“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