no Murphy

Murphy's Law creeps up whenever you're simply trying to go from Point A to Point B. In particular, living in Korea involves a disturbingly high Murphy factor. You want to do something as simple as print out a map image from your office cubicle, for example, but before you can do that, you discover that you have to install Adobe Acrobat Reader, convert the map image to PDF, open Reader, then print through that program. Why not just print straight from the screen? God only knows. That's Murphy.

Today, though, things couldn't have gone any better than they did. I went to E-Mart and found my printer, the Samsung SCX-3400. There it sat, on its display shelf, with a sign that advertised its price as W169,000 (about $154, US). When I asked the staffer to give me one to buy, he retreated to the storage room for a moment, then came back out and told me that all he could sell me would be the display sample... which he'd part with for only W49,000 (about $44.50). I was overjoyed, so I said, "Heck, yeah! I'll take it!" I bought the printer, a toner cartridge, and a box of A4 printer paper.

Before I left E-Mart, however, I tromped down to the food court and bought myself a celebratory Japanese modeum dongkaseu jeongshik for W12,500. It was a ton to eat, as you can see in the image below:


Not a bad value in terms of sheer quantity and craftsmanship and carbs, but the set was way too heavy on ketchup and honey mustard. I wouldn't have minded switching out the ketchup for something more Asian.

My gullet now filled, I waddled out with my heavy, bulky load of boxes (printer, A4 paper, toner), found a cab, and drove back to my place. Once inside, I downloaded the printer and scanner drivers to my Big Mac, broke out the printer, plugged it into the wall and into my computer, downloaded an English-language PDF user's manual, and tried printing.

Success! Success on the first try!

Next up was scanning. I found the Scanner Assistant, placed a shortcut icon in my dock, then scanned an image.

Success again! And again on the first try! See below:


So I'm now set to scan and print to my heart's content. And I got the printer I wanted for less than a third of its original cost. Could things have gone any more right on my birthday? Oh, yes: the weather this evening was magnificent—unwontedly cool and breezy. I barely had a chance to sweat at all. Would that all days were like today.


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