Whole lotta money goin' out...

I'm crabby today, the result of having had to write entirely too many checks to too many people. I was then reminded of the tab for the transmission repair in Houston, which hardened my resolve not to call the plumber to unclog our supply and drain lines (though, to be fair, the drain line was draining - slowly - yesterday afternoon). I also have some tax stuff due tomorrow, which contributes to my ebullient mood.

January started out well and will finish at about 50% of where I need to be to keep our financial nostrils above the slime. Hopefully, February will be better.

I've been thinking a lot about what it will take to rip myself out of this rut that I feel I am in. I was speaking to a client yesterday, who was trying to get me excited about a new development in aircraft design (for which I had done a translation), and for the life of me, all I could talk about was translations and deadlines and nickels and dimes (and not enough of either to make a lasting difference in my life). To my credit, I did start an email to an old friend, asking for a LinkedIn introduction to one of his contacts, but then I got to second-guessing myself and convinced myself to cancel the email.

Maybe if I... there's that word: "maybe." The best friend of woulda, shoulda, and coulda, and close relative of "if only."

I need to work on my attitude, which frankly stinks at the moment. I can't afford to simply "hope" February will be a better month; I need to take action now to figure a way to make sure it's a better month!

Cheers...

Low-budget lifehacking...

One of the negative aspects of putting the printer on a wireless network connection is the loss of two-way communication between the computer and the printer (though you never know, the capability might be there, I just haven't applied myself). Among other gotchas, this means I get to find out about empty ink cartridges when the printer stops working.

Naturally, I always have spare cartridges on hand (the Epson requires seven of the little suckers - or is that spewers? - but I digress...).

Not!

So what's a person to do when a client sends a five-page fax (with a vertical line running down the right side, through the text) that's not exactly amenable to OCR?

One alternative would be to drive to the store and print it out there, but it's late and I'm tired. Any alternative that involves getting into a car and driving someplace is not acceptable.

On the spur of the moment, I faxed the file to my home number, using my eFax account.

Now, normally I don't have a fax set up at home (that's why I got the eFax account), but I recently had to honest-to-Harvey fax some documents back to a client (scanning would've been a lot more trouble, for basically the same end result) and the machine was just sitting there. It took eFax about a minute to call my number and a couple of minutes later, I had about as good a printout of the pages as could be expected under just about any circumstances.

The job goes out tomorrow, along with a January invoice.

Cheers...