Installing a Brother printer driver (USB) in Vista… January 14, 2008
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
…can be a pain in the ass. I googled and found advice that didn’t work. I asked Gerhard, my best friend and IT expert, and experimented (as I said in a previous post) for several hours.
And based on all the advice, I finally got it to work.
Now for my advice to others with similar problems.
Trying to follow my philosophic training, I will reduce my advice to the simplest Occam’s Razor kind of advice. This advice might only work with Brother printers. Nevertheless, if it works, please let me know. If it doesn’t, Google some more.
Here’s my advice:
1. Unplug your printer.
2. Uninstall any previous printer installations. This can get complicated, as Vista doesn’t automatically list all installed devices in the device manager. You must click something that says something like “show hidden devices”, but I’m not sure what it says in English, since I’m using a German version of Vista. But you’ll find it. The point is that you must remove any previous printer installations.
3. Reboot your computer.
4. Assume (though this step might be completely unnecessary) that you had to reboot to finish re-installing your printer driver. So when the computer is again up and running: shut down your computer.
5. Wait until your hard drive stops humming and the static electricity goes away. Go to the bathroom. Go get a beer.
6. Do a cold boot. Now, maybe the terminology has changed. But years ago a “cold boot” meant doing what you just read in step #5.
7. Install Vista’s generic printer driver.
That’s my advice. The key here is: THE PRINTER SHOULD NOT BE PLUGGED IN WHEN INSTALLING THE DRIVER. Previously installed drivers screw it up. Brother’s own drivers screw it up. And using Plug and Play screws it up. In other words, with a virgin copy of Vista, install the generic printer driver BEFORE YOU EVER PLUG THE PRINTER IN!
That’s what worked for me. I’m curious whether it helps anyone else. Maybe not. Computers are fickle things.
jj
Rollercoaster Tycoon… January 7, 2008
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.5 comments
…has got my son in its grips.
Susanne thinks this is terrible, and is angry with me. She thinks that a little boy should be outside or at least doing something with his hands, and should NOT be sitting in front of a computer screen. Maybe she’s even right.
But: she also complains that I do too little with my son. Which I do. And I see Rollercoaster Tycoon as a kind of buddy project for the two of us. Staying up till four in the morning slaying monsters—that’s adult stuff. (At least, it’s not really for 8 year-olds, who should be playing ball or building things with LEGO.) But building a cool rollercoaster with your father is…
…a PROJECT!
Am I wrong about this?
jj
DIABLO! January 7, 2008
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.2 comments
RULES!
Upon buying a new computer, my dirty little lazy mind thought: hehehe, GAMES!
You see, when you’re running a Pentium II 400, and all of the sudden you’ve got a relatively up to date machine, you can buy games again.
I asked some of my students, “So, what’s out there? Any good games in the last few years that I should know about?” And they asked, “Well, what kind of games do you like?” And I said, “Well, I liked Diablo.” And they said, “Well, they really haven’t done anything better than Diablo lately.”
So I thought: OK, go dig up your old Diablo. Which I did, but it wasn’t any good because it was an English version which (rightly or wrongly) I was told not to install on a German OS. So I went to the store and bought a new copy of DIABLO II for about 10 bucks. (Oh, the beauty of liking old games: they’re cheaper and they run smoothly). AND: this time I ALSO got the expansion set LORD OF DESTRUCTION (for another 10).
So I install it, and Vista tells me that there might be some compatibility problems. Blizzard tells me the best way to get patches is to go into battle.net (which I’d never done before–hey, I played Diablo long before I had a 24 DSL connection, and I was way too cheap to try it online). So I go to battle.net, which downloaded and installed a patch as quick as a bunny rabbit and with nothing coming even close to printer driver installation stress, and I’m ready to play Diablo again–this time with a decent CPU and graphic power to boost–and this battle.net screen is on my monitor, and I think:
“OK, I’ll give battle.net a try.”
Fast forward two weeks, and you have an answer as to at least one reason for my continued failure to blog in spite of my resolution to be more resolved.
My back hurts terribly—undoubtedly a pinched nerve from hunching forward towards my monitor for countless hours. The fingertips of my third and fourth fingers on my left hand are numb—undoubtedly from some kind of pinched nerve in my left arm, just before the elbow, exactly where my arm hits my desk. And I am TIRED…the kind of tired you feel when you have spent at least two weeks getting less than your usual amount of sleep.
Hey: my old necromancing ways are not to blame. I got bored of standing back and watching my gollem kill demons: I wanted to jump into the mele—with zeal and holiness! I made myself a PALADIN!
