Finished my Christmas shopping Tuesday evening. Packages have been arriving for the last 3 weeks and I am happy I am no longer waiting on anything.

I also purchased two gifts for me. Well one is really a business purchase. My old Sharp 9600 monochrome laser printer was having problems and rather than purchase replacement drums and toner cartridges-- I got the Minolta Magicolor 1600W laser printer for a great price from Amazon. The Sharp was connected to my Windows 98 SE platform via a parallel port and I had an Epson Inkjet on a printer usb hub connected to both my Windows 98 system and an older Mac Desktop.

I gave my mother the same Minolta color laser printer last year for Christmas, and networked both her HP Laptop and her Dell Desktop to a USB printer hub. I knew my Acer Netbook would work with the Minolta color laser printer because I have printed from the system to my mother's printer over the last year, but was a little surprised I had to find a solution for my Macbook [which I did]-- not to be confused with my older Mac Desktop system.

I love my new printer-- but I knew I would, because it is just like my mother's. I no longer have to worry about dried up ink. I can print in color when I need too. Keep in mind my new Brother Fax which is also a monochrome laser is on the first floor so I use that for most of my print jobs. My business letterhead is in color so I am happy I now have my own color laser printer for things like official business letters.

That said, I have spent most of the last two days trying to get the new Magicolor Laser printer to work with my older systems. I did get it to work with Macbook which uses OX 10.4 and my Acer netbook which is running XP. The Macbook was a little tricky in that I had to use the Magicolor 1680 MF driver which I downloaded from the Minolta site.

Here are photos of what I have been up to over the last week, including transplanting my banana plant.

On Friday [last week], I received a package I was not really happy about, so I returned it. I was very happy with how easy it was to return the package. I printed UPS mailing labels. There is a UPS store in Hanover, however I thought the package was small enough to get into a UPS drop box. It wasn't, so I waited on the UPS driver. The drop box showed the time the driver was expected and I waited. I was surprised at how well this went. Was I worried about being out in a low traffic area [industrial center in Hanover with drop boxes all over the place] after dark? No-- but I did all of this "spur of the moment". I did see the police helicopter flying overhead.

Also happy to note, the return has already been credited to my credit card.

Christmas shopping relatively easy this year. I wish other issues were. Still getting noise from Washington.. Ear and balance no longer a problem-- but still have too many other problems. People having a hard time with no-- yet continue to say it will be over soon. Not sure where the process is. Will say that it appears many in Washington want to draw libel law suits. This suggests that my deals are still in the works. The people involved in this crap too high insofar as Washington types. That said, other than the constant irritations and vibrations while I am trying to work through everyday issues, I am mostly okay. I sleep later these days, mainly because too many are bored and the ACLU and FBI have not picked up the government equipment that allows many [with no lives], access to me at all hours of the night. Said no, Washington. Please move on.

Update 12/19/14: Still working issues with new printer and old systems. The following illustration shows the available printers with my Macbook [ox 10.4] after I added driver updates for the new printer.

The file I used to install the driver on my Macbook for the Minolta Magicolor Printer: .

Note: printer driver highlighed [in above illustration] is not the Magicolor 1600w but the 1680mf. This driver chosen based on research of other Macbook owners and how they were able to get it to work.

Last night, earpiece provided that my Windowse98 SE system needed the USB port upgraded to 2.0. I am still working the problem.