BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns I bloody hate printers. Not, controversially, small inkjet printers, which are mass-produced in the developing world, allowing big name manufacturers to be comfortably opaque about pollution and labor laws.  And that's even with their eye watering profits on consumables - that razor …

[jmch]

Gold!

Brilliant!

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Sheer genius!!

"... but I know for a fact that it can take half a dozen of Design and Style's office chairs without breaking the water line."

Absolutely brilliant.

"Still can't see those chairs..."

I was half expecting an additional

>Gurgle<

after this

Great way to start the weekend

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Incidentally. What are the odds the BOFH was involved in the microwaved can of sardines?

Seems fishy to me

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Sheer genius!!

More likely in the printer contracts that can't be are hard to cancel.

[rg287]

Re: Sheer genius!!

More likely in the printer contracts that can't be are hard to cancel.

Quite. I'd hazard that those contracts are not with a manufacturer, but a shady MSP whose registered address is the pub across the road. One has to keep in beer money!

[Zarno]

Re: Sheer genius!!

On the subject of microwaves in the office...

Many moons ago (ok, ok, about 111 moons ago. Ish...), at a firm that's better unnamed, there was a wall of microwaves in the break room/cantina bullpen.

I can't remember the brand, but I know for a fact that opening the door the moment the timer ticked over to zero and the beeper started to bleat would brick them.

Just one long, sad, ceaseless tone denoting that it's dead, persisting through a power cycle.

There was also another microwave where we swear someone nuked a plumped up used nappie, the stench was as strong as bear attractant, and never went away fully.

[Jay 2]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Once upon a time an office or two back, some enlightened soul* decided to heat up some pizza in one of the microwaves. So far so normal you may think. But it was still in a box. The box was placed on the revolving dish, the microwave started, and the person involved decided they'd go somewhere else for many minutes. But the box was suitably big enough to get jammed in place when the dish span. This resulted with part of the box being expertly zapped by all those helpful microwaves. After a few minutes of this, someone near the kitchen asked a slightly rhetorical question (as the answer was obvious) "Is something burning?". The answer was a most definite yes. The box was burning. Took a while for the smell to dissipate.

Similarly, but not etched in my memory as well, was an occurrence of some fish-based offering getting a good blast in a microwave and then spreading its rather interesting aroma around for longer than we'd have liked.

* Sorry, I meant to say complete moron

[Dog11]

Re: Sheer genius!!

You're surely not thinking of the time I reheated mackerel curry in the microwave. That was a long time ago, in a place far far away.

[ITengineer]

Re: Sheer genius!!

on a similar vein when I was a physics student staying in halls of residence I decided microwaving a t-towel would be a fast way to drying it. It did do that but I left it rather too long so it started to smolder. I tried to hide the evidence by handing it out of the window but there was a nice breeze that evening and that took it from gentle shouldering to full on flames.

[DuchessofDukeStreet]

Re: Sheer genius!!

In the early days of domestic microwaves, I once took the same approach to drying a bra. An underwired bra. No breeze was required...

[J. Cook]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Oh, a light show with the smoke and flames! :D

[Tim99]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Like Richard 111's Dad; In the early days of microwave ovens (1982?); I, too, used our brand new one to heat a Christmas pudding. There were no microwave instructions, and the standard way of heating said pudding was by steaming it in a bowl, in a partially filled pan, for 1-2 hours. I'll give it 10 minutes I thought, then have a look to see how much longer it needs... Just before the 10 minutes was up, there was a strong caramelly odour from the microwave. When I opened the door the pudding caught fire.

After unplugging, and dowsing the flames, cleaning the caramelized inside took perhaps half an hour.

Not a total loss, the cat carried off and ate the remains of the pudding.

[cookiecutter]

Re: Sheer genius!!

I microwaved a couple of eggs last month..never again. Took me ages to clean that mess up

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Sheer genius!!

I did that in a mates rented furnished flat. It had a basic microwave with a clockwork style knob for setting the run time, & a door open button, that was it, properly no frills.

He was being turfed out as the family wanted to sell up, & he felt, shall we say, less than entirely benignly disposed toward them & their furnishings.

We'd heard that you should never put an egg in a microwave, but only vaguely suspected the reason why.

After warming up with a couple of shite CDs for the dancing lightning display (it was the 80s, the decade that taste forgot, shite CDs were widely available for sacrificial purposes) we put an egg in an empty large instant coffee jar, screwed the lid down tight, put it in the microwave, turned the timer all the way up & retired to a safe distance to see what would happen, but feeling pretty smug that we'd thought up a foolproof way to test the egg problem without making a mess of the microwave.

After about 2 minutes there was a very loud bang & the cooking cavity of the microwave filled instantly with dense smoke, & the machine fell ominously silent.

