We had somewhat of a crises here last week. The copy machine ran out of toner. I don’t mean ran out of black toner. I mean RAN OUT OF TONER… BLACK, YELLOW, BLUE and CAYENNE. Yep, all four colors. I am not sure if it was WHAM, all at once or a gradual thing. Usually a warning comes up on the LCD screen and tells us which particular color is low and replacement is eminent. But if that happened, no one mentioned it to me.

We managed to shake, tap and smack the black cartridge enough to get the bulletin done for Sunday morning and copy a few other things. The printer part of the machine was done though. If you tried to print from your computer, the printer/ copier said,

“Heh eh! Not today, no way, not happening!” For any copies that needed to be made, we have another copier in the Education building that could be used. It is a little smaller and quite a bit slower but usually it can get the job done. And it had black and colored toner so you could print in either.

Wednesday morning I needed to print something. I realized I did not have the printer driver for that machine on my laptop (wow, don’t I sound smart talking printer driver). And there is no wifi over in that building so I would need to use a printer cable to connect laptop and copier.

Loading the driver to the laptop was a breeze. I went to google and pulled up the manufacturer website and typed in the model and number of the printer/ copier. In a matter of 15 seconds the driver was loaded and installed.

Next I had to find a printer cable. I used to have a box of various computer cables: USB, power cords, cat-5 cables, video and HDMI cords and even a few printer cables. But…do you think I can find any of them? Of course not! I looked in my office, the secretary’s office, my office at the parsonage and even a store room or two here at the church. Nada, nothing, zero.

I finally found a CAT5 cable in my computer bag. I went over to the office in the Education building where the printer/copier is located. I looked at the back and guess what I found? Yep, a CAT-5 cable hanging out the printer port. So much for spending an hour looking.

I got the computer connected, pulled up the document to be printed, went to the print tab and clicked and there came up the printer I needed. Easy Peasy from here, right? Nope, no way, not a chance.

I tried to print front and back (duplex function) to save some time and paper. The machine printed the first side but jammed up when it tried to pull paper back through to print on reverse side. GRRR… So I fumbled around and tried to find a cancel or pause print. I found the pause print and what I thought was the delete. I put one of the front copies in the copier and thought I would just print one side then put copies in tray and print second side. Good plan I thought. BUT… As I started the second side, the original job of printing front and back decided it wasn’t deleted and had un-paused itself. Now I was printing both documents. And the original job was jamming up on the second print. REALLY? My frustration level was only a little lower than my blood pressure at this point and I am questioning how bad do I really want these copies? Maybe I just need to shut off the machine, walk away and let one of the kids at church tonight show me how to do this.

Well, after much anguish and about an hour of time on a job that should not have taken 5 minutes to complete, I was able to get the copies finished, turn off the copier and light in office, walk away feeling somewhat victorious in a defeated way (not even sure that is real, but it’s how I felt).

My lesson(s) from all this? First, patience is truly a virtue, extremely hard when technology is involved but always pays off in the end.

Second is the question of life being simpler and easier in years gone by. Pretty sure our ancestors didn’t have to order toner, hunt cables and find printer drivers. They just wrote one copy and started another. Possibly some used the old mimeograph machine that just slung blue ink everywhere and if you breathed too much you felt funny!

Finally, technology is of the Devil. That is it, I’m done, enough said.

Technologically Challenged and Defeated, Bro. Tim