Research posters

Well, here I am sitting in a back room off a computer lab printing off posters for the BioNESUR meeting being held here tomorrow. There's a class going on in the computer lab, so I am effectively stuck here for at least an hour and twenty minutes. The good news is that we've just inherited a beautiful poster printer - an HP DesignJet 5500 - it prints beautiful, big posters. The bad news is that I am trying to figure out the machine by trial and error, on the fly - what kind of paper is this? what are the proper ink settings? how do I load new media? damn it, the ink is running - try new settings.

Just like my digital camera, I'm having mixed feelings about this new-fangled piece of technology. What happened to making posters one 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper at a time, carefully cut and pasted on a colored piece of construction paper and assembled piece by piece? Remember those?

Damn it. (do I sound curmudgeony enough?)

UPDATE: Damn it, I forgot rubber bands

UPDATE II: All better now. I figured out settings that work and the posters look stupendous. Forget what I said about old-school posters. I still need rubber bands though.