<Scroll down - later updates at the bottom>

 I had to get a new computer because I was spending hundreds of dollars for local
 tech-wannabees to come to the BartCop Studio and say, "Gee, it should work."

 So I go to Best Buy.
 Those people are specially trained to not make eye contact with ready-to-buy customers.
 I waited 45 minutes for someone to say, "May I help you, Sir," but this was Best Buy.

 I did overhear a conversation between a guy bolder than I (hard to figure) who interrupted
 a terribly busy employee who was buying not waiting on customers standing in line.

 Customer: Do you have keyboards?

 Handjob:  If we did, they might be over there (He cocked his head to the right)

 Customer: Where else might they be if they're not over there
         (The customer was mocking the unhelpful little shit)

 I started laughing, and if I had any money, I would've offered the customer a job as a writer.
 We can always use more sarcasm at  bartcop.com

 I figured that was a sign from God that Best Buy already had too much money,
 so I went to Comp USA in the same parking lot.  It was almost as bad there.

 I waited and waited for someone to wait on me.
 They have no structure, no apparatus for getting to customers.

 Christ, remember the bakery on The Sopranos where Christopher shot the guy for waiting on
 someone else when he clearly was next? In some crowded places, they have the numbered tabs.
 That way, the first free salesman can look at the last number helped and say "Number 214?"

 But nooooooooooo, not at Best Buy or Comp USA.
 At Best Buy or Comp USA, you're on your own.

 I figured I could storm out and try Circuit City, but this whole country is like those two places.
 Nobody in America wants to make any money. They'd rather have cursing customers walk out than hire
 another pimply-faced kid for minimum wage to help serious buyers who came there with a valid credit card.

 So I waited... and I waited...and I thought of Bart's Law #4 - Nothing is easy
 Eventually, a kid with a strange-for-Oklahoma haircut asked if he could help me.
 I said, "I want to buy a computer today, right now," and swear to Koresh, this kid says,
"I can't help you, but I can look for someone who can."

 He was a smallish kid, I think I could've knocked him out with one uppercut.
 Little bastard suggested I wait around for the next salesman.

 I asked him why they didn't have the numbered tabs and he said, "Hey, that's a good  idea."
 Time passes, and eventually a salesman showed up. I told him I need a computer with a beefed-up
 sound card and a gig of memory, and I needed it right now.

 We settled on a certain HP model, but when he went to fetch it - they were out of stock.
 So I asked for the next step up and he tells me "For another $20, you can get a DVD writer
 and a faster processor," so I told him, "Yeah, I got twenty bucks." It's hard to believe, but they
 actually had this one in stock, so I said, "Make it so," and off he went to find the sales manager.

 Why do we need a damn sales manager?  I'm dealing with a salesman, why can't he sell me the damn computer?
 Another 20 minutes go by - he returns and says, "The manager's with a customer, but he'll be right with
 you as soon as he's done. He'll find you - real soon." So like my name was Dubya, I stood there waiting for him.

 Thirty minutes go by, and I grab another red shirt and ask him where Cubby was. "Cubby's in the office," he says,
 so I head that way.  When I got there, Cubby saw the pile of stuff in my shopping cart and he says, swear to Koresh,
"I went looking for you, but I didn't find you."  Yeah, it's hard to find Ol Bart in a store with 3,000 square feet.

 Fine, and I'm like, just ring this crap up so we can get the installations started.  I'll be damned if I'm going to try to re-install
 this new Sound Blaster sound card fifty times.  (I hate dealing with worthless Oklahoma companies, but everyone says
 Sound Blaster is the best.)  It took another 20 minutes to ring up a computer, a stick of memory, the sound card
 and the A-B box that let's me use one monitor for both computers.

 Then he walks me over to "Installation" where I meet the same guy who wasn't able to help me.
 Turns out he couldn't help me because he's a tech - I have come to hate techs.
 Swear to Koresh again, it took 30 minutes before I even got to speak to the guy.
 He was helping someone else and he moved slower than a Democrat resisting Bush.

