In the “I Do So Solemnly Swear I Am Not Making This Up” department...

Yesterday afternoon after the adventures related below, I stopped at the Staple’s near my house and bought another Salvador Dali keyboard that isn’t wireless, doesn’t require batteries and plugs right into my computer, so this morning I’m up and running! For about two hours.

Then, abruptly, right in the middle of a check run my printer stops grabbing paper. I can see the paper quiver as the rollers try to grasp it, but it either cannot or will not suck the paper on through. I try poking it helpfully as it tries to grasp, I clean the rollers, I take the toner cartridge out and blow canned air around. This doesn’t solve my problem but creates a new, different one. Everybody say it like Samir, now: Why does it say “paper jam” when there is no paper jam?!?

There are two spare printers in my office, so I figure hey, no problem, I’ll just switch out one of the spares. Heh - no. I have a 3150 model. One spare is a 3100 and the other a 3200. The 3200 has no toner cartridge in it and requires a different type cartridge than the ones I have for my 3150. The 3100 uses the same toner cartridges (yay) so I get it all hooked up, powered up, cabled and attached only to find that I have no device driver. Still, merely aggravating but overcomeable, right? Wrong. I go to Hewlett Packard’s website to download the device driver only to find that it is not available online, that printer having been discontinued so long ago that HP feels the drivers are obsolete.

As it stands now, I can type away and do all the work I want, I just can’t produce hard copies of any of it. This is kind of an issue when you consider that my job is writing checks, issuing invoices, sending out contracts and creating marketing pieces, y’know? And The Boss loves, absolutely LOVES, forwarding all of his e-mail to me with instructions to print it.

Does this happen to anyone but me? Does anyone else go through this much hassle, tribulation and fuckwittage just to get to the point that they can TRY to do their job? I swear, I don’t mind working, I want to be productive - why do the Fates mock me so? *gesticulates skyward* Why?!?