Revolt of the machines

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I'm having one of those phases at the moment where everything sort of falls apart. Even my household appliances are getting in on the action. My toaster stopped working, my oven dangerously overheats and nearly set on fire, the central heating is variable and my washing machine has started making rather interesting noises in lieu of actually washing clothes.

Evil incarnate

I suspect the printer is their ringleader. We've never seen eye-to-eye (or cartridge-to-eye), because we have different ideas over the function it's actually supposed to perform. I would like it to print things, and print them in the way they are sent to be printed. The printer itself would rather print them wrongly, or not at all. Sometimes the errors are so elaborate I really do suspect it's doing things on purpose, like the time it printed a map I needed with all the colours just ever-so-slightly out of alignment so I couldn't tell where the roads were supposed to be.

To be fair to the toaster, it did have a good innings. Half of it stopped working about a year ago (and I'd had it for ages), but I kept using it anyway, because, you know, it still toasted stuff so I didn't see much point in replacing it. A couple of weeks ago my mum forcibly removed it and chucked it in the bin, claiming it was a hazard. She brought me a replacement, which was very kind, but it's a bit shit. It's not big enough to put Proper Bread Slices in, so I have to either cut the crusts off, or turn the bread around half-way through, so that I end up with toasted ends and a burnt middle bit where the two toastings have overlapped. Neither of those solutions is working for me, so I have converted to crumpets, which actually might be better all-round.

The oven needs replacing; there's no way around that. Other than to not use it at all, which is my current method of operation. Not sure I can apply that as successfully to my dealings with the washing machine, though. Hobo-chique is so not a good look this season.

I'm hoping that this is just one of those times where stuff sucks, but it's okay, because things are about to get a whole lot better.