“Life is not one big joke, its a series of little jokes all lined up in a row… there they are look at them” ~Richard Pryor, Moving

There must be something in the water supply this week, or the moon is in an odd alignment or possibly, just possibly everyone I know is having at bad week at the same time. So I’m here to spread a little story and a chuckle.

I have been rebuilding our oldest plotter in work; a plotter is a big printer for those who didn’t know. This Bike sized printer has had more than its share of problems, but today took the cake. I finish a massive rebuild of the drive system, fixing belt issues, tracking strips and tension-er assemblies. This rebuild took the better part of two weeks. Its sounds more like a car then a printer right now. I put the last screw in, turn it on and watch the standard settings / printer test scroll across the LCD.

Just as the first text flashes onto the screen a smoke signal puffs up from the back of the plotter. followed by another. Either we had been inhabited by very tiny indigenous people or something was very wrong. I pull the cord out of the wall with a nice big blue spark and spin the machine around only to find a big puff of smoke coming out of a hatch. open the hatch see a sparky / smokey mess fizzle out. Not… Good… So the parts are on order to fix this.

You know you’re having one of those days when your printer catches fire… little did I know there was actually an error message for it lp0 on fire! Now I know what to file the report under. Thanks Chris for the heads up re the error

Today’s Form over function is a first. A wallpaper dedicated to a machine. At Temple University we recently got rid of our oldest and most well worn Plotter, 4 foot wide printer, the machines was 7 years old, I have personally rebuilt many of its internal workings and have brought it back from the dead many times. They are only designed to last 4-5 years. Its strange to feel a sense of loss for a machine, but this machine has produced a good portion of the work for every student who has passed through this department in the past 7 years. For 4 of those years it was the sole method of printing documents this large. With an Impressive body of work to her credit Old Hickory (we name all machines after food we also have BBQ, Mesquite, and Cayenne ) had to be surplused for parts at the end of May.

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