• May 15, 2008

    High cost food isn't worth it

    Last night, my wife and I went out to dinner at a nice restaurant. My sister had given me a gift card for my birthday, so we decided to use it. It was one of those restaurants where each entrée was over $25. Before we went, I kind of had a feeling I wouldn't be impressed as I'm usually underwhelmed when we spend a lot of money on meals; the quality is only OK and the portions leave me very hungry. This place was no exception; to top it off, I had to fork over a nice chunk of change on top of the gift card to cover the meal.

    Why do restaurants think they can charge so much and deliver so little value? There is one nice restaurant we go to where the portions aren't that big, but the food is excellent. Maybe I just expect a good value for my meals.

  • May 15, 2008

    I feel so dirty

    I decided to purchase an EPSON scanner to maybe workaround issues with their drivers and ReceiptWallet. I have an old Perfection 1250, but the drivers aren't universal binaries and I wanted to give EPSON a fighting chance to make it back on my list of acceptable scanners. So I saw that Fry's had a few on sale and purchased the EPSON CX9400. I feel so dirty purchasing the scanner as I've said so many bad things about EPSON. I unpacked the scanner and said "oh, this is a pretty scanner". My wife laughed at me as I described a printer as "pretty". It looks well made and it might replace my old HP OfficeJet 6110xi for faxing and copying.

    I installed the drivers from EPSON's site (I chose this model as it is current and has Intel native drivers) and away I went (the download was only about 20 MB vs HP's 100+ MB). I started up Image Capture and was pleased to see that Apple's TWAIN Bridge let me use the ICA scanning dialog instead of the EPSON dialog. Next I tried ReceiptWallet. It scanned on the first try, but crashed on the second try. Wow, that's what people have been telling me. The crash clearly looks like it is in the driver, but I'll take a stab at working around it as it will help many ReceiptWallet users. In addition, if ICA works acceptably, I might turn that back on as an option in ReceiptWallet. The TWAIN UI for the EPSON scanner still looks like crap, but if it works, then ReceiptWallet users may be happy.

  • May 15, 2008

    Taxing those that can't do math

    The latest attempt at getting out of California's budget problems is to increase marketing of the lottery. Someone once told me that the lottery is for those that can't do math as the odds of winning a substantial payout are astronomical. So the state is hoping that those that can't afford to spend money on the lottery buy more lottery tickets. I'm not saying that those that can afford it don't play, but my gut tells me that many of those that do play can't really afford it, but hope that just the next ticket will be the big one (it never is). What a brilliant plan; I'm once again impressed my our government.

    My partial solution (not just to the state's money problem, but all government money problems) is to tax each person that has served an elected office for each year that he served. Some amount, like $10,000, would be a start. Those in office currently or in the past got us into the mess that we're in now. I'm sure that this will go over real well with the politicians. This won't solve everything, but it may make politicians think twice before wasting our tax dollars.

  • May 14, 2008

    Collecting scanners

    Yesterday I placed an order for my competitor's scanner. Why did I do this? I have no interest in looking at their software; I want to try out their scanner driver and make ReceiptWallet work with the scanner so that users can switch to ReceiptWallet. That got me thinking about my collection of scanners and what I need to add to it.

    • Fujitsu ScanSnap 5110 EOXM
    • DocketPORT 465
    • Pentax DSMobile 600 (currently at Apple)
    • IRISScan Express (sitting in the original box)
    • EPSON Perfection 1250
    • HP OfficeJet 6110xi

    So when I add my competitor's scanner, that will total 7 scanners. I need to get a newer EPSON (one that has Intel native drivers) as well as a newer HP. While I still don't recommend EPSON or HP scanners, I can at least try to make them work better.

    Do I really want all these scanners? No, but in order to make ReceiptWallet more compatible with a wide variety of scanners (many with broken drivers), I have to add to my collection.