When we eventually opened the thing, the jar was intact, & the threaded part of the lid was still firmly screwed in place, but the rest of the lid was in small pieces, firmly embedded into the uniform layer of very tough scrambled egg-and-eggshell that now lined every internal surface of the machine. The microwave's mains fuse was intact, & the layer of rubbery egg wasn't going anywhere, so we left it be, never to work again. Apparently it was my fault as he was a musician so couldn't have known that it might end badly, whereas I was a mechanic, so...

He's still a musician & I'm now mainly a student landlord, so karma in action presumably?

[Andrew Scott]

Re: Sheer genius!!

my mom used to make Plumb pudding. pour brandy on it and light it up at christmas. poured extra as she'd had trouble getting it lit the previous year. lit up great, but then she couldn't put out. flame kept moving to the opposite side of where she was blowing to put the flame out. did manage to light a paper napkin on fire, but that was easy to put out. think it was the last time she made that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sheer genius!!

When carving in green wood the fast way to dry the finished item is the microwave. For about 10-15s a time, and allowing the item to cool down in between. People have, reportedly, both charred the inside of wooden items and actually set them on fire by just letting it run for a few minutes.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Microwaves don't cook from the inside therefore I doubt that they managed to char the insides of wooden unless there was only water on the inside and none in the outside portions of the wood. In which case the wood would almost certainly have split due to superheating of the trapped water.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Microwaves will heat most effectively at whatever point they are focused (the reason why there are turntables in the things). This will most likely be in the middle of something, unless that thing's surface is reflective to microwaves, or electrically conductive, in which case it may act as an antenna.

This is why you can microwave a measuring jug of custard with a metal tablespoon still in it (the water content of the custard absorbs the microwaves), but if you put the spoon in on its own, it's a really, really, really bad idea.

[Richard 111]

Re: Sheer genius!!

We had a new microwave in the 80's and it included a keep warm function. My Dad followed the instruction to microwave the xmas pud and then keep it warm while we ate dinner. Some 40 minutes later he went to get the pudding, opened the microwave door and it burst into flames. He promptly closed the door and took the entire contraption outside. The pudding had been reduced to a large glowing ember of charcoal from the prolonged warming which finally ignited once some fresh oxygenated air was allowed in. The resulting fire melted the microwave door. No Christmas pudding for us that year and a new microwave was dully acquired a few weeks later.

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

Re: Sheer genius!!

At a certain large technology company, at a certain campus building in the southeastern part of the US... the underpaid and under appreciated L1 support queue was housed along with a few specialty queues for business customers and escalations, tended by a roving pack of very sharp L2s

It became well known that an ordinary bag of microwave popcorn, set for a 7 minute cook cycle, would result in smoke alarms and building evacuation for at least an hour, every single time. If you were on the queue, that is an hour break, with pay.

It's weird how many otherwise tech savvy people seem to struggle with microwaving a simple bag of popcorn....shocking really!

Then the magnetron got broked.

(if you were there - you will recognize the verbiage on the sign posted...)

[Medixstiff]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Came into the office one morning to find everyone standing outside, someone had tried to heat their breakfast in one of the microwaves, however they had it on convection, which proceeded to melt the plastic splash lid and set the fire alarms off.

My favourite though, was our CEO screaming his head off asking - his words - What f***wit decided it was a bright idea to cook fish in a microwave on the day the minister was visiting.

The worker in question went home crying his eyes out, I agreed with the CEO though, use some brains people.

[Andrew Scott]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Long time ago trying to diagnose memory errors on a computer being used as a server and studying the hardware manuals with a do-not-disturb sign on the door. Someone decide to heat some kind of pasta with tomato sauce in a plastic container tightly covered in plastic wrap. Exploded spraying tomato sauce all over the inside of the microwave, while i jumped about a foot.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Once upon a time we had a microwave which would incessantly beep every couple of seconds after somebody nuked their lunch, just as a reminder that said lunch is still inside the microwave.

Well, somebody did it. Walked away and forgot about said lunch.

The beeping started to irritate me, so I helpfully nuked the cold food again.

Then left for my desk.

After a while it started to beep yet again. Said owner still did not collect his/her/they/them's foodstuffs from the microwave.

So I nuked it. Again. But for a bit longer this time in order to ensure it will remain warmer for longer.

Thereafter no more irritating beeping. Hope the food was tasty and delicious. Fnarrr.

I picked this specific icon, because the third time round I would've nuked the absolute shit out of it.

[CountCadaver]

Re: Sheer genius!!

All the sump is missing is a 1980s esque sewer gator lol

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Sheer genius!!

More likely to have a saltwater croc.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Sheer genius!!

Our office has hot desks but formed into neighbourhoods for each team. We had to lock everything to desks to stop monitors etc walking off. The only thing we can’t lock to the desk is …. The chairs. Guess what has gone missing? Now we’ll have to play musical chairs, or mount a raid on another neighbourhood

[David Hicklin]

Re: Sheer genius!!

> The chairs. Guess what has gone missing?

Nothing worse then to find YOUR chair has gone walkies....at least WFH solved that problem!

[Dave K]

Familiar!

