiator and let the car run. All this time, my “light” on the dash for overheating never worked, so we talked about adding an after market guage, then sat there for a while waiting for the car to either leak or boil over or something. Nothing ever happened. So he fiddled with a few things and asked about a secondary fan, which to my knowledge, only came on when the AC was running. The mechanic disconnected the fan switch and the fan started running. He looked at me and said, “well there’s your problem.” Now, a little voice in the back of my head (that is sometimes quite annoying) said, “but wait, you haven’t turned on the AC yet.” My background in computer troubleshooting means that the little voice in my head is always busy telling me this or that, but I figured, this guy is a mechanic. What business do I have telling him that I think he needs to refine his troublshooting methods because they don’t match mine?

So he quotes me a price for a new fan switch, which he says is also tied into the dash light and may be why my overheating indicator light never lit up. So I agree to the price for the fan switch and he leaves to get it, and returns about half an hour later to put it in.

I watched the mobile mechanic remove the fan switch (which goes into the top of the thermostat housing) and replace it. While he was tightening it, I heard a pop. In my experience, there are two kinds of people in the world - people with finesse and people who beat the hell out of things to make them work. These second types of people are also the ones who think that you have to hammer on the rachet to tighten a bolt. This is what mister mobile mechanic did. Not realizing at the moment that I was a fix chick who just didn’t feel like farting around with an automotive repair, the mechanic simply went on about his business while I watched and wondered what broke. Five mintes later, when we started the engine, it became apparent that he had cracked the thermostat housing - apparent because there was now a two-foot tall stream of water shooting from the seam in the housing where it cracked. Hmm, there hadn’t been a so much as a spec of water coming from anything BEFORE he replaced the fan switch.

Without admiting what he did, the mobile mechanic simply said, “I’ll have to go to the Jeep place tomorrow and get another housing - this one’s cracked.”

“I see… “

He showed up around noon the next day (a Saturday) with a new thermostat housing AND a new thermostat, which he had not previously quoted to me as part of the repair. He installed them both while we made small talk. He noticed that there were new spark plug wires and commented about them - when I told him I replaced them he looked a little weird. “You work on this car yourself?”

“I do now.”

I let him finish his job and paid him (he didn’t charge for any of the extra time to replace the housing and thermostat, even though I did end up paying for the parts that I didn’t originally require.) The bill came to over $180.

The next day I drove 4.3 miles down the road, pulled into a parking lot and noticed a literal waterfall of water and antifreeze streaming from my engine… Let’s just say that the filthy red jeep was not the only thing that was severely overheating at this point.

Thanks to a really nice chinese man who owned an egg roll shop, I got the radiator filled back up and went straight home, where I proceeded to get down and dirty and find whatever was wrong with my cooling system myself. It didn’t take too long - a little pushing and pulling on the hoses was all it took. To my surprise, the culprit all this time was a leak in the lower radiator hose that only leaked when under a certain amount of pressure, or when you pulled on the hose itself. Oddly enough, right on top of this leak was an extra, non-standard hose clamp - the kind you tighten up with a screwdriver instead of those funky pliers. Apparently, someone before me, like maybe my brother-in-law, had seen the crack in the hose and rather than replace the hose (because all they had was a radiator) they just clamped over it and it happened to have held for a month or two.

I don’t know what I was more annoyed about - the fact that the whole time the culprit had been a leaky hose, or the fact that rather than replace the hose the first time someone found the leak, they just put a clamp over it and didn’t tell me that’s what they did. Then there was the whole bit about the $180 that I paid a “mechanic” to fix the thing.

So $30 and two hours later, I had a new lower hose, new easier-to-use clamps - I hate those stupid spring clamps that dealers put on these hoses - and the car has run just fine ever since.

So I guess my first lesson in Automotive 101 is never assume that whoever is working on your car knows what they are doing just because they are willing to do the job. Take some time, look around, read, look up things on the internet, buy a Chilton’s manual, play with an old wreck - whatever you need to do in order to make yourself somewhat competent with the HOWs and WHYs of autmobiles. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or point out inconsistencies in what mechanics might say to you. Get multiple opinions if you can. Don’t just take someone’s word that you need a certain part or a certain procedure - ask questions so that you understand what’s going on (and maybe figure out if the person you’re talking to knows what they’re doing).

