Happy Birthday to my Dh! He’s now two years older than me, for about a week in length. 
July is about Fireworks, Baseball, etc. The All-Star Game is always right before, on, or after this day of DH’s birth, so … for you …
A Virtual Birthday Cake
Enjoy!
I’m not the type to “do a Snoopy dance” i.e. dance around in glee about something as Snoopy the dog of The Peanuts fame.
I have a virtual model of that going on though, I’m giddy inside with pleasure.
I had troubles with printing on my Epson CX4600 in the last few months, but didn’t do anything about it besides grumble and do a cleaning the heads session here and there. I grumbled and grumbled more the last month or so, and have been sick inside over how much “ink” the printer uses up to ‘clean’ and how much ‘ink’ I KNOW, since I have ears to hear with, is still in those cartridges that the printer/computer say are “empty”.
I got so tired of it after I changed the cartidges with my very last color set last week, and blonk, chug, blon, chug, chug, chug … the printer wouldn’t print right and went from FULL to EMTPY in three #%@$#%#$@ sessions of trying to clean the nozzles, etc via the printer utility in the computer.
I found a site a very techy usefulness:
http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/
There you can find info on your printer, and I found scads of ideas and comfort for my Epson CX4600, and eventually came away wishing I hadn’t gotten rid of that Epson Color 800 from years before, knowing that I would have the knowledge and tools to fix it now. 
I ordered a cleaning kit from the above website. I got ideas from the forum, and on that site as well they did have a page about building a chip resetter … but I don’t have the tools to make one myself. I then found a reference to someone saying “they are cheap on ebay” and wouldn’t you know, it’s true.
I also found a service utility to download to use in place of the traditional Epson one. With it you can “freeze” ink levels, so that the computer will keeps churning out ink until it’s really out. In order to be able to use it though, you have to have INK in your cartridges. What’s that all mean? Newer cartridges all have an IC “chip” on one end, and that’s what the printer reads and writes to about ink levels. It’d be nice if it really, truly worked, but it’s meant to keep people from refilling their cartridges mostly, and that backfires on people who don’t refill, since the chip doesn’t rely on what’s in the cartridge, but on how it’s been used. I can go back in time and recall cartridges that I threw out that I KNEW there was still INK INSIDE, you can hear it slosh around, heavily so even, and it’s maddening to see the printer reject it as “empty” … ugh. My days of that are over.
I had saved the last cartridges, when I had just changed them this past week.
Earlier this week my package of Epson cleaner came in the mail. I couldn’t use it without INK in my cartridges though, to be able to perform a cleaning cycle or two or three or more.
I had also gone to ebay and seached out chip resetters and found one auctioner that had them and other things for Epson’s, like the right inks and cartridges to refill over and over … and that is where I got the thing that came in the mail TODAY!!!! The Virtual Snoopy Dance is about this device, this sweet little device that is so awesome.
It’s just plastic and has prongs (contact pins) to enable you to “reset” the IC Cartridges … it has some little adapter pieces to put on for how your cartridge is made, and for mine it makes a nice cushy spot to line up the cartrige into and plunk it right down for a red flashing LED lite on the device to come on saying “I have contact” and then it goes “Green solid” when it’s successfully cleared the chip, “reset it” in other words.
I firstly tried my old black cartridge, and VOILA it worked! So I quickly did the rest of the old color cartridges and they all reset fine. I then turned on my printer and took out the “empty” cartridges that were in there already, barely used, mind you. I put them down and popped in each of the four cartridges I’d just reset. “Churn, Churn, Churn,” my printer said … meanwhile I opened up the window for the SSC Service Utility and made sure my printer model, which I was using, was chosen, and then went to see the “printer report” for it and YES IT SAYS I have 100% levels in each cartridge! Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.
I still need to clean the printer out, but I am able to print black documents and some of the colors. It’s the printer heads, that whole area is a mess, I did use a wire to pull up bunch of matted-with-ink-Hair out of there last week, after the fact of my “cartridges being empty” so that I couldn’t perform “printer cleanings” anymore … but that’s why I got the “fixyourprinter” Epson Cleaning kit. I’ll spend my time doing that later, so that it’ll have time to work without my interferring … so over night it’ll work.
