I spent a good portion of this morning in a creaky, drafty garage, attempting to make one good laser printer out of three. You never know what you’ll find when answering a Craigslist ad, which is why I always travel with tools, flashlight, cellphone, and the minimum amount of cash possible to hold an item until I’ve taken stock of the situation. These printers were three Phaser 7700 models, big tabloid-sized laser printers bought at a GSA auction and stored for several years behind a surplus hospital gurney covered in books and old Silicon Graphics workstations. Between the three of them there were two full sets of ink cartridges, one set of fusers, and one working hard drive (the other two had been pulled as per government regulations), and after swapping parts around, finagling balky fusers into place and doing delicate transplant surgery on the motherboards, we got one to power up and make it to the “print test page” step before paper jams and my ice-cold feet brought us to a halt. I don’t think these three machines were worth purchasing, but I’m still keeping my eyes open.