> It seems funny but I find it personally embarrassing that a vendor
> whom I hold in high regard technically can project such a shoddy
> image to the world at large.  While the problems mentioned here are
> mostly confined to the "shoemakers children", the ability to get to
> the home support page will be experienced by anyone trying to get
> stuff for a laserjet (which is more people than own hp3000's and
> hp9000's).
>

This past weekend I was informed via e-mail that the HP-UX
patch/security bulliten has been, to put it in Unix terms, depreciated.
To wit, I must now subscribe to/through the HP support page. Further, to
obtain the information that I used to have sent to me I must subscribe,
obtain a user-id, attach this ID to an e-mail address and then bind it
to my support agreement number.  I can only have one user-id bound to
one support agreement and woe to me if I lose or forget my CA900123
code.

The support site is of interest to a very small number of people.  WHY
is HP making me jump through hoops to get through it?  Do these people
really believe that everyone only has one e-mail address?  That we all
work everyday from the same desk with this burdensome trivia ready to
hand?  If they want to validate that I have access to something then let
the front end ask for my support agreement number every time I need to
get in.  At least then I only have to get track of two numbers and
someone else can get access if I am not avilable.  What is this with the
Captain Marvel decoder ring stuff anyway?

Grumpy and it's already Tuesday with no end in sight.

P.S.

For the record.  A complete transformation of all of our databases and
ancillerry support files and a complete overhaul of all of our
application code to handle 8 digit dates took slightly less than 96
hours commencing 970101Z0505.  All done.  Everything works and there was
only one gotcha in the whole kit and kaboddle involving an automatic
master which was solved using a QUIZ offload, a DBGENRL set erase and a
QTP reload of the offending detail set.

Maybe not steller but I was satisfied and I don't have to worry about it
for another 8001 years 11 months and 18 days.

Regards,
Jim

--
James B. Byrne                  mailto:[log in to unmask]
Harte & Lyne Limited            http://www.harte-lyne.ca
Hamilton, Ontario               905-561-1241