I am getting ready for a trip, and the departure date appears to be a magnet for the little complications of life. Of course, that is an illusion. The complications are always there. They just look larger because of the lack of time to deal with them.
Thus I indulge in triage -- the medical process of dividing the injured into survivability groups. And that is a bit problematic for this trip to south Asia and the Middle East. I think I could be away from Mexico for up to five weeks. If I end up in some sort of quarantine, it could be longer. Or I might fly to Oregon for a week and then cancel the trip -- and be back to Mexico before the end of next week.
That means that most of this week's complications have been stacked in the "this-will-keep-until-I-return-unless-it-dies-of-its-own-accord" pile. Laundry. Trimming the vines. That sort of thing.
But some problems call out for an immediate resolution. A broken printer, for instance.
The Mexican Pacific coast is not kind to electronic devices. I have lost track of the number of printers I have junked in my decade-plus of battling the brine and humidity. But I usually have time to make a reasoned purchase decision. Not this time.
On Sunday, I tried to print several documents I will need for the cruise. The printer has been acting up since last summer, but I have managed to trick it into working -- until this week. For reasons saline, I suspect, the circuit to the printer heads refused to recognize three new ink cartridges.
My options were limited. There was no time to repair it. So, I drove to Manzanillo yesterday to buy a replacement at Office Depot. As luck would have it, a sale had ended on Sunday and the offerings were limited. But I grabbed the closest match to my dead printer and headed home.
My plan was to set up the printer this morning in a short break between choosing clothes to be packed for tomorrow's flight. After all, we live in a wondrous age where all peripherals are "plug and play." Or so the tech-gods say. And like any gullible voter, I buy the promise.
What I thought (and should have known better) was going to be a fifteen-minute break from packing ended up costing me three hours. The easy part was unpacking everything. After that, the patience test began.
This printer does not operate with ink cartridges. It has a tank for the four inks. The procedure was easy, but tedious. I rather like the idea of an external ink tank where I can see actual levels rather than those mythical "esrtimated" levels on my old printer.
Then I hit a wall. I could not get the printer heads to properly seat. When I did, they did not complete the electrical circuit. After three tries, they were ready.
The next step was to request the computer to align its printer heads. It refused. After a half-hour search on the internet, I isolated the problem by installing a software patch. After that, the only thing I lost was more time while the software connected my printer to the house's wireless network.
I know we are supposed to feel grateful that we live in such a brave new world of technological wonders. And I usually am. Even though I have dropped out of the front lines of the tech-revolution, I find plenty of uses for my electronic devices.
But it seems like some devices are getting more difficult to install. "Plug and play" is still the chimera that never quite arrived.
Maybe we should just re-christen it as a "single player system."
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