And I have learned that playing online is a much different experience. Instead of picking off monsters at the edges of groups, then slowly opening every chest and overturning every rock and corpse looking for treasure, you run around full speed in a whirlwind of violence and magic, stopping for nothing other than an occasion drink to refresh your energy, letting money and treasure lie around like so much rubbish. And you say things like, “GO!” or “GO BACK” or “LET’S GET ANDI!” or “GET ANY GOOD DROPS?” or “LOL” or “ENGLISH?”
You also say a lot of unintelligible things like “wp, tp, pppp” and—here in Europe—read a lot of stuff in languages like Polish and Danish.
But the worst thing is this: you decide to do a quest, and you do it, and you do it fast because you have help, and then you hang around to help others do their quests. And you go just a little bit longer about 10 times, and then you yawn and say, “I really have to stop” and you turn off the computer and it’s 4:00 AM. But you’re no longer 27 years old, and you have a family expecting you for breakfast. So you get up dutifully the next morning and say you were up a wee bit late and then you do it again the next night. And you don’t prepare for classes and you don’t really want to be celebrating New Year’s Eve with friends and fireworks because ACT IV is waiting—and not only that…there is an ACT V! because this is the expanded version—and at some point you realize…
…I have become addicted.
OK, I’m exaggerating. At some point I stopped staying up till four. But I still spend my days thinking things like where I should build up my skill points. And this, my friends, all in a game I already played out two or three times at least five years ago! All because of battle.net.
I do not dare—I do not even begin to dare, so don’t anyone try to tempt me—to consider some MMORPG. Those are either for the people who wish to give themselves over to a virtual world (I don’t) or for those with self control (not me). I figure that I’ll play this one out—Diablo, I mean—and then quit playing online.
That’s my plan.
jj
Vista! January 7, 2008
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Sucks!
OK, maybe it doesn’t comletely suck, but this computer is new.
It looks good, I’ll give it that. It boots quicker than XP. I can all my old games (which I’m saving for another post).
But:
(And this is important)
I have spent at least five hours trying to install my printer, and it still doesn’t work.
I repeat: I can run old video games. But I cannot print.
You see, the beauty of today’s technology is supposed to be: I buy a new USB printer, plug it in, and Windows says, “Hey, Jeff, I see a new printer there…let me get it working for you, buddy!” That’s the whole point of Windows these days. If I wanted to play IT expert and mess around with registries and all sorts of binary technical stuff then I would run Linux. And the point of a new Windows system should be that it is an improvement. Right?
This problem is not unique to me: Google turns up many websites in which others complain about the problem–same error messages and everything–but I’ve yet to find a solution that actually works.
What is the problem, exactly? I cannot install a printer driver. It simply won’t install. I poke and prod and try tricks and bribes and it simply won’t install! Vista says, “That printer drive won’t install, buddy! You’re an idiot to keep trying! Wait about six months and Brother might have found a solution. Go to their web site in six months and I bet you’ll be able to do something. Otherwise, piss off!”
One friend helpfully points out that with the thousands and thousands of peripherals out there these days—all cheap and probably not earning the companies any money (they make it on supplies like toner cartridges)—why bother to offer support (like a printer driver that will install in Vista)? And he has a point.
Yes, he has a point.
Vista!
jj
This blog is ALIVE! December 23, 2007
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.4 comments
I haven’t been writing. And I should.
I also had a good scare. I got a new computer, and I’ve been moving things over from the old one to this one, and last night at about 3 AM I failed to log onto the blog after at least 20 attempts and five requests for a new password. And I thought: I’ve done it. I’ve lost my blog. I was negligent and haven’t posted since Halloween and now it’s gone. Out of my hands. Just sitting there in cyberspace like a gravestone. I didn’t cry. I just went to bed.
But now I tried one last time, and logged in successfully. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I was too drunk tired last night and I was doing something stupid. Who knows. It’s OK now.
I shall have to take this blog more seriously.
jj
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! October 31, 2007
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.3 comments
This is to let my sisters and other friends who stop by here now and then to know that I am still alive and well. I’m too busy to blog, but I’m doing well.
Happy Halloween!
jj
I get visitors… September 25, 2007
Posted by stoneunhinged in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
…for the strangest reasons.
Most of my visits coming from searches are due to the mummy. This pleases me. But the other searches bringing people here are…well…sometimes strange.
Many times people are looking to find pronunciation advice for German words. I’ve had at least a half dozen searches for people who want how to say “scheisse”.
Folks, it rhymes with “nicer”—when pronounced by someone from Rhode Island. (In other words, you don’t pronounce the “r”.)
Other times people must be frustrated–because they must be looking on page 472 of Google to be finding me. I seriously doubt, for example, that typing “Used banjos in California” is going to turn me up on page one.
