digital magic and reconcilable differences

"I'm going to give you a take-home final," he said, "you pick it up at 10:00 and turn it in at 1:00. If you don't turn in a print-out at 1:00, you can turn in a disk and then you have an hour to turn in a print-out. Which had better match what was on the disk."

Now, I'm just picturing a class of 80 students fighting over the two laser printers in the computer lab, desperately trying to print their exams between the hours of 12:45 and 1:00 so as to sprint to the records office to turn it in at 1:00. And given the way the IT department over there works, I'm picturing the entire network crashing right about that time.

I can't put one of our printers in the trunk because I won't have the car that day. So in a few minutes I'm off to Fry's for a bit of digital magic to reconcile the differences between the old, travel-sized, parallel-port ink-jet printer and the new, USB-only laptop. If this stunt works, that printer's small enough to carry in the backpack. If only every problem were so easy to reconcile.