EPSON, grumble, grumble, grumble

This weekend I finally had a chance to sit down with the EPSON CX9400 I picked up on Thursday. After hours upon hours of attempting to debug ReceiptWallet and figure out the problem, I finally came up with a workaround. It appears that the EPSON TWAIN data source doesn't close a few of its resources when the data source is closed. Then when the data source is opened again lots of stuff has taken place since the last scan potentially causing the data source to lose track of its resources (or maybe Carbon doesn't like trying to open the same resource more than once by the same plugin). In any case, I worked around this by not closing the data source for any EPSON scanner. I really, really dislike this solution, but I went through a lot of my code and tried removing chunks to see if they caused the issue and then eventually discovered that if I started a scan, closed the scan, then showed the thumbnail view (I normally show the list view), it would crash. So all the code I tested to see if it caused the crash really led me no where.

So, this proves to me (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the EPSON scanner driver is a piece of junk and causes lots of problems for ReceiptWallet users.

While I'm beating on EPSON, I decided to grab a screenshot of their latest user interface. This is 2008, not 2000 when I bought my last EPSON scanner. Can we at least get the buttons to be nice OS X buttons and use fonts that don't look like crap? This UI is completely unacceptable; it's kind of interesting that the Apple store doesn't sell any EPSON scanners or all-in-one devices (at least the online Apple store).

I recommend that Mac users stop buying EPSON devices (unfortunately I had to buy one to test) until EPSON decides to spend some money and fix the drivers. They are in such sorry shape, it isn't even funny.

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.

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.

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.