"Complicated contracts which can only be cancelled on a harvest moon in a leap year by repeating the word "multifunction" backwards, three times, into rotary dial telephone, after calling the unlisted phone number of a squid farmer in East Bangladesh. And leaving a message."

Has Simon been looking at some of the lease agreements from one of my former employers? This sounds strangely familiar!

[GlenP]

Re: Familiar!

A company I worked for took a copier on a 7 year lease, of course 4 years later it needed replacing. "No problem" said the supplier, "You can't cancel the lease but you can lease a new machine and we'll take the old one away!" They were stupid enough to not realise that the entire remaining 3 years of payments on the first lease were simply added to the second one, which was for another 7 years.

5 years later when the second copier died I refused to allow the same thing to happen again, so we had a dead machine that was still being paid for but I insisted any future leases were for a maximum of three years.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Familiar!

/scratches head

Surely if it’s on a lease, the lease company have to replace it if it breaks? Isn’t this why companies lease printers? Or am I missing something?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Familiar!

The lease company finds an exclusion clause which means that the way your particular printer is broken isn't covered.

[GlenP]

Re: Familiar!

The usual exclusion being, "Unless parts are unavailable!"

Pitney Bowes did the same with franking machines, charged a substantial sum for mandatory maintenance on machines they couldn't actually repair.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Familiar!

"Or am I missing something?"

Either the small print or (unlike the leasing company's salesweasel) a not very bright manager in the company.

[DailyLlama]

Simon has clearly had to deal with these people before... and I applaud this course of action!

Beer is on me, Simon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Printer Configs

My mind has just flashed back to 1985 when the printers in the office I was working had RS232 interfaces - in fact, the whole site network (for ~1500 staff) was based on that. One problem we had was that there was no common config for each printer, and we found that they could periodically reset themselves (and it wasn't possible for us mere mortals to find out what the new config was - no printer readouts, etc. back then). IT support would take ages to respond (because there was always a long queue). I had a Psion II PDA with an RS232 interface, and a program that ran through all the possible config permutations. Plug that into a recalcitrant printer and run it - once it had a config that coincided with the printer's it would print out. Even if I hadn't bought the Psion for other work, it would have been worth the cost of it from the free drinks and other credit/favours I was getting from my printer-fixing sideline. Even IT were happy as it cut down their workload in our area of the site (which was about as far as it could be from their base).

That job was my first day-to-day contact with a PC (a Dec Rainbow) - I'd routinely had to access mainframe terminals in previous jobs (and even direct use of a mini computer - a Varian/Sperry V70), but the Rainbow was the first one to sit on my desk and be my personal access to the wonderful world of spreadsheets, etc.

[Trygve Henriksen]

Re: Printer Configs

Pretty certain the Psion Org II (CM and probably XP) came out in 1986, and the LZ version in 1987(or was that the 4line 64KB LZ64 only with the LZ32 in 1986?)

I didn't really get into Psions unil the S3a, and I spent way too many hours sitting on the floor in networking closets with it hooked up to a router or Switch of some sort.

Picked up the S5 and did a lot of the same with that...

Got a few Org II(a POS350 and a LZ64 among them) and even a Psion Organiser(the first one) later. Wonderful machines.

My MC400 laptop is awaiting a battery pack rebuild, but the rest of the Psions still works.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Printer Configs

I didn't think much of the Psion v1, I actually donated one to the Computer Museum in Swindon after I saved it from being binned.

I still have an Org II LZ64 but in black, with some datapacks (including one flashpack and a RAMpack which needs a new battery) and the RS232 link. It still works, but has been living in a drawer for years now..

From the clamshells I liked the S5 best as it had a remarkably good keyboard for its size. Just the screen ribbons were less than perfect :).

[Willy Ekerslike]

Re: Printer Configs

"Pretty certain the Psion Org II (CM and probably XP) came out in 1986"

OP here: you're right - 1986. My memory was a couple years out. It would have been 1987/8 when I started checking printer configs. It was the year our team moved from the main office complex into an annex, where we were about as far from the IT centre as possible, and our use of the embryonic email system took off. I recall my Rainbow's other main uses were to run our supplier inspection database (on a Lotus Symphony spreadsheet), and sending telexes to suppliers (yes, for the young 'uns, telexes were quite common in businesses back then - fax machines were only still working their way in).

I still have the Psion II, the serial adapter (and, ISTR, the UV EPROM eraser for wiping memory modules) in the attic, along with the Psion 3a that replaced it (that with its plug-in modem). The 3a a really good PDA and was only retired when the hinges broke for the second time (though I got them fixed before retiring it). I had been planning to switch to the Psion 5 but its release was delayed so I switched to the Palm PDA series, albeit the Sony Clie versions, until they were discontinued. My final stand-alone PDA was the Tungsten T5. It's demise was the arrival of the iPhone, where I reckoned the 3GS was mature enough to replace my T5, my GPS, my iPod and camera - cutting out a lot of clutter when checking into flights.

