The Real Sentinel, Frustration with Printers, Cars and 24 Hours of no Internet 200429

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
Wireless Printer War This reporter rarely needs to print something over the wireless network, but yesterday I had a document I needed to print. I had the printer working over a month ago, but yesterday the Canon TS-3300 decided to take a few days off duty, without permission. I worked for 4 hours trying to get it to work. Every hour I had the inclination to walk the printer over to the dumpster and make a deposit. I overcame that desire until late evening and by then I was mentally and physically exhausted and did not have the strength to take the printer for a short, one-way walk. This morning, after 6 cups of my delicious coffee I decided to try again. I was out to the end of my rope after another hour of sheer frustration. Before I did, I pulled out an old USB printer cable, plugged it in and BAM! The printer started printing the document, 4 times without stopping. I had done that last night 3 times and got nothing! Computers and printers can lead to mental illness.	My Ford This column should bring some comments from my Ford hating, Chevy loving friends. I would imagine things like this: What did you expect from a Ford? Get a Chevy and you won't have those problems. Buy a Ford and you deserve what you get. That aside, it was the first year for the Power Shift Transmission and there were some problems with the transmission. The seals around the dual clutch system did not do their job. I had it into the shop two times to change out those seals (dealer did it under warranty) so there was no cost to me. The current seals have been in there for several years now and are operating well. There was a class action suit filed against the company that was supposed to settle in October 2017, with a nice payout, but Ford has their lawyers and they got things set back and a lesser payout. They also now require more paperwork on the repairs than any normal person would have saved. I do have some and hope the dealership put all the information on the repairs in the paperwork. I don't have high hopes at this point, so wish me a little luck, if you will.	If The Virus And Stay In Place Wasn't Bad Enough Yesterday my internet stopped working! I thought Oh No! I just sent the router on loan from our west coast bureau chief back to him after I bought my own router. I began my troubleshooting routine, wondering if my new router had quit. We had no internet, no TV because it is all streaming in our new location. After several troubleshooting steps, I plugged my high-speed Cat-6 cable from out wall outlet directly to my laptop and no signal was available. I called the streaming service and a nice woman there told me they had a widespread outage due to some building contractor cutting the fiber-optic cable used to distribute signals to multiple areas all around us and to we ourselves. I was relieved that it was not my equipment and breathed a sigh of relief. I am an internet guy, with hours every day writing, reading and watching things on the net. Apparently the contractor was not following the state law that requires contractors and citizens to call and have underground utilities marked before any digging goes on.