Update the 'printer driver'? What, are you from the past?

Next thing you'll want me to upgrade the potatoes

Photo © 2024 Donald Wu | https://unsplash.com/fr/@donaldwuid

Unable to print.

Yes, I know, I can see that for myself. I may not be the sharpest techie on the block but I can tell when a printer is unable to print: it does not print. Simple, really.

No doubt you are familiar with the scenario. Your printer sits in the corner doing nothing most of the time, churing out the occasional doc or label or whatever without complaint. But the moment you need something printed and you’re in a hurry, it senses your urgency and digs in its heels for a bit of a laugh.

Unable to print.

As I said, I deduced as much based on the simple evidence that the printer is still in Sleep mode and output tray is ominously empty. It’s my own fault: I had this silly idea of designing and printing my own Christmas cards for sending to distant friends and family. I’d visited several bureaux de tabac and maisons de la presse and left unimpressed by the bland graphics of sapins de noël and cadeaux. “I’ll do my own, like I used to do in the late 1990s!” I thought.

“It’ll be fun”, I told myself.

Now here I am, not having fun – on the final day of posting before La Poste officially puts all pre-Christmas international mail directly into the incinerator around the back – and I cannot print my oh-so-cleverly designed custom cards. Should I accept defeat and nip out to buy some of those aforementioned crappy Christmas card-a-likes, assuming there are any left to purchase at this late stage?

Not me! I picture myself as that action hero in the movies who kicks a malfunctioning machine to intimidate it into working.

I tie a bandanda around my forehead and run the Printing Troubleshooter.

Check your network connections.

Good advice. At least, it would be if I was at a workplace trying to print some office documents rather than at home surrounded by tinsel and torn wrapping paper. Even so, why would my network connection suddenly change at work? On a whim?

Who knows, one of my technophobe co-workers might have come in extra early that day, located the Ethernet cable at the back of the printer and, without actually knowing what it was, pulled it out. This co-worker would then have covered his tracks, wiped his fingerprints, dissolved a body in a bathtub and snuck home before returning nonchalantly at 9am after everyone else.

But no, I am not in a workplace but at the homestead, Château Dabbs; it is a home printer and the printer is still connected to my little home network, redundantly (and possibly even a little tragically in terms of overkill) in three ways – by WiFi, Ethernet and Bluetooth. At least one of these choices work because I successfully sent a job to the printer earlier. Now that I am in a hurry, of course, it doesn’t.

This never happens in the action movies, does it? I mean, you don’t see a five-star general in the centre of Norad stomping over to a nearby printer to grab a clutch of printouts that he must show the President immediately to avoid World War III… only to look baffled in front of the silent device, jabbing some buttons trying to wake it up, dancing from one foot to another, while colleagues shout across the vast room with helpful advice such as “Is the tray inserted properly?” and “Have you tried switching it off and on again?”