Sep '04 - Apr '06
I bought a laser printer. Not just any laser printer, though. An industrial-strength high-capacity 11x17 B&W HP LaserJet 5Si MX. This thing was top o' the line back in about 1998.
I bought it for $150 CAD, but realized after getting it home that the dude I bought it from had stripped its extra memory and is JetDirect ethernet card. I was pissed. Majorly pissed.
Anyhow, I'm now procuring parts from eBay: 96MB of extra memory, a Postscript Level 2 SIMM, and a 10/100 JetDirect card. She'll be a pretty smokin' machine after I've tricked 'er out. That's right; it's a she. ("It's a she...") I think I'll name it Shelly.
Thank goodness I'm employed this summer, otherwise one might call such purchases, um, "foolish."
But damn. This thing is big.
--
Further to the reasons for the printer: I spent an unreal amount of money on printing last year in school. Of $1911.37 in school-related supplies/expenses over eight months (that includes ~$500 of hand drafting supplies, used about, oh say, once), $560 was for printing alone. And I didn't even get anything plotted, which runs for about $5/sqft for full colour, if you're lucky. Some saps spent $500+ on just poster plotting for their theses. That is stupid and dumb, considering you can buy a decent used plotter for about $2000 or so. Also, I learned that it costs a mere $18000 in maintenance/upkeep costs for the SoA to keep the school printing. That includes paper and toner and all. Not including capital expenses of about $5000 for a nice 11x17 B&W printer and ~$9000 for the 11x17 colour printer. My point: of $18000, I personally paid for 3.1% of the school's printing budget. That may not seem like much. But the school has 150 students; splitting $18000 150 ways = $120. I spent 4.7 times more money on printing than the average SoA student.
Also, my girlfriend and I starting a 'zine dammit. It will be fun. It's gonna be called Cherry. You could maybe get a subscription. That'd be lots of fun, eh?
And on that topic, I'm gonna go eat some cherries.
6 Comments
ghhghghghghg ("homer thinking of donuts" sound)
hell yeah, laser printers are the bomb, nice one!
Why are you and your gf starting a zine? I'm curious - is this things/stuff couples do nowadays??
We used to work at a newspaper together. She's a journalist, and I like making pretty things. Hence, we find this sort of thing fun.
We're also total nerds, which is also why we find this fun.
lol, that all put a smile on my face, thanks for sharing ;)
cool. put me down for a subscription!
Just an update, to this relatively popular post (must be a slow summer?):
I successfully won all my eBay auctions, bringing my total printer upgrade cost to $96 – for a Postscript 2 SIMM, 96MB memory, and a 10/100 JetDirect network card. Total printer cost: $246 CAD
This particular printer retailed for about $4000 USD back in 1998. Yet I still feel somewhat ripped off. Sigh...
Surely there will be some kind of Cherry website. Of course, I'll be sure to make it public, when the time comes...
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