John Hesch

“It is well to give when asked but it is better to give unasked, through understanding.”

Kahlil Gibran

I have an Epson Stylus CX5400 printer that I use for color printing and scanning in photos. The majority of my printing takes place on my HP LaserJet 6L. For several months I failed to get my ink cartridges for the Epson refilled and so it sat, with the power turned off.

Last week I purchased new cartridges but now I can’t get the printer to print. It acts like the printer heads are clogged with dried ink. I have performed a ton of head cleaning jobs through the printer control panel, and now I can get some black ink on paper, but it’s no where close to working properly.

Does anyone know how I can get the jets to open up? I read that if I left the printer on overnight and then try again with head cleaning it should loosen up, but so far…no good.

I wanted to install a new WordPress plugin this evening but I kept getting a curl_init() error. I took this to mean that my copy of PHP was not compiled with Curl support. So I did what any system admin would do and recompiled ¹ PHP with Curl support. As usual ², once I completed compiling PHP, I couldn’t get Apache to restart. There’s nothing like hitting one of my websites and being presented with a download prompt, because my browser wants to download the PHP page rather than display it. That would be because Apache didn’t fire back up.

Well, after what seemed like an eternity I finally recompiled Apache and PHP without Curl support. Everything is now back in order. And goodbye Adsense Logger, you looked to be a pretty cool plugin.

1. I recompiled Apache too which was probably not smart. I should of just recompiled PHP and left Apache alone but I’m too worried to try it again. [back]
2. I say “as usual” because at least 50% of the time where I need to mess with my server software something goes wrong and I have to spend hours trying to fix whatever went wrong. [back]

Ever want to see where the cell phone towers are located near you? Cell Phone Tower Search uses Google Maps to provide a graphical interface to see towers in your area.

Maren Ord has her new awesome music video, Life is a Train posted on her website. Be sure to check it out. There is even a low-speed version for all you laggards out there.

I released the WordPress 1.5+ theme called Pink Winter today. I also reorganized my Projects page, which now includes my current and past projects as well as my WordPress themes.

This is a fun little Google Logo Maker by Logogle.

I don’t get many Email’s from the younger crowd so when I do receive one I get pretty excited. Thank you Brooke!

Hi - I’m from FL and I’m 13 and I started listening to this station because all the music out today isn’t very good. It might sound strange, but just by listening I feel the spirit SO
much stronger and just feel happy on the inside, I just wanted to thank you for playing such good, spiritual music! It’s really wonderful! Thanks!

Last weekend Shelly, Josh and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp. I’m not much of a Johnny Depp fan but I did like him in Secret Window and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He’s currently filming the next Pirates movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.

I’m not sure what to think about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was weird, funny, enlightening (We learned about Willy Wonka’s childhood), and dark. I don’t think I’ve ever read the book, but I read that this version of the movie is more true to the book than the original version. Even though I thought Johnny Depp did a pretty good job, I think Gene Wilder was a lot funnier and more sinister. Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka seemed disturbed and odd.

Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Nicolas Cage and Michael Keaton were all considered for the role of Willy Wonka. Marilyn Manson also badly wanted the part.

I’ll probably buy the DVD when it comes out but I wouldn’t go see it again in the theater.

Yesterday we saw The Island. What a ride this movie was. Starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, The Island was non-stop action that kept me gripping the sides of my chair. The special effects were amazing and there was plenty of humor. I’m a huge fan of action/drama/thriller movies, and The Island is one of the better movies I’ve seen in this genre in a long time. It’s unfortunate that the writers felt it necessary to add one “F” word which, as with most bad language, was totally unnecessary. The violent and intense action scenes should of been plenty enough to get the coveted PG-13 rating. I will definitely buy this movie on DVD, but will edit the one word from my copy.

I will probably see this movie again in the theater. It was pretty awesome on the big screen.

Need a good laugh? Head over to Josh Penrod’s blog Amishrobot and read Damn You Thomas Edison.

I’ve had a new WordPress Theme sitting on my desktop for about six months now. I have been meaning to package it up for distribution but haven’t had the time. I worked on it this evening and I think it’s ready to release. I need to look it over once more, which I’ll do sometime on Friday.

In the meantime, here is a peak at the new theme. Pink Winter is an open source web design which I converted to a WordPress 1.5 theme.

There is a severe security threat with versions of GreaseMonkey prior to 0.3.5. If you’re running the popular Firefox extension, update now.

Due to frequent power surges this afternoon, presumably due to the heat, I am keeping KZION shut down for awhile. I don’t want to risk damage to the hardware. As soon as it appears my power company can get their act together, I will power up KZION. It is currently 111° F (44° C).

Sorry for the inconvenience.

KZION was offline today due to a power outage. St. George had a city wide power failure for about three hours on Saturday. I’m not sure if it was caused by the heat or not. We have been under a heat advisory all week as temperatures have soared to above 114 F (45 C) most of the week.

Luckily we have a basement and stayed fairly comfortable. Shelly, Josh and I were standing in line at the movies to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when the power surged a few times and than died. We may try to see the late movie this evening.

KZION is now back online.

Google has undergone a PageRank update. This site was upgraded from a PR4 to a PR5, and Planet LDS went from a PR4 to a PR5. All of my other sites remained the same.