My Sixth Thing - Print Something

Print Something

This was something that technically wasn't a success but I had to really push myself past the 'activation energy' stage. Earlier in the year I had come into the ownership of a high quality printer. A color laser printer with lots and lots of ink. This has literally been a dream of mine for the last 10 years.

A COLOR LASER PRINTER WITH LOADS OF INK THAT I DID NOT HAVE TO PERSONALLY PURCHASE.

You would think I would have had it hooked up and been printing loads of pretty pictures immediately upon walking its giant, hulking mass through my front door. This is not the case. This is partly due to two things. First being that I do not have a great history with printers from a technical perspective. I may or may not have gotten into more than one losing argument with a printer or two in my past. Secondly, I knew this one was 'gently used' and therefore increased the chances of thing one being a real issue.

I let it sit on its lonely little table for months.

So my "Thing" was to address this activation energy that had been building inside me since that first day.

I needed to print "SOMETHING". Ie: anything. I needed to hook the cords to one of my various laptops and send information packets in its general direction.

Fortunately, the initial hookup procedure was relatively (and surprisingly painless). The printing aspect was not quite as successful. It does print but the image is rotated 90 degrees and slips about halfway down the page. Regardless of multiple changes to the setup and printing preferences. Additionally, each print requires me to open the top and unjam it because it is attempting to double feed.

Who guessed that would happen?

I did tinker and pander to it for about an hour before I forced myself to walk away or risk the induction of an aneurysm from this very predictable outcome. Fortunately I'm not out more than the 20 dollar donation and a few pieces of paper. Plus, it is not completely unlikely that these problems are fixable - I just need to readdress them later when literally nothing depends upon the outcome.

So I did print SOMETHING - it just didn't print with the orientation and ease that I would have hoped. If I want to take prints to Gypsy then I need to print them a different way.

Oh well.      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