Wednesday, April 12, 2000
invoices
I finally got around to printing an invoice for Atlantic Internet. It's a rather involved process printing out an invoice, but it's not the software that's the problem.
It's the hardware. Or rather, the lack of space for said hardware.
I use an old MS-DOS box for printing of invoices. Nothing
difficult, just copy over a template file (which is nothing more than a text
file), fill in the columns using a text editor, save then print to a dot
matrix printer. The problem is I have no space left for the system so it's
been sitting in my bedroom on the floor, waiting for the time I get around
to putting it somewhere.
But I needed to print this invoice and the Computer Room is full. Well, not as full as it was, but now that it's orgranized I'd like to keep it that way.
I could hook the printer up to the Linux box, but Unix and peripherals don't
mix. Or rather, don't mix well. I don't have an exotic printer. It's
dot-matrix. Schlep ASCII out the parallel port and it'll print.
But Unix weenies have to make something simple overly complex with half a
dozen configuration files (none of which are similar, and don't even get me
started on adding a modem to Unix).
Well, that and I never bothered to install the printer subsystem on Linux
since I don't use the printer all that often. Last time I dug it out it was
early February (when it and the MS-DOS computer were in the
Computer Room).
So I quickly set up the computer in the bedroom, printed out the one page I needed, and broke everything down again.
Now I just need to submit the invoice.
