Jean's Northern Niche

Brother MFC-465CN: Splendid! Even with Macintosh

Brother is better known for typewriters. At least that's where I first heard of this company. Perhaps that dates me. Regardless, the Brother company has been making printers for a while now.

Has anyone ever gotten an Epson printer to last more than a few years? My old  Apple Stylewriters still work, and those were based on Canon printers. But the folks selling computers switched to Epson as the printer-of-choice for Mac users some time back and I think this was a big mistake. I've had three Epsons now, and all of them have gone kaput in varying time frames, some as quickly as one year, (just past the warranty, naturally) and others have hung in there until I had to do something simple, such as move them ten miles. Even packed up nicely, they never recovered.

It's a far cry from the days of the Applewriter and other dot matrix printers, which I think could handle being dragged down a gravel driveway on a string. Noisy as heck, slow as government, but they were the workhorses of the Mac printing world. Heck, my old Laserwriter 360 will fire right up, and it did the Alaska Highway!

Finally becoming disgusted as I tried to rotate between the variously functioning and semi-functioning Epsons (and one Canon, too) I went to Orofice Max to roll the dice and make an educated guess as to what to purchase.

Hewlet-Packard (known to us Irish musicians as Planxty Hewlett-Packard), Epson, Lexmark and Canon all had various models offered, but all were made of thin, bendy plastic that just didn't bode well. If they don't feel their miraculous computerized guts don't warrant a decently solid case, then I just have to wonder if they build them to fail. Standing out above the crowd was a Brother printer that was built like a little tank, and did everything but take the garbage out. Somewhere on the numerous explanatory labels it had a happy Mac face. Hmmmm, interesting, I thought.

So let me tell you what this baby does:

Faxes
Prints
Copies
Scans
works on a network
More stuff that I haven't even needed or tried

Since I'm a music teacher I find it annoying to go to the local copy shop all the time to print out my handwritten music. With this printer I can scan in my music, and then print it out whenever I need it. I have begun digitizing most of my sheet music and this is wonderful for both me and my students.

It has a document feeder so that I can put five or six sheets that I need copied, tell the printer how many dupes to make, push the button and walk away. I LOVE this.

The scanner gets good use with my old photos, too. I haven't set the fax up but once. I don't have a separate line and faxing is not a big priority, though sending a fax out is something I occasionally do. 

The print quality is good, not super excellent. It's far better than my blotchy Epsons, though! Those were forever getting some kind of microscopic detritus in them and then smearing ink everywhere.  You can choose the quality level, naturally, and the Brother puts out some very nice color. I make Christmas cards and various projects, and it hasn't failed me yet.

I also like very much that you can buy the ink tanks separately, and replace them separately. It will keep printing until that last moment when all the ink runs out. Instead of having to replace the entire unit when, say, magenta is all out, you just replace what is empty and keep going.

The downside of Brother is that they really don't know much about Macintosh. Their software is only partly-built! Every time I turn on the computer with the Brother printer on, I have to type in "mac-boot" to finish booting up. It's not my computer, because this happens whether I'm on the portable or the desktop.

If you start up with the printer off, and then turn it on, you get a window that says the printer didn't connect, with an OKAY button that doesn't work! First of all, it's a lie, the printer did connect and will work fine, and second of all, you can't dismiss the window! Very stupid! So you just drag it away so most of it is off the screen.

I called Brother about these things. They tried to tell me that my ROMS were going bad because I had to type in "mac-boot" but of course that is nonsense. The Mac tech told me that she just drags the annoying window aside and continues working. Which is what I do, too. I haven't checked lately with Brother, I suppose it is time to do that again.

Those two things can be annoying, but they don't make the printer unusable in my book. I'm going to keep bothering them to fix their software, but for now I am very, very happy with the performance of the machine.

Oh, and the price was right! Around $100, even up in Alaska!  You can't beat it with a stick!

Scary Guard Dog

Pretty frightening, hunh?

We Might Have Turned a Corner

Most of the snow in my yard is gone. It's rained a few times and the forecast is for temperatures hovering around 60 during the day and 35 for the nightly lows. If you recall, 35 is ABOVE FREEZING! Whoopeee!

But I'm not committed to Spring yet. I made that mistake before...and it snowed like crazy. No, I'm going to be cautious with my engagement with the season. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature, but Mother Nature sure does like to fool US!

This Is Getting Serious

No matter what happens, it helps to have a sense of humor to keep a person going. But it is very hard to keep a happy face when winter just won't go away.

It doesn't help that most of the world knows nothing about weather in Interior Alaska. They think it looks like this twelve months of the year. No matter that the tourist industry hauls loads of people in buses, trains and cruise ships up and down Alaska during the warm, even HOT summer months. Still, when I meet new people from Outside, they ask idiotic questions such as, "Do you have telephones? (electricity, computers, etc.)" "What's it like to live in an igloo?"  and "Don't you get tired of it being cold all the time?"

No, I don't get tired of it being cold when it is supposed to be cold. But right now it's not supposed to be cold. Right now the trees are supposed to be budding. Right now the birds are supposed to be eating lots of insects. I just watched a chickadee go after my suet feeder. That's just not normal for April. It hasn't gotten above 40 degrees for several days.

The snow was on its way out. I had about 2/3s of my yard clear of snow and I could see things I hadn't seen for a while, such as some of the planting pots, some fencing I'd stacked, and so on.

I said many bad words when I sat up at 7:30 this morning to see snow just coming down like gangbusters. It's been doing that all morning. It is just after noon right now, and it's still snowing. There's more than three inches of snow out there right now...more every second...