 Finally he gets to me and once again, it took 40 minutes for this guy to get done.  First he made a photo copy
 of my recipt which was barely readable.   I'm thinking there are a thousand ink cartridges within baseball-tossing
 distance, and this handjob is straining his eyes to read the copy he just made.

 Then he typed hundreds and hundreds of keystrokes to imput my installation order.
 How is this possible?
 Every bit of info was already in their computer.

 Why the hell can't Comp USA just call up Ticket Number 352427 and write "Install" on it?
 Comp USA can't come up with an ink cartridge or a computer that holds sales data?

 So as the 40 minutes is drawing to a close, the guy asks if I want "priority" installation for another $30.
 I was afraid to say no, because I knew if I did, they'd bury the order and lose the ticket.
 Besides, I'm a busy man and I have work to do

 Sidebar:
 It just struck me - Bart's Law #2
 I had to buy a second Creative Labs/Sound Blaster audio card because their first one broke.
 They were rewarded for building an inferior product and having Gilligan tech support.
 I hate to reward the incompetent, but the Show must go on.

 So I'm at BartCop Manor now, waiting for their phone call.
 Let's hope there is no more comedy to this story.

 Bart's Law #5 - Nothing ever works

 Wednesday afternoon, we're still trying to make this damn computer work.

 Is this another trap by Bill Gates?

 There's no room in the studio for another monitor and another keyboard,
 so we bought this KVH box that's supposed to work - but nothing ever works,
 which will probably become Bart's Law Number Five.

 Here's the deal:
 We've spent two days trying to hook the damn computers up.
 The Bush-like monkeys at Comp USA gave us PS2 wires when we needed USB.
 So after 4 trips to Comp USA, we thought we were done, but noooooooooooooooo.

 Windows XP refuses to start until a keyboard and monitor are connected, and it's too f-ing stupid
 to realize we're using a USB mouse and keyboard, so I have a brand new, dead computer

 We messed with it every way possible, but it just won't work, so we have to disable a PS2 mouse
 and disable a PS2 keyboard and plug those in the back of the unit so extra-stupid XP will be fooled
 into thinking the mouse & keyboard are PS2.

 There's just no reason for everything to be so complicated.

 The assholes at KVH have to know that XP refuses to recognize their product.
 They brag on their box that there are over one million people with a KVH box.
 (They didn't say if any of those million boxes were working.)

 The point is, if KVH has sold a million, and Gates the Impaler has sold billions, why haven't they
 worked this kink out?  Why doesn't the box say, "Microsoft, with their thousands of qualified and
 experienced employees, is unable to recognize our million boxes so you'd better buy a mouse and
 keyboard while you're here to save yourself the time and aggravation," but noooooooooooooooo.
 

 But still, these greedy and incompetent "leaders of industry" sell their defective machines to Comp USA
 who is just waiting for some sucker like me who is too busy to shut down my business for a year so I can
 become educated enough to buy a goddamn mouse and keyboard without getting fucked.

 These days, you have to have a construction degree to turn a screwdriver.

 Computers have become like the space shuttle, with so many thousands of things that can go wrong
 that it takes a team of experts to screw everything up once it's fixed.

 Swear to God, a year ago I thought I could plug a microphone into my computer and start talking and
 have a radio show, but that won't work because Gates and the government can't make any money if
 their products work so I'm paying for it.

 This last snafu has (so far) cost more than $3500 and all ever asked for is a computer that worked.

 Nobody in America sells a product that works.

 The Soundblaster people haven''t figured out how to make a sound card,  Gates can't figure out how
 to stop breaking computers that work, the M-Audio people should be shamed out of business for selling
 a portable studio that comes with the most complicated instructions for fixing their original flaws, and the
 KVH bastards have illustrations and drawing in their installation manual that are different than the hardware
 they actually ship with their manual. On toip of everything else, this new keyboard is broken. It keep trying
 to put these - 000000000000000000000000000 - after every sentence.
 Hey world, I don't have time for this - I'm a busy man!

