Smorgasbord #70

Rage Against The Machine | A Very Italian Date Night | Vertigo Is Not Fun

Feb 28, 2025

Rage Against The Machine

One of the hats I wear at home is IT support, which means I solve phone, modem, router, internet, TV, and printer issues. It was time to replace the ink cartridges in our printer, so I got to it. Mrs. Cantú, the supplies manager, handed me a box with the black, yellow, magenta, and cyan cartridges. The box also contained a funny-looking plastic contraption I assumed I would need later. Who needs instructions?

I opened up the printer and removed the old magenta cartridge. I got the new one out of the packaging and noticed it was slightly different. The main difference was that the old one had a chip on the bottom, and the new one didn’t. I reluctantly reached for the instructions and the funny-looking plastic contraption and figured out that this tool was meant to strip the chip from the old cartridge and stick it to the new one.

Upon further inspection, the funny-looking plastic contraption suddenly became a Spanish Inquisition torture tool for old ink cartridges to shave off the chip by pushing it through a sharp blade. And so, I turned the nob several revolutions until I saw the severed chip coming out on the other side. I retrieved it and stuck it in the new magenta cartridge.

I asked the supplies manager if she got generic/compatible ink cartridges instead of the name-brand ones that already have the chip, and she confirmed my suspicion. I appreciate the efforts to save money on supplies, but the design was silly. How much cheaper can generic/compatible cartridges be? Nobody knows. My labor is dirt cheap, so it doesn’t matter. Focus on the next problem.

I also tortured the old black ink cartridge and replaced it. It was time to print a status page and reap the fruits of my work. It is straightforward, right? Take the old cartridge out and plug in the new one; the printer is smart enough to know there is new ink. Print the page, done. However, the printer had other plans.

Even though new ink cartridges were installed, the printer didn’t recognize them as full ink cartridges and kept complaining that the ink levels for magenta and black ink were depleted and printed the status page on green and blue ink. Now I had a printer that knew how to act like it was depleted of black ink when I knew damn well the black ink was full. IT WAS RIGHT THERE.

A quick Google search made me feel better about my frustration with this machine. It turns out I’m another victim of Hewlett Packard’s evil plan to rob people of joy when dealing with office supplies. I quickly learned from past victims that the solution to my problem was to remove all the ink cartridges from the printer, turn it off, unplug it, wait ten minutes, offer a sacrifice to the printer deity, plug it again, turn it on, place the cartridges back and hope the printer would correctly read the levels of ink in all cartridges.

During those ten minutes I had to wait, I considered writing a letter to the Hewlett Packard team that worked on the OfficeJet Pro 8135e and giving them a piece of my mind. I abandoned my first draft, thinking their reply would be, "Did you buy the name-brand cartridges or generic/compatible ones?" My case would crumble like a sandcastle in the tide.

As the printer returned to life, I was on the edge of my seat. Would it work? Would I rage against the machine? I navigated to the part of the menu that shows the ink levels per color, and to my surprise, the magenta and black ink levels showed 100%. I proceeded to print a test page. It was flawless, crisp black letters on heavy-weight copy paper.

I compared the two status pages, the one with which my printer was auditioning for Julliard and the latest one. Even though I now have clear letters printed on paper, the printer is pretending not to know how to print ink levels on magenta and black, or maybe it’s just refusing to do so. You can win them all, I suppose. We’ll just have to wait and see until the coloring pages we print for the kiddos start fading. And maybe next time, we’ll stick to name-brand cartridges.

A Very Italian Date Night

I rarely crave pasta. I’ll demolish Neopolitan-style pizza or enjoy an antipasto salad any day of the week. But on Saturday, I was craving pasta carbonara. We were supposed to double-date with our friends, but one of them was not feeling well, so we had to take a rain check. The original plan was to use the reservation at this sushi place we like. However, once we got there, I looked at Mrs. Cantú and said: “I really would like carbonara.” She obliged.

We got back in the car and drove over to the Italian restaurant. We sat at the bar and saw that across from us was an older couple, maybe in their 70s. Mrs. Cantú looked at me and said: “That’ll be us in thirty years.” Also, there was no way they would finish the massive pizza in front of them. A bartender brought back a full Aperol Spritz and dumped it in the sink. “That feels criminal,” I said out loud without thinking. She explained that a younger girl had ordered it and didn’t like it. Oh, young people trying bitter aperitivo.

Mrs. Cantú ordered pasta with vodka sauce, and I made sure to tell our server that I was craving carbonara, and that’s why we were there. He assured me they had an excellent carbonara. I was going to be the judge of that. Even though the place was busy, our food came out relatively quickly.

In front of me was a plate of thick spaghetti in an off-white sauce made of eggs and cheese, with flecks of freshly crushed pepper. The bits of guanciale looked sumptuous and crisped to perfection. The plate was crowned with an egg yolk ready to be mixed in with the already rich sauce. I demolished that plate of pasta. It was glorious. It hit the spot just right.

