Me and the Scanner

March 31, 2009

For those who fight with office equipment every day ---

      There is something about the scanners in my building that is mystifying.
      How do they know when I have 5 minutes and want to scan to PDF?
      Do they communicate with each other?
      I have immediate access to three of them.

      One is set black and 200 dpi - good for most stuff.
      One is set to black and 600dpi. That's a little bit detailed.
      Good for thin lines on a schematic and yes, we still have those running around.
      Especially block diagrams and timing waveforms.
      It takes, BTW, a passwood to reset the little darlings.
      The third is Full Color and 600 dpi. It is the psycho-scanner.
      Who on earth needs to scan black & white masters into color?
      But then, who needs to print a memo in color?
      Some people feel they need to do this.
      Waste of chemicals. Waste of toner. Waste of time.

      I am scanning B&W masters of study Guides, User Manuals and Data sheets to PDF. (See some at donnamaie.com.)
      Saves paper. Captures vintage data before the paper disintegrates.
      Preserves my heritage and that of a good part of the engineering community.
      What is left of us after this last barrage.
      I am a teacher after all. Why throw away good methodology because the parts are no longer alive? The Design Methodology is what we are missing in most of today's Engineering and Computer Scientist graduates.

      I went to the 200 dpi unit.
      It was displaying an image of itself and demanding service.
      No luck there.
      So I walked to the 600 B&W one.
      I left the admin a note on the way by - KIWI is dead. Call Service.
      Male engineers just see the failure and walk away.
      They will go unit to until (like I am doing) but they will do nothing about the failed unit.
      The next unit is Apple.
      I don't name them.
      Some of the names are interesting.
      Some had meaning when we were in another building.
      They are all on network.

      Apple seemed happy to see me and I merrily ran sections thru
(one sided - all odd pages and then all even pages - use PDF to merge them interleaved, clever).
      Except for the last section.
      Now - my masters are sometimes bedraggled and that is being kind.
      It jammed on page 3 of this section - but it didn't tell me it was jammed.

      It just --- stopped.

      I am a clever girl. And, even with eyedrops and eye strain (I was talking a breather from a spec)
      I could see there was a page missing.
      I know how to fix this.
      I opened the cover. I pulled out one page. (The visible one) and I knew where to look for the one that was missing.
      The error message flashed finally that there was a jam - after I had cleared it.       And then it went away.
      Interesting. They normaly like to display their error message until you beat them over the head with a hammer.
      Well - not literally.
      Was it now happy? Could I finish my task?
      Well, no.
      It decided to just lay there.
      No scan.
      I even tried removing the USB, resetting up and pushing start - no joy.
      So I tested a print page.
      No joy.
      I checked the job queue.
      Empty.
      Apple was now sitting there like a squatting toad and refusing to do anything.
      I am a little more savy than that!

      I power-cycled it. (It's called the power switch - or the ON-OFF switch to the non-technical).
      Apple threw a hissy fit and ran thru its power on sequencing while blaring out a message that it had encountered a power failure.
      Sure it had.
      When it seemed to calm itself, I plugged the USB back in and re-set up scan to PDF.
      Worked like a charm.

      I am happy.
      My eyeball stopped burning. (Eyedrops had taken effect.)
      And I can go merrily back to peering at specs.