Brinkmanship

Let me introduce you to the inner workings of my A3 printer. I’ve spent quite a long time today contemplating this view. Ever since early this morning my printer has been having the habdabs, either refusing to print because it thought the orange ink cartridge was empty (which was only fitted less than a week ago) or it’s been telling me that none of eight ink cartridges can be recognised so all the warning lights came on and it stopped working.

Somehow I have managed to re-boot, coax, weedle and trick it into thinking that all is hunkydory and I have actually managed to do quite a bit of printing today. But this evening it seemed to have finally gone on strike for good. It was telling me that the cyan cartridge was supposed to be empty, which I had changed just over two weeks ago, and none of the aforementioned re-booting and coaxing would encourage it to start printing. It seems to be a communication problem, with the printer thinking the ink cartridges are empty when they are not. 

With just two days to go before I am manning my card stall at our annual church sale, you can imagine this isn’t the best time for the printer to go on strike. In desperation I finally decided to give in and change the cyan cartridge, despite it only having lasted two and a half weeks. (I have actually been using a lot of blue in my Christmas cards as it happens.) 

Phew! It worked. I can tell Smithers he no longer needs to bring me the smelling salts.