Cold and gray Monday here. I don't like it, I don't. Want warmth and sunshine and possibly an attractive young lady to rub suntan lotion on my shoulders ... That would be nice.

Bad news tonight: My beloved HP Photosmart 7960 printer broke. On that printer, I wrote five books, years of family newsletters, several plays, hundreds of greeting cards and postcards, countless articles, and much more. Naturally HP doesn't make anything like it now. Its price per page and reliability index has never been matched by HP -- not that they want to. "Planned obsolescence" has destroyed the manufacturing industry. In the printer industry, the drive to create merely adequate printers as cheaply as possible -- while making incredible profits from ink and toner -- led HP to discontinue many of their most reliable printers. Mind you, Epson did it first. The profit motive outweighs customer satisfaction every time these days.

And here's another reason to mourn this printer. I have over $250 in ink for it, and HP no longer makes any printer that uses these cartridges.

I was three-fourths finished with printing the February family newsletter. Somehow I've got to get that last page printed. Perhaps I can print it on the laser. The loss of color won't matter so much since that page is mostly type anyway.

You might think it strange to grieve for a printer, but I'm saddened by its loss. I knew it would eventually break, but I was hoping for several more years. Now I can either attempt to find a used one on the Net and hope it works as well or perhaps cannibalize an used one for parts and attempt to fix mine. Or I can buy a new printer. Sigh.

Hope life is treating well. Talk to you tomorrow.

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