For my final trick this week, I’ll give network printing a try. I’m on the porch, and I want a direct network connection from my Snapdragon/Windows 11 laptop to the Epson ET-2985 downstairs in the office. Without it being a shared device within the Windows laptop that has a USB connection to the printer.
That seemed to work. Is the printer available within the free imaging software I like to use?
Yes it is! Now I’ll scurry down to the office and see if the picture printed.
It did. Success!
This blogaroo will turn 20 on September 5. I’d been thinking about calling it quits then, but I’ve decided to keep going until Trump is out of office. Whether or not he has served out his full second term.
Over at News From Mark Evanier, he’s been talking about the soon to end Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
The New York Times — for those of you who can pass beyond its paywall — has an interview with David Letterman about the end of The Late Show and this essay by critic Jason Zinoman about what it all means to us.
A NYTimes subscription comes with ten paywall-free links to share within each $30 4-week billing cycle.
Here’s the Letterman interview:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/arts/television/david-letterman-stephen-colbert-the-late-show-cbs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g1A.9HWa.Q4Wa9-umbW4Q&smid=url-share
The Zinoman essay:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/arts/television/stephen-colbert-the-late-show-carson-letterman-leno.html?unlocked_article_code=1.g1A.SPFI.jUV67jIQBu1P&smid=url-share
I could never deny being an obsessive fiddler with settings. I’m playing with every possible way of adjusting the Epson scanner. The automatic setting does some things almost as well as the Canon did.
The processing on this scan is bright and de-screened, while effectively reducing the yellowing of the paper. The problem is a sharpening filter was added, and I really dislike that.
Enlarge this image and you can see there are ridges around everything, including the lettering. If I could disable that, I’d be pleased with this quality. Yeah, I know. Picky, picky, picky.
This is how it looks with only de-screening.
Here’s another insufferable explanation of further technical curiosity. I continue to run on the Verizon-supplied G3100 Wi-Fi router for gigabit internet service. Despite my concerns about security, I like being able to check on it from my phone.
Which I did yesterday, when the Epson ET-2985 unexpectedly spit out a piece of paper. Telling the printer in a commanding voice, “Eat your own output!” I have scanned the page.
Signal strength fair? Uh, the router and the printer are only six feet apart in the home office. Pulling out my phone and running the Verizon Home app, I saw the Epson printer was on the 2.4 GHz network. My best guess was the router, which is set to automatically move devices between Wi-Fi channels, must have kicked it off the 5 GHz network for some reason.
As I was looking at that, the app suddenly said the router was offine. Yikes. Yeah, it bounces itself every so often. That’s another complaint I have. I’ve seen error messages in the router’s log in the past that had me chasing down a possible bug in the firmware, but this time I didn’t see the error.
The time was near midnight, so maybe Verizon was running a maintenance routine. What’s interesting to me was the way the printer provided a warning of router trouble.
After everything had settled down, the router’s Wi-Fi signal strength was, as expected, excellent. But note that the printer’s DHCP-assigned IP address changed from .213 to .253. Renewal of .213 must have failed for some reason. Perhaps it wasn’t attempted. I’ll see what I can find in the router’s DHCP log.
The results are here from my third and final time wearing a heart monitor since the ablation fifteen months ago. The test report summary says “normal” and “100% Non-AFib.”
There were quite a few instances during sleep when my pulse dropped as low as 42 bpm. Another effect of being a former marathon runner. Which was also the likely cause of the persistent AFib I no longer have.
A slow heart rate isn’t always a concern. For example, a resting heart rate between 40 and 60 beats a minute is common in some people, particularly healthy young adults and trained athletes. It also is quite common during sleep.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/bradycardia/symptoms-causes/syc-20355474
