New rhythms

Second day of retirement and I''m still finding what the new rhythm to daily life might look like. There hasn't been a chance to gauge this yet, as nothing has been quite what might be termed normal, and perhaps that's good. Maybe that's what the new rhythm will be.

Anyway, among other things yesterday involved the purchase of a new printer, since the Dell model that came (if I remember rightly free with the computer I'm currently working on) has not only decided it doesn't like scanning, it doesn't like copying either. At least it used to do copying, but this part of the system seems to have been recently wiped from its skill list.

We'd talked about getting another printer, mainly because the cartridges for the Dell can only be purchased online from Dell themselves, and have to come from overseas (believe it or not). The last lot took over a month to arrive, even though they'd been paid for at the beginning of the order. Furthermore they're fearfully expensive - this is perhaps why the printer is free - and no one is doing refill versions here as yet. In fact, they may not at all.

So we bought a new printer from Harvey Norman, the place where we'd got the last one - which worked tirelessly until it just clogged up its inards one day. This is a Canon Pixma MG 5150. I think it's going to be okay, but when I first tried to print something yesterday - which had both colour and black text in it - the colour printed fine; the black was non-existent.

We went through all sorts of processes trying to discover what might be the problem, and even rang Canon (who, unlike Dell, actually have people on the ground in NZ). She suggested nozzle cleaning and that sort of thing - which hadn't at that point occurred to me (I won't be applying for power engineer jobs in my retirement; at least not in the IT area) - but that made no difference.

There was plainly something wrong with the black cartridge, even though you could detect ink when you tested it out manually on your finger.

I took it back to the shop, and discovered another gent with the same problem. His machine was being tested when I arrived. We agreed on every point, in particular the lack of black print, and finally the person doing the testing in the shop agreed that there was obviously something faulty with the cartridge. In fact there was something faulty with the black cartridge in both machines, but he had to go through the whole rigamarole of testing my machine as well before he was satisfied this was the case. Good grief.

Anyway, I didn't get much chance to check out the printer after that, because I had to go out and play at the first of two concerts at Brooklands Retirement home in Mosgiel.

Today's 'retirement' has consisted of my wife having a birthday, walking down to see my grandson play soccer, (yesterday I walked up the hill from South Dunedin: not far, but pretty steep); buying a couple of folders for more music, and some sox from The Warehouse - only to discover when I got outside that they were the heel-less kind, which I don't wear. So I had to go and replace them.

Back home and preparation for a family picnic out at Mosgiel (again - but not at Brooklands) where we ate and played games and generally had a great family outing. Home for a long overdue snooze, interrupted by some of the people for next week's concert arriving for a practice. (Yesterday I also spent some time with a tuba player who's playing at the brass band comps in Roxburgh next weekend. I'm accompanying him and several others - though not the guy whose music almost made me despair when I first saw it: the bulk of it goes at crochet equals 176, which seems fine for the soloist who only ever plays one note at a time, but is a bit of a nightmare for the accompanist whose flinging notes around all over the place. I was working hard to simplify it and still make it sound reasonable when he rang to say he wasn't going to have time to practice it properly. Great relief.)

After a walk on the St Kilda beach tonight with the dog, we came home and played Settlers with my daughter and her friend. As always, lots of cheating going on from two of the participants (not me!)