A New Printer & Blogging

Well, as you can see, I'm still here, blogging. I wanted to put something up yesterday, but ended up too tired when I actually had the time. I've spent the week cleaning out my office, catching up on email, going to jury duty, rereading Assassin's Quest and taking notes, researching printers and then buying a new one.... That was cool, because after I'd gone online to consumersearch.com and found out that Canon was the hands-down best brand according to the reviews, I went to my local Office Max to see if they had the model I was interested in and there was a guy there who actually knew something! I was amazed. Not only did he know lots about the model I wanted and the one I ended up buying, but he also explained why I had so much trouble with my HP.

For one thing, front paper loaders that have to fold the paper around the rollers as it's moved through the machine just don't work well for envelopes or heavier stock. I went through probably five envelopes for every one I actually got to print out right. Also, HP is known not to have reliable software for getting the labels and so forth to line up properly. Again, I don't know how many labels I wasted trying to get the thing to print right, and even when I found a combination that seemed to work, the next time it wouldn't. It was awful. I think it was a combination of the front loading/roller issue and the flaky software.

Another thing I like about what I got (Canon Pixma MP530) is that it has single ink cartridges for each color so you don't have to throw out the whole cartridge when only one color has gone dry. At least I like it all now, on paper. We'll see when I get the thing and try to use it.

Anyway, I ended up ordering it from Amazon, my first time to do anything like that. It's supposed to come this week.

As for the blog, after last week's post, I got several emails from readers asking me not to stop, that it wasn't marketing, but ministering. I have long thought of the blog more as a ministry than a marketing tool -- I never really intended it to be a marketing thing when I began it, actually. But when you dabble your toe in the water, you suddenly find there is this entire system under the waves: almost a force that urges you to read other blogs and comment on them so they'll comment on yours, to link to others so that your own will get linked to and noticed, the need to write appropriately interesting copy so that it will get popular, the idiotic fixation on "Did I get any comments?" that sets in, etc... That part was killing me. If I can keep all that at bay, and keep my thinking from going off into "ooh! that would be a good blog post!" when I'm supposed to be concentrating on the book, then I think I can stay with this. At least once a week, and lately I've been thinking maybe more, but we'll see.

Until next week (or sooner, if I am so moved)
Karen