Tag Archives: HP Color LaserJet 3600n

2015/12/13 (N) Test Print

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We were up at 7:45 AM this morning.  We were still unable to acquire the Internet via the resort Wi-Fi system so I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and got our Wi-Fi Ranger connected to it.  I made the coffee and fed the cats while Linda cleaned the litter tray.

Sunday is pancakes-for-breakfast day but we had some coffee first.  Linda played word games while I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s blog post and started today’s post.  The pancakes were yummy if a bit too much quantity wise.  Linda said I complain if she makes a smaller batch, which is probably true.  I suggested that we should have grapefruit with our pancakes to make up the difference.

At the fire circle last night we met Tom and Cindy.  We have seen them there the last three times but not had a chance to introduce ourselves.  Tom sat down next to me so we finally had a chance to chat.  They are newly retired and less than one year into their RVing adventure.  Like us, they are only here for the month but expressed an interest in getting together to discuss motorhomes and RVing.  Absolutely!

My main focus today was finishing our 2015 Year in Review holiday letter, which is actually a photo essay.  I spent some time looking for a few additional photos that met my criteria and constraints and found one to fill available spaces.  I also replaced several images with better (sharper) versions.  By noon I was finally ready to print a test copy but had to mess around with printer settings for half an hour to get it to print.  It finally did, and looked good, so I should not have to make any further adjustments unless Linda finds something when she proofreads it.  Linda won’t have time to address envelopes until the middle of next week so there was no need to print them at this time.  We will print, fold, address, stamp, and stuff them in one continuous process and then get them out of the rig and to the post office the same day.  Space is at a premium in an RV, even a 40 foot converted highway coach.

With the holiday letter done I decided to make some minor updates to our website having to do with Bus Conversion Magazine.  WordPress 4.4 was available so I installed it.  There were eight updates—three plugins and five themes—so I installed those too.  I did not take the time to update the other three WordPress sites but I need to do that and thought I might get to it after dinner.

We were both focused on our work and decided to skip lunch save for a few pretzels dipped in hummus.  At 1 PM I decided to it was finally time to install the window.  It was a warm, sunny day, which was fine for a short, light-duty maintenance task.  Linda informed me that the weather forecast for the upcoming week had a significant chance of rain, so getting the window reinstalled today was probably a good thing.

It was a simple enough thing to install but I had to get out the Little Giant stepladder and a tool box for a pair of needle-nose pliers.  I cleaned the hinge part of the frame and sprayed it with a dry lube.  With me outside on the ladder and Linda inside I got the window hung and she got the lever mechanism adjusted so we could get the lever pins inserted in the correct direction.  I then installed the E-clips on the ends of the pins.  I noticed that the front pin on the other driver side living room window was missing its E-clip so we installed one there.  At that point we checked the other six windows for missing clips.  They were all good.  I was going to change the pins around on the other three windows that had them in backwards but it was warm with a hot sun on the driver’s side of the bus so I deferred this minor project to another time.

Not having the window in place was starting to bug me so it was good to have it done.  With that minor weight off my shoulders I returned to working on the Habitat For Humanity article for Bus Conversion Magazine.  Although Part 1 will run in February and Part 2 in March I really want to put it to bed in the next 48 hours.  As with Part 1, I reformatted Part 2 in two columns and started selecting and inserting photos in-line with the text for the print edition.  With Jorge doing the magazine layout, and not being a bus person, placing the photos approximately where I think they should go seems to streamline the process.

By 4 PM we were both ready to go for a walk.  We were back before 5 PM and sat outside for 45 minutes using our iPads until we felt a few rain drops and then a few more.  The day had started with fog which gave way to mostly sunny skies that were gradually replaced with clouds and became a dense overcast by the time we went for our walk.  The winds were out of the SSE and darker ones moved in just ahead of the rain drops.  I put our outdoor chairs away and went inside just in case we had an unexpected downpour.

For dinner Linda heated up a couple of cans of Amy’s vegan chili with saltine crackers on the side and the last of the broccoli Cole slaw.  After dinner we tuned in PBS and watched the 1981 Simon and Garfunkel Central Park reunion concert followed by a documentary on The Carpenters.  The resort Wi-Fi was still not providing Internet access so I turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi and spent the better part of the evening copying blog posts from e-mails into Word docs.  Linda played word games and eventually went to bed to read.  I switched to my iPad to finish up this post and turned in for the evening at midnight.

