So I am attempting to join the 21st century and upload a media file with video and sound to this blog. Hmmm, since more than 3 pictures in a post han't been working so well this might take a bit but hang tight, tech genius at work here.

In other technical news, the AoY has bought a printer. A printer with the fancy Ethernet card thing for wireless printing. Gumtree.com is a marvelous Kiwi (erm, New Zealand) invention to counter craigslist.org (my first love of online apartment hunting). So I trekked all the way to ACTON TOWN (That's Zone three which is like driving to McLean, Rock Hill or Irmo depending on who is reading this. If you are from Texas I just don't know!) and met Tom, the rather cute Aussie who works in hotels. He assured me it worked, even threw in some nice cords and found a shopping bag to haul it all another 30 minutes on the tube. All this for 35 quid?!?

I must think of a name for my new love. This is the end to running downtown to LSE or being lowered to hit on the creepy Italian/French/Albanian/Armenian guy at the Princess Hotel across the street. I must, in an ongoing effort to prove that the UK is not quite up to US standards at time, that Kinko's is neither 7 days a week nor 24 hours a day. Nothing 24 hours is actually 24 hours but that's another issue...back to printer!

So, the Epson EPL-6200L is SUPPOSED to be reliable. Rave reviews on the Internet, easy to assemble, a bit boxy (as I ended up carrying it in my arms the whole way 'boxy' is an understatement). I waddled home, and not due to a liter a water sloshing about my insides, and put on my super-smart-IT-I-can-do-it-sans-man hat. Ladies, this is the hat that inevitably involves tears, a phone call to your ex or daddy and more money spent on repairs than the original estimate. Said hat is often donned by men refusing to read directions or hire a professional but women will sometimes fall under the illusion that they can do it all (and we can, just not rodent disposal). So without a man, a manual, or a muse in sight it was time to figure out how to set up a UK printer through a wireless BT hub to a US computer. Here is how:

1. Go to the manufacturer's website and download the specs and instructions for that printer.
2. Print a test page from your new printer and determine if it can go wireless.
3. Pour the first glass of wine.
4. Connect the pretty cables and sort of close one eye and hope that your laptop sort of automatically recognizes a new printer in the room.
5. Refer to your properly downloaded manual which they suggest you print out for clarity-hmmmm.
6. Try the old Plug and Play via Windows to see if Bill Gates has made connecting wirless devices idiot-proof.
7. Order Thai food as an excuse to have two bottles of wine sent to your door in less than 30 minutes-ha! That didn't require a man or a printer.
8. Muck around in the printer settings, maybe unplug and re-plug the cords. I find a little love tap to be helpful right about now. Just a little nudge to prompt good behaviour from Stewie (how's that for a printer?)
9. See if the delivery boy knows anything about printers and overtip him in case he's bluffing.
10. Just start googling 'how to set up wireless printer'
11. Determine that you need the printer's URL or IP address (I actually knew that but I couldn't find it). Now might be when you start thinking of all those trusty man friends and IT gurus that you should have dated back in college and how liberal arts degrees are worth nothing and how you are doomed to serve fries forever...
12. See that your downloaded manual requests that you refer to the original manual. Grrrrr...
13. Repeat Plug and Play, love tapping, glass refilling.
14. Find some tiny little unlabeled button near the Ethernet card installed at the back and see your printer spit out the much-desired URL, IP and other pertinent information. Basically, luck and happenstance have trumped logic, rational and skill (and this is why women shall rule the earth!)
15. Celebrate with a nice glass of wine after successfully installing your new printer-you have triumphed. The empty bottles were clearly consumed by some depserate person without a clue of how to operate electronics.


Now that Stewie is up and running, he decides, in typical evil-machine form, to only print a single page at a time. Just like a man, he can't multi-task, he jams himself up after a single accomplishment and then just gets all bent out of shape over multiple commands. This is an issue to be resolved at a later date...
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On the NHS front, four weeks after an initial consult and two weeks of waiting on X-ray results, my shine bone is officialy NOT sticking out of my skin and I won't die. Thanks, thanks for that. I am now going back again to the same doctor who can't remember why I went in the first place to try for an MRI. Free health care is slowly working its way up my shit-list. Oh, the doc did tell me upon one of my many calls for results that Ms. Hannah London (me, apparently)'s chest x-rays were perfectly clear and everything looked normal. Now, enourmous issues of malpractice and privacy violations aside, because I quickly tried to tell him I wasn't NOT in fact this mystery woman, I was chastised for being impatient. True that may be but I was told to call back in 3-4 days, then 7-10. So I shall call starting at Day 7 until they get it all together. :)