My Printer is Impotent
By Webmaster
It is the one thing
men fear the most. As we age, things slow down; we aren't as
active as we used to be; we become far less attractive. But none
of that really matters until the one dreaded event occurrs: impotency.
This may sound hard to believe but my printer suffers from this
affliction. It is a printer with great age, but is not dead,
dying, or on life support. It is a Canon BJC 4100 and it is an
old man.
Now, admittedly, this is not a Linspire problem. In fact it has
nothing to do with Linspire whatsoever aside from the fact that it is
installed on my Linspire machine.
Its color printhead went out and can only print in black and white with
the right cartridge. It creaks and squeaks and clanks and
clunks completely at random. It makes rather objectionable noises
when asked to do something, and sometimes it objects so loud, it sounds
like something has broken inside it.
But this does not make my printer impotent, merely old.
And no, there is nothing to be done about the printer's age.
Besides, at this point I think a shot of Botox will do it in.
Even the sight of a printer refill kit needle makes it nervous enough
to shake.
What really makes my printer impotent is the paper feed. It's
really a simple mechanism. It drops down into a slot - assisted
by the force of gravity even - and it gets pulled into the
printer. Somehow, this old printer fails to grasp such a simple
operation. It doesn't matter how much you talk to, curse at,
stroke, pet, hit, or slap it around, it still fails at this simple
task. And when you do get it to work and think "success!"
it has pulled 25 sheets of paper through itself and is now groaning
under the strain of it all.
Now, I ask myself; "How do you cure an impotent printer?" It's
not like you can just pop it a Viagra and cure it. And besides,
the plastic stick thing it has for a paper tray has been fully extended
for like a week and no one in their right mind is going to call a
doctor for something like that. It stuck about halfway when I
tried to pull it out and I think it got jammed so it ain't going back
in without doing some serious damage.
I can't just back over it with my car and bury it in the backyard or
something. It still works when it wants to despite the fact that
it seems to have a knack for getting on my nerves. I can't
justify printer euthanasia as I have no idea what kind of misery it is
in. So that is definitely out of the question.
I can't just pawn it off on relatives either. A few days with
them and I will get it back.
I suppose I could take it down to Gigabytes Computer Store and see if
the techs there can operate on it. Who knows? With a little
surgery and some TLC (that's what the Gigabytes folks might listen to
while they operate - that is, if they were into that kind of
music), this old printer might still be able to contribute in
some, small, way.
Nah.
The shovel's in the trunk and we're going for a little ride.