 

2015/12/09 (W) Return to Satchel’s

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I was up at 7 AM.  It was 66 in the coach; cool but tolerable.  I put on my sweats, fed the cats, and cleaned their litter tray, but did not turn on the heaters.  Linda was up by 7:15.  I made coffee and we delayed breakfast until later.  We are going to Satchel’s for dinner with John and Ali this evening so we decided to have brunch instead of breakfast and lunch.  Satchel’s has some of the best vegan pizza we have ever had, including a choice of vegan cheeses, so it will be a big meal for us.

Linda used her iPad to do some holiday shopping.  I checked my e-mail and was then going to play a few games on my iPad but the iOS 9.2 update was available so I started the installation process and set it aside.  Once the updated OS was installed I had five app updates available so I initiated those, one at a time, and started working on this post.  The updates downloaded fast enough to be reasonable.  Either the Resort has made significant improvements in the Wi-Fi and Internet connection bandwidths or very few people are using the system at the moment, or both.

I got the BCM boxes out from under the bed and integrated in the issues I received on Monday.  Everything was there so the three sets of issues are ready to give out as door prizes in at the Arcadia Rally 2016.  I worked on the photo tips article for BCM for a while and then decided to do some more work on the BCM page on our website.  I had a detailed e-mail from Gary at BCM with suggestions, and I find it easier to use that kind of information when it is printed out, but when I tried to print it my computer said the printer was offline.  The printer display said it was “Ready” so I had a problem to investigate and resolve.

This was the first time we tried to use the HP Color LaserJet 3600 printer since we put it on board the bus and it was the first time we had connected it via the Amped|Wireless SR20000G network extender / router.  I had expected it to plug-and-play as this trip was also the first time we have used the newer/larger NAS on the bus with this particular router and it worked without me having to do anything to configure it.

I downloaded an updated version of Advanced IP Scanner and ran it.  It could not find the printer and claimed that both of our computers and the NAS were “dead” connections, even though they were communicating with each other and the Internet.  All of the evidence suggested that the problem was somehow related to network addresses.  I went into the printer configuration menu via the front panel and changed two settings, turning on IP Release and IP Renew.  I turned the printer off and back on but that did not cause it to connect.

I went in and out of the control panel in my computer looking at the various screens related to devices and drivers, specifically printers.  I also went into the web interface for the SR20000G where some settings and context dependent help screens caught my attention.  In particular, the SR20000G appeared to be set up as a DHCP client rather than a server and the help screen suggested that it was getting IP addresses from the primary router, i.e., the one connecting our “home” network to the Internet.  In our motorcoach, that is our Wi-Fi Ranger, and the Wi-Fi Ranger operates on a different range of locally routed IP addresses (10.139.1.nnn) than most home networks (192.168.17.nnn).  I opened the Advanced IP Scanner again and figured out how to get it to scan the local address range served by the Wi-Fi Ranger and voilà, there was the printer, the NAS, our computers, and the SR2000G.

The final step was to revisit something that caught my eye earlier.  In the printer driver configuration there is a Port screen and the printer was configured with a Standard TCP/IP Port in the 192.168.1.nnn range.  I created one in the 10.139.17.nnn range to match the address that Advanced IP Scanner indicated had been assigned to the printer.  I tried printing a printer test page and voilà (again) I heard the familiar sound of the printer indexing a sheet of paper and shortly thereafter had the test page in my hands.  I went into my e-mail and printed the one from Gary.  This was not what I expected to be doing today but it was satisfying to get it resolved and not have it take any longer than I did to get it done.

One of our tasks for today was reinstalling the awning style window in the living room.  I happened to notice this morning that one of the lever pins on the other driver side window was coming out, indicating that the C-clip was missing.  Closer examination revealed that the lever pins on the four windows we had repaired in April 2014 were all reinstalled with pins put in backwards.

I took a break from my other work at 1 PM and drove to the local NAPA store to buy new C-clips.  The clerk at the store had a kit of clips and a paper template for matching style and sizes.  He said our existing clips are actually E-clips, not C-clips, and the size I needed was a 1007.  He did not have any in stock but ordered them from another store and said they would be in at 4 PM.  We would be on our way to dinner by then so I indicated I would pick them up in the morning.

Back at the motorcoach John stopped by to let us know that he and Ali were going to do some shopping before dinner and to figure out a time to meet us at the restaurant.  We agreed on 5 PM.  As long as he was here I gave him the bag of Fire Ant Killer I bought for him on Monday.

