Yesterday afternoon at work, someone wanted me to print out some stuff in colour. So I did, then went upstairs to wait for the ridiculously slow colour printer to print them.

I got up there to find it was turned off. Which was odd, so I turned it back on and waited for the half hour it takes to warm up. Okay, I exaggerate, it was more like five minutes. But there were only two people up there at the time, both typing away, so I thought it was probably best not to disturb them.

So the printer was eventually ready, except that it did its usual 'I've just been turned on and I'm not happy' error message, so I turned it off and on again, which usually fixes it (the few times it doesn't, turning it off and on and second time does).

So eventually it was printing. Except it wasn't because it got a paper jam on the first sheet. I got the paper out and noticed, when I opened the lid, that there was a burning smell. No-one had said anything and it was possible it was coming from the kitchen next to the printer, so I put the lid down and thought I'd see what it did next.

What it did next was give me a fatal error message. When it gives you these it also helpfully gives you an error number. All the numbers mean something but we don't know what, we have to ring the people we get the printer from to find out.

So I went downstairs to my desk where I have the phone number and took it back upstairs, so I could look at the printer at the same time as being on the phone. At which point the people up there decided to tell me the printer was broken and they'd called an engineer that morning.

It was probably just as well that words failed me at that point.

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