Printer Villain

I have a strange printer. What happened was (I can’t remember if I told you) my previous printer, old and trusty and mostly reliable, printed its last sheet when the drum gave way. Replacing the drum was almost as expensive as buying a new printer, so I bought a new one. It’s the same brand, and in the same bracket too, I think. It just has some fancy wireless capability now. So, I think it’s fairly reasonable to expect it to give about the same level of performance as the previous one.

And you know what I’m going to say next.

The first problem is, paper gets stuck. It gets stuck very often. Paper jams were not such a big problem with the previous printed because they happened very rarely. Besides, whenever they actually happened, I could always get the printer to sort itself out by holding a button (which would make the rollers spit the paper out). No such things here. This printer chokes up once every couple of days, sometimes twice, sometimes thrice, and the only way to take the paper out is to pry it out with your fingers. Sometimes, when it gets stuck deep inside the guts of the printer, you have to open up all the plastic and hope that you can fish out the paper.

More recently, however, it’s been giving me a new kind of problem. It thinks it’s out of toner. That is, it’ll go on a long bout of warning me that my toner is running low before actually saying it has no toner left altogether. At that point, it just refuses to print.

This is impossible. The toner cartridge was brand-new. It’s an authentic cartridge. All my printings don’t show any signs of toner shortage at all. And most of all, after I smack the cartridge around enough, take it out and put it back enough, pray enough, the printer prints again and it looks as if nothing was wrong in the first place.

So, my conclusion is that I have a sly printer that’s just being lazy.

Computer and electronic problems don’t tend to irritate me, but I have to admit that this one gets on my nerves. There’s something insidious about this printer. To think that it sits in a corner of my room, mocking me as I sleep. Maybe it’ll read this blog post when I turn it on. That would be cause for concern.

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Wincing The Night Away

Funny how productive a day can be and yet still feel like I’ve completely wasted my time. But in any case, I had to get a new printer because the old printer drum had given up on living and a new one would cost more than a new printer, which doesn’t make much sense but nothing much in the world makes a lot of sense anyway. I also fetched a bunch of army items for myself and Paul. Then I went looking at some cameras, which surprisingly yielded a second-hand lens that I really wouldn’t mind getting my hands on. (The surprising part was finding it in the first place.) Oh I also got picture frames. And along the way I learnt that the new food court at Causeway Point is quite poor. First-hand.

Now it’s night and I’m wondering why my lecturers have all decided not to give us notes for our lectures tomorrow. Not a lot of night to go, but I’ve got quite a few things to do. Setting up the printer for one, but I’m also keen to set up a bit of work. It’s work that was supposed to be completed today, but wasn’t because I went out to do all of those things. I’m not exactly lagging far behind or anything, but it feels a little awful not having accomplished what I was meant to today.

Still, some bit of the night to go, so let’s make the most of it.

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Second Day

It’s the second day of school. Of course, as I’m writing this, it’s yet to start, so I’m not actually telling you about the second day of school. And I suppose in that case, the title is kind of cheating. I will however tell you about the first day of school, which went reasonably well, as well as a first day of school could be expected to be. It did somehow leave me quite winded, and I spent the whole day yesterday feeling rather out of sorts. I think this school thing will take some readjusting to.

On Monday night, my printer acted up. It just wouldn’t eat the paper. (I’m not sure if eat is the right word for it, but since you feed it paper, I take it that it eats paper.) It made a weird whirring noise and then the red light blinked and it shut up. This was repeated every time I tried again. What was fairly interesting, however, was that leaving it alone for a while (a while being a long, long time) before trying again seemed to help. It would print a few sheets, sometimes interrupted by the same problem, before completely giving up on life again.

Yesterday, the problem got worse, and at one point, leaving it alone didn’t seem to do anything for my ailing printer any longer. Well, it got better. Then worse. Then better. And worse. And I was then convinced that my printer was mocking me.

And then, as if not to disappoint me, The Oatmeal uploaded this comic: [via The Oatmeal] Now, I don’t quite believe that my printer was sent from hell, but it did seem like remarkably good timing.

Well, so my notes not fully printed and all, it’s going to be an awesome Wednesday. Or so I hope. I have a massive five-hour break in between (because the tutorials have yet to begin), and in that time I will probably have to do some readings, some planning, shop for textbooks, and collect a souvenir. I kind of have the feeling that won’t last five hours, so wish me luck.

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