Copy that
I got a new printer today.
It’s an advance birthday present from Herself. She knew I was pissed off with the old one as I have had it for over twenty years and there were bits missing, bits broken and generally it was a mess. Not unlike myself, I suppose?
Anyway I took delivery and unpacked it. Here we have the Tardis principle in action again – the volume of packaging, plastic and cardboard far exceeds the capacity of the original box. I don’t know how they do it. The floor was covered in stuff.
Then I set about setting it up.
I know a bit about computers. I can partition hard disks, install just about any flavour of operating system and all with my eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back. Easy peasy. But printers……… ?? Fuck!
What is it about printers that they are such a pain in the hole to get printing?
The instructions were pretty useless as they just showed a series of sketches with no mention of how to do such trivial things as inserting ink cartridges. I had to hunt to even find the socket for the power lead.
I finally managed it, but not before I lost my pipe in the chaos.
Maybe next year I’ll get a 3D printer and print off a whole series of pipes?
Anyway… a big thank you to Herself.
My own little Gutenberg.
Maybe you have seen the Internet comment: I don’t know what machine “Rage Against the Machine” was about but I’m pretty sure it was a printer.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
In my old days managing desktop systems for large corporates, more than 40% of the support calls were about printers. The ‘paperless office’ couldn’t come soon enough.
I am firmly convinced that the folks who write the instructions for most any contraption (such as printers) think at various points in the process that “I don’t need to explain how to do steps 3,7, or 12 any fool knows this.
(I am living proof that no, any fool does NOT know this!)
All manuals should be written by a person who has never seen the device before. There is no point in just saying “plug in the power lead” if the socket is difficult to find. They might just as well tell us to press the “Any Key”
I am also of the opinion that (much like the printer) the one who wrote the program should never be the one to write instructions for use or running said program.
James :- The bane of my student life, the ever so smart lecturer who would conclude an exposition with, ” from this it is obvious that….. ”
Eh?
Agreed. I did wonder whether they’d actually got stuck themselves and actually didn’t understand those bits, so skipped over them. And the ‘it’s obvious’ part ensured no-one challenged them by asking ‘why’ or ‘how’ – for fear of seeming dim.
The fall back for the instructor is to “come and see me during my office hours.” These hours always seem to be the same time as another class you are in, or there is a grad student covering for him who can’t help because that particular class was never required course work for them.
Ah, takes me back to when the printer bricked and we would call the IT department for help to be told to switch it off, then after a minute switch it on again.
Yup, that was officially called “The Power Off Reset”.
Timbotoo, yes this is another sure fire dead-end, because that is what the last tech told me to try. Didn’t work then probably won’t work now either.
The job I had when I finally got to the point that I could retire was with the Oregon Department of Transportation.
Tech support there was great. Call them with a problem, give them my name, the computer ID number and the tech could remote into the computer, poke around a bit doing their thing and “OK, here is the problem.”
A few minutes and a half dozen keystrokes later, problem solved.
I finally managed it, but not before I lost my pipe in the chaos.
The big question is, did you find the pipe?