So, I trudged down to the office to check it out, and sure enough, it wasn’t printing.

It was giving me an odd error that I wasn’t used to… and said something to the effect of:

Error 5100: Please turn the power off on this unit and turn it back on, and if you still have problems consult the User Manual.

So, I turned it off, and then back on again, and tried to print. Same error.

So, off to Google I went (we got this printer three years ago, and I couldn’t begin to tell you where the user manual is).

I searched Google for canon pixima 1600 error 5100

And I read this results page, which looked helpful:

FixYourPrinter.com: Canon i550 Service Error 5100

And another results page that took me to a Yahoo! Answers page, which was only midly helpful.

Long story short, something was likely wrong with the printer carriage bar… or something was jammed that was causing the print head to not advance all the way across the bar like it should.

I totally believed that, knowing that I have a 3 year old that is most-likely playing with the printer from time to time when we aren’t looking.

So, I opened up the front cover, and sure enough, the print cartridges weren’t seated well, and one of them was hitting the underside of the cover about three-quarters of the way across.

So, I re-seated all of them, and then turned the printer off and on again, and did a nozzle-check print test. It printed fine. So, back to the computer to resume the print job, and viola… no more printer error.

On those other results pages, they mention things like “cleaning the carriage bar” or “checking for stuff jammed in the printer” so, if reseating your printer cartridges doesn’t work, keep looking for things that would cause the printing head carriage (the thing the print cartridges sit in) to not function properly.

Good luck.

frigtard – as in “socially maladjusted frigtards”.

Love it.

Dell exits MP3 business
Computer maker quietly discontinues the last of its digital music players.
By Dan Zehr
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, August 24, 2006

Dell Inc. quietly axed the last of its digital music players last week, pulling the DJ Ditty from its Web site and leaving the MP3 business to Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod and its challengers.

The company had discontinued its hard-disk Digital Jukebox, or DJ, players in February, but it continued to carry the flash-memory-based Ditty until Aug. 17.

Dell began selling MP3 players in 2003. Its last model, the DJ Ditty, was discontinued last week.

Dell will continue to sell MP3 players from other companies, including SanDisk Corp., iRiver Inc., Samsung and Creative Technology Ltd.

“We chose to invest our resources elsewhere,” spokesman Venancio Figueroa said. “We’re going to put our emphasis in our core areas of PCs, printers and TVs.”

Apple and its iPods have dominated the MP3 player market, accounting for roughly three of every four digital music players sold, according to NPD Techworld analyst Stephen Baker. SanDisk has started to find some small cracks in iPod’s dominance, holding about 10 percent of the market, Baker said.

Microsoft Corp. hopes to make a splash in the market with its Zune entertainment devices and software due out later this year. The line will include a digital music player equipped with Wi-Fi to wirelessly download music, the company confirmed last month.

Given the way the market has moved, a digital music player “doesn’t seem to fit (Dell’s) model,” Baker said, and that’s especially the case if Microsoft finds success with Zune.

Dell entered the MP3 market with its own products in late 2003 but hasn’t had its heart fully into the digital music business for some time. Executives had complimented Apple on the iPod’s success but said MP3 players weren’t a vital part of Dell’s business.

“It’s not a big focus for us,” Chairman Michael Dell told University of Texas students in April. “We’re more focused on storage-area networks and high-performance computing than MP3 players.”

dzehr@statesman.com; 912-5932

Heh… Guess they decided it was time to get off the pot.

Hell’s doors are now open

Apple’s new Boot Camp software will allow Mac users to run Windows XP.
When: 4/5/2006
Company: Apple Computer Inc
Severity: 30
Points: 130
Discuss in the Happy Fun Slander Corner

Yes, I still read F’dCompany… you don’t? It reminds me of the good old days…

update: Don’t miss these pieces on Boot Camp too:

Boot Camp First Look: Half Life 2 Video + More from Cabel at Panic.

Obligaory NYTimes article

“I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.”

Problem with Microsoft’s OS is that typically you get both. – Zing!

14. Sit back and recall, with tremendously smug satisfaction, a decade’s worth of tech industry punditry holding that superior design would never get Apple anywhere, and that Apple should instead, you know, be more like Dell.

I downloaded a vCalendar file from the Hilton website onto my Powerbook, after booking a hotel room.

I then emailed the vCal file to my WindowsXP machine. I saved the file to my desktop, then doubleclicked it to open it in Outlook and save it. I got this error message:

Here’s the transcript of the discussion I had with my WindowsXP box:

self: Hmmm…
self: So, I can’t import the file. Okay.
WindowsXP: “… recurring Lunar appointment …”
self: What is that?
WindowsXP: “To avoid this error, set the appointment option to Gregorian instead of Lunar.”
self: Ok, I’ll do that (why am I wasting my time with this crap?) Let’s click the “More information…” link to see if we can find a way to do that in Windows.

So, I click the link.

And after about 2 minutes, I get this error:

WTF?

Why can’t a Windows error message contain a link that works?

So, I go to Hilton.com, check my reservation and download the vCalendar file again straight into Outlook from there. I don’t have time to troubleshoot this crap.

That’s the anti-thesis of the Macintosh “It just works” mantra.