Alex LuftA piece of the web dedicated to me… by me!

Something magical took me to the podcasts section in my iTunes library today and somehow I hit the play button on… The Mac Attack.  I haven’t listened to/watched it in quite some time (long enough, actually, to have had iTunes stop auto-downloading it).  The screencast Steve (the host) did was about printing in OS X, and the first few minutes were dedicated to setting up printing - more specifically, adding a printer.  To make a long (and sentimental) story short, it made me want to try one more time and reconfigure my “network-ready” HP all-in-one (AIO).

Why the one more time?  Because I’ve tried a total of ten times before (yes, really - I’m not exagerating) to set this thing up to print via a LAN connection.  It never worked.  So this time I thought I might do something different…
And I did!  It all works now!  I’m in network-printer heaven right now, having disconnected that silly USB cable that ran from the printer/AIO to the iMac.  And now I don’t need to keep the iMac on all the time!

Kudos to Steve Stanger for his inspiration, kudos to me for doing it, and more of the same to HP and Apple for figuring it all out and making it all work.

On second thought… I think that those ten or so times I tried setting it all up before I was using Tiger, not Leopard.  Long live Leopard and its auto-IP detection!

Or something like that…  Now only if I could scan from the LAN…  Can I?

Specs, devices, & details:

• HP OfficeJet 6300 AIO series (with LAN port)
• iMac and MacBook (13″ aluminum) - both running Leopard 10.5.6

You know how car makers camouflage yet unannounced cars when the vehicle is being tested?  This is the principle behind what Apple did with the new MacBooks, wrapping the beautiful aluminum enclosure with old-school black plastic… there’s even a weight attached to the screen - just to see how strong the hinge is.  I kid, I kid.  - end geek humor -

PS: For the sake of attribution, I don’t know where the image came from, I found it on the interwebs somewhere.  I hope it’s fine that I use it.  Thanks for the awesome work!

In my shopping for the new 3G iPhone, I discovered something I didn’t know: even the least expensive individual plan for AT&T ($69.99/month) includes unlimited in-network calling for AT&T customers.  The plan doesn’t have unlimited nights and weekends, however.  These realizations came as a big surprise, since I found this out in a situation I wouldn’t have wanted to.  And that’s all I’m sayin’.

By the way, I pre-ordered two iPhones (8GB) from an AT&T store on Tuesday: one for me and one for Ari.  Needless to say, the experience was sub-prime.