My printer is out to get me, and other tales of paranoia.

Look I am not one to complain but this HP printer is the biggest piece of crap ever made. I am not sure, but I think if crap itself could crap it would crap out something like this. What I mean to say: it’s a giant plastic box of whirring, paper eating, ink smearing, duplex clogging, file flubbing, productivity sucking, stinking waste of my time. I hate it.

Today it proved the feeling is mutual.

Its bad enough that it takes an act of congress to print an envelope. Really, does it have to be that hard? Not to mention HP’s thinly veiled plan to make stinking wads of cash by producing the cheapest machine possible and making ever more expensive and ink cartridges and replaceable printed heads (seriously printer heads?) is almost more insulting than calling this a printer in the first place. Almost. Here is idea for the next year printer: a completely empty box, for next to nothing, and the entire printer, feed, duplexer, and inner-workings are attached to one of 17 required and ridiculously priced ink cartridges, sell them for about $1000 a piece and you have a business model to run with.

Yet it overcame all this to prove what a potent enemy it could be.

In a single act of defiance, its refusal to print on the grounds of a non-existent paper jam was just the right amount to incessantly infuriating insanity that I am not sure how it escaped me throwing it into the snow bank. Waiting until I was insanely busy, and showing me the same impossible error over and over again…a masterpiece of soul crushing cyber terrorism that had to be by design. I am sad to say, I was defeated, the printer had won.

If it will not work tomorrow, I only have one last recourse. A new printer for me. Not before complete and utter dismantle and inspection down to the last circuit board. Just to prove there is not one fiber of paper in the machine causing a jam... and maybe a little revenge.