The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Thursday, 3 April 2008

The Trials of Technology

It was a stressful moment. A piece of paper was in the printer. The print button was pressed. The paper stubbornly refused to feed. Sheet after sheet of paper ruined; none of them would feed.

The printer breaking just as I was trying to print some rather urgent conveyancing documents (urgent because they all need to be in place before we set off for Land’s End) was annoying enough. The knowledge that I still have sections of detailed maps and various notes to print was even more pressing on my mind.

It seemed inevitable that I would have to rush out and buy a new printer – and that led to the most annoying point of the breakdown. You see, having been printing so many maps I decided that it would be cost effective to splash out on the ‘high yield’ ink cartridges. As a result I currently have over £40 worth of ink in that printer and I was understandably reluctant to let it go to waste.

So, out came the screw-driver and I painstakingly took the darned machine apart.

With pieces of plastic and electronics strewn about the room (it’s actually a printer/scanner/copier; it contains a lot of parts!) the problem was diagnosed and fixed (a foreign object in the mechanism). Then I realised that maybe writing a few notes about the order and method of disassembly would have assisted with reassembly.

It’s now all back in one piece and working as well as it ever did. Phew.

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