Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for January 18, 2025

Random crunchy sound? Random is the perfect word to describe how, or when, printers work.

VERY temporarily, I suspect. Tomorrow the rules will be different!

Random crunchy sound? That can’t be good.

Maybe it’s “normal?”

Is the printer dying or constipated?

While we might think that “random crunchy sounds” and “whirring hisssss…” are coming from the printer, those sounds could just as easily be coming from cats.

The antenna to my radio has to be held up to work, too. So it has been stuck to the wall with poster putty for over a decade. I am sure the Woman will figure something out.

Printers don’t have antennas. Time to give in and use a printer cable.

Burt’s commentary is very accurate.

The printer does not like my computer. It feels superior and decides when it doesn’t want to print. That is usually when it is late at night, numerous copies need to be run off, and a very early get up to head out for a meeting.

My current printer is pretty reliable but every now and then when I go to turn it off it goes into this weird clicking, worring cycle and eventually shuts down.

Printer looks like it’s passing a stone …

Countdown, hm? One of those small hourglasses would be apt. The eggtimer ones lasts about 3 minutes.

Puck to e beans!!!! SQUEEEEEEeeeeeeeee… [runs out of breath and faints].

‘Whirling Hissssss…" What’s Elvis up to now?

I’m loving the little moment of Zen sense in panel two.

Woman, try some aluminium foil on the wires. My daddy swore by them. ;)

Printer, prints instructions: Ok,hold cord at 90 degree angle, put your left foot in, No! Take your left foot out! Now shake it all about… Do the hokie pokie and turn yourself around…MOO HA HA HA HA HA! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU FOLLOWED MY INSTRUCTIONS!! HA HA HA HAH! STILL NOT GONNA WORK!

It’s not a printer! It’s a cat toy maker. Just think of all the balls of paper that will come from the crumpled and torn pieces of paper that accursed printer spits out.

OT, other modern tech issue

My cat loves the printer! Runs to watch when the cruchy sounds start.

I would hire this tech crew!!

Having Lupin say the line in panel two is very poignant. In panel three it looks like the printer is sticking out its tongue, which certainly seems fitting.

I love that the printer looks like it’s horking. And that it’s mad about it.

Well, I tried for three days and still can’t get the Epson working so I bought a new printer. I’m goin’ in today. Wish me luck that the new one works…

I’m giving up on Go Comics for the day. I’ve been on the site for two hours, and only gotten this far. My system keeps telling me that the site is slowing down my computer, the pages keep jumping all over the place, and I can feel my blood pressure rising in frustration.

Yeah, I’m thinking this printer is just not well designed. I would recommend the Woman consider buying from a different brand next time, because I don’t know what this printer’s brand or stats are, but they’re clearly not up to snuff.

Imagine your car or refrigerator being engineered with a hard-wired end-of-life countdown clock, like many modern printers have. After a certain point determined by when the pad inside the printer gets too full after so many cleaning cycles. A friend of mine did that to her new “archival quality” printer prematurely. When I set it up, I explained the cleaning cycle and its occasional use to extend printer life. She took it to mean “Clean between every print” So I got a call about a year later, and that $2k printer was now an expensive doorstop. It took finding new ones and replacing the pad which was oversaturated and made a huge mess, and identifying and removing the chip that stores that info and replacing it. I charged her almost as much as that printer was worth new for time and labor. It’s been 5 gloriously silent years, perhaps she has learned from her experience.

Well i’t just about time for the “evil printer” to start the electronics revolution in the Big Pink House on the Hill. It seems lately that every story line has an evil plot twist that the cats must some how miraculously solve.

I feel this. The only reliable home printer I can remember is the Star-Micronics form-feed printer (remember that? The green and cream paper that was in a fan-fold stack. It made great banners.) that worked with my Commodore 64 (1986 or so). It used an ink cartridge much like a typewriter. It ran out through the ribbon fairly quickly, but a few drops of WD-40 and you could eek a few more pages out of it.

I guess I’ve been lucky, I’ve never had that much trouble with a printer.

Meanwhile, Back on the Nile

Iggy: I still have a lot to write, but I do have the finale.

Beatrixia: That’s great! I’d like to publish a lot of scrolls for everyone’s different interests.

Iggy: Then you’ll like the song I composed:

Getting to know mew

Knowing what you like to read

Getting to like you

Publishing scrolls for you to see

Do you like farming? Maybe to do some cooking

I will be looking to see what you like to read

Getting to know you. Getting to spread information

When you are reading, getting to know what to write

Haven’t you noticed, the new selection of publications

There will be more wonderful and new

Scrolls for all you to view

What a sight!

Scribe Akil: Let’s get together and make up a scroll of your summary, Iggy.

Iggy: Alright. Maybe we can get together over snacks. I’m going to write a list of recipes for performance.

The printer is angry. Don’t mess with it.

Does anyone know what happened to Sue Ellen? She hasn’t posted anything since Tuesday. Is she okay?

I hate to see this storyline end because it’s been so great and so relatable. I need to get my printer up and running again (moved houses awhile back and keep putting it off) but dreading it lol

There are no wires for WiFi

OT but cat-related: AWSUM cat art for Caturday!

Even if she gets it to work she will be able to print one thing and it will be out of ink. I will stick with my color laser.

Maybe that’s the problem. Mine is direct wired.

Get a bigger hammer?

At last! Great job figuring out the problem, Woman.

“Countdown to paperweight begins…” I threw my head back and laughed so hard. Gawd, I LOVE this strip.

Congratulations. Best wishes for tomorrow.

90 degree wire? What this some sorta modern su-purr-stition?

Yeah hitting steenky preenter with heavy paper weight may does the treeck.

I just hardwired my wireless printer.

The problem is that we are no longer customers that the companies have to please. We are now the companies’ investments that have to pay off to make them happy. Yes, I have proof in that is exactly what the president of HP said in an earnings call to his investors.

OT — Runaway cat has returned

Time for an additional router or a mesh network.

Georgia: Take a marker (or piece of chalk) and draw the letter I on it. It’ll never give you trouble. (I did this in a postal processing facility)

Real advice: when making your home network, use as many Ethernet cables as you can get away with. (Cat homes will usually need covered cable routing to prevent chewing.) The fewer wireless devices, the better for both per-device throughput and preventing errors. And if you can use PoE (Power over Ethernet), that makes it even better. (Check your devices for PoE support, you’re likely to kill them if they don’t support PoE or if you try to force a regular PoE device to take PoE+ or PoE++ wattages with a passive injection.)

love the teeth on the printer and the mad face!