Journaling June - Day 12-13
13^th June 2026

Journaling June Day 12-13
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Today (12^th) was a busy day since I had a client to visit some distance away. I was expecting it to be a simple job, in fact so simple that I'd replied to her original e-mail (over a month ago) with some things she could try herself, to save her the expense of what seemed to me to be simply a blocked nozzle in her printer. It turned out she needed a new printer. She had replied to my e-mail to apologise for not being confident enough to try my suggestions, but when I got there it transpired that she had also contacted Epson and done "a few" head cleaning cycles. There was now a bunch of ink in the printer, on the ink pad, and on the rollers, and being picked up by the thick glossy paper she was using. I tried to clean things up but it made little difference, so off I went again to pick up a new printer for her. Her laptop was also lacking the latest Windows 11 updates, so I set that to work while I popped out [it turns out the latest version of Windows 11 wont quite fit on an 8GB memory stick #bloat]. In all the job took a few hours - so much for a simple head-clean, but I enjoyed the drive. Plus, I'm now back up to having three printers in my collection...

The view from my client's office.

I grabbed some groceries on the way home and then called round to my mum's house to collect the wood she had offered me. I took measurements with me of what I needed for the shelves I was thinking of creating. As I pulled into the narrow lane near her house there was a truck coming that was towing a trailer so I prepared to back out of the lane for him, but just then another car turned in behind me. He was some distance away and I saw him immediately start to back out like I was doing. I glanced forward to check which way the truck might be wanting to go, so that I could back out the opposite way. I looked round the corner to back out, kind of observing that the other guy had by now moved out of the junction the other way, but in that split second as I was about to turn out, I caught sight of the front of his car right next to the side of mine... like wtf was he still doing there, and sat in my blind spot! There was barely two inches between the front of his car and the side of mine, yet I managed to squeeze out of the junction past him, annoyed that I'd pretty much almost backed into him. As I looked up at him I saw he was sat there on his phone, oblivious to what had been a near miss. It was like he'd backed up by what he'd considered to enough, and then grabbed his phone to do something on it (check directions, or a message? who knows) while I got on with my maneuver. Like, if someone was backing up in front of me, I would be watching them. It was all quite odd, and still had me irked the next day as I recounted this.

Anyway, I got to where I was heading without a scrape and got on with sawing wood and loading it into my car (right).

It amuses me to have little car missions like this. I remember one time with a compact car I had, the guy at the recycling centre being amazed at how much I'd managed to strategically pack into it, because of how long it had taken us to offload it all. Or the time I helped my sister move house and there was barely enough room for me to change gears with all of the stuff that surrounded me. I employed this knack when I used to work at a supermarket on the checkouts where we had to load the groceries into the customer's trolley/cart beside us as we scanned them; I had regulars coming specifically to me with their weekly shop because of just how good I was at stacking things, not only swiftly, but in the right order - like all of the cans and sturdy stuff at the bottom, and squishy stuff like bread on top. I do the same to this day when I do my own big shop and it's amusingly satisfying.

Back at home and a new gadget had arrived...

This is palm-sized...

Back in the 90s it was the thing to have one of these personal organisers, but it's now amusing to me how pointless they feel. Yet this one came up cheap, considering it still has its original box and user manual. That manual, I came to realise, is essential.

The organiser I had back in the 90s was a later model to this and I don't remember having any particular problems using it. But this Casio is an early version from the 80s; quite an impressive piece of kit back in the day, and stupidly expensive. Like mine in the 90s with its 128K cost £50 and was a big Christmas present. But for the Casio to be from the 80s with half the RAM, must have cost £000s.

Anyway, I checked the unit over as it had been supplied with batteries installed (I wanted to make sure there was no sign of any leakage, and there wasn't). The time wasn't set correctly so I had to try and figure out how to do that... and jeez it was complicated. Reading the manual from Casio gave the impression that the unit would have good time-keeping precision so I thought I would set an alarm for the morning... that took another half hour of trial-and-error-button-pressing, head scratching, and flicking through the manual, where every process involves a specific and archaic sequence of button presses.

While the unit is currently frustrating to use, I realise it's largely down to being a "difference way of doing things". Modern devices are generally "intuitive" and have a common, and therefore, familiar interface (not to mention often being touch screen and utilizing an app). This Casio is from a different era and I can appreciate that my brain just isn't grasping the process. This is intriguing me, like being faced with all of the buttons on a scientific calculator; not having the foggiest idea of what they're all about, but wanting to know. So, I want to get to grips with this Casio organiser, and become that suave person I would have looked at in awe as a child, coolly inputting things into my neat gadget, like a man of the future... whilst being stuck in the past!