HP EZPZ – How to take something really simple and make it extraordinarily difficult.

Unlike my comrades here at Aiming Low, I rarely do anything the easy way.  It’s not that I don’t want to – I am, after all, one of the laziest people I know – it just happens to work out that in order for me to complete a task it needs to be done in the most difficult way possible.

I don’t think my brain works in a Start at Point A and continue to Point B kind of way.  Instead I’m more of a Start at Point A, continue to Point E, subset 1-f, then back again to Point A, subset 3-g, then jump to Point Q, subset 7-n, divide by Pi and add 27 more steps before eventually getting to Point B… after standing on my head while doing the hokey pokey.  ‘Cause that’s what it’s all about.

My kids don’t help the process either.

Take for instance the day I tried to set up my new HP Photosmart printer.

I gave myself an hour, knowing I wouldn’t need it all and I would have plenty of time to screw off in our office while my husband wrangled the kids.  Unfortunately for me, however, my husband had to run out soon after I had opened the box so I was left with two unruly children after a long day of Swedish furniture shopping.

Mayhem ensued.

I had just sat down when one kid started beating on the other so I had to stop what I was doing to attend to that.  No sooner had I walked back in the office when someone “accidentally” broke a toy that needed to be fixed right that very second or else the sound barrier was going to be shattered.  Toy fixed, I was back to the office to plug in the printer and start it up.  I had gotten the lovely touch screen to come on and was admiring it when my eldest fell from something and needed attention.  While I was administering kisses and admonishments my two-year old daughter snuck into the office and I can only imagine was so mesmerized by the pretty colors of the touch screen that she felt compelled to touch it, somehow setting the printer to Portuguese mode.

I don’t speak Portuguese.  But my kids learned a few new words.

Word to the wise, when setting up your HP printer please make sure you set it to your native language immediately, otherwise you’ll have to spend time chatting with HP support while your children are swinging from the light fixtures.  Not that chatting with the fine people from HP is a bad thing but you’ll be forced to use all your reserves of patience leaving yourself spent with a craving for fermented grape juice.

Thankfully after a few tries, a wonderful woman at HP talked me through the appropriate screens and I was soon on my way to printing glossy color photos with my new HP printer.  The first one I chose?

Yep, that’s about right.