I Pit My Stupidity in Terms of Spatial Relationships...how girly!

The BBQ Pit
1

How can I be so goddamn smart in some respects that it kinda sucks*, and feel like a mental defective in others?

My situation is small, and silly, and entirely unimportant. And dealing with it seems to demand every synapse in my brain to accomplish!

Two PDF documents. One is a hundred even-numbered pages. The other is the odd-numbered pages, which were scanned in from the highest number to the lowest, because that’s how it stacked.

If I want to print it all two sided, how do I do that?

Well, if you’re me, and your brain devotes so much of its capacity to things like words, you have very few bits left to figure out something like this. Being a girl doesn’t help. So what you do is print out the even numbered pages, plus about five extra of the first page. Then you mark them up so you know which is the top and bottom of the page, and you load them back in the printer, and you try printing over and over until you magically get the answer. And the facts of that answer will not stay in your head, applicable to other documents, no, this is the process you will have to follow for each pile of two-sided pages being printed from separate documents.

I bet a person with a penis would be able to figure this out blindfolded in ten seconds.

(Even my verbal ability is challenged in thinking about this; I assume “spatial relationship” is the applicable term to this situation, but I may be mistaken. Correct me freely. And if you have any ready tricks or instructions about how to accomplish this task consistently, that would be great, since I have a lot of this kind of thing to work with…law books. Love 'em. Wish I could afford to own my own, vs. all these damn copies…)

Sounds like a boast, and normally it would be, but at the moment it actually isn’t, it really does suck in a way. I’m acting as my own lawyer, and discovering as I go that it’s a good thing, because time after time, given my level of devoted research, I am finding that I actually do know and understand more about the topics of my legal situation than anyone else I talk to, and that’s a scary situation! Without someone around who actually does know more about this stuff, how can I feel at all secure that I’m not missing something? Where’s my Daddy, so to speak…

2

I have been tasked with the project of the type you describe, not with pdfs, but with other multiple-page docs. And I’m here to tell you that I always need to apply your trial-and-error technique.

So it’s probably not related to whether or not you are equipped with a trouser snake. My guess would be that there’s another likely factor, one that you share with me.

You’re not left-handed, are you?

ETA: Oh, suggestions. Well, the next time the chore presents itself, muster all of your determination and self-discipline, and instead of just gleefully rushing through the job once you’ve figured out the key, write it down. Then type it into a post at the bottom of this thread, and bookmark it. :slight_smile:

3

Penis to the rescue!

All you need to do, is mark a blank page like so:


__________
^ Top-Left




                      v Bottom-Right
                          ____________

Then put that in the printer face up and print page one.

When it comes out, it will let you know the orientation and side on which it prints. Then, when it comes time to print the opposite side, load the paper in the inverse way.

Ergo, if it prints on the opposite side of your markings, then you just load the paper, with the printed side, face up.

If it prints on the side of your markings, you load the tray with the printed side face down.

THEN

Mark a sticky with these instructions, and paste it in the printer tray, so you won’t have to solve it again.

And I think spacial-reasoning plays only a part here.

4

FWIW, this person with a penis would need to go trial and error to figure out how to place the paper, too. Even if I’d just done a similar print job the day before. If I’d been doing it every day for weeks, I’d be confident of getting things right, but not before then.

5

Is there any reason why you can’t just merge the two documents, and then print as a two sided document?

6

My penis is terrible at even turning the copier on, and has a hell of a time lifting a new ream to reload it…

7

This would require a printer capable of auto-reversing and re-feeding the pages, would it not?

8

I just get confused trying to print something two-sided on my home printer. And on that I can see the paper go in and come out. I’m sure, if I thought about it long enough, I could figure it out. But instead I end up making about three copies of the same thing, with only one being right. It would be smart for me to write down how I did it in the end, except by the time I have to make another copy I would have forgotten that I need to write it out.

9

I think he means that the PDF’s could be collated before printing.

10

This won’t help. Sure as sh*t, by the time Stoid needs to do this again, the printer will have been replaced by one that feeds upside down and backwards.

11

Maybe Viagra would help.

12

This is how I would do it, although in my case “merge” would mean physically combining the pages in order.

13

Yup, or get a double sided laser printer.

14

Take it over to Kinkos and have them do it. You can just send them the FDP file and then pick it up later.