print purge

The Canon Pixma IP4200 printer finally died. It had 1.5 years of refilling and 2 years being hooked up to a continuous ink system. I liked it because of the duplex and disc printing value adds. Though I think having a CIS killed it because we lost track of how much we were printing apart from the signs of dying - squeaky noise and skipping lines.

However, before that I had the pleasure of a chance meeting with a friend. With a few dollars of print credit left and the intriguing option of transparencies, something interesting was produced.

But alas, the print quality wasn't all that great. It would probably be a good enough distraction if stuck on a car window.

I thought that the combo of Canon inkjet and CIS has been a good compromise so I got the Pixma IP4700 printer from MSY and another CIS from Rihac in Ascot Vale. Due to my negligence, some time was wasted by walking in the wrong direction from Ascot Vale station.

From Life is a series of distractions

The nozzle count has increased - there's an extra row of stuff on the print head as well as the nozzle check printout. It's faster and a little quieter, otherwise very much the same winning formula. There's a bit of an oddity where it doesn't keep the silicon tubing straight and bludgeons it into the cavity for printhead storage when it's doing a print run. The noise isn't nice but it straightens up after a sheet. Hopefully resticking the arm will help with that.

Anyway, the more interesting part is trying to flog off the old CIS kit, which is perfectly operable.
I didn't have high hopes when I saw the condition of the refilled cartridges at a family friend's.

From Life is a series of distractions

Though the photo doesn't show it well, the colours are way off and virtually dry. However it turned out to be completely fine and produced a pass in the nozzle check.

From Life is a series of distractions

Quite a robust printer.

expectations

After coming back from an evening with extended family, I have been made more aware of my own expectations. I do expect people to keep their word, though it seems less and less likely to occur nowadays. Having an 'evening' blow out by 500% of the expected value to conclude at 4AM is something I frown upon.

Though it was a totally new experience, I don't believe that I am much for the better having undertaken it. Christmas light displays, McDonalds after midnight and Kings pool and arcade gaming machines among others. They seem like poor excuses to stay up for the sake of staying up and spending money recklessly (my own arbitrary definition).

This kind of lifestyle doesn't appear to give any indication of being able to look after oneself well and also lacks discipline.

I do hope to experience something 'else' while on exchange, free from the constraints of life in Melbourne whether it be distance/transport or family, however, I hope I don't have to compromise values that I feel are important. Some things will probably just be reinforced, such as my non-mainstream or non-existent sense of fun.

There is the chance that I might find myself completely at home in that everything is work and fun doesn't exist. Or it might be that fun is for work or work purposes at least - even in the slightest manner for making new business contacts. Shit, my great uncle just spoke in his sleep. Scary because I didn't turn on any of the lights and he's in the lounge room.

Anyway, I'll get around to addressing other topics as they come up. Hehe that means making a list like yours Sam!

Overseas banking/Evolution and Christianity reconciled over 100 years ago?

Comparative Student 'going-away' banking
	NAB	CBA	WBC	ANZ	SGB	HSBC	Market
Monthly fee	-100 (0)	0	0	3	0	0
Card provider	VISA	MC	MC	VISA	VISA	EFT only
Card Overseas
Pay for something	2%	$1+2%	3%		2.50%	$1+1.1%
Cash withdrawal	$4+2%	$5+2%	$5+3%	$5+3%	$5+2.5%	$4.5+1.1%
Telegraphic
Rates 10/12/09	6.9323	6.9216				7.0228	7.0559
Fee	22	22				20

I suppose the card fees are not that useful without their respective foreign currency exchange rates. Plus at each branch they said it's not available until you see the entry on your statement. Lame.

Anyway, recently I read Dawkins' God: Genes, memes, and the meaning of life by Alister McGrath - a professor of historical theology at Oxford University. It does seem like it's more about bashing Dawkins' bashing religion rather than putting forward religion but anyway... here's some of the points I took out:

1. Various people in history were to blame for the ills of religion and anti-religion - not the movements as a whole (yeah, people always screw up things... take humans out of the system and it'd be fine)
   
2. religion needs to keep changing with the times and McGrath says that the modern church is compatible with natural science (but where to stop with the picking and choosing/reinterpretation to fit?)
3. In Victorian England, people were turned off Christianity because of the idea of everlasting hell
4. In 1887, a few decades after Darwin, the Bishops of Carlisle, Bedford and Manchester said natural science was okay with religion - it's in the same sphere but in different planes or so. (But people can't agree so we've still got sentiment against evolution...)
5. People can rationalise many things into others... Shoehorning as it were. eg Benjamin Warfield thought that biological evolution was quite magnificent and so it must've been guided by devine providence.
6. Some stuff is unexplainable and does not need explanation - just leave it. (Well that's what I do when I'm lazy and my circuit or code just happens to work after a while.)

Still, an interesting response to Dawkins' stuff.

Luggage expedition - end of Target Box Hill

My dad wanted to buy the Tosca one from Harris Scarfe for $119 but I thought that even that 'special' price was a little too high for my usage patterns. We went around to two other smaller stores but the prices were quite ordinary there as well. So... I was greeted with this:

Oh, and Box Hill Dick Smith is renovating: no more electronic components anymore. :(

Anyway, they had some very random clearance tags around the place. The highest 'special/clearance tag density' was probably around the home entertainment/electrical area. I thought this was surprising since things like DVDs, media players and digital cameras can be moved to another store quite easily. hmm

This one caught my eye, but alas, I felt I needed to spend a little more... haha. It was tempting though!

At home I've finished Saints Row 2 about a week ago. It's a computer game rather like GTAIV. However, it doesn't seem to have any light-heartedness about it. Everything is so serious - especially the violence. The controls aren't great. It was an alright filler while waiting for the next GTA. I would have marked Saints Row 2 as a more dangerous game than Fallout 3, which was initially banned. At least in Fallout 3, there's more background story to distinguish it from 'real life'.

so obvious now... kinda

Having a strange conversation amongst my co-worker and immediate manager go from going abroad-passports-visas-citizenship-politics-international diplomacy-Transformers 2(this my my fault), I found a plausible explanation for at the end of Transformers 2 and how the Americans got waved through the Egyptian border crossing. Since the Egyptians allow the USA to conduct their extraordinary rendition, they're all in bed with each other at the government level, so there's some agreements to encourage this kind of treatment. On the other hand, they are an Arab country and support Palestine strongly, so the people are kinda not so with it. Hmmm.