Well, actually I gave it to them, and they shipped it off to… Seattle? I’m not sure where it goes when they need to do work on it, but I know it leaves our locale. I haven’t been blogging because 1.) I don’t have my laptop, and because of this 2.) I have to fight for my turn on the desktop computer! The girls are at a youth camp for three days this week, so I get the computer! ;D

In the meantime I am still trying to figure out how to print all of the e-books I have downloaded (currently all residing on CDs, since the reformat of my laptop). I have read at the 3RHomeschooling Yahoo Group about a program called FinePrint, and everyone speaks very highly of it for printing off all of these wonderful books. I decided to give it a try today, so I downloaded it to the desktop.

The download is fast and setup is simple. I opened a very short document (the Student Planning pages .pdf at OFE), told it to print to FinePrint, and then the program opened. I told it 2 pages per sheet, and then it asked me about duplex printing. As far as I knew, my printer does *not* duplex. Well, it is a rather new printer, and although I don’t remember seeing it anywhere in the printer literature, I went through with the Test that FinePrint does for duplex printing.

And discovered MY PRINTER HAS AUTOMATIC DUPLEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can ya tell I’m excited?? I had no idea. And I’ve goofed up SO MANY ebooks, by turning the paper the wrong way when I flip it, or my printer would grab more than one sheet and all the second sides would end up on entirely the wrong sheet of paper. No longer! FinePrint really is amazing, telling me exactly what I need to do to make my book turn out how I need it to. And on top of that, I found out my printer is even neater than I thought! Bonus!!

Next, I printed a neat little book called The Play Grammar, or, The Elements of Grammar Explained in Easy Games. It is 114 pages in total, but printed with FinePrint using Booklet Printing, it came in at 25 pages (2 pages per side, double-sided). I didn’t have to do a single thing but watch. Amazing! Also, if you are interested in this book, you need to join 3RHomeschooling, because it’s in their files and I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else online. There is a preview at GoogleBooks, but only a partial one. It is a book about a mother who teaches her children grammar concepts by playing games with them, and it is in story format.

BTW, I have the (free) trial version of FinePrint, which just prints a “Printed with FinePrint trial version…” note at the bottom of each page–You can buy it and the little banner will go away–And I use an HP Photosmart C7280 All-in-One (which I got on clearance at Circuit City for $175 about six weeks ago, when the scanner in my last all-in-one died.)

Call me a tech nerd. Go ahead. It’s okay.