stupid machine

I think I'm going to cry.

( Cut for those who don't want to see obscenities directed at my printer. )

I bought some labels yesterday to try to cut down the amount of work required to send out Christmas cards. I have found the correct label template in OpenOffice, and set them up.

When the printer prints on normal paper, the labels are all in the correct positions. When it prints on the labels, it prints way too near the top of the page, so they're totally out of alignment. WTF is it playing at?

I thought maybe the labels were too shiny so they don't feed properly or something like that, but noooo - on the second pass, they print correctly. But on the second pass they already have the misfed previous address on.

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Christmas rage.

I have been suffering from rage directed at my printer today. I've decided that I'm not going to attempt to print any more labels. I'll let Richard do it when he gets in. 9 times out of 10, having Richard here solves a technical problem (all he has to do is *look* at the machine and it starts working again!).

I have also *just* discovered that we can't wrap any Christmas presents until either a) I buy more wrapping paper or b) we complete a sufficient amount of the DIY for someone to squeeze into the spare room past all the stored furniture, and rescue the wrapping paper that's in there :D

But I am positively an oasis of calm compared to some of the crazy people I've seen in Kingston lately. A couple of days ago I was in Costa and a guy in front of me had taken his drink back to the counter because it was, and I quote, "too milky". The man had ordered a caffe latte. What does he think a latte is, forgodsake? He was getting really quite angry about it.

Then a bit later I was in the Early Learning Centre trying to find a "hard dino" for the nibling, and a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman was berating a couple of members of staff. Some of the shelves had signs on them saying "1/3 off selected stock". This is a fairly common sign in shops of my acquaintance at sale time. The woman was ranting and raving about the fact that it was "misleading" that only some items were included in the 1/3 off sale, not everything in the shop. Finally she stormed out saying she was "going to report them to Trading Standards". I just... boggled. And told the distressed staff members about the latte guy in Costa to cheer them up.