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This post will be “One Hundred percent A.I.G. free” and there will be no mention of Rush Limbaugh, Larry King or Jane Fonda.

Now I ask you … “Where could you get a better deal than that?”

To all my rowdy friends in the Internet world, I hope that you had a great weekend, and that things went well for you and yours.  I spent the majority of mine (if anyone cares) hanging around the house and no trips to the Big Town.

Like Mama sez, “it is a lazy snow-day, go away boy, you are bothering me.”

So I just assumed a low profile and that was that.  I became “Polar” as my grandson would say, which is for the uninitiated, “Beyond cool.  Colder than Ice.”  Spent the majority of my time trying to retrieve my email system that went south, and it only took two and one-half days to get my somewhat illiterate, un-edumaycated computer assisted dumb butt back into working order.

Bought a new laptop, I am now also into the wonderful world of Microsoft Vista and I am working on the learning curve on that.  Which is okay if you are young and quick on the uptake, and we all know my answer to that, don’t we?

Unfortunately, I did manage to somehow lose most all of my email addresses of those folks who were communicating with me when I made a data transfer.  So if you see this, read this, come across this on a bulletin board at the local laundry, stuck up there with a piece of plastic in the shape of a Pear or Banana, get back to me.

I am somewhat excommunicated but still online.

The weekend was not fraught without its fair share of problems.  My old printer went south on me this past week, it had served me well, first purchased in November of 1998 I have no earthly idea as to how many reams of paper has gone thru this machine.

It was an HP model 722 Deskjet I believe that is what it was called.  Figuring that I had such good fortune with HP then it just seemed natural to pick out another HP for the replacement.

So I trot off to China-World and I find one on the shelves for under $40 with taxes included.  I pay for it bring it home and open it up and start unhooking wires and all that.  Getting down like a reptile and crawling around in the dust of man, hooking and hooking in the limited space area under my desk.

First thing I find out is the thing has TWO INKERS a #22 and a #21, the #22 is there (color) but the #21 (black is not).  I didn’t care for this at all, but it is not the end of the world, I go back to the store, and I purchase the errant cartridge, $13.47 plus tax.

Now I have both inkers installed, I hook up the power cord, little green lite comes on, everything is working out swimmingly.  I look around for the printer cable, it turns out that this model has a USB port type printer cable, it is not there.  I search the box again, it is not there.  Now this … This has a profound tendency to hack me off, I look at the instruction sheet and it reads:  “You may or may not have a printer cable, and might have to purchase one separately.”

Are you kidding me?

You sell a printer and it does NOT HAVE A PRINTER CABLE?

Carefully I inspect the box (which evidently every consumer in America ought to do when purchasing an American Product these days) and low and behold, there it is.  “Requires USB printer cable, not included.” In somewhat smaller print than the rest of the nomenclature on the box.

I go back to China-Mart and locate the USB printer cable, $14.80 plus tax, and take a guess who manufacturer of this particular cable …. Yeppers …. you guessed it.  HP.

Now here is the rub.

If I had bought a printer that was manufactured by say the Japanese, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that the machine needed in order to function would be in the box.

It would be all there, and I might even add, possibly contain a note of thanks for purchasing their new product. It would NOT be missing key items and parts needed for proper printing.

This is lousy business, no matter how you look at it.  HP can kiss the part of me that goes over the fence last, I am not buying another thing from HP and I suggest the very same thing to you.  Unless you just happen to be into aggravation, unwarranted frustration and haven’t any better ideas as to where to spend your time and money.

As my grandmother used to say, “always look for the rainbow.”  All is not lost, there is good news in some of this.  At this particular juncture in time, I fail to see it, but I know it will improve, if not naturally, then maybe I will have to “help it along.”

Now I am off to see if I can find a link for HP on the net, and I am going to send them a copy of this article and then wait for them to reply back to me and tell me it was “the Viet-Namese-Dude who packed it” he is the guy that screwed it all up.

So there you are, today’s wonderful little post-it-note from my corner of the yard.  Another diatribe on America, a fine and proud country who now has unfortunately plummeted to the status of third-world-knuckle-draggin-boobs, a disorganized clump of business incompetent greed hungry dollar mongers, a country that is now where most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are, like HP, really good at it.

Printers without ink AND printer cables, what a novel idea.

A little less than honest I would say, but then again, what do I know, I am just a consumer.  And the rest of the world wonders why we have to bail these American companies out?

OOO

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