First Day in SB: Accidentally Selling a Printer
Last night after the long night on the road I still had work obligations to discharge – specifically, some freelance stuff that showed up just before we left Oakland. I sat down at my stepfather-in-law’s computer (let’s just say C’s computer), and opened up the relevant files from email. They were PDFs, scans of handwritten draft in a handwriting that can be deciphered only by three people in the world: its owner, his wife, and me. My mission, should I choose to accept it (and which, in fact I already had), was to print out this scrawl, convert it to readable type, and send it back for revisions. I was just about to click “print” when I looked around and realised there didn’t seem to be a printer anywhere in the room. Hating to bother him again, I went and asked C if the computer was hooked up to a printer. He said “Oh, yes it is, but I haven’t been able to get it to work in a while.” He showed me where the printed was hidden – under a plastic cover, and fiddled around with cables under the desk, trying to get it hooked up. I looked at the printer setups and saw that there were about a half dozen copies of the printer listed. One, which wasn’t active, had a whole bunch of print jobs waiting in its queue. Apparently, that’s why he didn’t think it was working. I deleted the extraneous copies and set the one with the active connection to be the default printer. Then I printed and a bunch of blank pages came out. We opened up the printer to look at the toner cartridge, and that’s where I decided to give up. It’s an old Epson printer from the 80s, a dot matrix thing with one of those cartridges that zip back and forth across the page. Even if I could figure out what was wrong with it, I’d have no idea how to even begin fixing it.
C and I got to talking about the printer and I told him about the travails Mama Dog and I had had, first with the top-loader and then with the older LaserJet 4 that Mama Dog’s papa had scored for us. I told him how after all these inadequate stopgap measures, Mama Dog finally said (in stern tones), “Oh no, this won’t do at all,” and ordered us a new printer. I told him how completely satisfied we were with the HP 1320, how it was as fast and accurate as my printer at work but small enough to fit on one corner of our desk. “How much does it cost?” C asked thoughtfully. Next thing I knew, he was online making what was apparently his first-ever large Internet shopping purchase, namely and HP 1320 laser printer. I was bemused to think I had sat down to print out a PDF and ended up accidentally selling a printer. They should give me a commission.
C and I got to talking about the printer and I told him about the travails Mama Dog and I had had, first with the top-loader and then with the older LaserJet 4 that Mama Dog’s papa had scored for us. I told him how after all these inadequate stopgap measures, Mama Dog finally said (in stern tones), “Oh no, this won’t do at all,” and ordered us a new printer. I told him how completely satisfied we were with the HP 1320, how it was as fast and accurate as my printer at work but small enough to fit on one corner of our desk. “How much does it cost?” C asked thoughtfully. Next thing I knew, he was online making what was apparently his first-ever large Internet shopping purchase, namely and HP 1320 laser printer. I was bemused to think I had sat down to print out a PDF and ended up accidentally selling a printer. They should give me a commission.
posted by PapaDogDuvalier | 3:44 PM
1 Comments:
I have come to the conclusion that it is cheaper to just buy a new printer than to buy the ink to restock it.
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