The Never-Ending Access-Printer Saga, Part One

So, my boss is an eye doctor. He's my eye doctor, in fact, which is why last week I told you it pays to complain (hahaha, but really). Anyway, as a "side business," (I promise it's not as sketchy as I made it sound by calling it that) he travels around Texas and helps older people with special eye problems see better with these crazy looking glasses. Part of my job in the last week has been to type a letter, get a list of the addresses of (I want to say ALL, but it's probably not even close to) about 800 eye doctors all over the state of Texas, figure out how to put their names in the letter, print envelopes without labels, etc...

Sounds fairly easy enough if you click around in Word enough. But this is so far from the truth. The list(s) of doctors' names is in Access, a little known Microsoft program. It's not part of the usual Office package, you either have to buy the BIG Office package or buy it separately. Well, I have a Mac and use it at work. And this is how the whole thing started last Monday...

I put the list on my little jump drive, specially purchased for this list. I plug my jump drive into my laptop and problem one occurs: I do not have Access.

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Since my boss isn't in the office Monday or Tuesday, I left. When I went back Thursday, I spent probably two hours looking for the Access disk to try to install it on one of the office computers and explain that I have a Mac and when we find the disk it won't install on my computer. We finally found the disk - success!

It needs to be installed on a DVD drive because it's a newer version of the software. Ok, good deal, there's a DVD drive a few feet away from me. No problem. Until the DVD drive doesn't open. No matter how many times we push the button. I decide to try one of the computers up front even though they're all ridiculously old. No luck. So we call a local shop that specializes in refurbishing computers and selling them for super cheap. We're in luck. They have a couple year old laptop with a DVD drive and it'll only be $250. We'll be there first thing in the morning Friday.

Come back tomorrow for part two when I begin to question if my life is a joke. And don't forget to help me celebrate my 2-year blogiversary by going here and asking me a question in the comments! I'll answer the questions next week!