I love/hate my new printer

One of my pet peevs is when somebody puts together something that does exactly what I want, and then decides to cut one feature that kills much of the value of it. It really drives me nuts, and this is a story of exactly that.

So, I just got a brand new multi-function printer to replace the photo printer that died recently. It's got a lot of cool features that I really like.

• Photo capabilities (with 7 separate ink cartridges, so I have a good breadth of color and only need to replace the colors I run out of).
• Decent printing speed
• Ethernet capabilities, so I can connect it directly to the network and have several machines print to it without having to turn on a main print server machine.
• Fax and Scanning (I already had a scanner, but it's nice to be able to fax out when needed)

So, you think all would be perfect with the world. I unpacked the box, put it all together and hooked it up to the network. I had one machine I was going to use to administer the printer, so I took the CD and installed the required software and then configured it. I was impressed. Smooth sailing up until this point.

So, now I wanted to take my laptop and set it up to use the printer. The instructions said you had to use the CD to do this, but I simply could not believe that they would require me to install all sorts of software on it, when all I needed was a network identifier for the printer to connect to it. I ended up spending the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to do it (I was even able to telnet to the host name and port 9100, type in a few items, and then cause it to show up on the printer). To no avail. In their infinite wisdom, the printer manufacturer decided to create a proprietary print server. I'm sure that it has something to do with the fact that it also does scanning. I can just see the design discussions that went on:

Well, we've already built this thing that the administrator uses to configure the printer on the network. Instead of using standard protocols for sharing the printing, fax, and scanning features, let's just use what we already built. Sure, the people would have to install the administrator tool on any machine that wants to use the printer through the print server. Since this printer isn't part of our business product family, they should feel lucky this printer even has the ethernet functionality."

This is really frustrating, because the manufacturer took away a lot of the value of the print server functionality with this decision, and there really isn't a good reason for it. Whenever somebody wants to use this printer, they have to have the CD and install the software on their machine. Additionally, anybody who spends any time administering computers knows that bloatware is a problem. I don't want to install a bunch of extra crap, just to send something to the printer

With all the cool things this printer does, it's really frustrating that they overlooked such a simple requirement that has a big impact on the value of it (although not such a big impact that it would cause me to return it... in some ways, I guess that's the point regardless of my frustration, isn't it?).

P.S. I'd tell you the model number in question, but the manufacturer is a potential customer of ours (and I see this sort of thing going on with other manufacturers, so I don't necessarily want to single them out).

More on Has Beans

Now that I mentioned a couple of folks I have coffee with, I figure I should discuss why I like Has Beans so much.

Has Beans is a unpretentious and charming coffee shop in San Ramon in the shopping center at San Ramon Valley Blvd and Crow Canyon Road. They've been there for years and years, and the proprietors, Gene and Chris run it all by themselves.

Although Has Beans has great coffee, it's charm is that it's one of the few places left where you can meet and chat with the most interesting people around. My first version of this posting described some of the regulars, but found that I couldn't do them justice in something this size. In lieu of that, here is a sampling of backgrounds of some of the regulars.

• FBI and local law enforcement
• Multi-generation local Ranchers and Farmers
• Small business owners in retail, technology, home improvement, finance, manufacturing, and entertainment
• Environmental consultanting
• Retired Military
• Medical
• Journalism

Chris and Gene have created a great place where people just love to go. It may sound corny, but its feel is similar what was portrayed in "Cheers"; because people really do know your name and the different personalities of the regulars makes for very interesting and stimulating conversation.

Suffice to say that going to Has Beans is th highlight of my day.

I got to hold an Emmy Today...

It was very cool. Sasha Gurevich did an investigative series on the Unabomber for KPIX (CBS Channel 5 in San Francisco), and won an Emmy on Saturday for it. Here's a picture of Sasha receiving the Bill Stout Award for this same piece earlier this year.

He brought it into the coffee shop I frequent (Has Beans in San Ramon) and shared it with us.

One of the other folks I have coffee with, Max Noel, was a former FBI agent and was the person who actually tracked down and arrested the Unabomber. He worked with Sasha on this piece. Here's a (much too serious) picture of Max.

It's a shame that I couldn't find anything about the Emmy, the piece that earned it, or even information on Sasha on the KPIX website, since their name is on the Emmy, too. However, KPIX recently decided to cut costs by letting all their freelance folks go (and I guess it wouldn't look good on their part to recognize an emmy that went to somebody you just sacked).

So, it looks like there's a very good Award Winning Investigative Producer available. I have his contact information if you're interested

Usability screwups

Out of the box VMWare has confirmation dialogs that pop up when you want to do something destructive, like reverting your environment back to a previous state.

At some point in the past I managed to turn off this setting (it's a checkbox in the dialog that comes up) by accident, but there's nothing in the UI that makes it easy to turn this setting back on. I remember being mildly annoyed by that before and thinking that I needed to look up how to do that.

I guess I should have looked harder for the setting to turn that back on because I've just managed to revert an environment that had a bunch of important stuff on it by accidentally clicking revert. This was due to the top portion of the VMWare window doing the hide/unhide thing from being in it's mostly fullscreen view. So instead of clicking in the top of the window to change focus out of VMWare, I managed to click the Revert button and POOF!. Gone. Instant outburst of extremely choice words (the kids are asleep though - just the dog to hear me)

Thankfully most of what I blew away is in my head (the rest was already in version control), so it's not the end of the world. But, it's definitely the end of my tomorrow to try reproduce it all. Ugh.

I know, I know - I'm the one the did it, but why, oh why did someone make it so friggin easy to do?