Film Scanners, Cheesy Mac, & Enduring Pain

I've spent all free time online the past week searching for and reading reviews of film/slide scanners and finally narrowed the list down to 7 brands, all claiming to do a better job than the others, but all with different image quality bells and whistles, and speed. Microtek, HP, Minolta, Ion, Pacific Image, Epson, and Plustek were the finalists.

A few had compatibility issues with Windows 7 that I didn't want to deal with. All came with mixed/good reviews, priced under $100.

I wrote questions to a few companies asking for clarification of details that were vague in the product descriptions and only one answered in detailed layman's terminology.  My kind of folks.

Reading the reviews of each was informative and educational. While I do not require extremely high resolution (some slides are up to 40 years old), I do want an image that might be enlarged and printed if I chose to do so.  Last night I whittled the list down further, and after re-reading the reviews of those 3, have decided on the one for me.  It's green with a fairly high resolution output, not the fastest, but it has manual overrides so tweaking things like colour, dust removal, and back-lit situations will be easier.  Other programs can do some of that, but I can do it all at once in the initial scan of the original.

Now on to searching for the best price.  At least this hobby will keep me busy over the long winter months to come.

I have today off and it's rainy and dreary, though not cold, outside. I'll be doing some household chores and a bit of cooking, as well. The Plumbing company is due sometime today to change filters and perform annual maintenance on the heating system, so it would be an indoor day, anyway.

Oh, and BTW, that beefy cheesy Mac recipe I made a while back turned out really well. It's based on a high carb recipe that Saints Quarter Back Drew Brees dines on before games and it really knocked my socks off. 

CAUTION: Not for the Kraft Mac&Cheese lightweights out there.  If you're interested let me know in comments, or by email.  I will post it here, or email you personally.

The back and hands are an aggravation in this weather and over night, I discovered a hard lump on my head behind the left ear near a pressure point, so it's likely stress-related.  Can you imagine?  Stress-related?  It is to laugh...hahahahahahaha.Still, it's annoying and painful.

More later.
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