On Sunday 28 March 2010, I am presenting a lecture on evaluation to the KTP411 Advanced Practice in Creative Production & Arts Management students. To prepare I thought I would review my slides from last year's lecture and update them based on my now completed Masters thesis (yay for completion!) which was about evaluating a youth arts mentoring program. As I don't really like to read from my screen, I thought I'd print the slides, make hand written notes then update my slides. Sounds pretty straightforward right? Wrong!
What should have been a simple print job turned into a printing nightmare!!!
My printer jammed.
What's the big deal, I hear you ask? It didn't just jam, it right rooted itself. The paper got concertina-ed right at the back of the printer between a couple of rollers. I thought to myself, don't panic, you're pretty good at unjamming printers (and photocopiers), just pull gently. So I gingerly wrapped my fingers around the jammed-in paper and gave it a teensy tug. The paper gave a little, but then I heard the ripping sound. That's right. For those who've ever had to unjam a printer the ripping sound is not good. That sound means the paper is so jammed that it is catching on some spiky thing (why do printers have spiky things inside them?!?!) and is now going to come out in pieces! Now, that in itself is not necessarily the complete end of the world either, because sometimes you can retrieve an entire piece of paper in pieces. So I yonked to find that I was not in luck today. One tiny piece came out, but the rest stayed firmly stuck. Dammit!
Now when this happens, I then go for pushing and pulling as many levers and opening as many doors as I can find. Usually this does the trick... on a photocopier. But this is my little desktop printer, my Brother HL1430, it had no other doors or levers. *expletive*.
Not one to be licked by a printer, I decided to open it up. Surely that's how a professional printer fixing person would do it???
Armed with phillips head and flat head screwdrivers (note the technical use of handyman tools, so awesome), I opened my little Brother up while my cat Arora watched on in total fascination. I had to remove two big pieces of printer casing which was all locked in around the metal printer bit before I could get to the rollers and spiky bits. That was annoying. Not sure what printer fantasy land I was living in to think I could remove one printer piece, levering off the top, and then could reach in and lift out the jammed piece of paper.
So here I am looking at the rollers and spiky bits and realised I am also looking at electronic bits. Crap, this was no good. I don't trust myself to take out all those screws and remember which cordy bits attach to which printer bits and which little metal bits go with which plastic bits. At this point, the paper is still jammed, and now mocking me. I could just make out the printing that was on the back (I was using recycled paper to be kind to the environment), it said I Love Maths. Noooooooooooooo!!!!!
Alright then, time for precision instruments. A pair of tweezers later and the paper is removed! Before putting my Brother back together, I attempt a couple of test prints, which don't work, then do work, then don't work, then do work. Satisfied with test printing, I print my slides (remember this is the purpose of this whole printer shenanigans), which print out perfectly and on recycled paper.
The reason this adventure is so particularly awesome is because:
1. I have never opened up an electronic gadget of any descript in an attempt to fix it.
2. I unjammed my printer, which is also no easy feat at the best of times.
3. I printed my slides so I can now prepare my class (yay! what? damn).
4. I never thought I could be nerdy enough to do something like this.
So in the battle of Joon versus the evil printer of death, Joon1, printer nil. I win!!! Take that printer!
