Saturday, June 12, 2010

Still small voice

Last night (Friday, June 11, 2010) I decided to print a story I had two-thirds finished, so I could review it, and finish it.
Simple; Command-P, print.
I did so — nothing!
I was doing something else, so didn’t notice.
“Well, I guess I gotta see why this thing didn’t print,” I said.
I tried again; Command-P — nothing!
I fired up my printer dialog box.
“Printer offline,” it said.
WHAT?
How come I see a green “on” light at that printer? That printer is on, and connected.
A small voice began ricocheting inside my cranium.
“Have you tried rebooting yet?”
It was Dan Gnagy (“NAGG-eee”), the techno-maven at the Mighty Mezz during my employ, parrying one of my fevered phonecalls about some fetid computer mystery.
“Have you tried rebooting yet?” he would solemnly intone.
I’ve driven OS-X at least four years, and have never had to reboot.
Well, a few times early-on, but that was force-of-habit.
With OS-X you can Force-Quit a hung computer application instead of rebooting.
“Okay, let’s shut everything down and start over,” my wife said.
A total reboot, first time in eons. I couldn’t see a means of Force-Quitting the printing function.
Computer rebooted I tried again; Command-P.
Click-whirr.
The little dear is printing.
“Have you tried rebooting yet?”

• The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over four years ago. Best job I ever had. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• “OS-X” (or OSX) is the current Apple Computer operating-system; I drive an Apple Macintosh.
• My wife of 42+ years is “Linda.” She retired as a computer programmer.

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