Tag: document

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Problems with Printers

I have two wireless printers used for different purposes. The larger one takes A4 paper and is for ordinary documents like manuscripts, while the smaller one prints onto a roll of thermal paper and can be used to create typed stickers. As they’re both made by Brother, they’re distinguished by the network names Big Brother and Little Brother.

A few weeks ago, I started to experience problems with the first of these, particularly when trying to print off documents from Outlook. Last week, the connection completely broke down, and it was the very worst time for this because I needed to print off a proposal I’d written for a writing class.

As such, I spent a chunk of Good Friday fixing the problem. The problem somehow fixed itself after I removed the printer from Windows and added it again. It happened just in the nick of time to commit that proposal to paper, and I hope to bring further news

At around the same time, Little Brother was up to the capers. This always had a quirk where the software sometimes says it’s offline, yet it spits out the print a few seconds later. More recently, the printing has become more hit and miss before failing completely.

It’s only by good fortune that I didn’t urgently need prints from that machine, since it took a lot of time on Saturday to fix it. It proved necessary to remove the existing installation, then use a temporary wired connection and disable the VPN while setting it up again.

I don’t fully understand the problem, but it’s probably not unrelated to a recent Windows update that won’t install for me, and it seems many other users are in the same situation.

What I now have, however, is a USB cable on standby in case this happens again.

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Cataloguing the Uncatalogued

For the last eight years or so, I’ve run my monthly open-mic singlehandedly. However, our collaborations during 2022 showed me the group was becoming unwieldy to manage alone.

So at the next event tomorrow, we’ll introduce our first co-host. Having already briefed her about the help we need, such as welcoming readers while I set up the equipment, I started to compose a short document to explain the role in more detail.

This short document quickly expanded to a long one, becoming a chronological checklist of the entire evening from start to finish. Much of the content is based upon years of personal experience and best practice. But almost none of it had been formally recorded before because there was never a pressing need.

I’ll give the document to my co-host tonight or tomorrow, although it’s still the first version and could do with some refining. Once it’s more robust, it’ll serve as a template in case she or anyone else needs to cover for me in the future.