Tuesday, December 11, 2012 – Cocoa:

            Woke up to fog again or was it that I just had a little too much fun last night?  No...I think it was definitely foggy weather!  After a breakfast comprised of strange things from the refrigerator, and lunch the same, the most exciting part of the day was doing laundry.  Well, actually it got a little more exciting when I couldn’t make the printer work, and we needed it to print our boarding passes.  Bob almost had to fish it out of the water, but he saved it and me just as I was about to pitch it out through the door.  We bought this printer back in Annapolis especially so it would fit on the shelf in our cabin, and it was wireless, and it looked like we could actually figure out how to make it work (especially after assurances from the nice salesman “that, oh sure, this is a piece of cake”, and it would be really convenient, etc., etc., etc.  Well, let me tell you, it has been nothing but a pain in the “engine room.”  Half the time, the wireless connection is no good, half the time the computer says it can’t find the printer, half the time I get a message that says, “You are too stupid to work this thing…” oh wait, that’s more than a whole isn’t it…oh well...and half the time it finally prints what I asked it for three days later when I least expected it.

            Well, anyway, we decided that it would be much easier if we just went back to the office supply store and bought a USB cable and connected the printer directly to the laptop.  The helpful salesman looked at us, and said, “You didn’t buy a cable when you bought the printer?”  Whereupon, I wanted to reply, “No…why don’t they just put the d@#$ cable in the box when you buy the printer?”…but I just meekly said, “I guess not…”

            So boatward bound we went, and the first problem occurred just trying to get the cable out of the packaging.  Honestly, you need an industrial chain saw to get through this stuff.  So after about 10 minutes of both Bob and I hacking away at this plastic thing with scissors and other tools we finally get the cable out of the box.  So I am now happily hooking everything up, knowing that this is going to work, and I will be able to print our boarding passes tomorrow morning.  WRONG!

            I couldn’t print anything! Nothing! Nada! All I got was this message that said the computer couldn’t find the printer.  I must have hit every button I could find on both the computer and the printer, and answered every stupid question it asked me, and I even very nicely told the computer that the printer was sitting right next to it, and please print my document.  (and…no…the cd that came with the printer would not work either).  Nothing!  It was at that moment that I got the bright idea to delete the printer altogether from the computer and reinstall the software from Epson.  Don’t even ask me to explain how long that took and that that course of action didn’t work either.  That’s when I rather angrily pulled the USB cable out of the laptop, and was in the starting position of throwing it out the door when Bob wrestled me to the ground and took the printer away from me.  That option being taken away from me, I decided to call the Epson customer service number, knowing full well, that I would never get through, and I might as well be calling Mars.  Well Glory Hallelujah! I got right through, a really nice man helped me that I could actually understand (well, pretty much), and he had the printer up and running in a couple of minutes.  I thought I had done everything he told me to do, but go figure – it worked and that’s all I cared about.  His last words to me were, “Thanks for calling and don’t hesitate to call again if you have any more questions or problems.”  He didn’t even ask for a credit card.  What planet am I on?

            So that was pretty much it for the day.  As far as I was concerned, that was enough!!

            We are now making packing lists and more to do lists, and tomorrow will be really busy as we prepare to head home for the holidays.  Here are some pictures of sunset at the marina, and Haulover Canal where we saw everything but manatees.

            Will write more tomorrow.  Ciao!

Sunset at Cocoa Village Marina

Looking over Haulover Canal with egret in background

Little lizard on the rocks at Haulover Canal