I am so very pleased with the chip resetter, at this point, and the SSC Service Utility as well. I have used that with my Epson Picture Mate Deluxe too, and can “freeze” ink levels, and have, so that I can squeeze as much ink out of that cartridge as possible. I also have a good visual window to look at in the SSC Service Utility anytime I’m connected to that printer to see the individual color levels, which can be done for other printers too, but it’s more meaningful there than it seems to be in the Epson Utility.
All of the above I found via info on the link to fixyourownprinter, which I found via Google.
Last night (Fourth of July 2006) we had some ‘fireworks’ at our house. Firecrackers I had gotten last year for my birthday and hoarded most of them until this year (my birthday is two weeks after The 4th), and a package we had gotten from Costco this past week. They had TNT firework bundles, we got one around $50 in price. In it was a bunch of stuff, mostly all “fountains” which are boxes or cylinders of pyrotechnics that flow up and then down as would a “water fountain”. There were small ones and bigger ones. Some of them threw the pyrotechical stuff way up, oh, 7 to 8 feet or so, which was nice. Most of them were very similar, employing different schemes in how it all came out, arranged in a different pattern of usage, strength of each stage, loudness of any sounds varied as well.
Some of them were super good, very enjoyable, rememberable — others nice enough, but forgettable in their own right.
One package was of several of one kind called “Cuckoo” — a very pleasant smaller-medium one that we thoroughly enjoyed, and used them all but two, saving the two for another night this week or next. We used up everything else that throws off sparkles and pops and bangs and stars and colors, except for a large handful of my good old Firecrackers.
I’m itching to get to SC and purchase some really cool upwards mobile shells or rockets or both. I read an article online about some good things to get, and that whet my appetite for what we witnessed our neighbors doing a few nights before … which none of such was in the package we got. It was a cheap package, we didn’t know what was in it precisely, but had not HIGH expectations. I know the sort of thing to do in the future is to get a bigger package from Costco, they had two packages of higher price with BIGGER cyclinders than the one we got, and then also get some pieces from SC or AL at a fireworks store. Some good ones are called “cakes” of some nature, basically a bunch of things that go up with just one fuse lit. Like to be used as a small show, or a finale, or whatever, I mean, there are good ones that stand alone, or are partial pieces to be put into segmental sequentialness for a great show.
I love fireworks, big shows, professional ones. But I have to say, what I’ve seen this year is driving me towards DIY fireworks, not MAKING them, but the pyrotechnical shooting them off at home idea. It’s particular to me that I’ve always loved that idea, but hadn’t explored it at all. I finally got my DH to get me some firecrackers last year, so that was the first step on the path to wonderful family pyrotechnical fun year round.
We really enjoyed the fireworks this year, a nice show a few days before the 4th from our neighbors, then some sparklers, firecrackers and a few small fountains on our property the 3rd, and the full package show on our property on the 4th. The children really loved it. They said it was the BEST time they’ve ever had. Bar none.
Oooh la la.
BTW It did rain yesterday afternoon, quite hard, but it was done before 4:30pm — giving a few hours for it to dry out before the sun started going down, and then awaiting absolute dark before starting our festivities with fire. It did cloud up again, and then at dark, dark enough dark, we went out and it was slightly dropping rain drops in a sprinkle almost fashion, but not true sprinkling, gaping wide sprinkles, maybe is the way to title it. Sometime into it the gappage was less, but still not a full sprinkle. We got our whole show in fine.
We heard that other areas got dumped on and didn’t get their community shows on. I know that Atlanta’s Centennial Park show was re-scheduled for tonight, the 5th, but on The Weather Channel this morning they mentioned that and that the forecast was more likely for rain tonight that it had been for the night before when it DID rain out the show. I don’t know what it’s like in Atlanta right now and what it’ll be like later, we live way outside to the NE, but here it’s overcast-ish and getting darker and it’s not even a quarter to Four yet. Darkness doesn’t fall until after 8:30pm anyhow, but it’s just a telling sign for heavy rain clouds above, if it feels this dark –which it does feel like, as if it’s Wintertime, the darkest part of the year, short days, as if it’s closing in on 5pm.
It’s Summer though, and it’s such a hot time we are in now, I was outside a little bit ago and the lack of sun, those heavy dark clouds, have really cooled down the day. For that I’m thankful. I have no beef with the weather, I am not talking about Atlanta Fireworks with any intention of us going to them, we wouldn’t go into Atlanta for that. Ugh. (Yeah, we are country folk at heart and do live in the “country”)