“Sex slave contracts” continues to bring people by daily.
But my absolute favorites are the very specific searches that people use, like:
How to teach people how to speak a foreign language
Where to buy hand rolling tobacco in Hannover Germany
American History X why it sucks
Words used to console the bereaved
I guess yesterday’s post might start bringing people by when searching “Did Walker Percy like to watch women shaking their bootie in German while listening to the banjo”.
I love the internet. And while I’m simply too busy to blog as much as I had planned to do when I was unemployed three or four months out of the year, it is still great fun for many reasons—including getting a glimpse at what people are searching for on the internet.
jj
Walker Percy, “presenting”, and teenage sex in America. September 24, 2007
Posted by stoneunhinged in philosophy.add a comment
“Presenting” is a term I took from the novelist Walker Percy, one of my favorites and one of the most intelligent and perceptive authors of the 20th century.
You can read up on Percy elsewhere; for my purposes, I only need to give you my own, very brief interpretation of his work. Percy, as I see him, specifically wanted to distinguish between man as spiritually understood and man as scientifically understood. What the scientific community would see as “disease”, Percy sees as “malaise”. Put another way, we’re all fucked up, it’s true: but it’s not because we’re sick in a psychological sense; rather, we’re alienated by a modern culture which has lost all sense of the truly spiritual, and by language which fails to “signify”.
(And even more specifically, he is writing of a “South” which had lost its sense of self, and thus it’s soul. Whereas Faulkner presents a tragic, Gothic south, Percy presents a comic, from plantations to shopping malls south. But again, you can read more about Percy elsewhere.)
The term “presenting” comes from the novel, The Thanatos Syndrome. The main character, Dr. Tom More , returns from a period in jail (he was selling pill prescriptions to truck drivers) to find things at home are strangely different. His investigation reveals a scheme to improve human behavior by spiking the water supply.
Dr. More notices many things which leads him to investigate, but one of the first and more important is the change in women, specifically with regard to their sexuality. He notices this first with a patient named “Donna”:
I get up to get it to give it to her. Not hearing her chair scrape, I am startled when at the very moment I turn around, I run into her. She has come around my desk, barefoot and silent. She backs into me.
“Oh, sorry,” I say automatically, moving sideways to my chair, but she has already reached behind her, seized my hands, brought them around her clasped in hers and against her.
A few paragraphs later, Dr. More analyzes what happened:
To describe her backward embrace, I can only use the word primatologists use, presenting. She was presenting rearward.
Later, Dr. More finally gets the chance to make love with his wife for the first time since getting out of prison:
Ellen starts for the bed. I start for the wall switch and turn out the light and head back.
“Lights!” says Ellen.
Very well. By the time I’ve turned on the light and come back, Ellen is in bed but is, to my surprise, not lying on her side as she used to but is on all fours.
Very well, if that’s—
“Well, bucko?”
Bucko?
“Cover,” says Ellen.
“You mean—” I say, taking the sheet.
“No.”
“I understand,” I say, and cover.
“All right,” says Ellen.
Later, Dr. More, summarizing the case histories of his patient, says this about Donna:
Now she’s jolly, lithe, and forward, or rather backward, presenting rearward.
There’s more in the book than these examples, of course, but I’m not writing a master’s thesis here. Go read the book.
Within the context of the book, presenting rearward is a sign of the changes produced by the chemical additive in the water supply. I don’t think Percy is arguing against doggy style. The point here is specifically the “presenting”. Presenting rearward is, in the context of the novel, symptomatic of a chemically induced evolutionary return to a primate level of sexuality.
Got that?
Now look at this: Bootie. It is a video of a girl “presenting” rearward. To me. To you. To the whole goddamn world, in fact.
Note at the sidebar there are a few thousand videos of precisely the same thing: a style of dance in which young girls “present rearward”.
(I knew about this, of course. But I suppose I should say a word about how I came upon this video. I was watching the video of the UF tasing incident, and this appeared in my sidebar. Which means: it’s one thing to know of its existence; it is another thing entirely that it is so prevalent that one runs into it without seeking it. But that’s a subject for another post.)
Make no mistake: while I am only familiar with hip-hop culture in the vaguest way, I can say two things about it:
1. It is the primary dance/music culture of young people in the western world;
2. The predominant dance move of girls performing hip-hop is to present rearward.
This is very strange. I won’t get into how girls used to try to turn boys on when I was sixteen, but it wasn’t by shaking their behinds in our faces during dances. That this reduces eroticism to its most primitive, basic level I think is indisputable. (You don’t think so? Okay Mr. Philosopher, convince me of its sophistication in a comment.) That a primitive, basic level eroticism is a sign of a much deeper, spiritual malaise I will leave to Walker Percy.
