My Thanks For The Day

The last two days has had me fighting with my computer, trying to get my new OS to play nice with my old(ish) Epson printer. I got the HP online, no problem, but I really wanted to get the Epson up and running because it takes cheaper ink. (When I finally run out of ink, I'm going to try a continuous ink system, but for now I have some cheap ink I've had for several years that is still good).

I spent the equivalent of about a day on the computer chatting with 3 different tech support guys. The first guy was quite helpful and got it working for awhile, but then it stopped printing again. The second guy was hopeless, basically told me "hopefully Epson will come out with a driver soon, ... I was happy to help you." Ha! He was no help!

Then I connected with just about the best tech support person ever. He tried every trick in his play book. We installed, uninstalled, restarted more times than I can count, he took control of my computer for awhile to try to figure it out, finally (I think as a last ditch effort), he had me reinstall the OS over the existing OS installation to try to repair anything that might be damaged and ... drumroll ... my printer still wouldn't print.

So then I went online and started searching for reasons why documents would go into the printer queue and not go any further and definitely not print. I tried restarting the print spooling, read a little further and read that if the printer is out of ink, it won't print. It also said that if the light on the front is solid red, that means the printer is out of ink and won't print. Um, yeah, you guessed it, the light was on and yep, it was solid red. I had known that my ink was low, but I was expecting the printer software to tell me that it was time to put in a new cartridge (I think my other printer does that), but it never did. So I put in a new cartridge. I clicked print... it started printing and I just started laughing. What else could I do? I felt so foolish and so relieved at the same time. I needed my printer and it was finally back and for that I was so glad, but it was also pitiful how much time I spent trying everything but the actual solution. But, it's finally back up and running and I am SO thankful to have my printer back. And that's my thanks of the day; and the moral of the story is, if your printer ever quits working, check the obvious, is it plugged in, is it connected to the computer, does it have enough ink? 'nough said.