I'm at a computer lab printing things. That's ok, I like printing things. What I don't like is when a million others are printing their things and your never know if it's your stuff or somebody else's coming out. You put in a sheet of paper and out comes... economy? development? globalization? maths? confirmation of plane tickets? Then you're standing there waiting, this isn't mine, that isn't mine. Whoever it belongs to isn't coming to get it. Cancel the job? Hope the next one is yours?
Put in a new sheet of paper. Nope, not mine. If you had an unlimited supply of paper in your bag, this might not be a problem. But most of us aren't walking book stores and we don't have unlimited of supplies of paper in our bags. You can risk, as I have, that you suddenly don't have enough paper left to print what you were actually going to print. Sometimes they don't put out anything we have to print for a week, then everything comes the same day. Today there's a bit and it's messed up (messy professor) and I have to cut and paste and change the font a bit. Which I really don't mind. As long as I get to print it.
Now ssssh we have to work!
Oh you poor thing. You know what you could do?
ReplyDelete1) Most simple & basic thing - Write your name on your paper, e.g: Property of Apples, Paper Belongs to Apples, Thieves Shall Be Butchered by Apples.
2) Use pink paper. Bright orange would be even better. No sane person would wanna use colored paper for their assignment. Not that I'm saying you're insane or anything. But desperate times call for desperate measures.
3) Use heavily scented paper. That way, you can trace whoever used your paper and perhaps charge them for printing over your paper (serves them right!)
Cheers!
Thanks for the suggestions, it's just that none of them would work...
ReplyDeleteWe have to put in paper, one by one, so they don't get jammed in there (happens all the time). There's no way of knowing if it's your thing that comes out, but you still have to put in paper to find out if it is.
Just now the printer wasn't working, apparently no one knew how to fix it so I did. Then I had to cancel about 15 jobs, people had pressed 'print' then realized the printer wasn't working. After cancelling it all, I could try printing my stuff again.
It's not that someone takes my paper, it's that I have to use it to print my stuff and I never know if my stuff is next in line, or if someone printed and never went to get it out.
Nice suggestions though :)
Check the print queue, it should be down in your system tray (PC), or in the Dock (Apple). Open it up, and it will show where everyone is in the queue (provided you know how the computers are ID'd). If you want to be really sneaky, you can delete everyone out of the queue, add yours, and then let everyone print. It worked for a while at my college before they locked us out of the printer system.
ReplyDeleteI've looked and looked but have not found. I'm not there now so I can't look again, but I'm not sure it would do any good.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure it's even possible to do that. There's this guy in an office next to the printers, he's always walking around helping people and once when I was there he let it print one page, asked if anyone owned it, then deleted the job. Then he did the same thing again and again until someone owned the things coming out. If it was possible to check who's in the queue, I would have think he'd have done that.
Also, I don't have a clue how the computers are ID'd.
I'm gonna have a better look next time I go down there though...