It's supposed to rain this afternoon. If the temperature can stay above freezing that will be a blessing as it will wash away this snow. If it hovers around freezing then we will have to endure the dreaded black ice.

I know of two suicides in the last week. I can't say for certain that the weather caused them, but it's extremely hard for me, a non-depressed person (rapidly becoming a depressed person) to hang in there when Spring just never arrives. I can't imagine being someone with clinical depression having to try to keep spirits up with this situation.

Even my DOGS don't want to go outside. We went out and this morning and, rather than play in this new snow, they quietly relieved themselves and then walked straight to the gate and waited. We want to go in. We don't like this, they said.

When you have a husky and a Norwegian Elkhound that are sick of snow, you know it's really, really serious.

Little Miss Pantywaist

The backyard is looking interesting these days. About two thirds of the snow has melted, revealing something I didn't expect: a nice layer of FUR on the ground! I expect the birds will have some nice, soft nests this year. And I haven't even begun to start pulling out the dogs' undercoats yet! That operation takes place in many sessions on the balcony, where we fill the air with floating dog hair.

The bird feeders are located on the balcony, too. Raking the dogs up there is fun and easy, and done in the Spring sunshine. The only hard part about it is making sure Ole doesn't eat the suet feeder.

I just made a trip outside with the dogs to the backyard. At the moment all is frozen, but later today it will thaw, and when we get home from work it will be squishy and downright puddly in some places. And the dog who runs around in -20° just like it was nothing (even sans booties!) will walk into the yard, relieve herself, and then just stand there, giving me a pained look. Then she'll pick her way across the fur, mud, water and snow to where I'm standing by the gate. "I'm done," she says.

And that's it! No matter how much Ole sneaks up and attacks, she's done. She's not going to mess her Royal Self up playing in the mud. No way. Nope, Miss Wild Thing, Miss I-Will-Hunt-Anything-And-Run-Wildly-Through-The-Woods is NOT going to get herself dirty!

Go figure!

You know, I can't complain. If the dogs get all muddy and need baths, I'm in for a world of inconvenience. I have only a small shower. No tub. No outside hose because I don't live in a regular, suburban house. I don't have city water, I have my OWN water and it's in a tank that feeds into the house, not to the outside. So there's no hosing them off outside, either. The rivers are way too cold for them to swim in, too. Besides, that would require putting ooky, muddy dogs in the car to take them somewhere, rather defeating the purpose of not spreading the mess!

So whether Sofia is being silly or not, she's really doing me a great favor!

But it still cracks me up!

FINALLY! It's Spring!

Yesterday I got up and it was 17°. I got ready and did my booth at a Summer Activities Fair, where the only view I had was of a snow-covered football field. And that only if I left my booth and walked across the hall.

When I'd parked my truck I'd had to walk very carefully over a whole bunch of ice to get to the front door. When I came out there was nothing left but bare pavement and water and the temperature was 50°! What a difference six hours made!

This morning it was 50° at 9am, and by 2pm the sun shining on my thermometer on the birch tree made it register 80°! Taking advantage of that, Sofia and Ole got a brushing in the sun-washed balcony and the birds got a lot of very nifty nesting material out of the deal.

I have gnats and moths already, and a spider landed on my head in the house. One notices such things after a completely bugless winter.

The red birch next to the balcony has BUDS ON IT. I saw pussywillows on the way home yesterday.

So this is it. No more snow, and if it does come, it will melt right away. But Spring is HERE. Finally!

Groovy Guy and Sexy Gal

The most innocent pirate ever...

Looks like she's right out of Charlie's Angels, doesn't it?

 

You can do this to YOUR dog here:
http://www.pimpyourpoochgame.com

Snow, Starring Ole

Ole and Sofie both look for voles in the snow.

Making snowdog angels.

"Come on and GET ME!"

It's good to have a best friend.

Sometimes you love snow so much you sing!

Ole was across the yard and I told him, "Ole! Over!"

But wait! It's SNOWMAN Snow!

So it's not easy to make a snowman with dogs going cuckoo banananuts all over the yard. Ole knocked the head off not long after this picture. But it was FUN letting the Michigan kid in me out to play in the snow!

We NEVER get snow wet enough to make snowmen! It's always powder. So this is a real treat!

I'll make another one tonight maybe, after work. But this time outside the dog yard!

Maybe making snowmen will make it warm up enough to bring on Spring.

April Fool's Month

April Fool's month. That must be what is going on, because we got six more inches of snow last night and it's still snowing. It's still snowing. Did you hear that? It's still snowing! And it's April! This is insane. It's like it's going to be winter forever. The Snow Queen has taken up residence in Fairbanks. I might as well invest in a dog sled team and a sled. If this keeps up even 4WD isn't going to cut it.

And it's windy. That's just plain weird for Fairbanks.

I'd post a picture but I'm out of batteries for the camera...but hang on...maybe....the batteries in the camera are dead, but I think I have some that are only "mostly dead".... (guess which movie I watched yesterday?)...

See that expanse of snow in the foreground? That's my porch. There's supposed to be a step there....and a porch!

Contrary to what many think, Alaska is NOT covered in ice and snow 12 months of the year. In March the snow starts melting, and if it doesn't start melting in March, it starts melting in April. By the end of April it's mostly brown. Then in May it greens up. All the trees bust out in leaves within a week of each other and it's just amazing. We run around in shorts and t-shirts all summer, and it can get up to 100 degrees in June.

Our weather patterns, just like everyone else's, are all crazy now.