Day: October 7, 2008

Xerox Phaser 6130N

Published October 7, 2008

Xerox Phaser 6130, which was $249 via Costco.

A few weeks back I mentioned that I really needed a new printer, as my old HP LaserJet 5L had mostly ceased working. Well, last week Costco had a Xerox Phaser 6130N listed on their site for $249 shipped, with a Tripp Lite surge protector and USB cable.

I ended up jumping on this deal, because it has all the features I was looking for in a printer, except a duplexer, which really isn’t that important anyway. In short, this is a networked color laser which speaks real Adobe PostScript 3 (Wikipedia PostScript article), making it properly usable from any OS without silly Gutenprint (GIMP-Print) drivers and their crappy dithering.

The price was also outstanding, as Newegg sells this printer for $359.99 and most other places want even more than that. I also made a quick trip over to Crucial for a $16.99 piece of CT12864AC53E should bring the total RAM in the printer up to 1152MB. That ought to make printing complex documents fast.

Budweiser American Ale

Published October 7, 2008

I have a confession to make.

This beer?

I like it.

It seems that the venerable old (and now non-American) Anheuser-Bush has decided to take on mid-size decent brewers like Sam Adams (Boston Beer Company) by actually brewing a decent, widely available beer.

While it’s not the best beer I’ve ever had and would probably find itself near the bottom of a beers-I-like scale, it’s just as good as any of the relatively easy to find in bars smaller beers like SNPA, Sam Adams’ Boston Ale, or the Goose Island beers.