[Anonymous Coward]

Solutions: simpler and simplest

The coloured pencil brigade are hardly distinguished by their intellect nor I daresay their creativity odd as it might seem.

Connecting the two printers to separate power outlets operated by Yale key locks would seem to prevent unauthorised use sufficiency and the time for printer to power up each time they wish to print shouldn't faze those who habitually gaze vacuously into the void. Really the two switches could be keyed alike for all the difference it would make.

The simplest solution involves a packet of decent cable ties - the steel ones would be favourite - and relocating the entitled coloured pencil department's chairs to Simon's basement chair repository. You can see what the ties are for...no?

I always think of LDAP as a rare occasion of the TCP/IP rebels being drawn to the dark side by the imperial OSI forces.

Kerberos + LDAP a bastard offspring at best.

[Alan Brown]

Re: Solutions: simpler and simplest

Kerberos+LDAP usually works, once you get your head past the arcane and eldrich magical incancations

[Richard Gray 1]

I Really hate printers

I think that BOFH just has a mild dislike to printers compared to my dislike of them.

Having to go to peoples houses to fix home printers not working by turning them upside down and giving them a massive shake to clear out all the paperclips, drawing pins, bits of biscuits etc out of the feed tray, to having to remove the massive plan printer from a station because the later found out it was too cold for it so kept stopped working.

Along the way I've had MFDs that couldn't do NTP and the boss was too cheap to replace them. I've negotiated a replacement printer that was faster, cheaper with a smaller footprint that was rejected because although the new one was correctly calibrated it didn't match the blue of the old one (which wasn't calibrated).

Been unable to remove the very expensive wax from a Xerox printer, and done a guerrilla night time run to remove an old printer from an office by the application of black insulation tape across the laser that managed to take out one complete row of a spreadsheet.

I've got a printer next to me that requires a connection to halfway around the world which means it regularly fails to print..

Now you have got my blood to boil thinking about printers and it's going to be hours before I can get a beer ...

[Flightmode]

Re: I Really hate printers

> I've got a printer next to me that requires a connection to halfway around the world which means it regularly fails to print..

Tangentially related: In the late nineties I was doing helpdesk duty, and was called upon to check a networked HP LaserJet printer that had been slow and unreliable for months. Since our cabled network was a bit iffy at times (my team didn't own or touch the wiring), I decided to start by moving it to another patch point to see if that made any difference. This was was in our customer service area, which was on a section of raised flooring in an old automobile manufacturing hall (long and narrow). The printer was next to one of the small stairs that led up to the raised floor, and as I started pulling the cable, I realized that it went up the post next to it, then across the stairs (tautly stretched between the poles), down the post on the other side and continued off along the floor (neatly tucked in between the wall partitions and the desks, all the way to the end of the hall and back - SIX TIMES, then patched into an outlet on the post it had just gone down. Having rolled it all up, I found myself holding a mass of partially frayed Cat 5 cable that I couldn't even estimate the length of in meters - it was at least FOUR WEEKS long! I replaced it by a 2 meter drop patch to the outlet right next to it (on the same pole the old cable had gone UP), and after that it worked perfectly again; snappy as anything and completely reliable once more.

When I asked the nearby staff if they knew who'd installed it they said that it'd originally been installed on the other side of the stairs (where it was plugged in), but they'd wanted to move it for some reason and then the cable hadn't been long enough... so they'd found a longer one next to the trash compactor and used that one instead.

[Giles C]

Re: I Really hate printers

I had one similar but it was ibm type 1 cabling, we had a port that didn’t work well, so decided to replace the patch cabinet, now from the cabinet to the central reception was about 150 feet (45m) we started pulling the patch cable out no big deal it should have been less than 2 metres but this was long and curled up in the bottom of the cabinet, well we managed to get to the reception door without either end being unplugged so that was about a 100m patch lead which then went off to a desk near the reception door, this was replaced.

The thing is for those youngsters who have never encountered it, is that type 1 cable is big and heavy modern cable is a lot lighter but this wire must have weighed in at about 15kg. Considering it is 4cores of 0.6mm cable it will draw about 7amps per core you can almost run a 240v kettle on a single cable…

I don’t miss working on it.

[Alan Brown]

Re: I Really hate printers

"so they'd found a longer one next to the trash compactor and used that one instead"

It used to be common practice to tie knots in the ends of dud cables before tossing them into the bin

I gave up on that and started carrying a pair of sidecutters when I discovered several "enterprising" users were fishing them out, untying the knots and using them for various equipment - then calling us for networking issues

Cat 5 1G cables will still (mostly) work if one pair is dead - mostly - meaning that when traffic levels ramp up the error rate goes through the roof

[Meph]

Re: I Really hate printers

Back in the days where I was deskside support and field tech, I habitually wore a Leatherman precisely for this reason. Dud patch cables were summarily executed by removal of at least one of the connectors, since I couldn't trust the end users to not just retrieve a seemingly fine-looking cable and plug it back in.

