Update on the Printers

September 07, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So basically after I had decided that the ML-2250 was going to be best for Kathy I ended up having to wait until the following day to make the order. And in that time newegg lowered the price of the ML-2010 $20 to $109 (sale still going until 5:30pm tonight). And then there's the $50 mail-in rebate, so really it's a laser printer for $60. That's crazy.

So I bought two.

Well, I ordered one for Kathy, and then because the price was so hard to pass up I decided it was time for me to enter the ranks of those who own printers.

Just to mix things up, though, I ordered one from Amazon and one from newegg, since they both had the same deal going. I figured it to be a little bit of a race to see which would show up first. Neither has shipped yet, but they should today or tomorrow.

Pricing Printers

September 05, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I'm looking into printers for Kathy, since her Epson still refuses to play nicely with Linux (even though the model is supposed to be compatible). She's decided that she doesn't really need color, which means I get to look into black and white lasers. Kathy prints a lot of papers, so I think in the long run the cost savings from laser will be substantial.

I hadn't realized until today, though, just how cheap black and white lasers had become. One really tempting option is the Samsung ML-2010, which newegg has for $79 ($129 minus $50 mail-in rebate). It's not at all a bad looking printer, and like all the Samsung lasers I've seen it includes Linux drivers in the box, but I'm thinking that we'll probably end up going with the Samsung ML-2250, which newegg carries for $148 ($168 minus $20 "instant savings"). The difference is in toner capacity -- the 2010 lists 3000 pages, while the 2250 lists 5000. Both toner cartridges are roughly the same price, in the $70 range.

The ML-2250 also supports adding a network card and Postscript support if you want to do so later on. That's not a consideration for Kathy, but it's something I'm a big fan of. These prices make me want to finally buy a printer. Well, a good printer... I've had a Lexmark z43 sitting under my bed for the last year, but I'm over having to fight inkjets.

Good Ol' tc

August 30, 2005 by Eric Richardson

For the last few years I've run the USC waterski team. This year I've finally acknowledged that I'm way too busy to do a good job at that and have passed it off to someone else. I still have a good number of connections to the team, though, one of which is the fact that the mailing list still runs off my email server.

That just sort of dawned on me tonight when the new president sent out an email to the list that had 4mb of attachments. Or rather I should say he's still sending it, since qmail-qread shows it about 50/50 between done and not done for the list's 350 or so members.

Each time something like this happens I have to refigure out how to set up traffic shaping. Today the answer was to rate limit traffic destined for port 25 (SMTP) to 300kbit. :

sudo /sbin/tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:1 \
classid 1:12 htb rate 200kbit ceil 300kbit prio 0;
sudo /sbin/tc qdisc add dev eth0 parent 1:12 \
handle 12: sfq perturb 1; 
sudo /sbin/tc filter add dev eth0 protocol ip \
parent 1:0 pref 2 u32 match ip dport 25 0xfffe \
flowid 1:12

I have no clue if that's the proper way to do it, but it's working. My pings have gone from 1200ms back down to a more fun 80 - 100ms.

A Little Pleasure Riding

August 28, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I took a fun little 17.5 mile ride tonight. I initially thought I was heading to Griffith Park, but then plans changed and I decided to do a loop up through Silver Lake. I had to make some funny turns to avoid Sunset Junction, but all in all I was happy with how it worked out.

Actually I think there's a little mistake in that map... I'm pretty sure I went past Hoover on Santa Monica, took the right on Manzanita, took a left on Del Mar, and then a right on Hyperion. That took me back down to Hoover.

Like I said, I really didn't have a plan for this one...

CA Says PA OK

August 25, 2005 by Eric Richardson

A couple weeks ago I went to get a California driver's license and was told I had an outstanding ticket in Pennsylvania. That was news to me, and to PA. Turns out it really wasn't even true. I finally got around to calling CA's Problem Driver Pointer System office and a nice lady there reran the query. To paraphrase, "I looked at it, and that's not you." So now my license will be printed within 24 hours and I'll get it whenever the mail chooses to deliver it.