Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2013-07-10 12:32 am
azurelunatic) wrote2013-07-10 12:32 am
Entry tags:
Rescuing the Printer
So there I was minding something vaguely like my own business at work when one of the art guys wanders past on his way to the bathroom (detouring where Aunt-Manager is investigating the possibilities presented by my jellybeans) and informs me that he's going to be sending me an email about The Printer.
The first part of this saga is that we have some interns, and suddenly we had to emergency-order a photo printer. Which was a bit of an adventure in the Land of Paper and Databases itself, but hey, it happened. I'd thought that he had a perfectly good photo printer of his own, see, but we needed an extra one for the intern.
Nope, as it turned out. The new one was to replace the old one; the old one was epically gummed up in some fashion and non-working. And now I was in charge of sending it where all good printers go.
"What was wrong with it?"
"All gunked up."
"What did helpdesk say?" ... "Did you talk to helpdesk?"
"Um, no?"
"Right, so that'll be the first stop then; I can take charge. Let's figure out where to put it."
The Stage Manager's office was a bit small for it; it's a large printer. The cabinets were right out. The Hive, not so much either. "My cube?" I hazarded.
"It's really big..." he said.
"I think I know where I can stick it," I said, or words to that effect.
One meeting plus some ten minutes later, I'd cleared a patch of desk and started drafting the helpdesk ticket. These are typically works of minor literary merit, and seeing as I'd already bothered helpdesk today because I promptly locked myself out of my lockdown cable (more on that later) before writing the code down, I didn't want to waste any of their time. So I decided to try and reproduce the symptoms that the printer was experiencing, after getting its model number and so forth.
Some juggling of coffee syrups and paper trays later, the printer was on the other side of my desk, where its cord could reach to the power outlet, but its USB cord could still hit up the socket on my monitor. I plugged it in, turned it on, and waited for it to think about matters. I tried printing a test page and pressing some random buttons.
Now, this printer is Very Advanced, and thus has idiot buttons. The teardrop light was blinking, which I assumed meant ink. I lifted up the cover for fun, to see if I could see any problems. There was another light inside, blinking at one particular ink cartridge. Okay. Visual Dude had dropped off a whole whackload of ink cartridges. I popped it out and unwrapped the new one. Installation was pretty straightforward.
The printer thought about it a while. It eventually spat out a blank sheet of paper.
"Two can play this game," quoth I, and hit more buttons.
It disgorged another sheet of paper.
One trip through the freaking manual later, I extended the paper tray, rotated the paper, and glared at it. "Your move, toaster," I said, or something equivalent.
It thought some more, and began pulling a sheet of paper down into its maw in a much more contemplative fashion.
I popped back by Visual Dude's cube, brandishing the expended ink cartridge and the printed sheet. "Qapla'!" I said, startling him and the other guy hovering over his screen.
He was surprised to learn that the printer had come back into the land of the living (and possibly surprised to hear me speaking Hol). I trotted back off to label the printer and enter it into my roster of properties. Now we have two operative photo printers, and the Stage Manager has briefly schooled me in the topic of printing weekly so the heads don't get all gunked up. I emailed the team letting them know of the status of the printer, to check if they have any ideas on places it could go that might be better suited than my cube. (It's very large, and I don't do anything appreciably visual at work, so if one or more of the designers lays claim, I'd be entirely okay with that. I also have visions of them perhaps doing something fun like plugging it into the mini data center that some of the designers shacked up in our meeting room have got going, the better to share it...)
The first part of this saga is that we have some interns, and suddenly we had to emergency-order a photo printer. Which was a bit of an adventure in the Land of Paper and Databases itself, but hey, it happened. I'd thought that he had a perfectly good photo printer of his own, see, but we needed an extra one for the intern.
Nope, as it turned out. The new one was to replace the old one; the old one was epically gummed up in some fashion and non-working. And now I was in charge of sending it where all good printers go.
"What was wrong with it?"
"All gunked up."
"What did helpdesk say?" ... "Did you talk to helpdesk?"
"Um, no?"
"Right, so that'll be the first stop then; I can take charge. Let's figure out where to put it."
The Stage Manager's office was a bit small for it; it's a large printer. The cabinets were right out. The Hive, not so much either. "My cube?" I hazarded.
"It's really big..." he said.
"I think I know where I can stick it," I said, or words to that effect.
One meeting plus some ten minutes later, I'd cleared a patch of desk and started drafting the helpdesk ticket. These are typically works of minor literary merit, and seeing as I'd already bothered helpdesk today because I promptly locked myself out of my lockdown cable (more on that later) before writing the code down, I didn't want to waste any of their time. So I decided to try and reproduce the symptoms that the printer was experiencing, after getting its model number and so forth.
Some juggling of coffee syrups and paper trays later, the printer was on the other side of my desk, where its cord could reach to the power outlet, but its USB cord could still hit up the socket on my monitor. I plugged it in, turned it on, and waited for it to think about matters. I tried printing a test page and pressing some random buttons.
Now, this printer is Very Advanced, and thus has idiot buttons. The teardrop light was blinking, which I assumed meant ink. I lifted up the cover for fun, to see if I could see any problems. There was another light inside, blinking at one particular ink cartridge. Okay. Visual Dude had dropped off a whole whackload of ink cartridges. I popped it out and unwrapped the new one. Installation was pretty straightforward.
The printer thought about it a while. It eventually spat out a blank sheet of paper.
"Two can play this game," quoth I, and hit more buttons.
It disgorged another sheet of paper.
One trip through the freaking manual later, I extended the paper tray, rotated the paper, and glared at it. "Your move, toaster," I said, or something equivalent.
It thought some more, and began pulling a sheet of paper down into its maw in a much more contemplative fashion.
I popped back by Visual Dude's cube, brandishing the expended ink cartridge and the printed sheet. "Qapla'!" I said, startling him and the other guy hovering over his screen.
He was surprised to learn that the printer had come back into the land of the living (and possibly surprised to hear me speaking Hol). I trotted back off to label the printer and enter it into my roster of properties. Now we have two operative photo printers, and the Stage Manager has briefly schooled me in the topic of printing weekly so the heads don't get all gunked up. I emailed the team letting them know of the status of the printer, to check if they have any ideas on places it could go that might be better suited than my cube. (It's very large, and I don't do anything appreciably visual at work, so if one or more of the designers lays claim, I'd be entirely okay with that. I also have visions of them perhaps doing something fun like plugging it into the mini data center that some of the designers shacked up in our meeting room have got going, the better to share it...)
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Have I mentioned that I continue to fund your work fascinating? Perhaps it is the deceptions, but I think the people have something to do with it as well.
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Amazing. Amazing people. I'm in a different corporate borg cube. But the people I know at Amazon are pretty awesome too.
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ROFL! That was totally awesome.
Although my klingon is rusty, I muddled up Qapla' and Nuqneh. I can't believe I know any klingon at all :)
Is it too late to get a refund on the new printer?
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This reminded me of some Printer Incidents I was involved in
http://pauamma.livejournal.com/11936.html
http://pauamma.livejournal.com/27327.html
http://pauamma.livejournal.com/40158.html
One of those involved glaring on my part, but none involved coffee syrup. (Or if they did, I don't want to know.)
Re: This reminded me of some Printer Incidents I was involved in
Finding myself dissatisfied with the coffee selection at work, I have brought supplementary supplies. After they started to have too large a footprint on my desk, I got a professional rack to store them in.
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Plus it was on sale.
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Apparently that guy.
In his defense, we are only used to getting helpdesk help for equipment issued through the helpdesk. Specialty non-shared equipment through the office supply routes is the sort of thing they might not support.
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