[tango_uniform]

Re: I Really hate printers

Been unable to remove the very expensive wax from a Xerox printer,

Ah, those old dye-sub printers. Had a few in a department that did pre-press stuff for a few years. If the printers weren't regularly used the heads would clog. I found that you could remove the heater/tank/printhead unit from the printer and stick it in the oven (on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper) for an hour at low heat to clear it out. Wasted wax, but consumables weren't in my department budget.

[Alan Brown]

Re: I Really hate printers

"If the printers weren't regularly used the heads would clog"

For some values of "regularly" - being 10 pages/er day or so

I finally managed to bin the last two waxjet printers (which nobody used because they kept clogging) and wasn't impressed when a printer rep tried to pitch new ones as an enterprise printing solution

Mind you it would have been amusing to see a 300 page doublesided printout all nicely glued together. There were some staff who deserved that kind of experience

[Martin an gof]

Re: I Really hate printers

And on the contrary, I have had the pleasure of working with two "wax jet" printers, as you call them (they aren't dye-sub - re. the previous poster - they're much more like inkjets with properly engineered mechanics and ink that isn't liquid until used). The first was actually a Tektronix model and the only faults I had to deal with on it were thick secretaries feeding label sheets through it more than once.

The second was a Xerox and was my family's main printer for 10 years or more until the cost of a new drum for it, alongside it needing a new set of ink, turned out to be considerably higher than the cost of a new Lexmark laser printer which came with part-filled cartridges which nominally had the same page coverage as a set of wax blocks for the Xerox. It had one fault early on (can't exactly remember what) which was partly covered under warranty and fixed on-site (on my dining table!) for a not unreasonable fixed-fee, but otherwise ran flawlessly* and would probably run again if anyone was daft enough to fit it with a new drum. Its main downside was needing to be constantly powered in order for the ink to stay liquid which enabled a "quick" time to first page of maybe a couple of minutes.

Upsides included the ability to add ink before running out, in the middle of a print job if necessary, and absolutely stunning text output and graphics. Photos not perfect, but good enough, and we had a succession of "photo" printers which did that duty (I'm never buying another ink jet).

We also had a Canon Selphy true dye-sub printer, for 6x4 prints (and a few other sizes). Expensive to run, but great on holiday for those personalised postcards home, and the used cartridges make interesting window decorations :-)

M.

*a couple of years before we decided to replace it, it did develop some really odd symptoms which I eventually traced to a failing SODIMM. I'd added generic laptop memory to it early on because it struggled with full-page photos or complex pages with detailed graphics. The official Xerox part was exactly the same spec, but about five or six times the price. Replaced the SODIMM (that wasn't easy as IIRC it was DDR which was very much out of fashion by then) and all was fine again. So I'm not putting that down as a fault with the printer.

[Alan Brown]

Re: I Really hate printers

"I've got a printer next to me that requires a connection to halfway around the world which means it regularly fails to print.."

Someone "acquired" one of these and demanded we (IT) make it work with all the PCs in the office. It fell off the desk and was declared unrepairable (oops) - with the user rather pointedly being told that if he purchased another one we'd let procurement know he'd gone to an unauthorised supplier

[storner]

I also hate printers

Problem is my 88-year old mum insists on printing all of the emails, she receives. Guess who gets to fix it when the printer does not work?

I actually bought a new printer for her - well, an old model since it has to work with her Windows 7 laptop - which worked flawlessly for 10 days, but now refuses to connect to her wifi.

So ... printers. Spawn of the devil.

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: I also hate printers

My mfd is stuck in US land. Cannot reset to EU to get that extra channel

Thing is all the wireless units I have used and have auto hop channels so as soon as one goes to 13 no printing and 13 really seems to be the best free channel

Only thing now is that I have offed the WiFi to external units and configured the WiFi on the router to US and only the printer connects

Cabling - except for devolo units is not possible

[Xalran]

Re: I also hate printers

I think I know that story.... Oh wait....

Ah, yes, I'm impatiently waited by my 86 years old mum that has (yet another problem ) with her new printer.

(one year old printer... the old is with me, apparently it dies, and I haven't started looking at how it died.)

Since I'm guessing that Windows (11 sadly) just removes the printer from the devices if it does not see it during an update, and since it's a wifi connected printer (through the triple play box), I'm probably going to be nasty and if the printer can't be connected in USB, I'll get one that can, and tell her that from now on she will have to connect the printer to the laptop to be able to print.

( I have a laser printer [network connected] that I need to integrate in my home network, once it's done I'll have a free junk inkjet printer that can be connected in USB, with luck it will be available to replace my mother one if it doesn't have an USB connection )

Obviously... I don't like wifi, everything (except the fondleslab and the mobile phones for obvious reasons) is wired at home.

[Luiz Abdala]

Loved that lift.

I want a lift equipped with a disposal device now...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Loved that lift.

What I want to know is were the chairs occupied when they were disposed of?

[vogon00]

Re: Loved that lift.

...and if not, why not! You simply cannot afford to waste a storage area like that!

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Loved that lift.

