My grandfather passed away last night. He went quietly in his sleep, I can’t ask for better than that. I’m mostly all right, I’m at the point where I’m just grateful for the time we had. But I miss him already, even though I haven’t gotten to see him all that often since I moved from Missouri.
His funeral will be Wednesday afternoon. I don’t feel like I need to attend for my own sake. Part of him is with me all the time. I’m debating going anyway, for the rest of my family, especially my aunts and uncles. But it would mean taking both of the kids, so that complicates the whole thing considerably. Everybody’s going to be supportive either way.
I missed my grandmother’s funeral two years ago, and it’s not even guilt that I feel about it, but I just felt so isolated from my family, it still bothers me. I mean, I live almost 800 miles away, and even farther in recent years; it’s not like I get a lot of chances to act like family. And Lord knows I’ve squandered enough chances already. But then I wonder if it’s selfish of me to drag the kids out there for such a reason. On the other hand, it feels at least as selfish to be whining about the logistical difficulties of air travel with two kids. Anyway, I need to decide tonight, if I have any hope of making it there.
Update: I am going to go after all. Laura’s taking a couple days off work to watch both kids, which frees me up to take late night flights. It’ll be a really short trip, but I know I’ll be glad I made it.
Not so much “tech” as “moral” support. Presumably.
So last summer we bought an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax, the HP LaserJet 3390. It worked fine for months, but for some reason decided to stop scanning while I was out of town. There’s nothing wrong with it mechanically — it still faxes just fine using the same apparatus — but when I ask it to scan, it lies about there being no paper in the document feeder, and pretends not to remember that it can just scan the glass anyway.
So I try their email support first, because frequent interruptions don’t really matter with that. I get a reply a couple of days later with some things to try. None of them make any difference. I email back to tell them this. No response to that. A few days later, I email again. Still no response. So I call for support by phone.
I’ve had this thing less than nine months (even now, let alone when the problem first started three weeks ago), but they tell me it’s already “out of warranty” and that if I want support by phone (or by live online chat, as it turns out), I have to pay for it. I feel like I’m being fleeced. So I said I’d just wait for the email response. Still waiting.
Shoulda gone with a different brand. I believe I’ll avoid HP in the future.
My Wee Winnie
All Your LJ Icon Base Are Belong to Us
I watch a couple of icon communities, and I sometimes see something that puzzles me (like here, for example): A person posts a bunch of LJ icons that consist entirely of resizing and cropping someone else’s copyrighted stuff, then they turn around and insist that the icons can only be used under certain conditions.
Requesting to be credited makes at least a modicum of sense to me, even for a simple crop job like these; someone’s looking to promote their own journal, or even just looking for some recognition, fine. But the part about how they “are not bases” — and I assume what that means is that they don’t want folks to take one of these images and add text or modify it in some other way, then promote it as their own creation — is that not just the height of hypocrisy?
It bugs me a little every time I see it. I never bring it up, because it would undoubtedly generate some flames in response, and seem like I was picking on the individual and singling them out of the crowd. But I really just don’t understand how they rationalize this in their mind, I’m curious about that. I mean there are only two possibilities I can see: they’re oblivious, or they lack integrity. Am I missing some magical third explanation?