And if you are so inclined, get a little dirty. Despite all the computer-controlled equipment on cars today, there are still lots of things a shade-tree fix chick can take care of themselves - oil changes, replacing belts and hoses, replacing batteries, and checking fluid levels regularly. A little comfort under the hood is all you need.

~ .\\

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sharing your internet connection wirelessly - part I

I always laugh at the local commercial out here where they advertise providing you with wireless internet access for 10 extra dollars a month. What a scam. You still have a regular cable modem connection in your house. If you want a wireless shared internet connection, you can do it yourself without paying anything extra to anyone.

With the normal cable modem or DSL installation, a signal runs from outside in to a modem of some sort in your house and then the modem is connected to a computer. When you want to share your internet connection using a wired Ethernet connection, you either pay extra for a router/modem that will let you connect all your computers to the modem, or you install two network cards in your main computer, connect one to the modem and one to an Ethernet hub and then all the computers talk to the hub, which then talks to the main computer.

With wireless sharing, things are set up just a little differently. First of all, you have to realize that for a wireless connection to work, your computers have to be equipped to communicate with a wireless router. Just as a computer needs a network card for an Ethernet connection, a computer needs a wireless network card for a wireless network connection. The best advice here is pay attention to protocol. You will get the best results if all your wireless devices are using the same protocol. Here’s where it gets technical – there are a couple of different “kinds” of wireless equipment. They are designated by numbers – 802.11A, 802.11B and 802.11G. In the real world, they’re referred to by that last letter – A, B and G.

Forget about A –it’s defunct. Unless you have to be able to connect to someone else’s antiquated 802.11A router as well as your own newer router, don’t bother with anything that has A at the end of it. The B type protocol is probably the most prevalent at the moment, because it’s been around long enough to be pervasive. Wireless devices that operate using the 802.11B protocol can send info through the air at 11mbps (megabits per second). That’s pretty darn fast for a home LAN (local area network).

The latest protocols are two flavors of 802.11G – one runs at 54mbps and one runs at 108mbps. (Don’t ask me why the faster speed didn’t warrant a new letter – that’s one of those mysteries like what happened to C, D, E, and F?) One philosophy is that faster is always better. If you agree with that, then look for 802.11G products, or simply G. Some items are now being designated as G54 or G108. Of course, the faster the speed, the more the devices cost.

The not-so-obvious caveat here is that you will be limited to the highest speed of the slowest part. Yeah, that’s the unfortunate law of the entire internet too… if you have a G108 wireless card in your PC but an 802.11B router, you’re not going to be transmitting any faster than the B router can handle, if you can get them to work and play well together in the first place. I always advocate matching speeds. If you have a B router, put in B network cards.

stay tuned for part II

Confessions of a Radio Shack Flunkie

DIY 2-line phone services

Everyone knows that only geeks work at Radio Shack. I should know, I worked as a geek-for-hire for several years. We Radio Shack geeks never ask questions like “will the cable company charge me more for splitting the signal off into my bedroom?” or “will the phone company make me pay extra for receiving faxes?” We know better. (In case you don’t know, you pay the cable company and the phone company for no more than simple services - what you do with each service after it’s reached your house is usually up to you and none of their darn business if you do the work yourself.)

One of the best kept secrets in the phone business is the fact that while most houses in the country are wired with four-wire telephone cable, a standard single phone line only uses TWO wires. So when your kid is addicted to Ultima Online and you’re ready for a second phone line to come into your house, you don’t HAVE to pay extortionate fees to have new jacks for the second line inside your house. You probably already have adequate wiring to all the jacks in your home. All you have to do is have the phone company run the service up to the box (or demarc - short for demarcation) on the outside of your house. Armed with a couple of screwdrivers and some needle-nose pliers, you can take it from there.

If you watch the phone man, you’ll know exactly where the demarc is on your house - or if you recently painted the outside of your house, you probably remember having to paint around the box. All you have to do, once the phone guy is done with his part of the deal, is take the two wires for the new service and connect them to the two unused terminals where your existing phone line is connected. Don’t ask me why it is that the phone box is sealed with a phillips head screw but the phone line terminals use slotted screws - some things are still a mystery, even to Radio Shack Geeks.

