Thursday, June 22, 2017

They can smell fear

I've been doing some minor surgery on Awakening - cutting some irrelevant scenes, moving others around, and so on - and now I need to read the whole MS and reassure myself that it still makes sense. And being a 20th century troglodyte, I cannot evaluate my own book just by looking at it on a screen: I need that stack of printed pages so I can read the MS the way I've always read MSS.

My Epson spent day before yesterday coming up with new and creative ways to make printing the MS a major PITA:

"My heads are clogged, you have to waste ink cleaning them."

"I'm out of yellow ink. This has absolutely nothing to do with printing black, but I'm going to sit here with my arms folded until you get me a new yellow cartridge."

"Paper jam!"

"I did 10 pages. Now I'm out of black ink."

"Ooh, you touched my plug. Don't you remember you have to insert it just so to actually get electricity from this wall outlet?"

"Say, how about I print everything after page 82 in red?"

Actually, I think the red ink was caused by a mistake I made in Word, and I think it's fixed now, but I coulden't risk testing that hypothesis until I recovered from the urge to pick up the printer and hurl it out the window. Now it's time to find out. Wish me luck.

Update:

After another 45 pages it has now decided that it cannot continue printing black text unless I give it a new blue ink cartridge. Pfui. Blue and magenta cartridges now on order.

4 comments:

  1. Inkjet printers are bastages.
    Having dealt with label printers, they are also.
    Laser (or "laser") printer prices have dropped quite a lot and some makers have gotten smart enough to combine the roller that wears out with the toner cartridge. The result is a fairly inexpensive printer (I snagged a new 'off' brand for around $30 a while ago.) that doesn't care if it sits idle for a long time. The downside is that color is still expensive. But if all you need is black text? It'll do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow. A long time ago I decided laser printers were too expensive to think about, but that was way back in the 20th century. Thanks for the update! I'll still need the Epson for printing on fabric, but mss would be soo much easier with a laser printer!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have a laser printer I love - and a refill kit for the toner (cartridges used to be $60, but I can now get them from eBay for $15 when I need one). I have enough toner from that kit to refill all the cartridges 6 times more, and the printer is holding up - it was around $240. HP laser jet CP1525mw.

    I wouldn't bother with the toner kit if I were buying a new one, but I've refilled the black one several times, and several of the color ones.

    You still have to pay outrageous prices for 'original mfr.' cartridges, and the starter cartridges which come with the printer don't have nearly as much toner. But I've gotten my money's worth out of this one.

    Husband bought a VERY inexpensive laser printer, B&W, for his computer - works fine andis fast.

    Don't be afraid of the technology when you are ready to upgrade. It's rather nice.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Okay, Alicia. If you can move into the 21st century, I can stumble in as well. I'll go off and research laser printing on fabric, see if I can dump the Epson altogether.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
My Blogger TricksAll Blogger TricksLatest Tips and Tricks