Rambling About One-Offs. Not All One-Offs Are One-Offs -- July 22, 2021

Take a look at this graphic which I've now posted three times:

Hold that "visual."

The other day, the CDC reported an almost unbelievable low number of vaccinations given in the previous twenty-four hours. A reader suggested that a number that was so far off the "norm" suggesting a "reporting" error or some other similar error. I agreed.

But thinking about that, I took another look at the graphic above. Can you imagine what folks thought when overnight night money market funds jumped from less than $4 trillion to over $5 trillion? A lot of folks probably thought there must be some kind of error -- but that would never have gained any credibility -- "money" numbers are tracked too closely and these kind of errors don't occur. 

So, not in all cases, does an unusual change in date suggest an error. 

Having said that, the CDC data was certainly suspect when it was reported less than 250,000 vaccinations were given.

And with that, I'm going biking.

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Printers

I think my current HP printer has been with me for ten years, maybe longer. No problems. It works like a champ. It requires a cable; no wireless. 

Some time ago, I updated my operating system on one of my laptop computers. The HP printer driver for this printer no longer works with this updated operating system. Many folks have written about that on social media; greatly upset, but HP and/or Apple refuse to budge. The driver for this 10-year-old printer will not be updated.

I resisted forever, but finally broke down and bought a new printer. I had little choice to buy anything other than HP. The Brother brand was a possibility but I just didn't find anything on Amazon that caught my interest. 

So, after many days of thinking and reading many reviews, I finally bought an HP Envy 6055e from Target. On sale. Better price than Amazon at the time. 

That was about six months ago. My wife has been nagging me to set it up but I read all the reviews suggesting how difficult it was to set up -- being wireless, and all. I was not interested in another headache especially when my current 10+ year-old printer/scanner works fine.

But to keep peace in the family, I finally opened the new HP Envy and set it up yesterday.

Set-up: easy as could be. I cannot imagine anyone with any "tech sense" having any trouble setting it up. There were a few challenges that would have stopped a "non-techie" in her tracks but in the big scheme of things, incredibly easy. One needs to remember one's old HP account password or establish a new one. 

It works flawlessly, it appears. 

However, scanning is a disappointment. The dialogue box for the "old" system (on my 10+ year-old printer) works fine and is absolutely excellent for scanning. I'm not happy with the new scanning drop-down menu but I assume I will get used to it. 

The good news: I will still use my old HP printer as long as it works. My wife is thrilled with her wireless printing and she doesn't scan anything. For her, a screenshot and / or a smartphone photo work just as well as scanning. Smart woman.