Goldilocks and the three power adapters

Some time ago, I got an Agfa 1212 USB scanner from Freecycle. The owner claimed that it worked. Somehow I never got around to actually connecting it until today. I plugged in the USB connector and the power adapter, and nothing happened. I'd rather expected the plug-and-play (or plug-and-pray) magic to work, but nothing happened. I mean, the light went on in the front of the scanner, but that was all.

So I went to the Agfa site, and downloaded and installed the scanner software. I started it up, and the software kept insisting that no scanner was connected. So I sighed, and figured that the scanner was worth exactly what I paid for it, and disconnected everything. And then I looked at the power adapter. The scanner said it used 16VDC at .9-1.0 A. The adapter said it was 6 VDC.

Could this be the problem?

So I hauled out my bag of electronic gear, and went rummaging through for adapters. Turns out I have several 6 VDC ones. I found a higher value one that made the internal light on the scanner light up, but the software still insisted that the scanner wasn't connected. I found one that was 15VDC at 2.1 A, and had high hopes for that, but apparently it was too strong, since I got a nasty clicking noise when I removed it -- and it also didn't work.

I'd gone through the entire collection (I could have sworn I used to have an adjustable one, but couldn't find it), and was about to give up, at least until I made a visit to Radio Shack, when I thought of trying the adapters that were already in use. It turns out my Actiontec router's adapter is 12VDC at 1.2 A. And when I plugged that one in, the "Found new hardware" function started itself up, identified the scanner correctly, and in general did all the things it's supposed to do.

So I now have a functional scanner -- or I will when I go out and buy a dedicated adapter with the appropriate power levels, since I don't really want to have to lose Internet access in order to scan something. And I don't know if it really matters how far off the power numbers are, if it does work.

Murphy has it in for me

Yesterday morning's *splat* I already posted about.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to minnehaha's place to feed the cats. I did so, then went back to the car to go to dinner (I'd planned to try the new Chinese buffet at Penn and 494). The car wouldn't start. I think I've described the problem before; sometimes I turn the key and nothing happens except that the dashboard lights go on. It only happens when the car has been driven a while and then I return to the car to go somewhere else -- which means that it's most likely to happen when I'm not at home. I already had the neutral safety switch replaced, but that didn't fix the problem.

It was after 5 pm, so it was too late to call the garage and have the repair guy come over and look at it -- which he'd promised to do if he could so he could see the problem in action. So I waited 40 minutes to see if the car would start after a wait. It usually did. This time it didn't. I waited another 40 minutes. No luck. Then I walked to Fresh Wok and had dinner, and walked back. Still no luck. By this time it was 9 pm or so. I went back into minnehaha's place to wait. I gave it one more hour, and tried again. Still no start. I intended to try again in an hour, but I guess I dropped off, because I woke up at 4 am with the start of a nasty headache. It was still dark out, so I didn't go out to check the car.

I fell asleep again, and woke up at 6 am with a really impressive headache. This time, the car started. I made it home, swallowed a couple of ibuprofen, and got a couple more hours' sleep. The headache finally subsided enough to function, but I didn't go exercise today.

Then Visi.com had a problem with outgoing mail, which meant that nothing I sent was getting through, though I could receive mail okay. That finally resolved itself around midday.

This afternoon, as I was typing away on my computer, my monitor (Hitachi 21-inch CRT) went wonky. All of a sudden, there was no white, just orange and green, and all fuzzy. I played with it a bit, but it didn't respond to either degaussing or restarting. Given that it's going on ten years old, I assume it just died the death that computer equipment sometimes does.

I hauled out my old 17-inch monitor, and managed to lug it into the office with the help of my office chair (on wheels). I couldn't budge the old monitor, so I set it up in what would normally be my working area. Plugged everything in, and got nothing but eye-hurting flicker. Oh, right; it probably can't deal with 1600x1200 resolution, or whatever I was using. I plugged in the Hitachi again, and managed to persuade the orange-and-green blurs to bring the screen resolution down to 1024x780. Then I plugged in the other monitor. It's working, bar a couple of exciting moments where I discovered that it really didn't like the screen resolution I set it to and insisted on dying if I did that, until I turned it back on again.

I believe I've found a screen resolution both of us can live with, and Counterpane is sending me a 19-inch flat screen monitor to replace the dead one, so things should be better soon.

But I just wonder what else is going to go wrong today. I'm heading out to feed the minnehahas' cats, so a rerun of yesterday is entirely possible, though that would be exceedingly unimaginative of Murphy.