May 17, 2012

So frustrated

print failure

Everyone had the day off here. And what started as a day with potential for fun activities became a long, boring and frustrating day.  Because of (stubborn) me and a stupid printer!

It all started with little H. and me wanting to finally tackle the birthday party invitation issue. In no time we had the invitation ready on my laptop. We had a list ready with invitees. All that remained to be done was the printing. Only: the ink cartridge seemed to run low on yellow, and you need yellow in order to print green, don't you. Our invitation came out all purple and blue. Nothing wrong with that according to little H., but mommy is a perfectionist (sometimes) so she ran to the store to get a new color cartridge. Got home, installed it and... And nothing! The printer refused to print, except for a test page which clearly showed the presence of yellow now. I should have stopped here. We could still print with the old cartridge, couldn't we?! But no, I wanted to fix the problem. I checked settings, configurations, tried to find solutions online... And time flew by. I ran to the store again thinking that replacing the black cartridge as well, would do the trick. It only got worse: even the test page wouldn't come out now. I'll spare you the details of a long investigation, but it turns out that print cartridges for this particular brand of printer have a regional code (besides their expiration date - hence the absence of yellow!). And since we bought the printer in the US a long time ago (it never got used until now - long story!) and replaced the American expired but brand new cartridges with same brand cartridges meant for the European market, we have a compatibility problem.  Obviously, the warranty has expired as well. I do hope the help desk will contact me with a solution, though, but to be honest I doubt it...

Regional codes, seriously?!
Such a waste of precious and much needed family time...

And I felt bad about it all night.
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