IF.............YOU MIGHT BE A REDNECK

OK, I admit it...I, me, I am the one, I am a redneck! A good share of my dad's life was spent as a mechanic in the bus garage at school supporting his family. I never had any idea that we might have not had a whole lot of money. We always had what we needed and much of what we wanted. My parents taught me how to shop, cut corners, and make do. One of my favorite shopping places today and I always go to that place each time I am in town is Good Will, a thrift store. A friend at church says she buys her clothing at G.W. Fashions. I, in fact, was there yesterday and found my POT OF GOLD AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW. I brought home a large shopping basket FULL of yarn!

Back to todays subject: I have two printers connected to my computer.
Both were free to me for different reasons. One came with my computer when I bought it. It is a Lexmark. It works well and is a satisfactory machine. The second is a Brother and it was free with points I earned with my Wells Fargo Credit Card.
Since I pay off my credit card completely each month, it IS totally free.
It is a very nice machine. It copy's. It prints. It scans. It faxes.
Since I no longer have a land line, the fax is now usless to me.
The thing that really frustrates me about the Brother machine is that is will NOT print when just one cartridge is out of ink. If one color of the Lexmark is out of ink I can make it print in a color that is still available. NOT SO FOR THE BROTHER! MAKES ME MAD!
If only one color is missing, it refuses to print at all. MAD! MAD! MAD!

Redneck mind kicks in:

In the picture following you will see the results. I have this old huge hypodermic needle
that was given to me by vet many years ago for the purpose of oiling my great
grandmothers kitchen clock.

Redneck mind says:

I bet you can fool that silly printer by injecting the cartridge with water. It worked. Of course, since the yellow cartridge is filled with water the printer no longer prints the colors it is supposed to, but I print mostly in black anyway. I am no artist, no business person and the printers are just for my entertainment and personal use. If it will print the information I need to store, no matter the color, it works for me.

Redneck mind still working says:

Hey, how about trying food coloring. Much less expensive than printers ink.

Mentioning this to MAJOR SKEPTIC BB who says, with a knowing smile on his face,
Let me know how that works out .

Picture for your enjoyment of MAJOR SKEPTIC BABY BROTHER.


Fry's Grocery Story has one of the larger bottles of food dye. Safeway only had the teeny,
one drop at a time size. I have a card from Fry's that gives me money off on many
things in the store. I bought the bottle for one dollar and sixty nine cents. Injected the yellow dye into the cartridge,
after sucking out the water with the hypodermic needle, and VOILA! It worked.
If you do that, be sure you seal the hole into which you inject the dye or it will all leak out all
over the computer. I think I remember that happening one time several years ago when
I was refilling ink cartridges with the on the market ink refillers. I used Stickytack.
AT least that is what they used to call it years ago. It is a sticky substance kinda like
childrens clay. It won't dry out like clay and is used to put posters and such on your wall
and will not harm the wall. I bought Rubber Cement to use but the Stickytack worked so
well with the water injection that I just put it back in place after filling it with the food dye.

I have no idea of the permanency of the Redneck ink. I printed out some words in yellow,
kinda brownish yellow and the picture of my cat sitting in the late afternoon sun, all
yellowish-y, and it worked.


Co-incidentally, while I was out and about yesterday, I stopped in at the Honey Baked Ham store
and bought a sandwich. They had a small free paper there to pick up and read called:
EXPLORER...The Voice of Marana, Oro Valley and Northwest Tucson. In it was an article
written by a man called James Sandefer and his article was entitled Simplicity is bliss after
retirement. It was an amusing article to read while eating my sandwich. He mentions the price
of computer ink...and if you think that stuff is over priced, printer ink tops the list of all-time most
expensive semi-essential products selling at approximately $10,000 per gallon if you calculate the
amount of ink actually contained in one of those little print cartridges.