Warning: This blog may lead to increased blood pressure and feelings of fright.

Thursday: Rick had let me borrow a video a few weeks back and I finally sat down to watch it. It’s called “The Secret” It’s all about the “Law of Attraction” – the idea that we attract what we think about.

I was kind of getting into, thinking wonderful things about how successful Graphic Habit is going to be. About a half hour into it a got an e-mail asking if I could make shirts for all the girls in U hall here at BYU. I was excited.

Friday: In the morning I got a call from a friend of mine asking if I could do a shirt for him to give to his girlfriend. Then after classes were done for the day I got another e-mail asking if I can print a few shirts for Josh back in Moreno Valley. I was digging the “Law of Attraction” thing at this point.

I fire up the old printer to prep some jobs I’ve had outstanding. For some reason the cyan isn’t printing well, so a do a few cleanings and nozzle checks. After a couple cleanings the printer’s LCD screen tells me it’s time to empty the Maintenance Tank. The maintenance tank is where the printer spits all the excess ink as it’s doing self-cleanings. The tank needs to be emptied from time to time.

So I pulled out the tank, emptied it out and stuck it back in. The printer didn’t recognize it. The tank has a little chip on the side of it (about the size of a Chicklet) which identifies the tank to the printer. Whenever you empty the tank, you reset the chip with a special device. The chip wasn’t resetting. Apparently the something had malfunctioned. The time was about 6:00p.m. My distributor was closed. All the stores around here were closed. There was nothing I could do.

I posted my problem on the message board and after a few frantic re-tries I gave up.

Saturday: I flipped through the phone book to find someone who sold printer supplies. No one was open. I searched online. I didn’t get many results and none of them were open. Then I discovered the Epson web site (the Flexi is a modified Epson 4800) and found their list of Certified Distributors. There were a few in Utah, none in Provo, but 3 in Salt Lake. One of them was open and they had my Maintenance Tank!

I had a test to take at the Testing Center, but then booked it up to Salt Lake. I picked up my tank from Pictureline (an amazing photography store) and came back to Provo. I pulled out my old tank, slid in the new one and everything was cool – only, it wasn’t. It still didn’t work.

I figured that chip had to connect to the printer somehow, so I set out to find the contacts. When I finally uncovered them I found a bent pin and went about straightening it.

Then the pin broke.

I panicked.

Then I calmed down. I had jerry-rigged contacts before. I could do it again. I found an unused twist-tie, striped it and spent the next hour applying it where the previous pin had been.

When that was done I reassembled the printer and slid in the tank. It didn’t work. Then I realized I had slid in the old tank. I pulled it out and slid in the new one. It worked.

Relief.

I then went shopping and tried to let my mind de-stress. When I got home I fired up the printer. The cyan still wouldn’t print. I did cleaning cycles and nozzle checks but nothing seemed to work. I opened up the flexi yet again, taking panels of the sides and front to expose the tubing that carried the ink to the print head. The cyan tube was practically empty.

I disconnected the tube and sucked ink up through it. I couldn’t seem to get it to stay. Ink dripped everywhere. I finally got the line to stay mostly full, but it still wouldn’t print. I finally did a power clean, the cycle used to load the initial batch of ink through the lines, and finally it started working.

I’ve since printed 3 test images and everything seems to be in order.

These is one of those times when the answer to a problem was the answer to a truly heart-felt prayer.

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