"We Three"

"We Three"

Saturday, November 20, 2010

The devil made me do it...


The cow woman went shopping today. I have been struggling with this #$&^*@ printer for YEARS. It never printed my business cards right the first time out of the gate. And sometimes, not the second or third either. It kind of cleared its throat before picking up the stock, and dropped the print too high on the page. I might get two cards off a sheet of ten. Expensive, when you add it up. And, lately, after printing each page, it would stutter and whine until you opened the cartridge door and shut it again. Clunkety clunkety clunk clunk. Enough! I looked up printers online, and made a beeline for Best Buy, where I picked up a spiffy new Canon that has wireless technology. Okay, I don't have wireless technology yet, but I am ready when it arrives! Now, years of dealing with new peripherals have taught me that nothing works the first time you install it. Well, actually, my wireless mouse did, but that's pretty simple. I did depart from my usual seat-of-the-pants, I-don't-need-no-stinking-manual attitude, and sat down to read the steps necessary and execute them in the manner and order presented. Or tried to. Right away I got an error message that the "inner cover" was open. Whaaa? After trying over and over to do the same thing, I squinted my eyes at the tiny display screen on top of the printer, and figured out where that inner cover was, and closed it. Tada! The print head and cartridges went in without too much sweat, and how smart is it that there are six of them, so you don't have to replace a tri-color cartridge just because you are out of blue. And I can open the top of this one and see the whole cartridge assembly. I loaded the paper tray and prepared to hook my new baby up to my system via the USB connection, and jeez, another error message. I flogged that dead horse for a while before deciding to start over again. In the end, I just ignored the message that the printer wasn't present, restarted my system, and voila! There it was after all. Yay. The whole process took about an hour and a half, and never once did I have to pull hair out of my head or even bite my tongue. I have printed twenty new business cards perfectly so far. I love that this baby packs up all compactly when not in use. And it has a paper tray! Inside! How efficient can it get, anyway. Then I made myself a turkey, cranberry and toasted almond sandwich on my TJ sprouted wheat bagel that I treated myself to. Okay, they each have (gulp) 300 calories, but I did split it into thirds, and the mayonnaise was low fat. Hey, as celebrations go, this was pretty tame. And pretty tasty, too.

1 comment:

Karen Martin Sampson said...

I think you were very brave to get and install a new printer all by yourself! I know the frustrations of setting up new equipment. I just get used to the stuff I have and how it all works and then something dies or the technology changes and some of my stuff is no longer compatible, and so on and so on...Glad you can print out your business cards without the hiccups now. I have to say my old HP Photosmart 7660 still does ok and only slips up once in a while. I am coveting some new stuff but then I remember life before gadgets and sometimes think I was happier then:-)