Tech Observations - LibreOffice

LibreOffice

I think, in the advent of Windows 10 - most of us have come to realize that the way Microsoft wants to sell their Office suite products has 'evolved'. Annual subscription model is the thing now. Adobe started it years ago - and every software maker now 'likes it' - for obvious reasons. And, to be fair, there are some advantages for users too - interacting with cloud (or application service provider) solutions that are always up-to-date and which don't take up space (although with todays drive size explosion - that's hardly a practicle consideration) on a user's machine.

So when we purchased a new laptop I was faced with Microsoft's new office software purchase model - and not really loving any of the flavors, I went shopping for a free (read: open source) solution. After a little investigation, I found LibreOffice, installed it - and am actually quite happy with its component functionality which mimics the Word, Excel, Powerpoint, DB, Drawing experiences that we've all grown up with thanks to the Microsoft 'school of software indoctrination'.  There might be a small glitch here and there - with 'translating' certain Microsoft file types - but only occasionally. On the whole - it works and when you're creating documents yourself - I think you'll find the process very satisfying (and familiar). \mf

Tech Observations - Epson EcoTank

Best Printer Solution EVVVEEEERRRR !!               Jan 2020

If you're at all like me, after 20 years of being held hostage by Hewlett Packard (bless their innovative little engineering hearts and the genius strategy of manufacturing a device that is a decoy for their real money maker - the damned ink cartridges), I've recently stumbled on the printer of my dreams.

Shelling out $18 to $39 for standard or XL black HP 62 ink cartridges (which exhaust themselves  INCREDIBLY quickly) - at some point just starts to get under your skin.

I was driving to Home Depot a month ago and heard a radio advertisement for the Epson EcoTank printer and it's guaranteed 2-year ink supply. Two years?! I almost spilled my latte. A couple weeks later (on one of those Saturday morning local-expert AM radio shows) I listened to a guru tout the advantages of the Epson EcoTank. He was careful to note that you'll pay more initially for one of these printers than you will for an HP (or other) low up-front cost cartridge printer. That certainly made sense.

Investigating - I found there's a small range of Epson EcoTank models. I settled on something in the middle (model ET-3710) - paying $379.99 for it. It comes with a bottles of liquid ink (blk, cyan, magenta, yellow) that are estimated (not guaranteed) to produce something like 2,000 black outputs and 1,500 color outputs. Not to be overly precise- that's a fair amount of printing.  The ink bottles are simply poured into one of four chambers or reservoirs. You can see exactly what you've got.  As backup I purchased an additional 3-color set of bottles for $41.99 and one black bottle for $13.99. Which, all in all, struck me as less costly than HP's cartridges - whose opaque container pretty much 'hide' the actual quantity of ink from you. By comparison these are just clear bottles holding 22ml each. It struck me as refreshingly above board to show exactly what you were getting.

After more than a month of printing (and we're printing a lot lately because of our tutoring activities) the levels of ink have barely moved. I love this. To summarize - I feel that I've finally found an efficient and reasonable solution to printer and ink supply management - and wanted to share that with you.  \mf

Summerhill at Beach

In the spring of 2006 we set in motion a plan that ended in purchase of a little beach house in Seaview, Washington. This 4-bedroom cottage built in 1900, was actually in pretty fair condition. Still, certain features, certain rooms, etc. presented themselves as candidates for a little love and rehabilitation. We quickly dove into one project after another. Weekend upon weekend and some summer vacations were devoted to 'improvements'. When we came up for air - ten years had passed and I don't think it's at all an understatement to say that we accomplished a lot.

Trips to what we call 'Summerhill' (after a favorite novel by the same title written by A.S. Neill) always put us in a different frame of mind. When we were still working - there was a palpable  melting away of stress within a mile of getting on the highway - headed toward this coastal hideaway.