Atreyu, just a quick hijack to express my appreciation to you for starting a thread interesting enough to bring our missed Tranquilis back. Good job.
Two words: Energetic disassembly. “A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” And the paper would be just as jammed.
DD
Isn’t anyone going to welcome petre? Great first post.
As for copiers, when I approach, they cease to function. I’ve been known to cause jams in 3 (as in, all) of our office’s copiers. The upside is: I’m barred from using any copier or fax device, and others do my copying/faxing for me.
Ah the good old days. I started my IT career at Eastern Airlines, or as they were known in their later years Financially Troubled Eastern Airlines. One of the many quirks that probably lead to the name change and eventual demise of the company were our copiers.
Oh we had standard copying machines, but these machines could only be operated by “copiers”, human copiers. That’s right, we kept a staff of about 20 whose only job it was to take a piece of paper from other employees, place it face down on the copier, press the “copy” button and return the original and the copie(s) to the employee.
And before the obligatory SDMB-justifiers-of-all-evil pipe in with their inevitable “I was one of those ‘copiers’, and we provided a needed service!” crap, let me add, these were not workers in a copy room, oh no. These were workers who sat by each and every single copy machine throughout the many buildings, and performed every single copying operation. Probably some kind of union scam.
petre, that was a fabulous first post!
I’m sort of in the industry - do you mind if I forward some of your ideas to the engineers?
Don’t get me wrong, I HATE copiers as much as the next person.
But, Atreyu, maybe you can rid your life of some of the randomness if you press “reset” or “clear” each time you go to make a copy…
My FIL has talked about getting a BoRE for his office. He may want to reconsider.
I’m lucky–I don’t work around any truly evil office equipment. Some of it is a bit neurotic, but at least I don’t sense any deeply-rooted animosity emanating from it.
petre:
snerk
lieu:
Umm…
Thanks!
:o
Ah - you beat me to it!! Our copier/scanner/printer has a little BRIGHT YELLOW button on it that says “Clear Modes.” Press that before you start, and voila!! Normal copies every time.
Ours works just fine, until a document that is fairly important and has a deadline needs to be copied, and then all hell breaks loose. Same with the printers.
They KNOW.
Not to pick nits, but…
… Should be ‘shat out through…’
Carry on.
(takes drink so as to intentionally snerk it through nose onto monitor in humorous manner)
Gold.
You forgot Byzantine Electronic Colon
Oh no! Or even worse…
Copier: Daaaaave!! Daaave-O! Makin’ Copies… Pressin the greeeen button. Press it one more tiiiiime… Yeah… two presses for the photooocopeeee! Dave-a-reeeno… Daaaaaave!..
Oh teh humanity!!!
About 20 years ago someone posted this sign above our copier:
NOTICE
THIS MACHINE SUBJECT TO BREAKDOWNS DURING PERIODS OF CRITICAL NEED!!
A special circuit in the machine called a “Crisis Detector” senses the operator’s emotional state in terms of how desperate he or she is to use the machine. The “Crisis Detector” then creates a malfunction proportional to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine may cause it to malfunction, too - they belong to the same union. Keep cool and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work.
Sincerely Yours,
Service Rep."I was once visiting an office that had password security on the photocopiers. Not being from the office, I talked a local staffer into letting me use her password.
This, of couse, angered the office’s God of Office Services.
My punishment? When I began to copy (20 pages, double sided, collated, please), I got an error message sufficiently complex to be a code, referring me to the manual.
The instructions in the manual read: Put down the manual. Turn off the machine. UNPLUG the machine. Get help.
Seriously.
train, that reminds me of windows (I think NT)'s Help. Very often it said ‘If you want more information, please contact your system’s administrator.’ I had a stand alone box at home.
Our Printer of Constant Mystery is acting up again…an ugly black streak of charcoal-like toner covers every page, staining hands and clothes and sending co-workers into creative fits of obscenity. This is the same machine that was repaired only on Monday.
I’m starting to think the Printer has crossed the line from chaotic neutral to chaotic evil.
You will be happy to know that when the Box o’ Evil was still in development, I had the opportunity to work on it.
You may not have noticed yet that the print quality is the worst in it’s class, and the software will occasionally substitute random characters for text. Those were my ideas. 
Disturbingly naive and optimistic, Duke. Just wait until it passes CE and descends even further to keep company with Dark Natasha.*
*[sub] not that I expect anyone to remember an obscure early Yamara strip…[/sub]
Now I know your location tag is accurate! You are the Dark Lord!
[sub]Run away! Run away![/sub]