…it’s almost March.
Work was done. I finally released the updated trade paperback of Code into the wild. If you already have it, no reason to get this one. I just changed the ISBN and publisher info to Glass Green LLC and did some very light editing that consisted mostly of removing exclamation marks my God what was I thinking with all those damned things. I also changed the paper from white to cream, which means the book is thicker and the pages look like those of a work of fiction and not a soft-cover textbook.
The Breakaway collection comes out in a couple of weeks.
Chaos Agent work continues. I’ve also written the odd scene for the next book and sketched out a possible novella, neither of which is really useful but it’s the way the overall story is working out.
In one of those “I knew this day was coming” situations, I finally had to replace my ancient HP1100 LaserJet printer. I bought in the late 90s or early 00s—I needed to get hold of a serial-to-parallel adapter for it when I joined the World of Apple back in 2004. I printed out so many drafts on that thing. Then electronic submissions became the standard. I liked printing in color on occasion, so I switched to inkjets. But after I went through a couple of those, I got sick of dealing with ink cartridges and clogged printheads and dug the 1100 out of the figurative mothballs. It’s chugged along these last few years, coming through at tax time and when needed for various non-writing related tasks. But the connection with my laptop would drop every few jobs, and recently paper jams had become more frequent. A decision needed to be made. It’s tax time. I needed a working printer. Plus, well, I wanted to be able to print in color and I wanted a wireless option, too. I decided the timing was right when I found a list of recommended all-in-one color laser printers in the latest online Consumer Reports newsletter and then found that their top pick was on sale at Costco.
So I am now the owner of a Brother MFC-L3765CDW. It is a monster, 45 pounds and way more printer than I need, but when I need it, it will be there. I also like the copy and scan functions (even though I’ve been using an app on my phone for most of that these last few years.). I’ve named it “Chonk” for now because it is a major one.
But decommissioning the old 1100 makes me a little sad. It was Old Faithful for so long. And it’s not a cliché to say that they don’t make them like that anymore.