Travel Forum / Travel Types / RV Travel / July 2008

I think my problem is lack of use of my printers. I have a HP 7110 and
the first thing that went out was the color printer head, so I just quit
using it for color printing. Now the scanner is gone out. I have a HP
7180 that does a nice job but is using yellow ink at the same rate as
black and I'm not printing that much color. Bottom line is it is cheaper
to buy a new printer than have one fixed, you get the latest equipment
that way.

Mostly because they scan, print, and copy and cost $30. With ink. First
2, one for wife, one for me. The 3rd, bought much later at a different
source to see if I'd gotten 2 from a bad run. The 4th #27 cartridge came
free from Lexmark after I complained about the blue problem.

I had the audacity to hope that my explanation elsewhere would keep you
and others of your ilkness off my a.s. So much for the audacity to hope.

Which reminds me of a rather frustrating but maybe interesting story
from our trip.

My brother is rather new to RVing, and has yet to take any advice on
setting up his DISH. I saw exactly one occasion in 6 weeks where he set
his DISH up successfully without calling me over for some help.

Every day but one, I got my dish out, set the skew, leveled the dish
with the "N" pointing north, and immediately had _some_ sort of signal
that I then fine tuned. Total elapsed time was usually less than 2 or 3
minutes, start to finish.

Some days my brother avoided his frustration and didn't set his dish up.
 Most days he ended up calling me over to help. Every time I would ask
him why he is so anal, and explain that it doesn't have to be so
difficult. "Stop starting over every day." "Forget all of the settings
except skew, stop taking the dish apart every day, stop disassembling
everything, and leave yesterday's settings on the dish. Change only the
skew. That way once you find "north", and level the dish, you will have
SOME signal, and you only need to fine tune it."

Of course, being anal, and being the older brother, he just kept doing
what he always does. Everything had to be taken apart. Everything had to
be stashed in it's exact proper place. Every day he started over with
all settings, setting the skew, azimuth, and elevation, according to the
numbers from the receiver. Every day he fought it until total frustration.

Finally, on our last night of stopping together, in Watersmeet,
Michigan, I asked him: "What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you
insist on doing it over and over and over again? Why must you wipe out
the old setting and put in new ones for everything? Why must you do it
ALL the hard way?"

His response: "Well, they always give me skew, azimuth, and elevation.
I'm supposed to be able to set those on the dish, and walk away with a
signal if the dish is level."

My frustrated response: "And how the hell is that working for you?"

I won't be helping him set up his dish again. Heck, even Liberals learn
faster than a bull headed older brother.

Lon

You think Walmart might have one tiny enough?

I said "about" - and I said "about" intentionally, because I'm in RORT,
and because I haven't run any timed tests under controlled barometric
pressure, humidity, and temperature conditions. And don't intend to.

All I can say with certainty is that 24 hours, more or less, has nearly
always been too long, and 12 hours, more or less, has nearly always been
short enough. I can say with confidence that this has been usually true
most of the time.

No - wet paper towels are pretty cheap. And the thing scans and OCR's
very well. Copies excellently, too - when blue's not asleep.

'Course, if I could get an HP 3 in 1 for $30, I might consider it. Can I?

I've also got a Lexmark Z735. It works fine.