Go Places To Buy Things

I need to print and sign an agreement. Someone’s waiting for it.  It’s only two pages.   The last time I tried to print another must-sign doc, it came out rather faded.  I turned on the printer this morning and tried to send the doc through.  Before I could print anything a series of perfectly good pages were successively fed to the turning bits and ruined, coming out on behalf of some long forgotten print job. I took at look at the faded green and yellow pages.  “Honey are these yours?”

Clearly they’re her affair, but she has not recollection of when it was sent, how many times it was sent or what it fact it was.  There is also, no easy way to kill the print job.  One paper and then another is gobbled up and rendered useless by the machine.  Surely this will be the last one.  It is not.  Nor is this one.  I look on line for how to make it stop.  Yes, I feel guilty about my pointless contribution to deforestation.

Off with the power, then.  I fear this print job will return zombie-like.  The web doesn’t seem to offer me much of any guidance on how to kill this job, on a Mac OS.  Clearly though, my ink cartridges are screwed.  Fortunately the store I bought the printer in isn’t far and I inform my wife that I’m heading over there right away to get some new ink. 

The store is open and I am quickly informed that they do not stock ink.  Yes, we sold you the printer.  Yes, we have that very printer right here. But No.  No ink.  Perplexed I ask: “I always thought the cartridges were how folks in the printer business made money.  And that may be true for HP, but the folks responsible for the customer interface have decided it isn’t worth it.  “Go to JD dot com’s” what he told me .  “Really?” 

I headed back home feeling old, I suppose.  I knew intellectually that ordering them on line would be easier.  They’d have them over at my door in no time.  But it felt more important as a memory to mark.    Bricks and mortar shopping will soon be yet another anachronism from that time when old people used to physically go places to buy things, transact things. 

By the time I was home I’d already arranged to have my nephew order me the cartridges.  “Is there a rush fee, so I can get them today?”