Printers, they creep me out man...
From the moment I got my shiny new HP Deskjet I hated it.
It printed things ok, but badly, it fed paper at an angle even if I made sure that it was going in straight.

One bright morning sometime through second year I woke up and thought "I'll print my essay before going up the pub".

Oh no.

**PAPER JAM**
"Hmmm that's weird, even after checking for paper blockages the error message still comes up."
*Removes all paper*
**PAPER JAM**
*turns off and leaves it for 5 minutes*
**PAPER JAM**
"Ok, my assignment's due in shortly and you won't print? There's no good reason why you won't print. Why won't you print?"
**PAPER JAM**
So I phone HP technical support. Would you like to guess what they told me what the problem was? "The paper is jammed in printer, please check it and remove and paper before retrying".
Genius.

Apart from the face that THERE WAS NO PAPER IN IT.
Eventually it gets to the point where I go
"Fuck it, I'll print using the uni's computers."

Then, suddenly, one fantastic day. It prints something when asked to!
This gives me hope, as I'm coming up to disseration time and printing off copies and drafts would be expensive.
Disseration time rolls around and my printer and I are best pals, it prints when I ask it to and we're both happy as I'm not going mental at it every day.
I come to print my disseration out (I was running up against the deadline here for other reasons).
The clouds darken overhead.
**PAPER JAM**
I take out all the paper and try again.
**PAPER JAM**
I start to cry.
"GEORGE" I weep. "Why would you do something like this to me? I thought we were friends!"
I run to Uni, pay all the money in the world to an understanding techie friend to use a uni comptuer as (understandably) all the ones in the computer rooms are taken by people printing their dissertation.

Then came the glorious summer when I finished Uni. What would I do to celebrate such an achievement, get drunk, propose to my girlfriend?

I went to town with that bad boy with a hammer and my shoes of pain.

Have you seen Office Space? Well imagine Michael Bolton without anyone to hold him back from destroying the printer and you've got a good idea of what I was like.

I still don't trust printers.
Or shredders.
(Evilweevil is covered in bees, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 9:30, 5 replies)

I watched that movie just 2 days ago.
Classic scene!
(Eggstrovert isnt patronising you...honest..., Tue 29 Sep 2009, 9:34, closed)

A friend showed me the film
after I told him of the world of hate I unleashed on that printer.
He said "you HAVE to watch it, there's a scene in there made for you"
He was right. That scene is not only amazing (especially the backing song) but sum up my feelings towards technology that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
Stupid printer
(Evilweevil is covered in bees, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 11:53, closed)

I didn't
like the proposing bit...but smashiness made up for it :D
(lemonadegame, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 14:56, closed)

Fucking HP
bastards.

Nice story by the way, well told. "Went to town with that bad boy with a hammer and my shoes of pain." was my favourite line. Have a click for destroying some HP. bastards.
( the pink chicken sniffer sniffs pink chickens., Tue 29 Sep 2009, 17:22, closed)

The First Law of Printers
It's a long time since I did support - I are a developer now - but when I did, pretty much the first thing my older, wiser and far more cynical colleague said to me was 'The First Law of Printers is "It won't work.'" And he was right.
(Vainomoinen went looking for the Sampo on, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 18:51, closed)