Apple had a media event today and announced a few new products. The Intel Core Duo Mac Mini is nice, but the rest of the stuff was crap. $99 leather case for a leather case that says iPod? No thanks. And who the hell is going to buy that ugly $349 iPod speaker box? And for the love of God, can Steve Jobs please get a new outfit????

Ink-Jet Printers Suck

I have been wrestling with my printer for the past couple of days. I was about ready to throw it out the window and let it smash onto the ground. It's an Epson CX5200 that I've had for a 2 or 3 years. I have been really happy with the printer up until now. The black refused to print right, so bought a new cartridge. After running the cleaning a couple of times, the black came back, but then the magenta and yellow stopped printing. UGH!!!! I bought new ones and put them it, but no luck. I decided to call Epson support today. My first surprise was that there was no wait time, they spoke English and were very nice. Shocking. Because it was out of warranty, they charged me $9.95. After going through the various troubleshooting tips, they said it was a hardware problem. They cancelled the $9.95 charge and sent me to customer service. They got my phone number and offered me 3 options: (1) A $40 coupon for their store; (2) Send my printer back and have them try to repair it free; or (3) get a new CX7800 printer for $139 plus a $30 mail-in rebate = $109 or a RX620 printer for $249 - $100 rebate = $149. Shipping was free, via FedEx in 3-5 business days. I was really surprised and I decided to get the new CX7800 printer. It's quite a step up from my 5200 and hopefully they have worked out some of the kinks from the 5200. I will say that I'm pretty impressed with Epson's service and would still recommend them to anyone looking to buy a printer.

Cold Weekend

Polo just turned 5 months old this week. It got pretty cold this weekend, so we had a fire going in the fireplace most of the day and night. Polo just loved it! He got close and sniffed the fire, but he knew not to get too close. He laid down in front of the fire and played with his toys and had himself a nice nap. He is doing so well. He hates having to go outside to potty when it's raining out. If you can get him to go out, he runs right to the door and gets up on the door sill out of the rain. It's cute...