The day before, I had heard of a gelato place nearby that imported its raw materials from Italy. The owner allegedly attended Carpigiani Gelato University in Bologna. What better way to end the night than with more rich food? Mrs. Cantú got Biscoff flavored gelato and I got stracciatella. Both were delicious.

Mr. and Mrs. Cantú having their first gelato as a married couple in Rome, Italy.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know that Mrs. Cantú and I go on a date every other week, and we highly recommend you do, too. Going out to dinner is not strictly necessary; sometimes, date night means getting takeout and watching a movie after the kids go to bed. Still, the benefit you get from time alone as a couple is well worth the effort to get a sitter and like I say, give yourself a chance to miss your children. I only say this half-jokingly.

Date your wife; be intentional. Make a list of restaurants you want to go to or movies you want to watch together. One day, the kids will leave, and it’ll just be the two of you. Make sure you know how to be a couple and not just be in parenting mode. Fight for your marriage; the world needs strong marriages. *puts soap box away*

It also helps if you find someone willing to change plans on the spot to satisfy your craving for carbonara.

Vertigo Is Not Fun

I wasn’t expecting to know as much as I know now about the vestibular system. A sensory system in the inner ear that controls balance, posture, and spatial orientation. It contains three semicircular canals that sense head and body movement. Tiny calcium carbonate crystals in the inner ear help us maintain our balance by sending signals to the brain about head movement. When these crystals become dislodged, it can cause dizziness and vertigo, a condition known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV).

Females are more prone to experiencing vertigo from BPPV, and the crystals can become dislodged by suddenly moving the head or sleeping funny. Mrs. Cantú suffers from this a couple of times a year, and usually, she can resolve it on her own by lying down or performing the Epley maneuver. However, lying down didn’t work on Monday; in fact, it made it worse, producing nausea and vomiting.

I took the two older boys to school, and when I came back, things hadn’t improved. I called a few friends who live close by in hopes of getting someone to watch the two younger kids while I took Mrs. Cantú to the ER. I took the kids to our friend’s home, returned home to pick up the patient, and headed to the hospital. The ER was packed. According to the nurses, Monday morning is always crazy.

I gained the admiration of the nurses checking Mrs. Cantú’s vitals when they asked if there was any chance she was pregnant, and I firmly responded no. Mrs. Cantú explained that I’m responsible for our NFP chart, which, judging by the nurse's reaction, is a coveted skill for males to have. Learn about NFP, boys.

We were called to the back fairly quickly, and I learned that the reason was that sometimes vertigo can be a sign of a stroke. That’s fun. A doctor rolled in and did a few tests on Mrs. Cantú, ruling out that possibility; a few minutes later, a nurse came to start an IV on the missus. She was able to get medication to control the nausea and deal with the dizziness.

It was close to 1:30 pm, and I agreed to pick up my two kiddos at the preschool where she was picking up her kid. She fed them lunch and had them play with kinetic sand; they had a blast. I took them home to change their clothes because it had gotten hotter that day. I had also been texting with another one of our friends who offered to watch our kids in the afternoon, for which I was very thankful. So I drove over to their home and headed back to the hospital.

Mrs. Cantú was feeling better and had arranged for a third friend of ours to take the two older boys to her home after school. Once done with everything, I would pick them up. As I got back in the room, an occupational therapist was about to start several maneuvers to see if BPPV was what they were dealing with. She put a contraption over Mrs. Cantú’s eyes that recorded her eye movement while performing the maneuvers. A sign of BPPV is eye movement while moving the head in various directions. There were no signs of BPPV the two times she tried the maneuvers, which was unsatisfying. It could’ve been that the nausea medication was helping or that the problem had already been resolved by shifting positions and the crystals returning to normal.

We were waiting for the doctor to discharge her; it was around 3:00 pm at this point, and I was hungry. Mrs. Cantú was feeling better and urged me to get some food. I had a tuna salad on a spinach wrap that was good for having been prepared at the cafe inside a hospital. The missus got discharged while I was finishing my meal, and we met at the cafe. We picked up the two younger kids; I dropped them off at home and went to pick up the boys.

Our friend got hand-me-downs from a neighbor so the boys wouldn’t have to wear their school uniforms all afternoon. She fed them, entertained them, and washed their school uniforms. She also sent lasagna home so we could feed everyone dinner. Another friend of ours dropped off pizza. I felt overwhelmed by the love our friends were showering us with.

For not having family close to us, it was clear that God had given us a solid community that rallied around us and showed up when we needed them. I even called a couple of our friend's moms, whom we call “honorary grandmas,” they texted me throughout the day asking how we were doing, saying they were praying for us and asking if we needed anything.

I am grateful I have a job that allows me to take time off to care for my wife. I know not everyone has that luxury. I’ve been going to the Adoration Chapel almost every day this week, and I can’t stop blabbering about how thankful I am for everything He gives us. It was scary and stressful but a good opportunity to trust more profoundly in His Divine Providence. God can’t be outdone in generosity.

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Sobremesa

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
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What are you thankful for today?