December 7, 2017

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On December 7, 2017, I was girding up for the annual Battle of the Holiday Envelopes.  This is the only time we ever print a whole batch of envelopes from the info in a database.  Even though I've got my instructions written out and saved in a file, and I never fail to read the file before I begin, there are (almost) always difficulties. 

My better half planned to be away from the house that day.  He asked me, as he got ready to leave, if the aggravation wasn't mostly due to software issues.

"Oh, no," I assured him "It's a team effort between the word-processor software, the printer software, and the hardware!"  I'm not sure he was convinced........

He left; I began to fight.

(Digression:  Remembering our late dog, Buzz, who would go hide any time I turned the printer on.  He hated contention.  [Unless he was causing it..........] 

I'm pretty sure there is not one [1] printer which has ever earned the right to cross over the Rainbow Bridge, so Buzz is safe now.  I like to imagine him chasing balls on four good legs and two good kidneys....  End of Digression.)



Anyway.

If I remember correctly (writing this post on 3/29/18...), I had no trouble getting from square 0 to "theoretically time to print."   This is already something of a triumph -- getting the software to hold the formatting I want for the return address AND the "to" address, and to put all of the correct info in the correct places is *not* to be taken for granted!

But, of course, that's only the beginning of the process.

Here you see my first two attempts at actually printing an envelope................

Envelope #1.  The return address and the "to" address printed correctly.  But what is up with printing all of this formatting crap on the envelope???

I argued with the software, and got it to stop adding the formatting crap, but then I apparently fed the printer the next envelope when it didn't want an envelope....   (You have to feed them one by one....)

Envelope #2 got mired in the bowels of the printer.  As far as I know, there is no way to open up anything to be able to get at an envelope in this predicament.

Luckily, the envelope was just barely accessible from the front of the printer, and I have some very flat tweezers (which actually work!).   (Digression -- why is it impossible to buy tweezers which actually work, nowadays???)



Anyway.

You can see it was a struggle to retrieve the envelope.

After this point, I vewwwy carefuwy put in the envelopes, and everything went smooth as pie.  Except that I had forgotten to lay in an extra supply of envelopes.  My goal, once I get this process working, is to be able to print two years' worth, so I'm spared one year's worth of battle.

I think I'll go put a reminder in my calendar to acquire extra envelopes before embarking on this project this year........



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