Roger vs Printers

More Dad stories…

I just got back from our parents’ old house outside Chicago. As I went through my Dad’s basement study, I uncovered a surprising number of printers… Too funny to find this email from 2018 about the topic:

Hi, Gareth,

First, let me say that I enjoyed your latest podcast.

Then let me tell you about my all-too-typical battle with my printers.The old, old Canon MX490 in the basement was out of ink from the get-go, and I had no replacement cartridge. OK. So I got 20 copies out of my newish HP 2600 before it ran out of ink. No problem. I did have spare cartridges in plenty—genuine HP’s that I got oping to avoid problems. They thanked me for going brand name. So I was shocked when the first one showed “out of ink” almost immediately. Well, OK. I had them a long time, but they were in sealed pouches, right? So I tried cleaning and then deep cleaning. But no go. Well, all right, I still had others. The second one insisted I do an alignment adjustment before I could use it. Hmm. But THEN THE SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN! It registered EMPTY right off the bat. I had to try FOUR cartridges before I got one that worked.

So I had worked over two hours futzing with cartridges, dropping things, cursing, learning how to put cartridges in the right way. cleaning each new candidate, cursing, dropping things. When I finally got things tamed, the whole job only took about 15 minutes.

That is the last time I get name brands!

When you have a few free minutes, I’d love to hear about your trip to LA and Warner Bros studios. Maybe we could Face Time and I could also hear about your couple of weeks of bachelorhood. Let me know!

Dad