My scanner: Or how I learned voodoo

I can't get my scanner to work. 

Not that I can -ever- get my scanner to work, but this time it has decided to access my A:/ drive.

Continually.

Don't laugh. Usually, I have to sacrifice a chicken, wave incense over the HP logo and hop up and down on one foot, which amuses my cats to no end, before that little light on the scanner will appear and we all scream "oh...quick...it's working!" in unison.

Of course, the fun doesn't end here. Now that I've got the scanner working, I now have to see if my "easy to install, easy to use" HP software will fire up. That is, without destroying all other files on my hard drive, while signal-handedly causing communications over Peru and parts of Brazil to cease functioning. Rabid emails and death threats from high ranking South American officials have become sort of a pastime for me, although nowadays I just reroute them to the HP Help Desk. 

I have a whole collection of "We'll get back to you soon", emails. We're planning on repapering the study, and I've got to cut costs somewhere.

So, anyway.

Now that the cats are happily feasting on raw chicken in the far corner of my study, and my "cutting edge, technologically advanced" HP ScanJet 3200C appears to be working, as the "cutting edge, technologically advanced" light appears to be moving in one "cutting edge, technologically advanced" direction, I sit down for a quick session of head-scratching, "How'd THAT happen?' computing. I lift the lid, which they tell me is also technologically advanced, and slide in my magazine photograph of Cindy Crawford. 

What? You though maybe Home and Garden?

Luckily, nothing breaks. 

No funny sounds, no snapping of "technologically advanced, cutting edge" plastics. Lowering the lid as not to upset anything that one might professionally refer to as " one of those computer thing-a-ma-jigs," I turn to the keyboard and wait for my scanning program to open.

Meanwhile, my wife finishes knitting that sweater she started when I turned on the computer, and the seasons change.

Finally, my HP PrecisionScanLT program opens, and I am faced with a plethora options consisting of "scan" and....well, "scan." With such a myriad of options to choose from, I draw on my years of software experience and choose "scan." 

Once the scan is complete and I check my email for any South American addresses, mail bombs or FBI notices and finding none, I begin the process of choosing which format I wish to save my new Cindy Crawford image in: 

Text? 

No...Cindy would look awfully funny in all text. 

Not that I'm sure Cindy Crawford can read text, save for zeros and commas, but that's another article. She can keep her fortune, as long as see continues to parade around in skimpy black lace panties, rather than those awful weather-beaten sweats and that tee shirt that says, "Not now, I've got a headache," like my wif...

Ahem...where were we?

Oh, yes. 

Rich Text Format? 

A file format that lets you exchange text files between different word processors in different operating systems? No..no...I think I want Cindy and her teensy-weensy black lace panties all to myself. 

And, of course, my poker buddies.

I assume at this time, my wife is lining up to scan her full-color "Brad Pitt in ripped jeans" photo. 

Gee. Smoldering good looks. Fabulously rich. Incredibly famous...just what do women see in this guy? 

Perplexed, I go back to scanning through my choices.

Image: 

Well, that sounds like just the ticket. However, I certainly hope that Cindy looks better in my graphics editor than she does on my cutting edge, technologically advanced PrecisionScanLT. Even Cindy Crawford looks less than appealing with wavy blue and green lines running through her. 

Off I go to save my image of perfection, but at 5.6 mega-bytes, that's suddenly become a very large piece of perfection. Meanwhile, Cindy has lost none of the blue and green wavy lines and I begin to worry. 

Did I do something wrong? Should I have sacrificed a pig instead? Perhaps there was a hidden function besides "scan" that I should have pressed - like the "eliminate the blue and green wavy lines from my image" button. Somehow, I don't think so. And the scanner has decided to stop working again. 

Sigh...

My coffee's cold by now, and the cats are fat and happily asleep on a bed of chicken feathers. Me? I'm rubbing my foot, wondering if it was worth the trouble of jumping up and down, waving a fist full of burning incense over a "technologically advanced, cutting edge, easy to install, easy to use," rectangular piece of plastic and glass.

Maybe I should have gotten that fax machine instead...

Copyright 1998-2001 Mark Oberg, All rights reserved