Only two new sightings: Iowa and Kentucky. The YTD total is 32.

How is this license plate map different from all previous license plate maps? Sure, it looks like all its predecessors, but it was scanned on my new scanner. My venerable UMAX 3450 finally croaked. How venerable, you ask? Well, it was designed for Windows 98 if that gives you an idea. Each operating system upgrade required a driver patch to keep the scanner happy. The patch was fairly complicated for a non-techie like me, but the instructions were so clear that I (a) had no trouble, and (b) emailed UMAX tech support to commend them on the clarity of their instructions. A UMAX techie emailed me back to thank me and to commend me for being able to follow directions.

Clear instructions are worth commending. So are people able to follow them.

I decided to replace the scanner with a scanner-printer combo. My workhorse LaserJet, also venerable, is working fine, but it only communicates directly with Morgana V, my Windows XP desktop. WinXP’s days are numbered, and eventually I’ll have to spring for a laser printer that talks to Hekate the Win7 laptop and/or the future Morgana VI. Adding a scanner-inkjet now would ease the future financial pain of replacing everything at once.

Plus the inkjet prints in color, which the LaserJet doesn’t, and color is fun if not exactly work-related.

The new member of my little cyber-family is a Brother MFC J425W. Setting it up challenged my self-taught, seat-of-the-pants IT person — that would be me — in part because I was connecting it both to Morgana V (by cable) and Hekate (wireless) and in part because the instructions were nowhere near as clear as those UMAX provided to patch the driver for my old scanner. Brother is now playing nicely with both Hekate and Morgana V, and I am quite pleased with myself.

Brother faxes as well as prints and scans, but I’ve never had a home office fax so I’m putting off setting up the fax function till I desperately need it, which I hope will be never.