My printer maintenance pissed me off today. I was trying to print out a document, and suddenly a screen popped up saying that the printer is cleaning the cartridges. Why do ink cartridges need to be cleaned by my printer? Is there some asshole that is purposely packaging dirty ink cartridges? Shouldn’t they already be clean based on how much money I payed for them? Ink cartridges are expensive!

While the printer was cleaning out the cartridges, the power to my laptop died out. Great. I went back into my room, retrieved the power cord, and waited a few years for the operating system to turn back on. When the power finally came on, an indicator light said that I am out of cyan ink. It would not let me print until I replaced the cyan ink. Why the hell does a printer even need cyan ink to print out a black and white document. That’s nonsense!

I thought that maybe if could violently shake the ink cartridge and blow into the receptors, I could fool the printer into thinking that I replaced the ink. This was loosely based on a theory that I applied to old Nintendo video game cartridges. I wasn’t sure if I was surprised at the fact that it actually worked, or that technology hasn’t evolved since the 1980’s.