our printer was acting up this morning. the paper wouldn't feed properly and would jam, resulting in a crinkled, inky mess. i tried to prop up the paper, add more, even hand-feed it, but none of these worked. soon, i had a half-dozen sheets that had to be pulled out to avoid more jamming. i opened the lid, fiddled with the controls, tried again, and when it still didn't help, i nearly had to stop myself from throwing the printer out the window (imagine that lovely scene in 'office space' when the printer is getting a beat down).
collecting myself, my rational side kicked in and i decided to google printing errors with my model and the first few results exhibited the same issues i was having. there even was a youtube video showing the jam happening. apparently using cardboard was the solution, since people were finding that the reason the paper wouldn't feed was because there were objects stuck under the rollers. since i didn't have any cardboard, i applied the same logic by force-feeding the paper through and manually yanking it out. next time i tried to print, it worked.
problem solved.
i think i really like figuring stuff out. a couple of months ago it was with my cell phone, when it kept auto-erasing my call log and incoming texts. i googled the problem and searched through online manuals and forums, trying a bunch of things until it stopped doing it. i'm not sure if i enjoy playing detective, or if it's my hate for letting things go to waste/preference for getting the most out of something which is more at play here. either way, they are both a couple of dad traits i must have picked up along the way.
so printer, you survived another day, thanks (in part) to my dad. and thanks to the power of google too.
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