Well, I’ve been a very busy boy. Schroedinger the Wonder Cat is now complete and Beta copies are out for comments. When they are back, I will incorporate them into the book and, after a final proof-read, it will be ready for printing. It’s been a long and hard battle with more to come before publishing. It’s also been a good time even with all the trials and tribulations.
It’s amazing how many silly things can go wrong and raise your blood pressure. In the last two months, I’ve been having a slight problem with printers, for example. At the start, I had a very good Canon color inkjet and an old black only Brother laser printer. They both worked well. That is, until my lovely wife, Sandy got a paper jam in the Canon printer. I got the paper out, but the printer no longer worked. It had a broken gear. She then got a jam in the laser printer. It took a while, but I got that working again. Now, I had to replace the inkjet with another color printer. Guess what, because of the pandemic, printers are very difficult to find. Even Canon was out of them. I decided to buy a used one on eBay that was the same as the one I buried because I had a large supply of ink for it that I didn’t want to throw out.
I knew my purchase was used and in “as is” condition, but what I didn’t know is that it didn’t print properly. After much arguing and a partial refund from eBay, I purchased a new printhead on eBay for installation by myself. I watched a video to learn how to do the job. The old printhead came out easily, just like it showed in the video. Filled with confidence, I picked up the new printhead and positioned it in the printer and the access door slammed down on my hand and left the printhead stuck in the printer. It wound up in my trash can. In the process, Schroedinger learned many new words that are not suitable for inclusion in this story. Well, it’s not a story as it actually happened and is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
At this point, the black only printer knew that I was really annoyed and decided to run out of ink. When I opened the new cartridge, a spring flew off it. After checking with the expert, I installed the new cartridge and it printed fine until I tried it on a book that Sandy is writing. The first twenty pages turned out well and then it began spewing out blank pages. After the second time this happened and I couldn’t get it working again, I decided to buy a new printer. Rather than have two printers, I decided on a Brother color laser printer that would do all the work I needed done and allow more desk space to clutter with my papers. It had two-sided printing that was a feature I really wanted.
I had to wait to pick it up and used the time to clean off my desk and vacuum up all of Schroedinger’s hair that had accumulated while he helped me with the writing process. The big day came and I brought the printer home and installed it. Of course, being old and having a bad back, I had to ask a young, strong neighbor to carry it into the house. The first big job was my wife’s book which printed well on both sides of the pages using the same file that, I was told, destroyed the black only printer (the broken cartridge had nothing to do with it). Then, I decided to print my book, but on only one side. That went well, but the photos of Schroedinger came out with a purple cast. He’s white. Both support personnel at Brother and the store from which I purchased it told me it was a fluke and I should return it and get a new one. Again, I had to ask for help to get it into my car, this time from my fifteen-year-old beanpole grandson, Nathan, who has passed six feet. He picked it up like it was a sack of marshmallows and I took it back. I ordered another from the same store and had it delivered directly to the house.
After tracking the printer from Texas to California, it was finally carried into the house by a huge FedEx driver. I unpacked it and Sandy and I dragged it into the bedroom (my office) and lifted it onto the bed. I, rather unwisely, lifted it from the bed and placed it on the desk all by myself. It was a strain, but for some unknown reason, my back pains disappeared for a few days and I felt great. I quickly installed it and was ready to print my book again, but on both sides for the beta copies.
I gave the command to Print and it worked beautifully, but totally ignored my instruction to print on both sides and, yes, Schroedinger was still slightly purple. After about another hour of cursing, I called Brother support for help. Note here that the difference between the two documents was that Sandy’s was in 8 ½ x 11” format in Word and mine was in 6 x 9” format. Note also that mine printed fine on both sides with no special instructions on my old inkjet printer. Basically, I was told that was the way the printer worked and, if I had bothered to read the 700 page manual before I bought it, I would know that. I hung up and it required two hours of ranting, raving and cursing to regain some semblance of calm. I decided to return the printer and buy another – not the same one. Now, it was Sandy’s turn to get angry. She pointed out that the printer debacle was wasting my time and keeping me from getting the job done. She explained that printing one-sided would get the book out to the readers and not matter to the process. I have a great deal of respect for her judgement and gave some serious thought to the predicament.
After much cogitation, I decided to keep it, but to also do something about the problem, since I always thought highly of Brother products. I realized that if a document could print on one side it should also be able to print on two sides. I used my engineering and computer programming background to decide that the fault was probably in the printer driver software and should be easily correctible. While printing the one-sided beta copies, I came to the conclusion that the only possible way to get someone at Brother to listen to my ideas was to contact the President of the company. My early experience with attempting to get a company to listen to me was to start at the top, since the person at the top should care the most about the success of the company. Accordingly, my letter to the president is now winging its way to the company headquarters in Japan. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that at a minimum, I will hear back and will be very disappointed if they do not fix the problem.
So ends another episode in the life of a would-be successful writer. Undaunted, I will carry on, but let me assure you, I won’t be able to survive many more like this one.
The accompanying photo needs no explanation if you’ve read this post.