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csberryThe Scoutmaster told me last week that they ran out of newsletters at the Court of Honor and asked if I could print some more out. Sure, I told him.
Yesterday I realized that the new printer at the house doesn't do double-sided printing. Not wanting to print one side, put upside down in tray, print the other side; I decided to wait and print out copies at the office today.
I arrived at the office, booted the laptop in Winders, and opened the newsletter in MSPublisher. I went to print and discovered that the office printer wasn't installed in Winders. I then tried to install it in the Printers/Fax option...but freakin' Winders doesn't provide an option to find a printer via MAC, URL, or anything else that the HP printer printed out as a guide for its network location. I pulled the HP disc out of the desk and attempted to install the printer along w/ the crap HP wants to put on the computer too.
What happened next was something that seems to happen 3/4 of the time I've EVAR attempted to install an HP printer. The installation was going through the process...and don't you know, it couldn't find the freakin' printer on the network. I then put in the IP address for the printer. The HP Installation program went, "YES! I found it!" It then asked me if that was the printer I wanted to install. When I told it "yes" and clicked Next, the freakin' installation program reverted back to the original screen for looking for the printer on the network. It forgot that it found it or something. I repeated this three times at the office trying to figure out what I was fuckin' up. No changes in the program's behavior, no idea what I could have done differently, and HP insists that the installation program is updated and fine.
I then decided to convert the newsletter from a MSPublisher file to pdf. I got that done, rebooted the laptop in Ubuntu, and opened the pdf file. The unique fonts used weren't embedded in the pdf and it was all funky! I then rebooted the laptop into Winders, found the option to always embed fonts, made another pdf version, saved it to the thumbdrive, and rebooted in Ubuntu. I pulled up the newsletter and everything looked perfect. At this point, I had spent about 70 minutes trying to get the newsletter printed. I joyously told the laptop to print 10 copies. I heard the printer start and I began working on something else. After a few minutes, I got up to check the printer. I look at the stack of papers and notice that there are 5 pages with the first page of the newsletter printed on both sides...and so on. I canceled the print job, change the print setting to collate, and went to watch the print job from the printer. Everything seemed to go fine until after it printed the 5th "page" (technically the front part of the 3rd printed page). Instead of leaving the back of that page blank and doing the next copy on a fresh piece of paper, the printer started printing the first page for the second copy on the back of the sheet containing the last page. I stopped the printer again. After a few more attempts to get everything right, I basically gave up and told it to print one copy.
After nearly 2 hours at the office, I can now claim that I produced one printed copy and one excellent pdf copy. I had Harper with me this whole time and I wasn't going to torture the poor thing any longer at the office. I'll give the Scoutmaster what I have tonight and will promise to have multiple copies by the conservation drive we're doing on Saturday.
Yesterday I realized that the new printer at the house doesn't do double-sided printing. Not wanting to print one side, put upside down in tray, print the other side; I decided to wait and print out copies at the office today.
I arrived at the office, booted the laptop in Winders, and opened the newsletter in MSPublisher. I went to print and discovered that the office printer wasn't installed in Winders. I then tried to install it in the Printers/Fax option...but freakin' Winders doesn't provide an option to find a printer via MAC, URL, or anything else that the HP printer printed out as a guide for its network location. I pulled the HP disc out of the desk and attempted to install the printer along w/ the crap HP wants to put on the computer too.
What happened next was something that seems to happen 3/4 of the time I've EVAR attempted to install an HP printer. The installation was going through the process...and don't you know, it couldn't find the freakin' printer on the network. I then put in the IP address for the printer. The HP Installation program went, "YES! I found it!" It then asked me if that was the printer I wanted to install. When I told it "yes" and clicked Next, the freakin' installation program reverted back to the original screen for looking for the printer on the network. It forgot that it found it or something. I repeated this three times at the office trying to figure out what I was fuckin' up. No changes in the program's behavior, no idea what I could have done differently, and HP insists that the installation program is updated and fine.
I then decided to convert the newsletter from a MSPublisher file to pdf. I got that done, rebooted the laptop in Ubuntu, and opened the pdf file. The unique fonts used weren't embedded in the pdf and it was all funky! I then rebooted the laptop into Winders, found the option to always embed fonts, made another pdf version, saved it to the thumbdrive, and rebooted in Ubuntu. I pulled up the newsletter and everything looked perfect. At this point, I had spent about 70 minutes trying to get the newsletter printed. I joyously told the laptop to print 10 copies. I heard the printer start and I began working on something else. After a few minutes, I got up to check the printer. I look at the stack of papers and notice that there are 5 pages with the first page of the newsletter printed on both sides...and so on. I canceled the print job, change the print setting to collate, and went to watch the print job from the printer. Everything seemed to go fine until after it printed the 5th "page" (technically the front part of the 3rd printed page). Instead of leaving the back of that page blank and doing the next copy on a fresh piece of paper, the printer started printing the first page for the second copy on the back of the sheet containing the last page. I stopped the printer again. After a few more attempts to get everything right, I basically gave up and told it to print one copy.
After nearly 2 hours at the office, I can now claim that I produced one printed copy and one excellent pdf copy. I had Harper with me this whole time and I wasn't going to torture the poor thing any longer at the office. I'll give the Scoutmaster what I have tonight and will promise to have multiple copies by the conservation drive we're doing on Saturday.
