So my neighbor had a Canon MX870 and ran into the issue where it was giving the "ink absorbing pad is full" error. She had used some office max cartridges and one leaked the ink out all over inside the cartridge area..and nothing that I could see or tried with cleaning from the top would fix it without doing a major disassembly...so we got her a new printer, and I got a broken printer for my 'garage parts'. Today I worked and took it apart and found the issue....so much ink everywhere in the pads...so many pads all over the bottom of the printer. Giant pile of ink....crazy stuff that totally explains the error message.