(no subject)

Well, I got my printer working, but either the cartridge has dried up, or the fascist chip in the toner cartridge decided I'd gone too long without buying a new toner cartridge.

Somehow I feel that the act of buying a toner cartridge, especially for a Lexmark, is some form of surrender. I don't want to send them the message that there's one more sucker out there who will willingly pay more for a toner cartridge than some printers cost. Especially one with a special microchip in it that prevents me from refilling it myself. A situation that they desire with such fervor that they've invoked the DMCA to prevent me from buying toner elsewhere.

Even though the price difference is only a few bucks, I don't know how the savings would add up because I can't seem to find any information about how many pages I can expect to wring out of a particular cartridge. That information would be useful, even moreso if I knew how often I expected to print things.

Should I be looking at alternatives, like buying a printer that takes cheaper cartridges? Or should I just shut up and buy the toner and write Lexmark a letter thanking them for being so draconian?

Furniture fandango

My apartment is, on the average, quite untidy. I attribute this to three things: one, the lack of proper places for the things that I own; two, my own procrastinative nature; and three, the extremely cluttered nature of the furniture.

Without any help, I rotated my entire bed ninety degrees. Now it lies flush against the corner of my bedroom.

The improvement is that the floor space is no longer a narrow U-shape, interrupted in one corner by my computer chair. Now there's big open space in the middle, as it should be. The TV tray that served as my nightstand is now next to the computer, where my printer now rests and operates for the first time since March.

Unfortunately, some things are awkward now. I obscured the outlet that was connected to my light switch. That's just as well, since my lamp has been evicted by my printer. Also, my window's pretty big, so my windowshade is now wedged between the bed and the wall. I suspect I can solve these problems by buying a frame for my bed, and a wall-mounted light for that corner.

Aside from that, I need to get myself a reading and writing desk, so that I don't have to pay my bills in the dining room. Move the bookshelf, and I'm all set...

...in the bedroom.

My living room will still be a friggin' obstacle course.

Reverse-engineering the taco.

I decided to make tacos more or less from scratch this evening, having received no instruction whatsoever. And since the store-bought taco shells are always cracking apart when you try to put stuff in them, I thought I'd make my own.

Seasoning the beef was the easy part; add some cumin and salt and coriander and that's enough. Everything else is just shredded cheese and lettuce. The real trick is the tortillas.

I tried one without any oil first, just to see if I could skate by without it. Didn't quite work. So I added a bunch of corn oil to the skillet and threw one in. Great! It fried all right, and if I dried it on a rack long enough it wasn't even greasy anymore. But it wasn't taco-shaped.

OK, so now I have to fold it before I put it in... damn, it broke. OK, now it worked but I didn't leave it in long enough, and oh now it's too tight and there's grease trapped in there...

Oh, wait, these tortillas I bought are small enough that I can use the smaller skillet. I think I'll just pour all this into the little skillet without letting it cool down.

After somehow doing that without killing myself, I got an even dumber idea, that I figured would give me a good shell-shaped taco. So I pinched the two ends of the tortilla together and dip it hinge-side first into the hot, hot oil, so that would firm up first. And it worked slightly better than anything I've tried before. I did this without tongs. I should get some before I try this again.

The oil started smoking so I turned the stove off and gave up. I managed to get exactly two shells that could facilitate ground beef and sundry, and I have a big mess to clean up now, and I'm lucky I didn't start a big grease fire or disfigure myself.

I think I need some guidance in the future.

(no subject)

Add this to your list of "do something cool in n kilobytes" contests: the 16k MOO contest.