Friday, April 12, 2013

A room with a mind of its own


Today, technology turned on me.

Well, to be fair, it pretty much does that every day aboard ship, but today was a day that sorely tried my patience. 

The printer has a fun little quirk.  It randomly assigns itself to print double-sided copies, something it is very, very bad at.  I will be happily printing various documents, and without warning, one will print double-sided.  The print menu will say it’s printing on one side only, but out will come a double-sided copy.  This is especially annoying when I have asked it to print only the even pages of a document, in preparation for manually printing a multi-page document on both pages.  So, for those not following this drivel too closely, that means I have page 2 and page 4 on the front and back of the page.  
Fortunately, the printer also jams after printing a couple of these, a then I can crawl around for a while, unjamming it.  (Found a new way to unjam today:  SCORE!)

Another fun habit the printer has developed is randomly choosing to print multiple copies.  One of my jobs is printing out exams, so I’ll be printing 35 or 80 copies of the same document.  That number will get stuck somewhere in the recesses of the printer’s memory, and it will come popping out 

inappropriately like a verbal tic or a nervous response.  Not every time.  Not predictably.  Not often enough that I check, every single time, all the printer settings.  Just often enough to waste a lot of paper and bug the crap out of me.

Our IT team is as baffled as I am.  Intermittent problems are hard to diagnose, and they like to believe it has stopped misbehaving permanently.  But, like the bully who waits until the teacher’s back is turned, the printer is just biding its time. 

Meanwhile, the fax has gone on the fritz.  Whatever little gizmo signals the paper to feed has gone to lunch, and the fax keeps scanning nothing at all.  Two IT guys later, we have reached a truce, the fax machine and I.  Let’s hope it lasts.  It’s the only way we have to make copies.

Jim’s computer reset itself while we were off in Ghana, and it is back to signaling new emails with an obnoxiously loud chime.  And sometimes with a softer chime.  I have no idea why the volume varies.  And sometimes with no chime at all, I suppose, because it does not seem to chime in direct relationship with his complaints about an excessive number of incoming emails.  But I know it’s reset itself, because one of the things it does is reinstall nonexistent hardware as the default printer, something Jim doesn’t notice until he calls me over to figure out why his jobs aren’t printing.  Jim’s computer is very fond of the broken printer/copier we offloaded in California.

Our email system on the ship is a slot machine in disguise.  Press send and you might send zero, one, or eight copies of your email.  Today I got 8 copies of the Deans’ Memo.  Then 3 copies of an email from my work study student informing me I’d sent 8 copies of the DM.  Then 5 copies of an email from another student helpfully letting me know of the problem…

The Deans’ Memo also goes into my junk mail sometimes.  That just hurts my feelings, really.  But lots of things go into my junk mail.  I do not recall any actual junk going there, but pretty much everyone who submits items for the Deans’ Memo winds up there from time to time.  Awkward. 

A month or two ago, I started getting copies of my sent mail in my inbox.  A thoughtful update to Outlook.  Who, after all, would treasure my prose more than I do?  Multiply it by a random number of copies and it really does make following an email conversation difficult.

This afternoon, Land Boss started gently nagging me for something I sent him before I departed for Ghana. Something I had to send him because our feeble internet and my outdated browser conspired to prevent me from saving it on UVA’s website.  Something of which I found no trace.  Not in the Outbox, or the Sent mail, or the Drafts. On my desktop or on my laptop.  Something I then couldn’t transfer from my laptop, because it randomly rejects my flashdrive, my SD card, and my card reader. 

If you are counting, today’s casualties so far include my printer, Jim’s computer, Jim’s printer (which prints double-sided, but prints the back upside down on signal from my computer, right side up from his), the fax, the ship’s email system, and all the portable memory devices I have with me.  When the stapler refused to work, I fixed it with my best no-nonsense glare and I said, “You, I am not going to put up with.  If you continue to misbehave, you are going straight into the trash.”  Four or five crumpled staples later, I prevailed.

And then one of the Resident Directors came begging for a favor.  Three hours before the Talent Show, she had given up on her balky printer, and she needed 400 copies of the program, double sided. 
“Let’s try a test copy first,” I suggested. 



One spontaneous double-sided copy, one jam, one inexplicable reversal of the two inside pages, a dozen reformats and adjustments of margins, and 45 minutes later, we were ready to print.

The (outdated) job manual for my position is very clear:  don’t let ANYONE use the copier except you.

Who the heck would want to?

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