We decided that we would also do some shopping before dinner.  We left at 3:15 PM and headed up FL-121 towards Gainesville.  When we got to I-75 we headed north to the next exit at Archer Road (FL-24) and made our way slowly through the traffic, into the outdoor mega-mall, and to Walmart.  We needed a small hassock (that would double as a storage cube), a small table (that we could put between the two captains chairs), a non-slip shelf liner (to put under the printer), a seat cushion (for the card table chair at the desk), a small mat (to put on the floor outside the shower to catch cat litter), batteries (for our bathroom scale), and high quality 8.5×14 paper (to print our holiday letter).  We found all of those items except the last one, but did not buy the hassock as the store only had them in gray.  We then worked our way to the Office Max store at the center of the mall.  They only had one (open) ream of 8.5×14 paper and it was regular copy paper.  Useless for our needs.

We put the address of Satchel’s pizzeria/restaurant into the GPS and worked our way over to the east side of town through rush hour traffic.  We pulled into the restaurant parking lot at 4:41 PM just as John and Ali were stepping out of their Tahoe two spots down.  Satchel’s is a very popular place but at quarter to five it was mostly empty.  It was a lovely late afternoon but the sun was already setting and the air would being cooling off quickly so we asked for an inside booth, which also happen to have padded seats.

We started with a small salad that was still big enough to share with Ali and John.  They had pizza slices but we ordered a medium (13″) pizza with Daiya mozzarella cheese, onions, mushrooms, and sun-dried tomatoes.  Soooo good.  John and Ali split a bottle of Cabernet, Linda had water, and I had ginger ale.  Satchel’s makes their own soda pop and it is very tasty (but contains sugar).

By the time we left the restaurant at 6 PM it was full of people, inside and out, and the noise level had risen to where Linda and Ali were starting to have difficulty with conversation.  We settled our bill and went on our way.  John and Ali had more shopping to do but we headed straight for Williston.  As we were approaching the intersection at I-75 I noticed that I was getting low on fuel.  I probably could have made it to Williston, but why chance running out of gas.  There are five filling stations near this intersection but the Mobil station was the first one on the right so I pulled in.  A few minutes later we were on our way again and we arrived back at our motorcoach at 7 PM.

I put the cushion on the desk chair while Linda put the placemat in the bathroom.  We opened the folding table and adjusted the height so the cats’ scratching post just fit under it and put it in place between the two captains chairs.  Having a table in that spot has been the plan from the beginning of the remodeling.  Although the folding table is temporary, it immediately increased the functionality of the interior.  It also allowed us to better visualize how the living room will look/feel when we finally install the permanent table.

Linda spent much of the rest of the evening shopping for holiday gifts and domestic necessities on Amazon.  She got presents ordered for everyone except her sister, with all of them being drop shipped directly to the recipients.  She also ordered a 15″x15″ brown storage hassock and a pair of washable floor towels (for the bathroom).  We definitely get our money’s worth out of Amazon Prime.

 

2015/11/25 (W) T Minus 2 Days

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We both got up at 7:45 AM.  My back felt OK when I went to sleep last night but it was not good by morning.  I don’t know if that is a result of being immobile and supine or just the Ibuprofen wearing off.  As painful as it is to get up it feels better once I do.  We both got dressed to work.  Linda prepared raisin toast and tea for breakfast while I positioned myself on the heater pad.  Linda was busy by a little after 9 AM and I was up and about by 9:30.

The first thing Linda did was take out the trash.  She called yesterday and stopped our pickups starting next week.  It took me an hour to finish organizing tools and supplies in the garage.  At that point I turned off the garage furnace and opened the overhead doors.  I started my car and turned it around with the back end facing the garage.  We moved all of the things that were going in the bus outside the larger door.  We then loaded a lot of the stuff into the car.  This is not a permanent arrangement but was merely for the convenience of getting packed for traveling.

I helped get the recycling tubs into Linda’s car.  Late morning she took them to the recycling center and stopped at two different banks to make club deposits.  I took care of some computer-based tasks while she was gone.  I finally got a reply from DataViz regarding a sync problem with Passwords Plus and sent the tech support person (Colin) a copy of the sync log from my computer.  I also managed to register the Sony flash and accessories I bought a month ago.  When Linda got back she made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and served them with fresh apple slices.  The cheese was Tomato Cayenne from Field Roast and it made for a tasty sandwich on rye bread from Metropolitan Baking Company.  I had a couple of Ibuprofen for dessert.

