A nice day, overall...

I managed to escape the long wait for service at the ham breakfast by ordering a toasted English muffin, but it was still quite a wait. Almost uniformly, the other folks at the table were aghast at the service, but there does not appear to be any other place around that can accommodate so many people (about 20), although if this continues, I'm sure someone will suggest a change of venue. I just hope it's not to the other end of town, as then my need to open the store at 8 am will pretty much kill any opportunity to attend such events.

* * *Drew has a fire lit under him to find an apartment. I can understand the feeling. Back when we were first getting started, Galina and I spent a year living in the basement of a townhouse on 84th Street in Jackson Heights, and there were times that mode of existence grated on the nerves. Add in the fact that the kids are living with the parents in this case, and I'm sure the pressure is even greater.

Personally, though, I think the move is perhaps unwise, as it will involve payment of rent and utilities, but that's part of life, right?

* * *The fusion unit of the HP LaserJet III I got at the county auction checked out with the multimeter, so I went and ordered a replacement AC module, which arrived early last week. Today, I finally got around to replacing it.

Part of the price of the kit included a CD with an MPEG file that shows the whole process. Unfortunately, 'borg' doesn't want to play sound, so I had to rely completely on the visual part of the presentation to figure out what to do.

The process went smoothly, except for a brief part at the end when it became clear that the cover didn't want to go back on properly, but I muddled my way through and found some extra screws to loosen, and now everything is back where it is supposed to be.

Upon starting the unit, I was pleased to see a "READY" message after a short warm-up period. My first test page threw a momentary scare into me, as I got a "PAPER JAM" message, at which point, I suspected I'd put something back wrong (I seem to recall a paper jam warning on the original web page I'd looked at). However, the jam sensor moved freely when I tapped it, so I took a look at the paper that was being fed into the machine and decided that it might be the problem.

It was.

The next test page printed out properly, and as far as I can tell, the toner cartridge is still pretty heavy. Not bad for about $60 overall.

* * *The terminology Igor wanted to talk about wasn't a big deal... probably a half dozen terms, tops. The assignment covers 11 pages of fax of intermediate-to-poor quality, which (unfortunately) I have a lot of experience with.

* * *I'd been a long time since we ate buckwheat (a.k.a. kasha), so tonight I cooked up a large batch, with fried onions. Dinner was just the kasha, with an avocado half and a few slices of tomato. Galina loved it, and so did I. About the only thing that was missing, in my estimation, was a few mushrooms, and I hope to remedy that shortage tomorrow, with another drive through the mountains.

Cheers...