Toner cartridge for Kerry office

[Roger H. Goun]

On Mon, 2004-10-04 at 13:54, Paul Lussier wrote:
> In a message dated: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:20:30 EDT
> "Roger H. Goun" said:
> 
> >The John Kerry campaign office in Nashua is in desperate need of a toner
> >cartridge for an HP LaserJet 5si MX printer.
> 
> Are you sure it's an HP?  If you ask again, I bet they'll say it's a
> Cannon, or perhaps an Epson ;) Of course, if you ask again, you'll
> likely get a response of 'We tried the Epson before we tried the HP! And
> if we had it to do over again, we'd buy the same way, but we'd do it
> completely differently!'

Yeah, I'm sure it's an HP. I installed it for them. Several times. The
first time as a network printer. Laughed when I saw it was BOOTP only
and couldn't get an IP address from the Linksys router. Gave it a static
IP. Couldn't ping it from some of the PCs. Laughed when I found another
daisy-chained Linksys router with the same factory-default settings.
(They'd been wondering why machines sometimes lost connectivity when
somebody else plugged in a laptop. Could be worse--they could have been
Wi-Fi access points with factory default settings.) Cleaned up that mess
and spent some time trying to get HP's gawdawful IPP client software
working on their Win98, XP, and 2K boxes. Gave up after innumerable
client crashes. Plugged a parallel cable into the nearest PC, which
happened to be Win98, and tried to set it up as an SMB printer instead.
Laughed when it asked for a Win98 CD. Cried when I couldn't find Win98
PCL drivers on HP's Web site. Drove an hour home, dug around until I
found a Win98 CD, and talked a staffer through a VNC install over the
phone. Read the VNC documentation trying to remember how to start a
listen-only viewer session on a Linux box. Poked a hole in my firewall.
Took control of the PC, copied required drivers to a Web server and
snarfed them onto the PC. Installed drivers. Works great! :-)

> And why exactly can't they run down the street and buy one from Staples?

Doubt they have budget for that. Everything was donated, including the
printer. (What a surprise!) The good news is somebody came up with a
toner cartridge for them.

> Not being a Kerry fan, please excuse me while I sit here not feeling
> bad for them.

No comment, other than to suggest you run a whois search on
nhfordean.com.

> (Of course, it it was W's office, I wouldn't feel sorry for them either,
> but that's only because they wouldn't have this problem.  They would
> have a well planned strategery for dealing with these inevitabilitisms
> which frequently occur inopportunedly :)

Yup.

-- R.