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Conceptually yes, but not really..... Today is the last day of summer for me. Tomorrow teachers report for training.
Some of you are probably thinking: It must be rough, being off for 2 months straight! I'm not going to get into the draining aspects of dealing with other human beings (unfinished ones at that), and the need to recharge. I'll just leave it at that we get paid approximately 2/3rds of what other college degree'd professionals in a general sense. It's not a bad job with rough kids in the "Blackboard Jungle" sense.
It's really more like the "Welcome Back, Kotter" version, but with a lot more pressure, 5 Horshacks (504 Behavioral Mods), 3 Vinnies (Special Ed), 5 Washingtons (Cultural/Ethinic performance tracking), and 3 Juan Epsteins (ESL). It isn't 1976 after all.
Most of time, it's really fun, and me being me, teaching world history; it's really a little more like this.
The real downside is that it gives me less time to work on my avocation which as you know is all things technology! Since summer is about to be over, lets take stock on what got done......and (unfortunately), not done.
For the bad, I did not rebuild "Hercules", my Windows Home Server, so that'll be on the agenda as soon as the beginning of school stuff settles down, some time around the end of September. I did not rebuild my daughter's X30 "Sparrow" Princess Edition into an X31, but that will really needs to wait until the garage isn't still 110 degree at 9pm. So I'm thinking, 2nd half of October for that. My personal laptop, the X300 "Raptor", was needed for client work and those times when the desktop workstation was down for upgrades on and off all summer. That'll be a VERY short and quick project, so I'm thinking over the weekend some time in the next couple of weeks. I also managed to acquire ANOTHER project during the summer, which is a T61 for my wife, who now would like a second laptop because her new school district has desktops. So, the Z61 will need a reload, and her personal stuff needs to be moved over to the T61 which I intend on installing a SSD. That'll probably be some time in the second half of September when I get enough money to buy another SSD.
That sounds like a lot didn't get done, which is pretty bad! Well, actually, just as much good occurred, but much of it was unexpected which pushed everything back. The most important was that I ended up with a LOT more computer work over the summer than expected. That's good for the bank account, but not as much for personal projects!
So what were the good results then? At the beginning of the summer, there were two things that if asked, I would have put on a "wish list", and that was a backup DSLR and a tablet. Well....it came to pass that I was able to buy a backup DSLR for my system: the amazing "Plastic Fantastic" with 28-80mm/f3.3-5.6 "G" spec lens.....couldn't be happier. At almost the same time, I bought a broken ThinkPad Android Tablet. WHAT? How does that accomplish anything? Be patient and soon (fingers crossed) and all will be revealed in a future post. Moving on, the main laser printer was upgraded from a LaserJet 4000 to 4100, and as detailed in the last post, the "Blackbird" was upgraded, then upgraded again to what I believe will be it's final version which I would expect to last at least two years.
It sounds like I didn't get an awful lot done and in some ways made more work for myself, but I don't mind. Some years ago when I made the decision to go back to teaching and not continue my IT career, it was a good call for me. I love teaching, and working on technology part-time helps me love it even more, since I can keep my mind off of the stress of that profession as well as maintain my love for the other.
I left off the last post with a discussion of our "workhorse", the HP LaserJet 4100 equipped with a JetDirect networking card, extra paper tray, and duplexer. Today, I'm going to get into the other half of the equation that makes our printing system here on StaNet complete.
On occasion everyone needs to make a copy of something. Here in the United States, it's often our drivers licenses, or birth certificates for the kids' sports teams, but it could be any number of things. And of course, no one wants to have a full-blown copier in their house. About 10-15 years ago, the first of the reasonable all-in-ones came out and alleviated that problem. They just make so much sense; printer (usually color inkjet), scanner, copier, all in one rather small unit which not only gives all the functions, but clears precious space. However, with all the goodness comes compromise. Although, most people don't care about the slow and poor quality scans, the one thing that is an issue is the same for virtually all inkjets based devices. The fact is that it's an inkjet! Although there are some things about the technology that reigns supreme, the use of them on a day-to-day sense is not very cost or resource conscious. The fact is, they all dry up over time. I've never used one that didn't. Some are worse than others, but they all do it. Some use ink more heavily and some less so. We have friends that have a Kodak who say that although it doesn't come up to their claims, it is their experience that it does save some money in ink. In my own experience, I've come across nothing that uses up ink quite as fast as an Epson, although the output was always top-notch.
Some years ago, we picked up our first in a long line of HP all-in-ones, and used them first attached to a PC then moved on to networked versions that we could share. The whole time, it was a frustration to pay the $30-45 per cartridge on a regular basis. This was somewhat lessened for us since we didn't print out in color a lot (we had the laser by then) and we bought our cartridges in two-packs at Sam's Club. Still it was incredibly annoying to have put in a cartridge and print little or none, go back several weeks later to find that I needed to put in another to copy something! The cost per page was astronomical!
So, several years ago I tried the first experiment. I bought a used color laser printer: it was an HP Color LaserJet 5, I got it for a great price ($75 plus toner AND an unused set), AND it was HUGE. It wasn't a floor-standing model, but it should have been. I can't even begin to describe to you how big and heavy it was! I could barely lift it and could barely get my arms around it! It printed out beautifully, but DID I SAY THAT IT WAS HUGE, plus it didn't solve the copy need, so I sold it for about what I paid for it. But I was hooked! I knew that I wanted a laser for my color needs as well. I began looking at all-in-ones that were color laser based. Unfortunately, at that time, they we still quite large both in terms of size and $$$, so we kept soldiering along with the inkjet.
About 3-4 years ago, I notice several things were going on; lasers (that worked unlike the LJ1100 series) were getting smaller, Samsung was not only in the market, but they were supplying some of them to HP for the bottom end of the product line and they were doing some color laser all-in-ones! So I started watching them carefully and reading reviews.
I don't think anyone who's the least bit interested in technology has missed the meteoric rise of the Koreans. They've gone from basically being a 3rd world country and outpost for the American military to dominant status in several key industries in less than 25 years! They've become as threatening to the Japanese industries as the Japanese had been to the American's in the the 70's. Basically, they've out-Japanesed, the Japanese! This has happened in everything from automobile and ship building to high-tech electronics such as cellphones, televisions and computer chips.
What this led to for me was the Samsung CLX-3175FN, networked, all-in-one color laser printer. Not only does this thing do everything that I had needed from it's inkjet predecessors, it was small, unobtrusive and rather inexpensive. I bought it used for about $200 along with a complete set of unused toner cartridges which by itself was a $100 value! This pretty much completes my networked printer systems and covers the vast majority of my needs.
The "vast majority"? Well yes: lasers are great, but they don't do photographs very well, so along the way, I've picked up some old Kodak photo printers so I can do quick prints to give people like my daughter's birthday party participants. People still LOVE to have a physical picture to hold in their hands. Eventually, I'd like to have a wide-format photo quality inkjet, so I can do my own printing of framed photos around the house, but that's a creative office reorganization to go and down the road. At this point, all I can say is that I'm extremely satisfied with our network printing system that's available to all computers at all times and doesn't dry up for less than $300 total invested! It was very satisfying the other day to watch my wife who was in her chair in the living room using her laptop on Wi-Fi to send various print jobs to whichever printer suited the purpose while printing out things for her classroom....all without a glitch and my intervention.
