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Sep. 27th, 2002 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7Fucking HP.
I'm trying to reinstall the scanner my family has. They had to get a new hard drive, so of course the old installation was lost. But I can't find the installation CD. So I went to HP's website, to download the drivers.
Well. You can get updated drivers right there, if you have an ME, 2K, XP machine or got the USB connection for the device.
however, if you have a 98 or 95 machine, (this one being a 98), you need to order the CD-ROM that came with it. For some reason, "shipping charges" on this CD comes to, for surface mail mind you, 7-10 business days-- $10.95. If you want your software this week, it rises to $17.
Are they sending it by Pony Express? Jesus Christ. It doesn't cost that much to ship a pair of knee-high boots to Alaska. Fuck's sake, folks; if you're charging for the drivers, at least admit it.
But why would it be so hard for them to put the original drivers for the device on their website? They couldn't be more than ... probably 50 MB at most. Come on, people, that's not that much.
I found them through a newsgroup, divided into six files that I have to put together in a folder and hope they work.
The first one is taking me 2 hours and fifty minutes to download.
...
So it looks like I'll be here awhile.
Mom says the CD must be around someplace. Every time I come into the living room and tell her I looked someplace for it, she tells me another place it could be. I've crawled under the desk and gone through the dusty boxes of paper that have been in the kneehole since I was ten. I've gone through every drawer in the computer desk. The last place I remember seeing them was on top of a bookshelf where Mom insists they couldn't be. I went through the bookshelf anyway, and results were inconclusive, given that the bookshelf was full of junk and I was having sneezing fits.
In the meantime, I have an estimated 17 minutes left... on part 1 of 6.
Mom hasn't come to look in any of the places she's told me, despite her saying she would, and despite the fact that I can never find anything in this damn house. She's listening to the yankees game. I guess she's an avid fan now... unfortunately, the only local station that broadcasts Yankees games is a weak AM station that goes fuzzy to inaudible after dark, depending on atmospheric conditions.
Hmm.
I'm hoping the radio fuzzes out soon, so she'll come see about helping me find the CD. But that would be cruel of me... surely she deserves her Yankees fix. I don't get why she likes it so much. In the car on the way home from eating dinner out, she had to explain to my anti-pro-sports father what exactly a "pitching rotation" was and why one extra game would matter so much, going into the playoffs.
I figured the phrase was self-explanatory, but... hey, it made her happy to talk about Soriano's brilliance as a relief pitcher, and El Duque's sporadic flashes of supernatural pitching ability combined with his wacko temperament.
Oof, I'm sleepy. I woke this morning thinking someone had shouted my name, but it turns out it was just the workmen next door yelling at his beagle to stop barking. The beagle didn't, and barked pretty much for the next 12 hours. Fortunately, it only belongs to one of the men working there, not the family that's going to live there. Mom hates beagles, for just that reason. One night it barked without pausing, frantically, for an hour. It barely stopped to breathe. Why? Because it's bored.
It barks at Dad when dad works over in our garage. Dad's waiting for it to get more aggressive (it barks louder when Dad walks away, even though he's ignoring it) and come onto our property, at which point he'll instantly kill it and pretend he thought it was a rabid stray. My dad's not a vindictive guy but he can be pretty coldly efficient when strongly annoyed. Mom's the one that wants to brain it with a rock, and she's the dog-lover. Dad thinks shooting it would be more humane, provided he had a clear shot.
The man whose house is being built is a state trooper, but a) it's not his dog, b) it's our property, c) the gun's legal. So what's he gonna do? Even a small dog can cause severe injury if it attacks. A badly startled man on his own property mistakes a dog's stupidity for sincere aggressiveness, and kills it? Gosh what a pity.
Of course Dad won't, really, so don't flame me, all you beagle-lovers. Just think, this beast has been standing on the boundary of our property barking nonstop all day every day for the last month. We've never had neighbors closer than 500 feet before. We don't like this. The workmen shout to each other all the time, and their equipment is loud. This morning I thought Dad was listening to talk radio, which astounded me because he never does, until I realized they were talking (very loudly) about some kind of construction equipment. Oh.
