Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013, Guerneville, CA.
A wireless printer and a new laptop.
I went to Sebastopol today to help Judy get her new laptop hooked wirelessly to an HP networking, all in one printer. I tried just before Christmas to do this, but her internet connection just wouldn’t let me download the win8 drivers for the printer installation on her new laptop. When I tried to download the drivers before, it would download about a third of the file and just stop, hang, no action. We called the internet provided at that time, but it was just after a big storm, so the hold time was excessive, so I gave up that day.
Well,……………..the same thing happened today, as far as the download went, so we called the internet provider and he walked us though a bunch of stuff and it was decided the download speed was just set too high for the distance the house was from the local telephone switching station. He made some adjustments back at the shop and I tried again. Yes, it was working better, but just as it got over half way, it stopped dead again. Darn.
Well, it was working a little better, so I disconnected the wireless part and put a cable in there instead and I was slowly able to get the sixty meg. file downloaded to her computer.
The installation went smoothly,……………but?
We couldn’t get it to print from her finance program, the computer just wouldn’t find the wireless printer, darn, again. The real problem is figuring out what to do to make something happen with this stuff, as most of it is supposed to be automatic these days, which is good when it works, but sucks when it doesn’t as there is no place to go to set anything.
Well again,…………… I reinstalled the HP printer software. This time it asked for the network address of he wireless printer, that was encouraging. :O)
But,……………that still didn’t work. Eventually, I figured out we needed to tell it which printer to use, as now there were two of them listed, pick the network one and try again.
Success,……………..but, now the darn thing was printing the check info on the check stub,…………..what?
Judy and I tried different things, wasting checks, but, at last I realized, it must just be set for a different size check. It was set for standard and Judy thought this should be right, but,………….she looked up what she had ordered and they were wallet size checks. We never had to set that before on the old computer, why now?
Success and I went shopping at Costco.
At last, the check printed so she printed one for me and I said my good byes and went to Costco to buy something to eat, hopefully without corn in it. :O) I did ok there, not sure how the cost got to 150 dollars as I didn’t have much.
I then went to Pep Boys to get some stuff for my van project and was lucky to find everything I needed there, so didn’t have to go to Home Depot or Wall-Mart. I did have to stop for gas though, and got home just about dark and it was cold, but not as cold as most other places.
I stoked the fire and got something to eat and now I’m taking it easy.
Computer reflections
It’s amazing to me what one sometimes has to go though to make some of this computer stuff work? I wonder how a normal person is expected to accomplish some of what these engineers think normal everyday people are capable of or not capable of? I’m not a normal person when it comes to this stuff and I have a hellava time making some of this stuff work, and the time it takes, is just ridiculous.
Back to low tech tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we are supposed to kayak from Monte Rio to Jenner. A group of about four of us. We’ll see who shows up. I’ll be there. This will be a low tech day, for sure. :O)
Had a great day.