Well its far more complex than it used to be, because you have to seperate for recycling purposes, so its fit an infra red sensor to detect a body going past, and then open the diverter to the wood chipper, chairs and desks need to goto the skip, PC, printers and moniters are sent to e-goods recycling, again by use of sensors and diverter plates, but finally , that really annoying salesman you cannot stand and who wont take no for an answer or indeed seems to be stuck in your office no matter how many times you hit him with a broom, needs to be sent to the water pit in the bottom filled with any number of sharp objects ranging from old mop handles through old wine bottles and last years glass display case to sharks and pirhanas.

I'm just surprised theres enough room in the lift shaft for the actual lift itself (although in a cost cutting measure you could always sell that )

[Richard Tobin]

"partially implement every networking protocol known to man, badly"

A fine example of this is that many Canon printers can't be connected to your wireless network if the network implements 802.11r, a protocol to speed up roaming between access points. The symptom is particularly bizarre - the printer just doesn't prompt you for the wifi password. The workaround is to turn off 802.11r, configure the printer, and turn it on again.

[TRT]

Re: "partially implement every networking protocol known to man, badly"

And I thought it was just me!

[DCS]

Canon can't count past 11

Just had something similar with a Canon Selphy (photo printer). It's wifi implementation only works on a subset of the channels available on 2.4ghz, so I had to change my wireless networking to be able to print.

Printer are the root of all evil in the world. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Spectre - all of them stemmed from someone trying to get a printer working.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Canon can't count past 11

"Printer are the root of all evil in the world. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Spectre - all of them stemmed from someone trying to get a printer working."

And they all hate the USA. Mostly because the USA is the only country in the world to not use A4 and every printer seems to default to US Letter instead of the world-wide standard A4!!!

Come on USA, switch to A4 and herald in world peace!

[Martin an gof]

Re: Canon can't count past 11

only works on a subset of the channels available on 2.4ghz

Think that's bad? I have some Aruba APs (i.e HP kit marketed at SMEs, not domestic stuff) which cannot as far as I know (and I have spent ages trying) be configured to use any channel other than 1, 5 or 11. Corporate uses Meraki kit which is likewise disadvantaged. Either that or IT hasn't set them up right (I do have access to the configuration interface, but only for "emergency use" so I haven't spent too much time looking there).

Plenty of (cheaper) 5GHz kit can only use the first four channels which don't need DFS (or TPC?) meaning that once someone next door decides they really need all 80MHz of those channels to stream 3Mbps YouTube videos to their £1,200 iPhone at 860Mbps your own connection is, erm, "compromised".

M.

[Alan Brown]

Re: "partially implement every networking protocol known to man, badly"

If you have a network complicted enough to need 802.1r, then those kind of nasty printers need to mysteriously break

[chivo243]

Mr Haney!

I felt like I was watching BoFH visits Green Acres for a second...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-sT5vHnYNE

Or Lyle Langley....

[Evil Auditor]

They then partially implement every networking protocol known to man, badly, and release the thing to market.

Ever since this MFP entered our place, I tried to make it connect to the rather secure WLAN. But it wouldn't. It's not ancient either. Had to create a dumbed-down guest network just for this bloody printer. Yes, I'm looking at you, HP.

[Ken Hagan]

I presume that the more expensive printers don't have USB interfaces, but the toy ones for SOHO use do. Use that to drive the printer and use a Raspberry Pi to talk to your network. Probably eliminates the risk of the printer ever upgrading its firmware, too.

[Alan Brown]

"I presume that the more expensive printers don't have USB interfaces, but the toy ones for SOHO use do"

If £15k is expensive, then yes they do have USB ports

[Meph]

>>"and use a Raspberry Pi to talk to your network"

Respectfully, no.

Back in the days of early MFD's that didn't natively support cabled networking, there was an after-market box you could use as a pseudo print server. These were the bane of my existence, as they frequently crapped out and needed to be power cycled to get the network to pick them up again.

I know Raspberry PI's would be infinitely more reliable, but the amount of PTSD those things caused can be seen in the drinking habits of many an old IT geek.

[Missing Semicolon]

El cheapo HP MFPs won't connect to the Wifi if the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz networks have the same SSD.

As every ISP's wifi box does.

[TSM]

> > El cheapo HP MFPs won't connect to the Wifi if the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz networks have the same SSD.

> As every ISP's wifi box does.

Not all of them! Mine has [name] and [name]-5G.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Got an old HP MFP color Laser at home.

Decided against upgrading its firmware as I don't want HP to brick it, and it is still working, so why upgrade the firmware and risk it?

[frankvw]

A particularly good episode

Bad things happened to my keyboard twice when I read this while having cofee... First the contract cancellation prodecure, then the heavy equipment disposal method. Brilliant!!!

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

"I'm not sure how deep the sump is, but I know for a fact that it can take half a dozen of Design and Style's office chairs without breaking the water line." *BWAHAHAHAH!!!