For you, I will just ask: hooking up? Friendship with benefits? Presenting rearward? Do our children have the slightest chance at all of discovering the spiritual power of intimacy?
jj
Vacation in Hamburg…part 3 September 6, 2007
Posted by stoneunhinged in germany.add a comment
Actually, we had gone to the Reeperbahn a few days earlier to go to Hamburg’s wax museum, the Panoptikum.
It’s just a wax museum, of course, but we had a lot of fun. The first figure one sees when entering the museum, is…
…well, here’s a picture:
The wax figure is on the right. Actually, the figure was only three or four feet behind Billy: it looks farther away because the Pope is apparently a very small man—scarcely over five feet tall, I’d say. I wonder if that’s in Wikipedia?
A bit further in the same room were figures of the current German chancellor and her predecessor having a champagne. I joined them and Billy snapped my picture before the woman watching the place yelled at us.
That’s what the woman did: yell at people. There were no other employees in the place. Just one woman who stood at the ticket booth and sold tickets and yelled at anyone getting too close to the figures. There were four floors in the building. The floors she could not see with her eyes had some kind of alarm system based on movement sensors or lasers or something. When an alarm went off, she yelled through a microphone at everybody in the whole house.
I found this out when I decided to take a close-up picture of Joseph Goebbels. I reached forward to get my cell phone close to his face and an alarm went off. I looked around at the others with a “hey, who set off that alarm?” look on my face. But I did snap the photo.
Now, this figure is incredibly fascinating. Suitably creepy, don’t you think? But get this: the figure (as well as figures of Hitler and Göring) was made in the early forties. Which means, of course, that it was done with his full blessing. Creepy though it might be, had Goebbel’s found it unflattering he most certainly would have had the figure destroyed. So he must have liked it. What a creepy little man he must have been.
That’s all the pictures I have from the wax museum. I don’t have too much more to report about it, either, except for this: assuming they got all the proportions right for Marylin Monroe, she absolutely deserved her status as a sex symbol. Even in wax, she pushed all my right buttons.
jj
Vacation in Hamburg…part 2 September 5, 2007
Posted by stoneunhinged in germany.1 comment so far
For thematic reasons, I’m going to skip ahead to the latter part of the vacation.
It was time to make my second attempt to find the clubs where the Beatles played. During the first trip I got flustered by my walk through the Herbertstrasse and plum forgot all about the Beatles.
This time, my pilgrimage was not going to get sidetracked. After all, my wife and son were with me, so I wasn’t going to get to gawk at prostitutes.
So we went to the St. Pauli district and started walking down the Reeperbahn. Billy and I got hungry, so we grabbed a bite to eat from KFC. Somehow a KFC in the most famous red-light district in the world seemed very funny to me. But there was also a Burger King and McDonald’s. Fast food—America’s gift to the sex trade!
Susanne got hungry, too, and bought a falafel sandwich. She shared it with Billy. I thought it a good family moment in which to take a picture:
After they finished eating, we headed down to the street which I knew from memory was the street on which the clubs where the Beatles played were on: the Grosse Freiheit, meaning “Big Freedom”.
The problem was, we walked down the street and saw nothing but bars and strip clubs and sex clubs. No Beatles. I walked around nervous and flustered: I was near Mecca but couldn’t find anything. Finally, Billy called us over. He had walked up a short alley and seen a plaque.
Yes, a plaque. As in: there’s no club or bar there anymore. Just a plaque. So I took a picture with Billy standing in front of it:
Billy, realizing it was important to me without knowing why, asked for my cell phone and took a close-up picture of the portion of the plaque to which he had pointed:
A plaque is what is left of the famous Star Club. Wikipedia tells me that the Star Club—or at least the building it was in—burned down in 1987. Why wasn’t that on the nightly news?
So we moved on. We went back out to the main street, and this time Susanne found a very small plaque just across the street from where the alley came out. An investigation showed that this was the world famous Kaiserkeller where the Beatles cut their teeth as real professional musicians, playing several hours a night, seven days a week. So I ran across the street and had Billy take my picture.
This, as you can see, is the “Grosse Freiheit 36″. You can see the plaque in the background over to the right.
There is no Kaiserkeller anymore.
Okay, I wasn’t crushed. But if you go to Rome and find out that the Sistine Chapel has been occupied by a restaurant chain and renamed The Olive Garden, you might find yourself shaking your head.
So my pilgrimage to the Holy sights of Hamburg was only a semi-success. But I at least got to eat some fried chicken (which I only get to do about once a year, since there is no fried chicken in my home town).
And this is my first multiple-photo post. I hope that doesn’t mean this page takes 20 minutes to load. Let me know.
jj