We disassembled the temporary work table in the garage and stored the sawhorses out of the way.  We shook out the floor mats (as best we could) and Linda used the ShopVac to vacuum the floor of the larger bay.  We finally had enough room to store her Honda Civic inside for the winter.  That will be the first time it has been stored inside since she bought it in 2007.

[ Photo 1 of 1 – HC – The large bay of garage ready to accept our Honda Civic for the winter.  This is the first time we have been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in to this house. ]

The large bay of garage ready to accept our Honda Civic for the winter. This is the first time we have been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in to this house.

The large bay of garage ready to accept our Honda Civic for the winter. This is the first time we have been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in to this house.

We rearranged some things in the front of the smaller garage bay to make room for the large trash container, the wheelbarrow, several 10′ lengths of 1-1/4″ plastic conduit, 10 large paver blocks, and the mower deck for the Cub Cadet lawn tractor.  With those things stowed inside the concrete driveway was now free of objects that Kerry could have hit with his snowplow.

The tractor and 18 cubic foot trailer will remain in the yard alongside the driveway where we park the bus.  The tractor won’t start and we had no interest in pushing it uphill through snow.  We found our large plastic tarp the other day so we unrolled it, covered the tractor and trailer, folded the edges under, and weighed the edges down with landscape blocks.  Hopefully it will stay put through the winter.

With sunny skies and the temperature hovering around 50 degrees F I opened the house electrical bay on the bus.  We loaded the four toolboxes onto a hand truck, two at a time, and rolled them over to the bay where Linda got them stacked and pushed in.  We then loaded the two drill cases in front of the toolboxes and I closed up the bay.

Next we opened the passenger side engine bay door and replaced the main engine air filter.  It did not look that dirty but the new one was obviously very clean by comparison.  This air filter is a bit pricey at $130 plus tax but it is so critical to good engine performance that it does not make sense to try and save a few cents by not replacing it or trying to clean a used one and reuse it.

With the air filter changed we then pulled out the chassis battery tray.  It holds four Group 31 lead acid batteries and is very heavy.  It has a very heavy duty slide out tray but the tray is worn and lets the leading edge drop a little bit as it comes out.  That means we had to lift it as well as push it to get it back in.

We applied a 14″ strip of black Gorilla Tape to the horizontal frame member at the top of the compartment opening to prevent metal tools from coming in contact with the chassis, which is tied to the battery ground.  I got this idea from Chuck when I saw that he had done this to their coach.  There was some fine rust on top of the batteries but the connections were all tight and did not show signs of corrosion.  I should probably have cleaned them anyway but we had too much else to do.  I did notice, however, that one of the batteries was from 2009 and the other three were from 2010 so they may be due to replaced.

I opened the doors on both sides of the front bus bay and climbed in.  Linda carried stuff over from the driveway and the living room (of the house) and I figured out how to fit them into the space.  We have less stuff in the front bay then the last two winters but more stuff in the car.  The problem for the bay is that we have things in open topped cardboard boxes so I could not stack things the way I have in the past.

We were done with this phase of the loading process by 3 PM.  I had turned on the main engine block heater and the Aqua-Hot engine preheat loop at 1 PM.  I started the main engine to air up the suspension, leveled the coach, and then turned on the auxiliary air compressor to maintain it at level.  I was getting ready to pull my car around behind the bus so we could hook it up when I realized I should probably move the bus a little bit first to make sure the brakes were not locked up.  I backed it up a few feet and turn pulled it forward a little farther than where it started.  Linda checked the floor and it was level so I switched the suspension back to Level Low to help minimize leaks and hold the pressure.

I continued to let the bus run on high idle while we hooked up the car.  With all of the connections made I opened the air valve that supplies air to the auxiliary braking system in the car and went to the cockpit to activate the various lights while Linda checked them.  Everything checked out as OK.

With the bus still idling we carried the HP Color LaserJet network printer from my office in the basement upstairs and into the bus.  It was heavy and awkward but we got in into the bus.  I had to remove the center cover from between the desk pedestals and we had to get it into its alcove in the left pedestal from the knee space between the pedestals.  I was pleased, however, that it fit very comfortably in that space as the space was designed to hold this particular printer.

Once the printer was in we found the replacement black toner cartridge and put it on board.  Linda also carried the smaller APC UPS up from the rec room to the bus and I put it on the connector cover shelf.  I think there will also be room on the shelf for one of the NAS units.  The newer one is physically smaller but has more storage capacity and is faster but my plan us to take the larger/older/slower one.

