I am surprised, at times, at how things change from day to day.

One day last week was the best day I'd had in months. I was up and about, productive, and got more done before 10 AM than I normally do in a week. Then, the next day, I was back where I have been. And then Sunday, I had a particularly bad day. I had Blondie dig out the walker, and had to use it to walk about downstairs. It's the first time in a couple of months that I've needed it.

And yet none of this has affected my mood much. I wasn't elated by my productive day, only surprised. And I wasn't depressed on Sunday, except when I tried to watch the Indianapolis 500. It seems that WHTM's uplink wasn't working right, so DirecTV's image on channel 27 was something like a kaleidoscope, only not symmetrical.

So while I strongly suspected the winner would be driving a Dallara Honda - all 33 cars fit that description - I didn't know until now that there would be a dozen cars completing all 200 laps, nor that Dan Weldon would win having led only the 200th lap while Scott Dixon, having led 73 of them, would end up 5th.

Bah!

Playing With The Puppy-Kitty

I spent a lot of time on the sofa, watching The Sandlot on TiVO with Blondie. Dustin would come over, wanting to play with me, and that was nice. I don't like cats, and they seem to be planning our deaths, but Dusty has increasingly been acting like a pleasant manner as he has aged.

He's always coming up to me, rubbing against my leg, wanting me to pick him up. In the kitchen, that's especially so. His food is in a bowl at the back of the counter, and he can jump up there easily, but he's apprehensive about jumping up there because he can't see where he's going to land. Sometimes, he can get Blondie to lift him up.

He jumps up on Blondie's belly, and paws her breasts, pressing indents with one paw and then the other. She and I laugh about it. "You can tell he's male," Blondie says, and I agree. When I've a blanket covering me, I move my hand under the blanket, poking up hills, which Dusty will pounce on, and Blondie and I laugh at that.

Are we manipulating him, or is he manipulating us? I'm hard pressed to answer that one.

Scratching His Belly

Mostly, though, he comes over and lies on the floor next to me, and I pet him, and he rolls over on his back. If I pet him on his belly, he swipes at me, but with claws retracted, and he rolls, then I pet him on the belly again, and he paws at me again, and rolls the other way, just rolling back and forth as quickly as we we can manage it, and he seems to think it great fun.

All of which greatly concerns Marie. She thinks that when Dusty is pawing me, that Dusty is clawing me, and she doesn't approve of that. Not. One. Bit. She growls at her puppy-kitty, "That's not how a proper puppy behaves!" and Blondie tells Marie that I'm a grown man, and if I get scratched, it's my own fault. I'm not sure if she's saying that to make Dusty feel more like a mountain lion, if she thinks Dusty is actually trying to scratch me and believes that I'm acting like a damnable fool.

Maybe she's jealous. After all, Dusty will lie quietly on Blondie's belly while Blondie pets him, which is something he won't do with me. Blondie also refuses to believe that Dusty is practicing his mountain lion "pouncing" skills.

Maybe A Nittany Lion

He's still afraid to be outdoors, which is strange, I believe, for a cat that spent the first three or four months of his life as a outdoor cat, on the farm. On the other hand, he loves to lie inside the front door and watch the animals outside. It's one of those storm doors that's all glass, so he has pretty good vision of what's happening. They do, too. Squirrels come up and tease him, from just the other side of the door.

Dogs walking by, with their masters, ignore him, which surprises me, because if Marie is lying by the front door, they see Marie and will bark at her, and Marie barks in response.

I suppose I should mention the new printer. It's an Oki B2200. It's a fairly compact black-and-white laser printer. I got it from Overstock.com, my first time dealing with them. They offer $2.95 shipping on any order, promising 14 to 28 days shipping, so that they can get you to pay extra for faster shipping. I cheaped out, and it took about a week, including time in transit, to arrive. I'd have to give The Big O a thumbs-up.

Oki Printers

If you're not familiar with Oki, they used to make bulletproof dot-matrix printers in earlier times, rugged enough to handle business needs, and the ribbons were affordable enough that businesses liked them. I'd guess that Epson was the most popular - they pretty much invented the category of "dot matrix printers for PCs". There were a lot of IBM printers out there in IT departments, too, because IT departments were used to dealing with IBM. IBM's own printers were always very rugged, being designed by the people who make trouble-free line printers for high capacity mainframes, but a lot of IBM's dot matrix printers were actually Epson printers with an IBM badge. Oki generally was #3 in terms of popularity, and yet I didn't see them for sale in businesses that mostly sold to consumers.

My first laser printer was an Okidata, and I was very happy with it, until it needed a new drum. With it, toner and drums were sold separately, which meant that I could use the same drum for years, saving a fortune in expendables. When I got to the point that I needed a new drum, it was fairly expensive - something like $250 or $300 - and I saw a complete laser printer on clearance at the QVC for about $90. Hmmm, I thought. I could use that until it needs a refill, and then redrum the Oki. However, that printer was faster than the Okidata, and it had a button to "print light" for toner savings, and when the replacement cartridges - toner and drum both - were only about $60, I got rid of the Okidata laser printer. I think I sold it for $40 to someone, pointing out the scratched drum.

Samsung Printer

Maybe I should offer the Samsung for sale here. The big drawback is that it has both a serial and a parallel port, and you can use either one - but most computers get sold these days without either one. If someone was using a desktop computer, they could get a multi I/O card for $10 online or $30 locally. If you have two computers, you can run it as the local printer for each, with one computer hooked to the serial port, and the other hooked to the parallel port, which is a convenient way to do things.

It has a driver for Linux, and drivers for Windows. It does not have drivers for 64-bit Windows, however. It has feeds for two types of paper, so you can put letterhead in one slot and plain paper in the second, or you can put letterhead in one and envelopes in the second. If you want to print on card stock, you can open a gate at the front that bends the card stock less, but the regular output nicely corrals output at the top of the printer.

Fast, quiet, and it doesn't shake the table. Really nice output, and this time, the printer has an unscratched drum. Instead of the 25c/page that an inkjet runs you, you can print for about 2c/page. It also has about half a cartridge of toner. The cartridges sell for $60, so I figure $30 for a complete printer, with half a cartridge, is a fair price. If nobody contacts me, interested in it. I'll eventually put it on Craig's List.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
cats - DirecTV - disability - dogs - Indy 500 - laser printer - Oki - Overstock - Samsung - squirrels - WHTM-TV