 Is there a company in America that even answers their phone in 2004?

 I'm so stupid, I expected these companies to have customer service.
 I'm so stupid, I expected these companies to have technical support.

 If by some stretch of luck you happen to reach a support person, it's their first day on the job because the
 boss is such a cheap-ass Republican tightwad that the employees don't get health care so they have to quit
 to find a company that does, which is great news for the cheap-ass boss because he can replace that worker
 with a newbie who gets paid 25 cents less per hour.  Of course, the newbie doesn't have a clue what his new
 job is about so he's the guy they give to me when I call with a problem.

 When I was shopping for a streaming vendor, one company's phone system was so screwed up, all you could
 do was leave a voice-mail, but since every customer they have was pissed off at them, their mailbox was full
 and it wan't able to hold any more messages.

 When my M-Audio portable studio blew up, I called to complain but all I got was a
 recording that said they were moving their offices and I should try back in a week or two.
 The lazy bastards at Soundblaster said they'd "never heard of" crackles and pops in their
 best-ever-sound-card piece of shit and said, "Sorry we can't help," yet I was forced to
 buy a second expensive sound card from them because the first one wouldn't work.
 Nobody is accountable, you can't even get them on the phone to make them explain themselves.

 There's no competition in America in 2004.

 Everything is owned by Gates or Wal-Mart or Viacom or Rupert Murdoch.
 And since there's no competition, there's no reason to ever make a customer happy.
 You just take their money and if they have a problem you just tell them to fuck off.
 It's the American way now.

 Yep, it's Bart's Law #5 - Nothing ever works.

 Bart's Law Number Six

NEVER upgrade because the upgrade is designed to screw you to death.

I don't mean to brag, but when I'm hard at work on a computer, I am much faster than the computer.
This latest computer I was forced to buy?
It's a Pentium 4 with somewhere around 2.6 or 2.8 speed, and it slower than my 286 was in 1995.

If you have a computer that works, trust Ol' bart and never, ever upgrade it for any reason.
I talked to 8-10 techs today, and 13 of them said they couldn't help me because they had the
brains to opt out of Windows XP and they had no clue of how to help me.

You see, all their programs work.

In 1998, the internet was so young and innocent, the files loaded onto alt.binaries.multimedia were
so pure and innocent, I remember a guy uploaded a 7-Up commercial to see if the technology worked.

I posted some never-seen live Led Zeppelin, some never-seen Fleetwood Mac, some Evil Kneivel jumps etc.
For a while, I was the most prolific multimedia rock n roll poster in the whole world, ...but then I upgraded.

Now, nothing f-ing works, and everything is f-ing screwed, so take it from me (and the experts I talked to today.)

Bart's Law Number Six  NEVER upgrade

If you do, ALL your programs will become useless and you'll end up as frustrated as Ol' Bart.
How many more months can I stand to have the Gates hourglass mock me and then watch everything crash - again.

> We settled on a certain HP model, but when he went to fetch it - they were out of stock.
> So I asked for the next step up and he tells me "For another $20, you can get a DVD writer
> and a faster processor," so I told him, "Yeah, I got twenty bucks." It's hard to believe, but they
> actually had this one in stock, so I said, "Make it so," and off he went to find the sales manager.
 

 Can you spot the clue?
 If you can spot the clue, you're smarter than me (easy to do) and you have a right to call me names.

 The Comp USA handjob upgraded me from a CD writer, which makes BartCop Radio work,
 to a DVD Writer and guess what - you see that sign outside BartCop manor that says,

"BartCop Television?
 You see that sign?

 No, you don't see that sign,
 and do you know why you don't see that sign?

