Love My Life, Hate My Printer

I’m very glad to have recovered from bronchitis at last.  Monday I took the last of the antibiotic.  I have been sleeping fine, very little coughing, appetite back, stomach quieted.  I also have begun physical therapy on my sore left elbow.  I’m hopeful they can help.

I’m also really enjoying cooking again. While I was very ill and not eating more than a few bites, I found cooking more of a chore than I usually do.  Mostly, I enjoy cooking and being an excellent cook. No company this weekend, although we’re going out to Stephanie and Natasha’s house on Saturday evening. It’ll will be my [not Woody’s] first social engagement since I came down with bronchitis. I did host my poetry group Wednesday night.  There were few of us this time as one poet is in Italy, two were sick, one had a funeral of family member.  One who intended to come up to shortly after five, when her mother whomoved near her to be taken care of had a heart issue and had to be rushed to the E.R.

The frustration began on Sunday was I was printing the poems from one of the participants in my June intensive poetry workshop.  The printer had worked  partway into her submission of 15 poems but then gave a terrible screech and then a loud grinding noise and died.  Nothing I did could revive it.

Woody got a new HP printer at Staples. Tuesday, we unpacked the box and got to work plugging it in.  Printers have always been one of the easiest gadgets to set up and use.  You just attached a USB cord to the computer, one to the printer, brought up the propriate driver and off you went!  Now we discovered that of course there is no longer a manual.  Instead you must go on line and follow a very complicated and confusing endless set of directions. 

I just use a printer it for printing, but as far as I can tell it does more.  Perhaps it can milk a cow or sheep and sing the Star Spangled Banner on key or reads\ your mind. It took four people two days to get it up and running, two techies, Woody and me. I will NEVER buy an HP printer again, ever!  One of the excellent techies [I subscribe to a service– they’re not cheap but they are always available over the phone and they know what they’re doing. They also never give up, no matter how complicated a problem is. The techie told me he had always used HP printerts but no longer.  He now he buys Epson so he can plug and play.  So much of the modern world of machines is way overly complicated. Computer programs provide bells and whistles that only a techie would ever use.  And some, I suspect nobody in their right mind would ever get into.

So far anyhow it's working.