Sep 30, 2009

Funny Story

See, I’m late for class, as it is, but I’m not done with my homework.  A lot of folks call homework “PSets” around here.  I call it homework.  Fin.  But I digress.

So I walk toward said class, crossing the Infinite Corridor, but turn off the hallway and walk out onto one of the many sets of stone steps in Killian Court, whereupon I commence to cracking at my solutions again.  And I squeeze off part d of problem 4 before heading on…to class?  No - to the nearest Athena cluster to quickly print out my homework!  Take note of the time, now: it’s 12:20 PM.  I’m twenty minutes late.

I go to the Athena Cluster in Building 12.  I log into the Quickstation.  I look at the printers.  One has a sign that says, “Dead since 9/14″ (it was September 28).  Another is busy undergoing a cavity search from a few industrious MIT students.  The third is taking up the queue from the full cluster.  So I bounce and head to the Athena Cluster in Building 4.

Enter Building 4 Athena Cluster and its printer, sanda.  sanda isn’t doing well.  It is jamming on some poor fellow’s print job.  And no sooner than I yank out the the jammed paper and shut the machine did sanda jam again.  A couple of iterations later, I bounce, feeling a bit like Sisyphus, or Tantalus, or one of those other poor blighters, and head toward the basement of Hayden Library, where there is another cluster to try.

But when I got there, the undergrad said, “Lo!”  Actually, he says (and I can’t even be sure he was an undergrad), “Yeah, I’ve got a couple of things printing, so it’s probably gonna’ be a while.”  I mean the fellow who is standing next to the printer, see, who I encounter after I sent my job off to the printer.  In the green shirt, you know.  That guy.  Who has to print those scanned-in .pdfs, bloated files what come out at 1 page per minute.  Several such.  Files.

So I bounce.  I head to the Athena Cluster in Building 56.  Funny story - you know those long, low-to-the-ground dogs?  I trip over one on the way to the Athena Cluster in Building 56.

Anyway, to follow the line of reasoning of the great Yogi Berra, that printing queue is so long, no one is getting anything printed.

And so I head back to Hayden Library (time check: 1:00 PM - class is over, anyway).  No dogs this time.  I go back down to the Athena Cluster.  The one in the basement.  The one in the basement, without the windows, with the cushy chairs nearby, and the books what distract you…anyway, I go to the library, where I encounter the same undergrad, still printing.

So I pop above ground and address a short letter to the IS&T (not to the professor of my class) which politely describes of my ordeal.

(Then I visit the printer again and infer that my print job has been canceled.  Exeunt.)

And then I finish my homework, and meet the professor of the class, and he accepts the thing late, anyway (though not before assigning me the Herculean task of tracking down his TA, and on an empty stomach, to boot!  Funny story.).

What irony - bad printing leads to better homework.  Who knew?

A Response To This Entry:

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Wow! I feel for you!

I am a bit amazed though. In this age of cheap notebooks and free WIFI, I would have thought that the Athena clusters would be empty.

Posted by: nakoruru on October 1st, 2009 at 1:44 pm

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