I can deal with that in the city (barely), but out here? God, I hope the neighbors are quiet people. You know we can't ever call in a noise disturbance against them, because he's a cop. There's no justice in the world if your opponent is a cop. So we can only hope they're good neighbors. Not that we don't know all of their kin, and mom won't be teaching their kids, but still, that's not as big a hold on people as you'd hope it would be.
It's taking fifteen seconds for anything I type in my telnet window to show up onscreen. Isn't that wonderful? Try typing like that sometime. Your typos will be amazing. Even if you're a decent typist like me, just you try making no mistakes when you can't see what you're typing and you can't scroll back unless you have an extra minute's worth of patience, at the least. I've been writing one email for two hours now. And i'ts not for the usual reason of me being so involved in writing an epic tome. No, it's probably about two paragraphs long.
ARGH.
2 hr 48 min left on part 2 of 6.
I asked Mom to help me find the CD when I had 2 hr 50 min of part I left.
And while those times are never quite right, they were only off by a little. It said it'd be 3 hours, it was an hour and a half. Solid. 1.5, six times, is... uh... a lot? 9. Yes, 9 hours.
Sweet! I only have seven and a half left!!
And the drivers might not work. Some people have posted that they had problems. Most think it was OK, though, so chances are I might be able to get it to work, if I can get all six parts downloaded without them getting corrupted.
Dear Lord, have mercy upon me, I beg of you.
Either that or let Mom be somehow able to find the driver CD, which I would swear I had left either on top of the bookshelf or in the top right drawer of the desk. I've looked both places and then some. So... who knows.
Mom says she didn't want to come look because that would interrupt my time at the desk.
Woman, I'm going to be here for seven and a half more hours if you don't come and look! PLEASE for the love of GOD interrupt me! Is pretty much what I told her, but she hasn't come. I don't think she really wants to.
ARGH.
Right, I'm going now, to implode in a ball of irritation. Fucking Hewlett-Packard. I'm glad I bought a Canon printer, just to spite the motherfuckers.
I'm trying to reinstall the scanner my family has. They had to get a new hard drive, so of course the old installation was lost. But I can't find the installation CD. So I went to HP's website, to download the drivers.
Well. You can get updated drivers right there, if you have an ME, 2K, XP machine or got the USB connection for the device.
however, if you have a 98 or 95 machine, (this one being a 98), you need to order the CD-ROM that came with it. For some reason, "shipping charges" on this CD comes to, for surface mail mind you, 7-10 business days-- $10.95. If you want your software this week, it rises to $17.
Are they sending it by Pony Express? Jesus Christ. It doesn't cost that much to ship a pair of knee-high boots to Alaska. Fuck's sake, folks; if you're charging for the drivers, at least admit it.
But why would it be so hard for them to put the original drivers for the device on their website? They couldn't be more than ... probably 50 MB at most. Come on, people, that's not that much.
I found them through a newsgroup, divided into six files that I have to put together in a folder and hope they work.
The first one is taking me 2 hours and fifty minutes to download.
...
So it looks like I'll be here awhile.
Mom says the CD must be around someplace. Every time I come into the living room and tell her I looked someplace for it, she tells me another place it could be. I've crawled under the desk and gone through the dusty boxes of paper that have been in the kneehole since I was ten. I've gone through every drawer in the computer desk. The last place I remember seeing them was on top of a bookshelf where Mom insists they couldn't be. I went through the bookshelf anyway, and results were inconclusive, given that the bookshelf was full of junk and I was having sneezing fits.
In the meantime, I have an estimated 17 minutes left... on part 1 of 6.
Mom hasn't come to look in any of the places she's told me, despite her saying she would, and despite the fact that I can never find anything in this damn house. She's listening to the yankees game. I guess she's an avid fan now... unfortunately, the only local station that broadcasts Yankees games is a weak AM station that goes fuzzy to inaudible after dark, depending on atmospheric conditions.
Hmm.