[Antron Argaiv]

Work had a number of base-model Aeron chairs whose seats had turned into a shredded mess of fibers (UV degradation?). Anyway, they were taking up space in a corner of the office for years. Apparently, nobody had the funds to get them fixed. During COVID, one of them made it back to my basement office. Replacement seat and some larger casters from Amazon, and an hour of wrenching, and I have a new office chair. Still using it and it's very comfy.

[ukgnome]

everyone hates printers

why would they waste that much time on a printer.

[TRT]

I was recently tasked with...

finding the current usage of the photocopier that arrived in the company before I did. Went down to the disused lavatory corridor where the machine has wound up some years pre-COVID during a redecoration event of the main common room area where it used to live. It's powered down...

OK, power on...

Print the job list...

Paper jam... only to be expected...

Fixed paper jam, apply a bit of platen cleaner to the rollers, a dab of blast on the paper pick up rubber... take out the toner cartridge and redistribute the powder... check it's not clumped.

Works like a beast now...

Print out the job log... and the dates are day and month, not year.

If I'd have done the job just three days later I'd not be able to tell if it hadn't been used for a year or a few days.

I suspect it's been unused for about 5 years, to be honest, but one year is enough to condemn it as not in use.

Now, where's that copy of Old Moore's Almanac and my handy Bangladeshi phrase book?

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: I was recently tasked with...

Got my LJ5 for free from a legal office in town. Fixed it up during COVID WFH. Knackered fuser ($125) and drive gears ($30), maxed out the RAM ($30) and added a network card ($15). 3 NOS long-life OEM toner carts from Goodwill ($20 ea) and the damn thing's gonna outlive me. Sits on my network, drawing 7W on standby and prints whenever SWMBO or I queue something up. My Linux system acts as an Apple print server, so we're all happy.

[Kubla Cant]

Funny you should mention printers

In former times I learned that the time programming a report was usually trivial compared to the hours making it print correctly. And if you really wanted to waste your life, try doing something with printer configuration. I thought those days were over, but...

Last week I replaced all my home wifi and installed a Pi-Hole DNS server. I expected problems, but it all went swimmingly. Everything connected to the new network: two PCs, a tablet, two TVs, everyone's mobile phone, even the washing machine (why?). But then on Friday morning I clicked [Print] and got a message that the printer was offline. Looks like I'd forgotten to reconnect the nasty little black Canon thing lurking in the corner.

No problem, just use the WPS function on a wireless access point and tell the printer to connect. Doesn't work. Oh well, let's try connecting manually. This is not easy, as the printer has a tiny display with no backlight and everything has to be typed in on its telephone-style keypad*. In accordance with best practice, the wifi password is a long string of varied characters, digits and symbols. I spend the next hour searching for the manual page for the keypad, and the next several hours trying to make the printer connect. I eventually give up at 2am.

Next morning the WPS feature works as if there'd never been a problem.

*Although quite new, this printer is equipped to send faxes. They've decided to eliminate the wired network port, but keep fax functionality. That will come in handy if I ever need to contact somebody in 1995. Why don't they include Telex? Put a Morse key on the printer?

[Alan Brown]

Re: Funny you should mention printers

Japan still uses fax heavily and almost all these designs are japanese in origin regardless of the branding (hello HP-badged Canons)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Funny you should mention printers

Are HP still using Canon engines? I thought they bought and switched to Samsung? Or is that just big MFP office beasts?

[Will Godfrey]

A simple question.

Will the single person who actually likes printers please raise their hand.

... assuming they exist

[Peter2]

Re: A simple question.

*raises hand*

I'm just replacing the last of a printer fleet I installed ~12 years ago with a newer model. And some of those printers did 2.5 million sheets in service.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A simple question.

When are you scheduling the next refresh? A couple of years' time?

[Charlie van Becelaere]

Re: A simple question.

*raises hand half-heartedly*

Well, it's more that I like to have things printed than that I like printers. I like what they do, not them for themselves.

[robinsonb5]

partially implement every networking protocol known to man, badly

Not to mention partially implementing each file format / printer protocol badly.

In a past life as a printer, I used a digital print engine which, by way of an EFI Fiery RIP, would print directly from PDFs. As long as they hadn't come from Apple Pages.

But Apple PDFs weren't rejected with an error message, or failure to print. Oh no - it would just merrily spit out pages with much of the text missing.

It's tempting to say "if I had a pound..." but the reality is I lost several for each time that happened!

[Decay]

Re: partially implement every networking protocol known to man, badly

"Fiery" ??? Oh god make the bad flashbacks go away, I find myself on the floor again, knees to my chest, sobbing into my sleeves. It always comes back — the memories of the Fiery Print Interface. The endless tabs that contradicted themselves, the settings that never stayed set, the desperate prayers whispered before clicking "Apply."

I see the faces of users asking, "Can you just make it print in color?" — as if I had power over the madness. I didn’t. No one did. Only the Interface, cold and uncaring, ruled us all.