We were done with this phase of the loading process at 4 PM.  Our next task was to replace the screen insert from the front door of the house with the storm door insert.  Linda turned her attention to preparing food for our family gathering tomorrow and I stripped the bed, took all of the laundry to the laundry room, and started a load of whites.

My back was making me aware that I had worked it harder today than it would have liked so I took a few more Ibuprofen and settled in on the sofa with the heater pad.  Juniper found my lap almost immediately and stayed there until just before 6:30 PM when I had to get up for dinner.

Linda heated up a couple of Amy’s curry and rice frozen dinners and served them with the remaining kale/almond/raisin salad.  After dinner Linda started packing non-refrigerated food items in paper grocery bags for moving to the bus.  I brought all of my photography equipment upstairs to repack but left that for later.  I went downstairs and pulled two additional sets of BCM issues plus extra copies of some of the issues in which I have had articles.  I boxed the sets, labeled them, and brought them upstairs.

By the time I replied to a few e-mails it was after 9 PM.  We could have worked until midnight but we had both had enough for the day.  I settled in on the living room sofa with the heater pad on my back.  In spite of wearing a knee brace Linda’s right knee was bothering her all day so she took some Ibuprofen and we both went to bed.  We watched Weather Nation for a while and then went to sleep.

Tomorrow will be a long day but of a different sort.  In the morning we will finish loading the bus and I will check/adjust the pressures in all of the bus and car tires.  We are due at our daughter’s house at noon for Thanksgiving dinner and will probably stay until 7 PM. That evening, after we get home, we will winterize the plumbing in the house and spend the night on the bus in final preparation for our departure for Florida the following morning.

 

2014/05/22 (R) Still Resting

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I called Mike (W8XH) last night and we agreed that it would be better for him to wait until I was better to come over and help us with our computer issues.  I finally got up around 8 AM, having spent 11 hours in bed.  I took a nice, warm shower and felt almost human.  Not well by any means, but enough better to have some granola for breakfast and catch up on the blogs I follow in Feedly.  It was a spectacularly beautiful morning and I opened all of the doorwalls and some of the windows.

I planned to take it easy today and maybe just sit on the rear deck and enjoy the weather, the view, and the sounds of the birds.  It got cloudy as the morning wore on and never got as warm as I had hoped so I closed up the house.  I worked at my desk for a while and got badly chilled and started shivering uncontrollably.  I had forgotten to turn the basement furnace zone back on and the temperature had dropped to 65 degrees.  I made some hot tea and some hot soup for lunch, which helped a little, and finally wrapped myself in an afghan and lay down on the couch.  Around 3:00 PM I called Henry Ford Health System Columbus Center in Novi, Michigan to see if I could get an appointment with our internal medicine doctor.  She was off tomorrow and it was too late to book an appointment with anyone else.  I was told to call back at 6:30 AM tomorrow for a same-day appointment.  Duly noted.  I went back to sleep on the couch.  The chills and shakes had left me completely drained to the point where I could not sit up or read.

I was finally tired of lying down, so I examined the printer drivers for our HP CLJ 3600n network printer on Linda’s Samsung laptop to see what was installed.  There were 40 files listed!  Someone has got to be kidding.  A notice popped up on her screen that Windows 8.1 was available as a free download.  I checked with Linda (it’s her machine, after all) and she gave me the green light.  I let it install and then restarted the machine.  I sent a test MS Word document to the printer and it printed just fine.  Great, so the printer can be installed under Windows 8 and then the machine updated to Windows 8.1, put it cannot be installed directly into Windows 8.1.  Microsoft “blames” HP stating that printer manufacturers are solely responsible for their drivers.  Even if true it’s still lame, very lame and there’s plenty of shame to spread over both companies.  It’s a “business class printer” designed for high volume use.  Since our volume is not high, our (expected) use is obviously long.  It’s enough to make my next computer a Linux box or a Mac and my next printer anything but an HP.

Speaking of which, I signed up for a free Intro to Linux course from The Linux Foundation offered through edX.  It starts August 1st.  My friend Steve has been trying to get me interested in Linux for a long time.  My problem has never been a lack of interest but a lack of a good, organized approach into the subject.  There are books on the subject, but I am unlikely to just sit down and read one as an academic exercise.  I have Linux running on one of my old computers (a dual processor Dell Precision Workstation) and Steve has been helping me set it up as a local web-server that I can use to test my WordPress sites, so that provides the needed sense of purpose.

I spent a little time in the evening uploading blog posts and then went to bed.  I can’t remember the last time I felt this bad.