Cats and Dogs Living Together...

Kristen Cole covered this long, long ago. But it’s time for YAB to add their collective two cents into such a hard-hitting news story, I’m half-surprised CNN and FoxNews aren’t all over it.

The Naming of Printers.

Kristen used to work in a world where the printers already had names, Presidential ones as it were. The World of Condon exists without pre-named document producing units. That task is left in my hands. And now that the dust has settles on the new apartment and life appears to functioning normally, it’s time to knock some remedial tasks such as these off the docket.

But first a recap…

In college, I had a printer whose incompetence goes completely unmatched. I feel like I wore a rut in the grass to Tyler Computer Lab across the street from Monroe for all the times I needed to emergency print something and my printer would hardly comply. “What’s that? You need this for a class in two minutes?” my computer would smirk. “Too bad! I’m going back to shooting death stares at your roommate – why does that kid never wear a shirt?”

And so, Pongo was born.

Pongo is not an endearing name to given – I hardly would connote it a positive handle. Not a whole lot of rocket scientists or brain surgeons out there on the scene with the name Pongo. Dr. Pongo is a horrifying thought. Spud named him, and he was promptly banished under the bed. (Pongo, not Spud.)

Once Pongo took a liking to “Involuntary Forced Skydiving (sans chute),” it was time for a replacement. Enter the printer I bought from Alok and Anand Dash junior year for 40 bucks. It was new, unopened, and curiously cheap. But despite that initial uneasiness, Pongo’s replacement quickly won over its new owner for one special reason: it new how to talk. When you sent a job to print, it would pipe up with a strangely soothing voice and proclaim “Printing Commencing.”

Printing Commencing? Who talks like that?

Something needed to be done. I quickly found the wav file that Printer #2 was utilizing to speak all proper-like in our dorm room and deleted it. However, I remained fascinated in its speaking abilities and search for a replacement quote. Nothing on my computer would suffice. I even tried recording my own voice to say something clever, but I sounds like a robot myself on tape. And then inspiration showed up on the campus movie channel: Ghostbusters.

There’s nothing more comical than having your RA walk down the hall and stop dead in her tracks to hear bellowing from your room –

”THERE IS NO DANA, ONLY ZUUL.”

And that, boys and girls, is how Zuul the Printer came to be born.

But Zuul deteriorated over the years, and didn’t exactly “make the cut” of stuff to come to the new apartment. And even if he did, he’d be third-string on the depth chart. Because Katie brings a fearsome twosome to the table. A standard HP and her new Epson photoprinter. And for the last 5 weeks, they have gone nameless. Printers without identities.

Suggestions, anyone?