The Final Countdown

I hope that all of you have that music stuck in your heads for the rest of the day now, too. Doo doo loo dooooo! Doo doo loo-doo-doo!

So it's the final countdown. I have one more to take tomorrow morning and a couple projects to finish up. So, of course, I'm blogging. But at least I'm blogging from the computer lab instead of from home. That's progress, people.

Lest you think that I've been doing nothing but watching House during finals season, let me tell you what happened today.

My print cartridge ran dry. Of course, this happens. It happens to everyone. But the fact is that it was a brand new print cartridge that I had bought late Friday night. Considering I started using it at about 9:00 Saturday morning, I would say that its total life span was about 36 hours. It gave up the ghost when it had only about five more pages of my eighty-page project to print out. I was supposed to turn in the eighty-page project yesterday morning, but my teacher obviously didn't take into account the fact that I had two finals yesterday morning. I had another final this morning, so I didn't get the project to him until this afternoon. I had to print the last five pages on campus and then run the whole project over to his office. He wasn't in his office and the project certainly didn't slide under the door. So there it sits, the murderer of my ink cartridge, outside his door.

Of course, I can't blame only the eighty-page project. I also blame the "Ideas Portfolio" that I had to do for another class for which the teacher required us, during the last week of class, to collect forty samples of different print layouts from different kinds of publications, and write a summary of the good and bad points of each design, including what we would use from the design to create designs in the future. The project took me all day Saturday and all day Sunday and two hours Monday morning to complete. If I hadn't bought a printer/scanner/copier back at the beginning of the semester, I would have been SOL. I was able to make most photocopies at home. Of course, this led to the unexpected death of my color cartridge, too. Life sucks. If you're an ink cartridge. Or an ink-dependent student. Or a student who doesn't like to spend $50 dollars on ink in one week.

Anyway. Back to the final countdown. One more to go. And some homework. Which is why I'm in the computer lab. Here I gooooooooo! Doo doo loo dooooo! Doo doo loo-doo-doo!

13 comments:

daltongirl said...

I want to know what kind of piece of crap ink cartridge you bought. They should be good for at least a half ream of paper, depending on the brand, of course. If you got the dollar store brand, I cannot help you. But otherwise, I think a strongly worded letter is in order, and a refund. Jerks.

Also, you need to refill your own ink cartridges. Super easy and cheap. Hardly messy at all (once you get used to it). Call me for details.

FoxyJ said...

Our ink cartridges run out at the worst possible times as well. We recently had a very bad experience with the whole refill thing, but you're welcome to try that. Maybe it will work for you.

SJ said...

Whenever I hear that song I always think of one of Gob's spectacularly bad illusions (any A.D. fans in the house?). And, yes, it will now be stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Cicada said...

I got a cartridge refilled at Island Inks yesterday. It cost me half the price. I haven't tried it yet, but here's hoping...

The guy at the refill center explained to me that they used to be able to fill the whole cartridge, but HP put a divider in the middle of the cartridge so that their cartridges are now permanently half empty (or are they half full?).

My cartridges are only $15 each, which is still expensive but not as bad as others. Still. To last four days...

FoxyJ said...

Um yeah, Island Ink Jet is exactly where we got screwed with refills. Each of our refills lasted a few days before they died. We decided not to do that again.

Cicada said...

Hmm... Well I'll tell you how it works out in a couple days...

Anonymous said...

An eighty-page paper?! Forty design samples?! Holy crap. It sounds like you're lucky just to be alive at this point, Cicada.

Anonymous said...

My ink cartridge died during my last paper at BYU. When I tried to take it out to replace it, I ended up breaking whatever holds the ink cartridge. Oops. I ended up having to print my final paper at the lab too. Now I praise and worship the laser printer. Sure toner is more expensive but it lasts a whole lot longer.

April said...

Sheesh. And I thought I had it rough when I had to write a 25-page paper on advertising design in college. 80 pages? I would have had a stroke somewhere around page 43, I think.

ambrosia ananas said...

I'm beginning to think you died of finals or something. Because otherwise, you'd've updated by now.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's thinking that. And I'm glad someone else said it first.

Tolkien Boy said...

I know that Cicadas don't sing in the snow, but I'm earnestly hoping this is a hibernation and not an extinction. How are we to enjoy the holidays without your witty editorials?

Th. said...

.

You know, we're still waiting for more on Frances....