Calidad = crap

Recently I have had some unsettling experiences with my printer, and the process of trying to get it fixed properly!!

It all started about a year ago when my previous printer - a Canon bubblejet something or other - died. What happened is that black suddenly stopped printing, which indicated that it needed a new printhead. No longer being under warranty, I decided to put the $150 for the new print head towards a new printer for about $230. I got a Canon Pixma IP4000, which I love. It has been a faithful little worker for all of my homework needs, and has the great features of printing onto DVDs/CDs and a range of paper sizes including 6X4 photo paper (although who prints photo's out these days anyway??).

Fast forward to about two weeks before my warranty was up this year, and my beloved printers little head stopped working - it had the same problem as the last one, the black no longer came through!! I couldn't believe my bad luck, but on the other hand I was lucky enough for it to happen before the warranty ran out.

I was rather nervous about taking the printer back to be fixed under warranty because I hadn't exactly been looking after it 100%. Being a student, I found it difficult to justify spending $20-$25 per cartridge (it takes 5 in total!) as I use it everyday and need new cartridges on a regular basis. Kmart provided me with a nice alternative, Calidad brand inks, which cost between $10-$12 for what I believed to be equivalent quality ink with good colour matching. My nerves were settled after consulting with the place of purchase. I was advised that Canon would fulfill their warranty requirements even though the printer had been fitted with non-Canon inks, which impressed me. I was very happy that they replaced the print head and got the printer working again, it's just a pity that it then cost me $115 in Canon inks before they would test it and release it back to me!!!

In the end, I have a printer that works (sort of, there's an ongoing saga there - a whole other story), a whole new set of inks, and have been on the recieving end of multiple lectures about not using any alternate brand inks (especially Calidad) as they tend to clog the print head and cause numerous other problems. My advice to anyone who wants to save money on inks is to wait until Kmart have a sale thoughout their whole store and stock up. It just isn't worth the hassle of having to get your printer fixed/replaced every year beacuse of sub-standard ink cartridges.

Amnesia or just laziness?

So I just spent about half a hour trying to remember what my username for this damn blog was, let alone my password!! I think it is an indication that I have not blogged often enough since I created my account, as in, never.

Now I am not usually a forgetful person. I admit that things to do occasionally slip my mind, such as peoples names about 2 seconds after I have met them (I credit this to the fact that I don't give a rats arse about them, and if they were more interesting I would be more inclined to remember who the hell they were). But lately I have been forgetting lot of the more important things I should be remembering - such as homework that needs to be done, and things I need to take to tafe or God help me I will cop it from the lecturers!!

Can I credit this recent spate of memory loss to stress induced amnesia, or am I just getting lazy??

I have always been one of those people that writes endless notes about things I MUST NOT FORGET such as "new flavour of toilet spray" on the shopping list, or "call doctor re that nasty rash". These endless bits of paper have kept my life nicely organised and running per schedule until about a week ago, when things went haywire. Are my trusty scraps of paper, backs of envelopes and sticky yellow notes failing me in my old age?? (upcoming birthday reference here)

Or am I simply getting lazy? - not bothering to even look at those "trusty" notes once written, not once glancing in my diary to see what needs to be done at 3am before I have to get up 3.5 hours later and head off to tafe....

It seems I have asked more questions than I have answered here, so perhaps it is time to stop procrastinating and just get on with doing the tasks that are scribbled on endless numbers of paper scraps strewn around my living room floor.