But the printer was just fine...

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

I was printing out the 1,203,481,288 pages involved in my tax return on my HP OfficeJet Series 700 printer which I got from my uncle a million years ago back when printers would print one dot at a time and it sounded like disco music, when suddenly an error message pops up saying in really big letters:

PRINTER ERROR

The computer has lost communication with the printer.

Cancel printing, turn the printer off, then back on, do the hokey pokey,
burn incense, twirl three times, tap your heels together and then
try printing again.

I'm skeptical of stuff like that. I'm a programmer--I'm fully aware that computers and software have no clue what they're doing. My printer was still printing the pages--albeit so incredibly slow that a three-toed sloth would start getting impatient. I figured I'd wait until the printer was done doing whatever it was doing.

I came back 24 days later to discover everything printed out just fine. And in color--I had no clue this was a color printer!

I still don't know what that error was all about. Maybe the software didn't expect the printer to take so damned long? Who knows? Regardless, I'm done filing my taxes, it's 60 degrees outside, and I'm going to go get some breakfast.

Want to comment? Send an email to willkg at bluesock dot org. Include the url for the blog entry in your comment so I have some context as to what you're talking about.