At least once a year you get one of these blog posts, don’t you? The sad, frenzied madwoman, trying to cobble together a host of printers and faxes and scanners and whatnot to get her danged job done! Where’s my IT Help Desk when I need it??
This time, it’s still partially an after effect of the flooring redo. We had to unhook everything and rehook it up and we moved the printer to a farther away spot which necessitated a longer cord because I haven’t stopped to figure out how to wirelessly connect it yet. So I finally got the longer cord and all should be well with the world, right? But no! We’re out of magenta toner on our monster Dell printer. No problem. I skip off (drive) to Cartridge World and get a magenta cartridge. I’ve used them before in a pinch, and while it’s not an official Dell cartridge, it worked and was $75 cheaper. Naturally, I let it sit there for days before I really needed it. Which was today.
Last night Mom and I both worked to get that new cartridge in the printer to no avail. It simply doesn’t fit in the slot. I tried again this morning just to make sure. Hasn’t shrunk overnight. So do I return it and get another one? What if I waste my time and it still doesn’t fit? They are the ONLY place in Austin to get a toner cartridge on the shelf for this printer. Everything else is delivery only. Which doesn’t help me TONIGHT.
Okay, I can work around this for the moment, right? My urgent need today is to get my Bead Fest Santa Fe Booth Rental Contract printed out, filled out, scanned into the computer, and then faxed. Because the deadline is today to keep my same booth spot. Because this is ME and I waited until the deadline day. You’ve been following along and this is expected, right??
Luckily I just bought a second printer for the house! The new desk setup in the Bead Room has a cheapie ($25 and I ain’t kidding) inkjet. Go to Bead Room and print out contract. Fill out contract the old fashioned way. With pen. Move back to the Office to scan into computer so I can fax through email. No old fashioned fax in our household – we don’t have any phone lines. All cell phones. Put contract page 1 on the scanner. Hit Scan on the software. Error! Can’t communicate with the scanner. Look at scanner. Silly Jilly! Scanner not turned on! Turn scanner on. Restart software so it can “communicate” with the scanner this time. Hit scan button. Error! Can’t communicate with the scanner. Waaaa?? Follow long and complicated cord snowball to discover scanner cord not plugged into computer. Plug into computer. Restart software again. Success this time!!
So it has now taken me 45 min (plus another 15 to write this post) to do something that should have taken 5 min. and I still don’t have a working main printer.
Technology? Bite me.
Did you or did you not get the print you wanted? I recently had a similar story. Had I written the letter by hand in the first place it would have been a LOT faster. I was really proud of myself to have managed after all.