Obsolescence

Before my regularly scheduled blog post, please note that on Friday, March 21 and Saturday, March 22, Screwing Up Babylon will be free on Amazon! If you’ve been waiting to read the book or know someone who might like it, now’s the time to get it.

Monday, we had a printer malfunction. My husband’s computer and his printer stopped communicating. After some trial and error, I discovered that it was a driver problem. I tried reloading the drivers, etc., but that didn’t work. So, I called tech support.

After the introductions and explanations,the tech dude said: So what seems to be the problem?

Me (confused because I already explained everything): Uh, I need to reinstall the drivers.

TD: I can help you with that. Let’s reinstall them now.

Me: (wondering if he was paying any attention during the meet-and-greet when I explained the problem): Um, as I said earlier, that didn’t work.

TD: Oh. Let’s uninstall the old driver.

Me (realizing that he’s reading off a screen checklist): It won’t uninstall, remember? It gives me an error message.

TD: Oh, that is too bad. (Long pause.) You know, your printer is obsolete. We don’t provide service for obsolete printers.

Me: So...there’s nothing I can do?

TD: You could hire someone who knows about computers to fix it. Or you could reformat the computer.

Me (sputtering): You’re serious?

At one point, he offered to sell me a new, non-obsolete printer. Needless to say, I loaded the drivers to an even more obsolete printer (a 14 year old Canon--yay for printers that keep on printing) onto my husband’s computer and said, “Now you’re going to use this printer, okay?”

Problem solved.