Installation blues...

A number of things have been accumulating with respect to the office, in terms of rearranging items, especially in light of the recent infusion of newly arrived items from Pagosa.

Among other things, Galina didn't like the fact that, way back when, I had installed the laser printer in such a way that (a) it was the first thing you saw upon entering the room, and (b) it was under a table, held off the floor by a cardboard box held together by Priority Mail tape. (I have to admit, this arrangement wasn't exactly the apple of my eye, either.)

I had brought down my Epson RX500 all-in-one printer/scanner/card reader, because (a) it's convenient to use the thing as a copier, (b) it's convenient to use the thing as a scanner that can save scans to flash cards, and (c) sometimes, it's just darned convenient to print things out in color. In fact, the only real downside - aside from the usual complaint about the frequent purchase of ink cartridges - lies with having to use it to print everyday stuff.

Incredibly, my organizational skills allowed me to find the driver CD and the user's manual for the unit. Incredibly still, running the default installation application off the CD nets me a "sorry, fatal error" message that is explained by the very helpful "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual manner," followed by a hint to go talk to technical support.

Frankly, the whole "asking to be terminated" thing sounds like a personal problem to me, but life must go on.

Of course, getting hold of anyone at Epson on Sunday afternoon would appear to be a pipe dream, except that even getting to the Epson web site isn't easy. I managed to get in once, a little while ago, after which every subsequent attempt timed out.

I rebooted my machine and tried running the install again, with no joy.

Finally, I started to explore the CD and ended up diving into the Drivers subdirectory, where I further descended into directories for the Printer, Scanner, and Reader. Each time, I launched a setup program that completed its work silently, asking no questions (and thereby eliciting, of course, no lies, but I digress...).

What remains is to actually plug in the printer, a step I recall the original "quick start" guide was, indeed, quick to point out as a Bad Move™. I'll do that later, after I finish this post.

In sum, I did a number of things to the office:

set up the RX 500 (and replaced an empty cartridge);

moved the laser printer to the other side of my workplace;

replaced the UPS;

installed a drawer on the underside of the work space next to mine;

rerouted (and bundled) the wiring for just about everything.

I only got about 15 minutes of exercise yesterday, biking to the Kroger shopping center. Once there, I learned that the very friendly, neighborhood health-food store next to the Wells Fargo Bank had moved to outside of biking distance, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the Kroger was running a two-for-one sale on a large number of their supplements, so Galina and I are set for a couple of months at least. However, I will have to get out of the house soon to get some exercise in today, and I'd also like to put some items on eBay this evening.

Natalie brought over a couple of DVDs last night, Schultze Gets The Blues, a story of awakened passion against a background of quiet, depressing boredom, and The Devil Wears Prada, which I skipped. I'm sorry she had to go home afterward; I had wanted to talk to her at length, but I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to get together again.

The road calls. Now, to decide whether to answer with wheels or feet.

Cheers...