In case I have to do this again (or if anyone else out there might find use of this) I am posting it here. These are the steps for setting the Canon Pixma MP495 on a Debian or Debian based system. I am running Debian Squeeze (kernel 2.6.32-5-686) at the moment and did not have to tweek anything.

UPDATE: After installing this on Ubuntu 11.10 (kernel 3.0.0-12-generic) I installed the drivers below on my 64 bit system and it works great.

1. Download these files: cnijfilter-mp495series-3.40-1-deb.tar.gz and scangearmp-mp495series-1.60-1-deb.tar.gz
2. Place these files in their own directory. Extract them (tar -xvf *.gz)
3. Install your respective .deb packages found within the extracted folders, inside the packages directory (dpkg -i *i386.deb). In all there are four packages that need to be installed.
4. Change the SSID of your wifi router to BJNPSETUP.
5. Activate wifi on the printer by hitting the “maintenance button” 13 or 14 times… until you see a character that looks like a capital “G” without the horizontal line. Then press the color start button.
6. Find out the IP of your printer by viewing the list of clients that are connected to your router. The IP address of the printer seemed to be automatically assigned by the router.
7. Open your web browser and type in the IP address of the printer.
8. Change the SSID to whatever SSID you want the printer to connect to. Hit “Okay” at the top.
9. Change your SSID back to whatever you set the printer to look for.
10. Print a test page… and if it worked you’re done!

NOTE: scangearmp (actually none of the apps) was not added to my Application menu. You’ll have to create a launcher and add it to your menu yourself, if you want.

    If you want to know how to set this up on OSX, follow the instructions on the disk.

    This is when I decided to contact the person at xabc@gmail.com by email. Unfortunately, the email I sent was also delivered to me!

    After I was about to post this on the Gmail forums, I noticed a related post of someone with a similar problem. The answer to that post stated that Gmail does not allow the creation of accounts with similar usernames, that include periods. There must be another variation of characters A-Z, 0-1 and/or underscores for you to create an account. So if someone wanted my email address, the closest they could get would be something like: x.abc1@gmail.com.

    My favorite part! Gmail also delivers any emails to you that contain your username, with any combination of periods in it. Here’s are a couple of examples of addresses that would be delivered to me:

x.a.bc@gmail.com
x.ab.c@gmail.com
xa.bc@gmail.com
…etc…

    This has been added to the list of things I like about Gmail. My number one favorite thing is that the inbox storage space is growing each second and no one knows when (or if) it will ever stop growing. Right now it is at 7539.223993 Mega Bytes (~7.3GB), which is beyond what most of us would ever need or use. Gmail has changed email!

    Another reason I like Google: wave.google.com. This project will be discontinued soon but has been made opensource and available to anyone who is interested in using it on their own server: www.waveProtocol.org. If you are into web devlopment / design by hobby or trade, this is worth looking into.

    The past few days I have been working on our store’s new catalog. In the process, I have been learning how to use QuarkXPress. Rachel really wants to be in the catalog but all of the photos that are being used are my “re-editions” of stock photos from the manufacturer. My plan is to sneak her face into a wave or her reflection, in the eye of a fish. Either way, I am going to be editing some photos at home to add some extra fingers and other oddities which tend to only be noted subconsciously. That is what I like to consider my signature.

    One of my youngest friends, Noraa, showed me some tricks for keeping my tomato plants healthy… it was amazing. At first, I had a twerpy plant, then I applied his advice and pulled off some useless branches. BOOM, in a couple of days the tomatoes were growing faster and the plant grew one-third, larger! Thanks Norra!
    On another garden note, I planted some cucumbers and once they get a little bigger then seedling size, they take off! Every now and then I go out to make sure they are not strangling any of the other plants. Cucumbers are a vine plant. For about 4 days, I left them to themselves and they are taking up almost half the garden! There are a lot of flowers, lets hope we have enough warmth in the year to get some produce! If I get a lot, everyone is going to get a cold cucumber in the mail!

And how do you like that, Spartan!?

    For years, I had run Watchtower Library in Linux. It took a lot of messing around. You had to know what you were doing to get it to work. It took using odd Bash commands and some tweeking of Wine. When I found out Macs were now using Certified Unix, I really wanted one. When I sat down to install Watchtower Library I thought it would be just as much trouble as in Linux but it isn’t! A brother out there created an automatic installer that makes it so anyone can install it!

    It is easy to install. Instructions can be found on the website but all you have to do is follow the prompts. Everything can be found at wtlib4mac.royratcliffe.me.uk.

UPDATE: I was notified a few days ago that since it is the same version of Wine used in Mac OSX and Linux it works on both very well!

    It seems like everyone wants to get out on a trip. The other day, I was with a big car group. There were three families in the car, besides me. They had all moved out of the state to nice warm places and moved back! The women all talked about how crazy they were for doing it. Then everyone turned their focus on me and called me crazy for never leaving. They said I’m young and full of vigor, that I should have moved somewhere warm since I could. They told me they were happy to have Rach and me in the Hall, despite the fact that we were crazy for staying in this frigid state.

    There is one less suit I can wear to meetings until I sew the button back on the pants. I sat down and it shot off inside my jacket like a bouncy ball in a box. What shock! One thing that has been getting me out and exercising is Geocaching. It involves GPS and hidden "treaure." Well, it is moreso the thrill of the hunt. It is like a worldwide hide and seek game where you hide containers with nearly worthless loot in them. It is a good way to get out and explore places you might not otherwise go. I have gone for a few hikes this winter to Geocache. At the begnining of the winter I went out into the middle of a lake and started a fire. It was great.

    In the picture on the left (click to enlarge) I was the only one who had been out there since it snowed. There were no tracks on the lake or trail when I went out. After assessing the lake, I determined where the center of the lake was, the best I could. There was a wealth of dry wood around, so I dragged out as much as I could and burned it all, had some coffee and a sandwich. Then after a while had some brandy. There must be some way of convincing Rach to join me on these types of expeditions.

    If anyone is up for winter camping let me know. KC and I are definitely going to give it a shot sometime soon it will be fun. We will fish, eat, have a fire, maybe have a few drinks and camp out like the olden days… except we will have high quality synthetic materials to keep us warm and probably use a lighter to start the fire… drive to the location in a heated car and sleep in the frozen woods for no reason but to have fun.