continued

Desperation strikes in the form of "Jeezz, screw HP".  Hup! Wait! I'm on
really good terms with
our local HP CE (956) 630-30xx.  Hey Javier where prey tell can I get this
stinkin' HP part that
HP hasn't got?  Try Best Buy?  Well............ok.

Best Buy may be found in the phone book right between Bedwetting
International and Big John
Portable Toilet Rentals (January 1999/2000 area code 956 issue. pp 9 in city
of McAllen).  So
fortified with my tenth cup of coffee I dial up 618-2241 and find that their
hours are Mon thru
Sat 10:00 am to 9:00 pm Sunday 11:00 am to 9:00 pm and Auto stereo is number
1 on
their 8 item menu and they are not conscientious because they are not going
to record my
message and this is a good thing and I punch number 5 for computers and the
line goes dead.
So I call back and *finally* get a real person and tell them I would like to
speak to someone
in the computer department and she puts me on hold and I hold for ten
minutes then someone
else picks up the line and asks who I am holding for and I say someone in
the computer department
and she says "I'll connect you" and the line goes dead. I guess flagellation
is to good for me.

Perserverance is it's own reward.  So I tell the computer guy that I don't
want no stanky DIMM
memory chips, I want the thingy that goes in the DIMM slots that gives the
printer barcode
printing capability just like I told him inna the first place and the line
goes dead.  These here
little nubs sticking up out of my gums were my own teeth this morning.  Lord
love a duck
I had a *lot* less trouble buying a 3000 987 and a 9000 K460 with all the
Nike and DLT, etc stuff.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho it's to AltaVista we go.  Things are picking up, I'm now able
to use my clicking finger
instead of my punching finger and there are only 3389 web sighs with
LaserJet 4000 in them.  Well
I sorta knew that was coming.  And guess what. The first random site had
exactly what I needed!
I guess.  Not sure actually as I don't read Japanese well at all.

So I'm sitting here looking at about the 6th site I've visited because most
of the others that I
looked at (that I could read) invited me to give 'em a call but somehow
neglected to put their
phone number anywhere.  Trust me, I've found this morning that having the
phone number
is a mandatory prerequisite to placing a call.  Anyhow, in walks the site
manager for CSC
and I find he's had someone up in Ft Worth looking for this thing for a
week.  Now that I think
about it my daughter just turned thirty.

So the upshot of the whole thing is that an outfit in somewhere named Ganson
Engineering, Inc
at (800) 434-9011 (www.ganson.com) has the suckers for $249.  Mr. Glenn Cole
has also
come up with a couple of sources so I'll forward all that stuff to the Ft.
Worth person if they
are not in some sort of asylum now.  Umm I'll forward it anyhow. I've also
gotten some offers
of downloadable soft fonts and an invitation to call some guy in Belgium -
howdoya spell
belgium anyhow.

Nope I'm not done yet so just sit yerself right back down.

I'ts now 70F and 3:00 pm here in SOUTH TEXAS and I still haven't gotten the
fax or faxes from
HP that I called (800) 333-1917 and punched in 11 instead of item #1
followed by item #1 again
and the next two times it actually took my fax number and repeated it back
to me which I found
amazing because at the same time it was recording my message for quality
reasons.

So now I've pretty much cleaned up all the paperwork and notes and put that
task aside.  Next up
I pick up the brand new issue (Vol 16, No. 2) of HP Chronicle and right
spang on the front page
I find the caption "Latest version of HP Customer Contact Manager enables
call centers to handle
multiple channels".  So one of my co-workers wife called me up to wish me a
happy birthday
which was pretty nice, being as how it's not my birthday - yet.  Anyhow HP
Customer Contact
Manager Version 5, computer telephony integration sofware, enables call
centers to manage
customer interactions across multimedia contact channels, such as voice, Web
and e-mail.
Also presented is Bob Alley, planning manager for HP's Smart Contact
program, with the
opinion that "Customer management solutions have been a neglected area for
the last decade
or so".  Go sell it to Hewlett-Packard Bob.  Then go sit on the fence or
something.

Sorry about the waste of bandwidth, but I'm just kinda aghast that HP can
(hopefully) sell the
truly great HP 3000 but can't come up with a chip for their own crummy
printer.

Thanks to all who have helped on this project.  I will now turn out the
lights and sit quitely in the
corner sucking my punching/clicking finger.  --> scream goes here <-- I just
realized it's January
and time to redo our HP contracts.

jt