Another general newsy update post

I still haven’t done a general news update since March 8! So here’s a summary:

I finished up the edits of Blood Justice and sent them to the author on March 11. The other big thing I did that week was buy a new printer. I had a very modest HP 5400 deskjet printer that I bought for (IIRC) less than $100 six years ago. I vividly remember buying it because it was in January, I was still working at the shelter, and at the time my finances were just reaching a point at which I wasn’t clinging to every penny and buying nothing I didn’t genuinely, if not desperately, need. I went to Circuit City and walked out with two shiny boxes, a VCR and a printer, and a sense of euphoria: “I’m…buying consumer electronics! In a store! Just like a normal person!”

I’m very frugal. Shopping tends to be a novelty for me. *wry grin*

But this little printer wasn’t up to my current professional/business needs. Its upper paper tray had broken a couple of years ago, and while this didn’t keep it from printing, it was a nuisance. The print quality was deteriorating, and it was a low-end model, to start with. I’d been thinking about replacing it for a while.

Staples is running a special: if you “recycle” your old printer and buy a new one, they’ll give you a $50 credit. That’s a double deal because normally you have to pay to “recycle” your old printer. Not only that, but I had a brand-new, unopened set of ink cartridges for the old printer, which I bought at Staples, and I had the receipt.

So, I did online research and read user reviews, settled on an HP printer, the Photosmart B8550, that seemed to give me the optimum print quality at my price limit, and found that it was in stock at my “home” Staples in Nashua. Once I’d done all that, it turned out to be incredibly fast and easy to spend a lot of money. I don’t think it took me more than 60 minutes total to find the ink cartridges and receipt, disconnect the old printer and put it in a box, drive to Nashua, go to the shelf and grab the new printer, talk to the sales rep, go out to my car for the old printer, make the transaction, and drive home. Between the “recycling” credit and returning the ink, I saved $100, or more than a third of the price, on the new printer.

But this was another occasion when I didn’t wait a while and contemplate the box. For one thing, I didn’t have a printer until I got this one set up. I knew I was going to have to jump through some hoops to install the printer on three different computers and get it running on the wireless network with the wireless printer server–and I was right. That took me the rest of the evening and a certain amount of angst and agony. But it was finally all up and running and talking to everyone–and man. What an upgrade! It will handle oversize paper and small photo paper and the print quality is just amazing. I also hadn’t realized how big it was until I unpacked it–it’s HUGE! Well…that’s what I need. I’m a publisher!

After I sent off the edits of Blood Justice, I got started on the cover art for Krymsin Nocturnes, and that involved quite a bit of learning curve with the graphic editing tools, both hardware and software. I don’t really think it’s going to take me over a week to do every book cover! A couple of other things did slow me down a bit. On Saturday the 14th I learned, within the space of a couple of hours, about the sudden and premature deaths of loved ones of two of my online friends. That was very sad and not something I could just shrug off and forget about while I got work done. And while I was dealing with that, we had a “historic” rain storm and subsequent floods that kept me housebound for several days–not that I couldn’t have gotten out if it was urgent, but it would have had to be urgent to make it worth the stress and risk. So, last week pretty much consisted of me trying to put all those distractions out of my mind sufficiently to focus on finishing the cover art project.

At the same time, I’ve successfully cleared two really huge learning curves/hurdles/thresholds I’d been avoiding this month, with both graphic arts and video. Shooting the flood video and editing it in Sony Vegas showed me that yes, I can do video editing and I really “get” it, and that taking that class last fall was a very smart move on my part. My attitude toward the video projects on my long-term To-Do list has suddenly changed from an uneasy, “I’m going to have to figure out how to do all that pretty soon,” to an enthusiastic, “wow, the second I get a spare minute I’ve got to do more of that, because it’s great!” I just need to find out how to get video into a format that doesn’t take quite so long to upload. I’m still nailing down the technical details about compression and formats and so on.

I followed the health care reform vote on Sunday via the New York Times “live blog.” I had an echo of the incredulous awe I felt watching the election returns in November, 2008. This is the first major social legislation the United States has passed for almost fifty years. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a start!

Account Cancelation Saga: Yes, it’s still going on!! My NET1plus account was supposed to be canceled as of March 17. I know they haven’t billed my Discover card for any more charges because I monitor that directly online. I tried logging into my user account at NET1plus and got an error message saying it doesn’t exist. But…my NET1plus email is still active. I can still log into the webmail, which is handled by a third party service called IpsWitch, and Thunderbird is still downloading that mail, and my account at Postini is still active. Nothing is coming into them but spam, but I want all of those closed down. I want the NET1plus address to bounce. Everything that needs to be changed has been, for weeks now. I just left a message with Ms. Billing Department letting her know that the email and Postini accounts still haven’t been closed down. I don’t know if there’s a delay, or they just plain forgot.

I just finished a DVD review that was over deadline, the edits are back for Blood Justice and I’m about to start the cover art for The Longer the Fall. I’m starting to see and feel results from my amplified workouts, but I’m still having trouble getting back to my dietary regimen, which is frustrating.

And I have a new conundrum. While I was working on the cover art for Krymsin Nocturnes, I was getting some ominous hiccups from Paint Shop Pro, and I started to suspect that I should upgrade it. It’s version 9 and I last upgraded several years ago. So, I went to check out how to do that, and was unhappy to discover that I can’t. Paint Shop Pro was published by Jasc, and Corel bought out Jasc, and now Corel doesn’t support Paint Shop Pro. They have a new version for photo editing called Paint Shop Photo, or they have their own graphics program called Corel Draw. I can’t “upgrade” from an old version of Paint Shop Pro to any current Corel package.

I can buy Corel Draw for $599…or I can get Adobe PhotoShop, which people have been telling me I should do since the graphics department manager at Storey Publishing pounced on me over this point back in 2007. Or…for just $100 more than buying PhotoShop as a standalone, I can “upgrade” to the entire Adobe Creative Suite CS4 based on the fact that I have Adobe InDesign CS4. That would be the best deal by far, and I’m seriously thinking about it. Usually, when I think this hard, I’m going to be dropping some bucks in the very near future. *wry smile* It only makes it easier that the Kindle edition of Mortal Touch continues to be a hot seller (thank you, Kindle fans!)–and that I’ll be saving $70 per month on phone and internet with the switchover I just made.

I’ll report my decision. 🙂