artbycassiday

Saturday, July 21, 2012

It's not the destination; it's the journey

Installing a different printer today was exactly what the Apollo 13 astronauts experienced after their oxygen tanks exploded. First I had to determine operating systems to be sure newer printer was compatible with older computer tower (having wasted an hour and a half driving to Nebraska Furniture Mart the other day in search of a Windows 98 compatible printer for my mother which the telephone desk at the Mart assured me they had but the computer staff at the Mart were unable to locate -Best Buy said check Craig's List); then the disc drive on Sue's tower didn't work so I couldn't simply use the disc provided with my printer, so I had to download the driver software from HP, which was interrupted by not responding messages over and over and over again, and downloaded at 35 kps. Finally, the CO2 alarm went off and I had to jerry-rig (no offense brother) a new co2 scrubber using only the parts in the kitchen silverware drawer, some rubber bands, two soda straws, some peanut butter, and a jelly jar. But the mission was accomplished: Sue's old printer is Windows 98 compatible which will work with Mother's prehistoric computer (which by the way is probably a million times more powerful than those computers that got Apollo 11 to the moon and back and which she is anxious to have installed so she can print the poetry she wrote many many years ago), we installed my newer model printer on Sue's computer which is the wireless server, the parachutes opened, we soft landed in the Pacific, and printed a document.