We now return to our regularly scheduled programming

Once again I had a reminder that technology is not the be-all and end-all in the practice of law.

For the past two days I'd been dealing with a problem with the print spooler on my computer. It meant that I was unable to print anything. That presents quite the problem in a profession in which paper is pushed to varying degrees everyday.

I spent hours hunting down the problem and trolling tech message boards for advice on how to solve it. I found the spooler in the services folder in the administrative tools folder in the control panel. I monkeyed around with it and was able to print out a page or two every now and then. But, after each successful print the spooler would come crashing down again and it'd be back into the control panel.

Clearly this wasn't working.



Then the computer simply refused to recognize the printer that's been hooked up to it for the past two years. I made changes to the printer app, rebooted the computer and saw the same messages pop up over and over again.

I was finally able to keep the spooler up and running long enough to delete the printer driver and reinstall it. Now, for the time being, everyone is recognizing each other and getting along.

The problem itself was bad enough, but the time it took diagnosing the problem and fixing it just made the situation even worse.

Last night, before I left the office to pick up my wife and take her to the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association annual banquet, I opened up Blogger so I could prepare the post for this morning. Oops. Blogger was undergoing some sort of maintenance and I couldn't access my blog. I tried a few more times before leaving the office to no avail.

Blogger is currently unavailable

Blogger is unavailable right now. We apologize for this interruption in service.

Please visit Blogger Status for additional details.

Luckily, I thought, since I had no appointments on the morning calendar I could type up my post for this morning once I rolled into the office. But, when I opened up the blog, my Thursday entry was gone and I was informed that Blogger was closed down because of some kind of technical problem. Of course, Blogger Status told me that it would be back online "soon"

Blogger Status

Friday, May 13, 2011

We’ve started restoring the posts that were temporarily removed and expect Blogger to be back to normal soon.

Posted by at 06:07 PDT

To get Blogger back to normal, all posts since 7:37am PDT on Weds, 5/11 have been temporarily removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon. Sorry for the delay.

Posted by at 04:25 PDT

"Soon," it turned out, meant sometime after lunch. Now everything seems to be back to normal (or as close to normal as anything ever gets in my little corner of the world).

The lesson, as always, is don't get caught up in the pretty little shiny gadgets we all have on our desks, in our pockets, purses or briefcases. They are tools that help us to do what we do -- but that's all they are. The practice of law cannot be confined to words and images that pop up on LCD screens. They greatest tool an attorney has is the grey stuff between the ears -- don't allow the latest shiny gadget to take its place.