The phone wiring in a typical post-50’s home will contain four wires - black, yellow, red, and green. The typical single phone line will use the red and the green wires, while the black and yellow wires just sit there being useless. What you will have to do to enable 2 lines of phone service to all your existing jacks is to connect the red and green incoming service wires of the new phone line to the black and yellow wires on the existing wiring in your home.

To use both lines inside from the same jack, go to Radio Shack and get a 2-line splitter or a “duplex jack.” This splitter will have a modular plug on one end that fits into your existing phone jack, and three modular jacks that you can plug phones into - a jack for line 1, a jack for line 2, and a jack for lines 1 AND 2, just in case you have a 2-line phone. You simply plug one of these splitters into Junior’s phone jack and plug his computer modem into “line 2” and presto - he can play Ultima Online till his internet connection dies or his bed time rolls around…

Oh, when you talk to the phone company about installing a second line, think about how you intend to use the line. In our house, the second line does nothing but make a local call to an ISP. If your second line will have a single simple function like this, be sure to specify when you order it that you require no long distance services, no call-waiting (ew, talk about “game over”) and no other special services that your area phone company might assume everyone wants with a phone line. You can save yourself a few dollars that way.

~ .\\

You’re Watering What?

This isn’t really a plumbing how-to or anything, because as our site visitors know, .\\ doesn’t do plumbing. But I was recently reminded of a “trick” related to both good home upkeep and plumbing - something we had to do on a regular basis when we lived in northeast Texas. There’s a practice up there, in the drier, sunbaked areas, called “watering the house.” Yep, I said watering the house, or more specifically, the foundation.

In certain areas where the ground dries out and separates in the summer, it’s essential to moisten the soil around a slab - if your house sits on a slab, then you end up watering your house about twice a month between May and October. If the ground around and under your slab dries out completely, your slab can crack more easily. Since slab repairs and house-leveling are expensive, watering the house is a sensible practice.

For folks who live in areas prone to slab breakage, here’s a really simple way to manage this potential risk… it’s called a soak hose. You’ve seen them in the garden department of your local discount store - those black pourous hoses that allow water to slowly seep through them. They don’t cost much more than regular hoses and they solve the moisture problem very handily.

At one point in the spring about a year after we moved to Corsicana, TX, we dug out flower beds along the two sides of our home. We were thinking about laying soak hoses in the back of the trench so we could water the beds without watering the yard if we needed to. A neighbor, who’d lived in that area all his life came over to see what we were up to and when saw what we were doing he got one of those “eureka” looks then dug up parts of his yard right next to the house and put soak hoses in the ground. When we asked him why he put the hoses where he had no planting beds, he said “to water the house.” I guess he assumed that we knew about the slab breakage problems so prevalent in that area in the hot dry summers. We had accidentally done just about the best thing you can do for a house that was already built - put in a watering system for the slab.

In order to use the soak hoses without interferring with any other use of the outdoor spigots, we bought a couple of “Y” connections from the local nursery - we didn’t buy those from the discount store because the connectors the nursery had were solid brass and felt a lot more hefty, and we didn’t want the connectors to crack in the winter. And yeah, it’s strange to live in a place where it’s 110 degrees in the summer and 10 degrees in the winter. Anyway, the “splitters” we got had individual valve controls so we could turn on the main spigot and then selectively turn on or off the two split out connections, thus enabling us to water the house without watering the yard, or vice versa.

We were never able to determine the longevity of this kind of solution though. You have to admit, the idea of putting a pourous hose under the dirt seems like you’re just asking mother nature to break up your pretty hose. We lived in that house for about ten years and never had a problem with degradation of the hoses - I don’t know what they’re made of but evidently they hold up pretty well when they’re used regularly. You could probably accomplish the same thing by taking a regular rubber hose and poking holes in it. The point is, sometimes you need to water your house. You might check with your local agricultural extension office and find out if the soil in your area puts your slab at risk of cracking. If so, don’t just sit there, water your house!

~ .\\