Office Space

It started so innocently.

I’ve acquired a lot of good Royals gear over the past couple years. Watching my boys in blue roll through the playoffs and into the World Series, culminating in an amazing November parade… it’s brought tremendous joy to Nancy, me, and the kiddos.

But what to do with all this cool stuff.

“I’ll redecorate my office!”, I thought.

Frames in hand, I was ready. Collage ideas in mind to display tickets, rally towels, photos, programs, and other keepsakes. All I needed was to print a few photos.

A random thought crossed my mind. I’ve taken a LOT of awesome photos I’d like to print semi-professionally. Maybe it’s time for a printer upgrade.

“Nah… no need to spend money needlessly”, I thought.

I’m not a professional. The old photo printer would surely do just fine.

Except it was out of ink. A problem I could solve.

Off to Office Depot. $100 later, I’m on my way.

Back home again. Cartridges installed in a flash. Finally ready to rock and roll.

The first photo sheet rolled out. Why was the firetruck in the parade photo such an ugly shade of yellow? Where were the reds in the photo? Why was Royals blue so… OFF?

“Those stinking ink cartridges. I should have known better than to buy generic.”

I yanked them back out, thinking they were empty. As ink splattered on my hands, I realized they clearly weren’t the problem.

“Clean the print heads. That should fix it.” Surely after sitting mostly unused for several months, the printer was just in need of maintenance.

I printed another photo. Same surreal weirdness.

“Print a test page you dummy. Quit wasting photo paper.”

I fumbled through the printer menu and on we went. Test page printed.

No dice. Light magenta and magenta were completely missing.

*SIGH*

“Google will know. Google ALWAYS knows.”

Google did not know.

Well, not really. I tried several forums. HP C7280, no magenta or light magenta.

A common problem.

“Well, at least I’m not the only one.” I tried the various solutions.

Entering troubleshooting codes.

Clean print heads.

Install and reinstall cartridges.

Re-initialize the ink system.

Hard reset the printer to defaults.

Strike one, two, three, four… ten. My Royals photos were clearly not happening.

The printer’s communications path was clearly not functioning with two of the six cartridges, just as so many others had experienced.

$100 down the tubes. No photos. No collages.

Blood boiling.

Printer out the front door. Time to go “Office Space”.

(If only in my imagination.)

Technology really stinks sometimes.