Mysteries.......

....very similar to mysteries that occurred with Linda’s brother’s laptop (a PC) in De Land, or mysteries that occasionally occur on Linda’s laptop (also a PC).

My rig has essentially two printer-drivers: —1) the old Epson print-driver that came with the printer, and I installed long ago on my previous machine (9.2 apps); and —2) the generic print-driver that came with OS-X.
OS-X incorporates a slew of print-drivers, so you don’t have to install a print-driver.
OS-X determines what the printer is, then selects the appropriate driver.
Only problem is the generic driver is too basic. It doesn’t print Quark color, and always prints “speed.”
It’ll print color with Photoshop Elements, but it’s not “quality.”
It’s “speed;” a print has stripes.
It’s a photo-quality printer, but the only way to get photo quality is to open photos in my old Photoshop 5.5 and use the old Epson print-driver. (With that I can select “quality.”)
I was using my old Quark 4.1 last night, a classic app. It’s overkill for what I’m doing, which is why I’ve never upgraded to an OS-X compliant Quark (like 6.0 or 8.0).
So I select the old Epson print-driver, and “DING” — printer not responding.
Okay, start over. Go to print my Quark document, and “DING” — printer still not responding.
Okay, I printed an AppleWorks-5 document the other morning, so I try to print that.
Still the old Epson printer-driver, and “printer not responding.”
Okay, kill everything, and reboot.
Still the old printer-driver.
Okay, move on to other stuff.
I have to set up online bill-pays at Canandaigua National Bank.
Browser opens about the size of a postage-stamp; WHAT’S GOING ON?
“Sometimes my laptop does that,” Linda says. “Mysteries wrapped in conundrums.”
FireFox (“Fox-Fire”) always saved my previous tabs, but not this time.
I have to reconstruct MyFamblee.com, Facebook, and my blog tabs.
Okay, I tried a new angle yesterday, kill Belkin® SurgeMaster™ instead of just rig and monitor.
That shouldn’t make any difference, but never again.
Bill-pays completed, and Quicken® updated, I fire up my Quark again, and this time I print using the generic print-driver.
Usually do.
I only switch to the old Epson driver if I want Quark to print color, like Christmas-card auto-signs.

“Linda” is my wife of 41+ years. We recently visited her mother in De Land, FLA (see post below), and her older brother Jerry also appeared.

“OS-X” is Apple Computer’s current computer operating system. My computer is an Apple Macintosh. (All my siblings use Windows PCs, so am therefore reprehensible and stupid.)

“Quark” is the standard computer paginating word-processing software used by large graphics houses, like newspapers. (I once worked at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over three years ago. Best job I ever had. —I got proficient in Quark, and also had it on my home personal computer.)

“Photoshop Elements” is a reduced version of Adobe Photoshop®, sufficient for what I do. (I also have an older full version of Photoshop, 5.5.)

RE: “A classic app......” —Is a pre-OS-X version of computer software; actually OS 9.2 (or earlier). The first versions of OS-X had a “classic-mode” resident — actually 9.2 — to run non OS-X compliant computer software applications. I have quite a few, including AppleWorks-5, Quark, Word and Excel 98, and Photoshop 5.5. —The most recent version of OS-X (“Leopard;” 10.5) doesn’t have “classic-mode.” I run 10.4: “Tiger.”

“Fox-Fire” is the computer Internet browser “FireFox.” —My siblings all mispronounce it as a put-down; they all use Microsoft Internet-Explorer, and claim FireFox is just a Tinker Toy.

“MyFamblee.com” is MyFamily.com, the Internet location of our family’s web-site.

“Belkin® SurgeMaster™” is actually my computer surge protection, actually a monitor platform with surge protection elements inside. —It has a separate kill-switch that kills everything.

RE: “Bill-pays completed......” —I do online bill-pay.

“Quicken®” is a financial management computer software application. I have all our bank-accounts in it.