Monday, September 3, 2018

The Absent-Minded Professor

After a recent drive to attend a relative's funeral in another state, I misplaced my Garmin, no doubt leaving it somewhere "safe" again.  (I've sometimes had variations on this theme. I also have also misplaced its UBS charge cable, which meant one time I went to use the Garmin, I found it was dead, needing a recharge. So I ordered a much longer third-party supplier replacement cable from Amazon. You win if you guess while I was waiting for the new cable to arrive, I stumbled across the original.) I can and have used Google Maps, but a first use, homeward bound after a vehicle emissions test (long story: I thought I could get it done at another facility and then was directed to a local highway split (and follow a maze of one-way street signs to the facility). My cellphone went silent as, in fact, I drove in the wrong direction.)

An even more telling example was that I had bought a nice wall-pluggable power storage device for USB devices, good enough for multiple charges of my cellphone. It wasn't that expensive, maybe something like $30-50, but expensive enough I didn't want to lose it.  I was living in temporary housing at a local hotel waiting for my household goods from SC to arrive at my new residence in Arizona. I remember having it out on the room desk before I checked out. Later, in my new apartment, I searched the pockets of my notebook bag and couldn't find it. I checked back with the hotel, and it turned out I did leave a device behind but it was an older, less capacity, cheaper unit. I began wondering if maybe the maid had stolen it; I never made that claim, but I couldn't explain how the device had disappeared.

In the meanwhile, I bought new storage devices, particularly after a long power outage in Maryland a few months back. So fast forward to a few days back. I own 3 notebook computers as well as a desktop--and, of course, a few notebook bags. I was searching for where I had misplaced the Garmin when I suddenly realized the internal calculator slot in one of the cases wasn't empty--and I know I didn't have a calculator. You guessed it: the missing power bank.

For some reason, Windows Update is choking on every monthly or so cumulative update, and it seems I must have had to resort to Windows Activation troubleshooter at least a dozen times this summer as Windows seems to think my notebook doesn't have a valid license. Not sure what the issue is beyond likely buggy, crappy Windows code. I keep my security software updates, constant scans, etc.

One runs into novel issues all the time. I have a combination printer/flatbed scanner. I had just scanned something to a pdf file recently but when I had to send a fax overnight, I ran into a software issue telling me the printer wasn't on or the USB cable was disconnected (neither true); I tested printer functionality: no problem.

The only thing I could think of was maybe I needed to update my printer driver software and quickly went to the printer vendor website. They had updated the driver earlier this year. And yes, its application resolved my scanner problem.