Is it actually working?

My wife and I each had separate computer-systems.
My wife died almost two years ago; I miss her dearly.
The fact we had separate ‘pyooter-systems was a reflection mine was more a toy, a personal-computer for our home. Hers was also a personal-computer, but she worked from home on hers.
Hers was a Dell Windows PC, mine is an Apple Macintosh (Gasp!). This is a reflection that her employer used PCs, while my newspaper was Macintosh.
My system was more elaborate and costly than hers. I have a gigantic Epson scanner with an 18-inch platen. It was the largest I could get and still be a scanner.
I figured I needed that big to scan large documents. Merging scans with Photoshop was too imprecise.
My printer, Epson, is also huge. It’s a photo-quality inkjet that can also print large documents.
My wife didn’t need that. All she had was her ‘pyooter and a small HP printer.
No scanner, although her printer was also a scanner. If she needed something scanned, I’d scan it and e-mail it to her.
Our systems weren’t networked. E-mail was our network. We each had separate e-mail addresses. Mine was local, hers was Yahoo.
I’d just crank something for her into my e-mail, and e-mail it to her.
No doubt people will say we should have been networked, but that’s an afternoon of dickering, even wireless, and trial-and-error. E-mail solved the communication problem right away.
This is like using your cellphone to communicate with someone at the other end of the bus instead of yelling, or seeing where your brother is in WalMart*.
Communicate via some faraway universe, when your contact is in the other room.
When my wife died her PC went to my nearby niece. I still have my wife’s printer, which I use only as a copier. It’s one of them combination thingies: printer/scanner/copier/fax machine.
But it ran out of ink (it’s inkjet).
And since I had never used it, I had no idea how to change an ink-cartridge.
I went to OfficeMax and told them what I had, an HP OfficeJet. Since there are 89 bazilyun HP OfficeJets, OfficeMax could only guess at the ink-cartridge.
I also told them I might need help loading that cartridge, since I had no idea how to do it.
Time was flying. A month passed between running out of ink and buying the cartridge at OfficeMax.
At least another month passed after buying the cartridge.
I analyzed the printer. It had a flap on the right side that looked like where a cartridge should be, but it was empty.
I hadn’t removed an empty cartridge.
I lassoed a friend into helping me.
It wasn’t rocket-science. We should be able to change a printer-cartridge without unscrewing things.
But he was in the same boat as me. We were both mystified.
My wife’s printer sat for another month.
Then Wednesday, January 29th, was too cold to take my dog to the park, so I decided to take the printer to OfficeMax.
They had sold me the wrong cartridge, so they began an exchange. They also couldn’t insert the new cartridge for lack of a power-cable.
That flap was the right place, but the cartridge rode the printer-mechanism, which slides into place in that flap-area with the power on.
So I tried it at home. Sure enough the empty cartridge moved into place for changing as I turned on the printer.
I had a hunch it shouldn’t be rocket-science to change a printer-ink cartridge.
Okay, cartridge changed, test-time; time to try copying.
I inserted a document to copy into the feeder.
I pressed “copy.”
Instead of copying my document, it printed some instruction-sheet from within itself about how to align the printer-cartridges.
WHA....?
The instruction-sheet was a simple pictograph with only a one-sentence instruction. —Translated into every possible language on the planet. Most obscure was Sandskrit.
I shut off, and tried again.
Nothing.
I noticed a tiny digital readout atop the printer rendering who-knows-what in gibberish.
My new Epson printer has that.
My old Epson printer used the computer-monitor as its interface.
“Printer maintenance?”
With my old printer my computer triggered that.
With my new printer that tiny screen tells me, and I have to hit “okay.”
My wife’s printer had one of them tiny screen interfaces — with obscure stuff you could hardly see.
Engage guile-and-cunning.
Back to square-one: shut the damn thing off.
Must I go back to OfficeMax, only to have their techies tell me I’m stupid?
(No Indian tech-support for this kid!)
What’s that tiny screen jabbering about?
It marches by so fast I can’t read it, plus it’s so poorly lit I can’t see it.
Back to square-one again: shut it off!
Re-insert document to copy; hit “copy.”
It did it.
No rhyme or reason; I have no idea why. It just did it.
Okay, try again. I shut off and re-inserted my document to copy.
It did it again.
Is it actually working?
I used to get this at the Messenger newspaper.
“The trouble with you,” they’d say; “is you think too much. Don’t think, just do.”
“But guys,” I’d say. “I can’t do the website if I don’t understand what I’m doing.
If it throws some steaming curveball at me, I can solve that myself, instead of hurling the mess into your lap, in which case you justifiably perceive I’m over-my-head.”
So regarding my wife’s printer: “Works, don’t it!? Just laugh and quit thinkin’ about it. It ain’t your prerogative to understand why.”
So I put the cover on it, stuffed it away, and hope it copies next time.

• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• RE: “Apple Macintosh (Gasp!)......” —All my siblings use PCs, and noisily claim I’m rebellious, stupid and “of-the-Devil” to use a Macintosh.
• The “Messenger newspaper” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger, from where I retired over seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I 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 14 miles away.)