I'm hoping the radio fuzzes out soon, so she'll come see about helping me find the CD. But that would be cruel of me... surely she deserves her Yankees fix. I don't get why she likes it so much. In the car on the way home from eating dinner out, she had to explain to my anti-pro-sports father what exactly a "pitching rotation" was and why one extra game would matter so much, going into the playoffs.
I figured the phrase was self-explanatory, but... hey, it made her happy to talk about Soriano's brilliance as a relief pitcher, and El Duque's sporadic flashes of supernatural pitching ability combined with his wacko temperament.
Oof, I'm sleepy. I woke this morning thinking someone had shouted my name, but it turns out it was just the workmen next door yelling at his beagle to stop barking. The beagle didn't, and barked pretty much for the next 12 hours. Fortunately, it only belongs to one of the men working there, not the family that's going to live there. Mom hates beagles, for just that reason. One night it barked without pausing, frantically, for an hour. It barely stopped to breathe. Why? Because it's bored.
It barks at Dad when dad works over in our garage. Dad's waiting for it to get more aggressive (it barks louder when Dad walks away, even though he's ignoring it) and come onto our property, at which point he'll instantly kill it and pretend he thought it was a rabid stray. My dad's not a vindictive guy but he can be pretty coldly efficient when strongly annoyed. Mom's the one that wants to brain it with a rock, and she's the dog-lover. Dad thinks shooting it would be more humane, provided he had a clear shot.
The man whose house is being built is a state trooper, but a) it's not his dog, b) it's our property, c) the gun's legal. So what's he gonna do? Even a small dog can cause severe injury if it attacks. A badly startled man on his own property mistakes a dog's stupidity for sincere aggressiveness, and kills it? Gosh what a pity.
Of course Dad won't, really, so don't flame me, all you beagle-lovers. Just think, this beast has been standing on the boundary of our property barking nonstop all day every day for the last month. We've never had neighbors closer than 500 feet before. We don't like this. The workmen shout to each other all the time, and their equipment is loud. This morning I thought Dad was listening to talk radio, which astounded me because he never does, until I realized they were talking (very loudly) about some kind of construction equipment. Oh.
I can deal with that in the city (barely), but out here? God, I hope the neighbors are quiet people. You know we can't ever call in a noise disturbance against them, because he's a cop. There's no justice in the world if your opponent is a cop. So we can only hope they're good neighbors. Not that we don't know all of their kin, and mom won't be teaching their kids, but still, that's not as big a hold on people as you'd hope it would be.
It's taking fifteen seconds for anything I type in my telnet window to show up onscreen. Isn't that wonderful? Try typing like that sometime. Your typos will be amazing. Even if you're a decent typist like me, just you try making no mistakes when you can't see what you're typing and you can't scroll back unless you have an extra minute's worth of patience, at the least. I've been writing one email for two hours now. And i'ts not for the usual reason of me being so involved in writing an epic tome. No, it's probably about two paragraphs long.
ARGH.
2 hr 48 min left on part 2 of 6.
I asked Mom to help me find the CD when I had 2 hr 50 min of part I left.
And while those times are never quite right, they were only off by a little. It said it'd be 3 hours, it was an hour and a half. Solid. 1.5, six times, is... uh... a lot? 9. Yes, 9 hours.
Sweet! I only have seven and a half left!!
And the drivers might not work. Some people have posted that they had problems. Most think it was OK, though, so chances are I might be able to get it to work, if I can get all six parts downloaded without them getting corrupted.
Dear Lord, have mercy upon me, I beg of you.
Either that or let Mom be somehow able to find the driver CD, which I would swear I had left either on top of the bookshelf or in the top right drawer of the desk. I've looked both places and then some. So... who knows.
Mom says she didn't want to come look because that would interrupt my time at the desk.
Woman, I'm going to be here for seven and a half more hours if you don't come and look! PLEASE for the love of GOD interrupt me! Is pretty much what I told her, but she hasn't come. I don't think she really wants to.
ARGH.
Right, I'm going now, to implode in a ball of irritation. Fucking Hewlett-Packard. I'm glad I bought a Canon printer, just to spite the motherfuckers.