Even now, years later, one faint "job error" tone from somewhere in the building and I’m back there, broken, weeping, wishing I'd chosen a quieter death than enterprise print management. All these years later the memories come rushing back, like a thousand misaligned print jobs storming into my brain with tiny paper-cut bayonets.

[Doctor Syntax]

I'm surprised the BOFH would let the cartridges go - after all there must be a market for them.

[Dennis_the_performance_dork]

HP 4050n

I flat LOVE my printer. Yes, it's almost 30 years old, has wonky JetDirect stuff going on, the Windows driver is a pile of burning dog doo, but I can just send jobs from the Windows world through my Fedora machine as PCL to the CUPS driver which works awesomely. I've replaced all the rollers twice and the fuser once. But it prints 20 ppm, costs next to nothing to print -- 30 bucks for a remanufactured toner that gets 10k pages. It, like my nearly 20 year old truck, works, is comprehensible, and doesn't feel the need to call out to HP's mothership every time the toner gets low.

[FeRDNYC]

Re: HP 4050n

That's great... until, of course, Apple rips out CUPS' (already-deprecated) support for printer drivers entirely, in favor of "IPP Everywhere or Bust". Which they're seriously talking about doing.

(Granted, they've been talking about it for years, and it's a very slow process, but that's kind of the point. After several years, they're still talking about it, and if they haven't let go of the idea by now then it's probably going to happen eventually.)

[Alan Brown]

Re: HP 4050n

You should be glad you're not tempted to use HP PDF or Postscript - the interpreter is broken

25 years ago I found that if the PS job description language headers exceed 1024 characters BAD THINGS HAPPEN (the spec allows up to 4096 char)

HP acknowledged it was an issue and promised to fix it in 2003

It's still there

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: HP 4050n

Yeah, I cam across that once when a client called us to fix an HP printer. I didn't know it was an issue or even that that was the cause for about 3 days. I power cycled the printer, tested it, all was well, then the queue started printing and it stopped. Cleared the queue, restarted the printer again (colour laser, takes 5-10 mines to "calibrate" every time you do this!!), all is well, people can print again. Back again the next day, same issue, still no obvious clue as to what happened, but repeating the fix got it working again. On day three, someone pipes up from the back of the office that every time he tries to print his PDF document, the printer stops working. Get onto HP and their response is yes, certain PDF direct print documents will do this and no, they are not going to fix it. The only fix, which HP did NOT suggest, was to open the PDF in Acrobat and save it again, then it worked. I was just so glad to see the back of that job with a customer "happy" to use the workaround that I didn't dig any further into why or how it was happening and came across that explanation of the long header years later and just assumed that was the cause.

[rototype]

At the risk of setting of someone's PTSD...

A number of years ago I replaced my decades old HL Color LaserJet with a newer Ricoh model from Ebuyer (they had a special on where one of the Ricoh's was cheaper than a set of toners for the HP - and this was BEFORE they started getting silly about stuff - OK, sillier than normal then). Plugged into a wired port they (I bought 2 - needed to use up some 'tax' as I was self employed at the time) performed admirably, Wireless is another totally different beast though. It's as if the halo's magically turned into horns as soon as the wireless switch was enabled. Setting them up is something that I wouldn't wish on anyone, not even my worst enemy, but even that isn't as bad as setting up a Canon 'personal' grade printer for one of our service engineers - turns out that you need to be logged in as local 'administrator' - not _a_ but _the_ local administrator, and it had to be that name exactly or nothing would work (no idea how they got on in France where it's spelled administrateur) - foul, contemptuous beasts. (and that's me being polite). Usually I don't mind printers (I'm about the only one in our team that doesn't mind going out and beating them into submission), but some devices should never have been spawned.I often joke that I keep a 3lb forge hammer in the car in case of emergencies but I have been forced to break it out occasionally.

[Herby]

Back in the day

When printers consumed fan-fold paper and had chains, bands, or drums of characters inside them, things were a bit easier. Before everybody liked the "Centronics" standard, there were many parallel printer methods. Thankfully you would get a nic interface manual that explained things. The fun part was the carriage control tape that needed a special punch to indicate where the top of the page was. Not having one, I used an Xacto-kinfe with great skill.

In my garage, I have a Centronics labeled printer that actually has a Data Products interface with a strange 50 pin connector. So much for standards, there are so many of them.

These modern loose leaf page printers are such a bother!

[FeRDNYC]

Inkjets are also terrible

The BOFH definitely should also hate small consumer inkjets, they're just awful.

Over 15 years ago, it was already common knowledge that Your Printer is a Brat.

[IceC0ld]

LOVE the BofH as always, and trying to get over the coughing that followed the howling with laughter

but for me, the bit that always gets to me is the title - The PRINTS of Darkness LOL

the sheer number of 'accidental' accidents that occur there, you would think that the suppliers, or, at the very least, the bean counters, would have twigged, and avoided annoying the IT Dept. not even talking about them, but that may be how he has managed to work his way through a goodly portion of, whatever city they reside in, that population LOL