Raven’s Range
Blather around a virtual range

Thursday, 12 June 2008 00:13

Cause and effect

This box contains our piece of poop printer.

If when, months ago when we bought the RV and I said I needed a mini-printer rather than this aged hulk, we had not been so cheap about it, none of this would have happened.

If I had started printing last night some of this would not have happened.

If I had started printing this morning some of this would not have happened. But instead I spent some time working, and it happened.

If we had done laundry yesterday or the day before I would not be quite as itchy, and I would actually have clean clothes for tomorrow.

Today I had three important documents to print — a contract, an supporting document, and a tax document. Printing them should have taken fifteen minutes, tops.

The contract refused to print in its entirety, but I eventually got the printer to spit it out by printing just one page at a time.

If I hadn’t followed Don’s (good) suggestion to keep the printer in the box I would have found the memory card sooner, instead of going on a wild goose chase to find it.

If I had found the memory card sooner we would have realized sooner that it didn’t work in this aged hulk of a printer and would have gone to plan B, finding someone with a working printer, in time.

If I had remembered what happened in April I would have remembered that this printer is incapable of printing tax forms out properly, but at least it did spit out enough to be usable.

If the printer had not been a piece of poop it would not have refused point blank to print the final document and I would have not been tearing my hair out in complete and utter frustration, cursing its parentage, etc.

I would have made it to the post office and the documents would have been mailed as promised.

My dad’s Father’s Day card would have had some chance of arriving in time and we would have had some chance of finally getting Netflix movies in time for the weekend.

I would not have needed to sign up for a freebie electronic fax service that is so stupid that it emails one’s password as a reminder of what one’s password is.

So, if we had bought a new darn printer in October I would not have wasted six hours of my life which could have been used getting over the huge backlog, my Dad would get a card on Sunday, we would have been able to watch CSI, I would not have aged some indeterminate number of years, and I would not still be sitting at my computer doing things I would rather have stopped doing around teatime.

Some things are worth the $150.