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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