Another HP Rant

I was still a few applications short of a full compliment after the reformat of New Year’s Day. Tonight I wanted to scan something, so I decided to install the software suite that came with my HP4850 scanner. Usually I just install the TWAIN driver, but I wanted to do a little OCR work, so I opted for the full boat. Turns out when I say full boat, that is close, it is more like one of those Indonesian ferries that are forever capsizing from overloading. We got an application to control the scanner, a thing that wants to be my multimedia gallery, some other stuff, including Microsoft.NET, all told over 500 Meg.

When I plugged in the scanner it wasn’t recognized. Huh? Turned it off and back on again. Still no joy. It used to work. I tried plugging it into a different USB port on the PC. Nothing. I uninstalled the software and reloaded it. Still unrecognized. I tried to manually install the drivers and it still said that the thing was an unrecognized piece of hardware on my USB controller. I tried using a different USB cable and that didn’t help either.

Don’t ask me why I tried it, or more importantly why it worked, but I decided to plug the scanner into the cheapo 4-port USB hub I have and DING, new hardware found, HP 4850 Scanner. Now all I have to do is to get XP to stop reminding me that the device might work faster if it is plugged into a USB 2.0 port…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 24

Breakfast Out

A repeat of January 6th’s breakfast. Hardee’s – Biscuits and Gravy for her, Sausage and Egg Biscuit for him with a small Hashrounds and small water to share.

Meal Cost: $4.74
Tip: None
Spent Today: $4.74
Year to Date: $106.43

HP Pavilion Support Experience

A coworker’s mother had her PC crash. She talked to someone on the phone at HP Support and was told that she needed a new motherboard. HP would be glad to repair it for the sum of $339 plus shipping. It would take approximately 6 weeks. Jonesing for a PC, mom went ahead and just bought a new one. But she still wanted to fix this one.

The coworker came and asked for my advice on where to get a motherboard. I searched around a few places on the net and found them for this PC from $225 to $325, but from no place that I had ever heard of, so I was skeptical. I asked her to bring me the CPU and I’d look at it. Maybe it was just a toasted power supply or bad hard drive. When I got it and opened it up, nothing obvious was wrong, so I turned it on. Non system disk! I was going to do a system recover, but I better ask if there was any valuable data on the drive first.

The next day I asked the coworker, who asked her mother, who said, “No. Just make it work.” So that night I tired the system recover option. It got part way through and asked for recovery disc #3.

The next day I asked if her mom had any recovery discs. Mom did indeed have the disks, she had ordered them from HP over the phone.

Today I got the disks. There are 10 CDs, what could be on all them discs? I’ll never know. When I attempted to boot to disc #1, the system told me, “These discs are not for this series of Pavilion PCs.” Dang, I guess I’ll try and see if the hard drive is any good. I got out my WinXP CD and loaded it on the Pavilion. Seemed to take a real long time to format the hard drive, but after that Windows loaded right up. I plugged in my network cable and was on the net.

I went over to the HP support page and entered the PC’s information to see if perhaps she got the wrong recovery discs. I went through the order process until I got a part number – 34naheblu2 – and found it would cost $16.93 to mail them. The only thing on the plastic wrap around the 10 CDs I had was 5069-6299. That’s helpful.

There was a link for online chat support, so I thought I’d give it a whirl to see if they could tell me if I had the right CDs. After 30 minutes of waltzing around, I was informed that the discs I had were the correct discs. The trouble is that the PC was old and would need tattooing to accept the discs (ever hear of this?) and I had 2 options; A) return the PC and get HP to fix it or B) take it to an authorized service center. When I asked what these would cost I was told that the HP option would be $339 (where have I heard that number before?) and that the cost from the authorized service center would be up to them. The closest center is a Best Buy in Augusta, good luck with that….

Nice. HP sells you recovery discs for $17 and they are worthless unless you spend another $350 to get them to make your PC able to use them.

If the PC were mine I think it would be time to load Linux, but if I was her, I’d head out to the flea market this weekend and see about finding a pirated copy of XP (or maybe even Vista) for $20.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 23

Click the more link below for the entire sordid details of the chat, misspellings and all.

PIZZA!

Stopped at Ferrando’s in the Alley on the way home to pick up dinner. 14″ pie with sausage, pepperoni, onions, green peppers and banana peppers, with two side salads to go.

Meal Cost: $20.67
Tip: None
Spent Today: $20.67
Year to Date: $101.69

Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire?

Ahhhh, me!

As part of our comprehensive retirement plan Donna and I play the Powerball Lottery every drawing. We will plop down $10 and get a quick pick set of numbers that are good for the next 5 weeks of Wednesday and Friday drawings.

Letting the machine pick the numbers for us is the best way to go. We used too play some family birthdays, but never won anything so what good are they. Besides, we had more than 6 birthdays to chose from, so we had to leave some numbers off. Then what would have happened if we were to miss the jackpot by one number and that one number was one of the omitted birthdays. How would we feel towards the person who had the birthday number that was wrong? How would we feel towards the person whose birthday we left off and would have won it for us?

When you go to a Chinese restaurant and you get a fortune cookie now a days they include a set of “lucky” numbers for the lottery. Well, a couple of years ago I got a fortune that said, “Financial prosperity is coming your way!” Seeing this as a good omen, I tucked it into my wallet with the intention of giving those numbers a try, but never got around to it.

Yesterday while chatting with a co-worker (Hi, Mark) I mentioned that seeing as the Powerball was up to 180 million that just maybe I’d go buy an extra shot at the prize. I told him about my lucky numbers and he asked to see my fortune slip. I thought he was kidding when he wrote them down and said he was going to play them. This morning he told me that he really bought a ticket using those numbers.

Tonight on the way home from getting our hair cut I stopped at a quick mart and bought a ticket using the “lucky” numbers too. Had to. Just imagine how I would have felt if he hit with those numbers that I had been carrying around in my wallet for years and never played. That’s right, the only thing left to do at that point would be Seppuku.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 23

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

I washed the car on Sunday and it rained today. No big deal, it is going to happen sooner or later after you wash the car and even after the rain it looks better than it did on Saturday. The kicker is that when we got off work today and got a real close look at the trunk there were yellow powder footprints where the rain drops dried and a fine misting of yellow over the rest of the car.

WTF?

Its pine pollen. The very mild weather has fooled the trees into thinking it is spring bout 6 weeks to early. They’re in for surprise, tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 50 which is 7º below normal. Thursday’s high only going to be 40 with a chance of freezing rain in the morning.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 23