 The reason you don't see that sign is because
 BartCop Television ain't my f-ing business.
 That's why you don't see that f-ing sign."
(My Tarantino impression)
 <does a shot>

 I'm not in the televison business - I'm in the radio business.
 The motherless huns at Comp USA took an extra $20 from me to erase the CD writer from the deal.

 That's why we have no audio because the Movie Writer was busy looking for the video!

 Some of you thought I was lying.
 Some of you thought I was too stupid or drunk to operate the equipment.
 Some of you thought I was coasting and not trying hard enough to take care of business.
(That's all true to some degree - sometimes, ...but I gotta have this radio show.)
 No, this is the state of American business today.
 Nobody knows their business and nobody cares.

 Take their money, assure them they bought the best product at the best price
 and once the credit card clears, screw them and don't waste a lot of money on
 Vaseline because ancillary expenses are up .01 percentso no more Vaseline!!!!
 

 I told Comp USA when I bought this that it had to be right the first time, and they
 all smiled and patted me on the head like I was some old man mumbling to himself.
 

 Guess what, Comp USA  - you missed!

 No  wonder the myriad of techs couldn't help me, I was lying to them when I said I *had* a CD writer.
 I want to thank very nice tech-savvy lady named Mary Lynn or Mary Lou.
 She discovered the clue after spending a lot of time working on this.

 Trust me, working closely with Ol' Bart under a ton of pressure when the facts before us
 make no sense at all isn't something anybody would look forward to, but Mary Lynn ? (I'm sorry!)
 was so helpful, and thanks also to her husband Tom for making everything come together.

 The Bad News:
 So, we have learned that our Corvette has no engine.
 That doesn't mean an engine will make everything OK, it just means that getting an engine
 rules out the "I wonder if it could be the engine?" theory, so progress is being made.

 It seems like, for months and months, we've been at the two yard line.
 We're two yards from scoring but powers and forces have conspired with God and Fate
 to prevent this too-entertaining-for-words radio show from taking flight on the web waves.

 A lesser man mighta broke, but my mind is a steel trap - ...or is that lead?
.

 Oh, and a special thanks to the people who write in each day to say,
"Dipshit, if you had a Mac, you've never have a computer problem as long as you live
  and every problem would magically melt away if you just had the brains to switch."

 Yeah, ...and Chinaco would sponsor the Radio Show and Shirley will be on the Bart Phone tomorrow.

 I'm at the two yard line.
 I don't want to learn how to play soccer or tennis - I'm at the two yard line.

 I just want to punch it in the end zone and make fun of the Illegal Monkey

 (This below is pre-computer fixed, but you might find some humor in the stories)

 Can it be true?

 I have three completely independent radio studios now.
 All three are broken and that's just not possible.

 For what I had to pay, I should be able to leave this stuff in the backyard overnight
 and still be able to do a radio show on two of the three studios the next day.

 Do I really have a working computer now?

 In a word - almost.

 Click  Here  for the always- exciting roller coaster of ever-changing updates.

 Great news!

 I just met the smartest kid in Oklahoma.
 He got all three studios working in 70 minutes.
 Holy Jesus, that puts me in such a great mood.

 He's not only a speed-demon genius, he lives in the same Hellhole I live in,
 and he says he can come back on a day's notice, so we might not ever be down again.

 Woo Hoo!

 Mrs. Bart is shopping, so I might even have a chance to get some stuff canned today,
 but it looks like our problems are behind us and if they're not, the SDJ will come back.
 So look for extra good radio shows in a never-ending constant stream.
 
  Woo Hoo!

 Damn, I'm in a good mood.
 He laughed at the problems, too.
 I told his company that I needed their very best guy because I was so tired of hearing,
 "We've never seen anything like this before," but he chewed up the problems and spit them out.

  Woo Hoo!

 And a special thanks to everyone who didn't cancel their subscription when times were tough.

  back to  bartcop.com