Lappy (and HP), you have screwed me for the last time...

that was a strongbad quote, by the way.
so on goes the saga of my lappytoppy. the power cord is on its last legs/wires. 11 months of being crammed into/on/about/under various pieces of luggage have taken their toll and it is conveniently out of commission the week before i start my mba.
i didn't need my computer or anything.
thanks, lappy!
so i called my friends at hewlett packard parts for a replacement. they ordered one and it was supposed to arrive monday (oh, that's today). to hedge my bets, on saturday i spent 58 minutes (thankfully weekend minutes) on the phone with hp to order power cord #2 that was covered under my rapidly-diminishing warranty. 58 minutes! for a lousy power cord! i could have charmed some engineering student at u.va to make me one in half the time!
so today, in the midst of my piles-of-junk mitigation that is dominating my days, i thought i'd call hp and see where in the samhell my power cord was. the one i ordered under warranty (numero dos) wasn't to arrive until thursday. this was okay. but i want the one i paid for to get here, stat! especially since the buffoons at best buy sold me one on saturday that would "probably work and be ok" but did not. i didn't want to cook my hard drive because some $12/hour dude told me it would "probably" do the trick. i wasn't about to lose my 5000 photos from the vanderkitten lingerie shoot. to say nothing of the pre-entrance exam modules i have to complete before they let me sit my ass in a lecture at darden (oh...that).
so, back to the hp story. i call the folks and inquire about my power cord.
oh, that's out of stock.
were any of you people going to tell me? or do you think i'm so bright that i have the hp parts inventory status running like a ticker at the bottom of my (not-working) laptop screen? sheesh! cut me some slack, people! i think that i deserve some special treatment, since after all my dad grew up in the silicon valley and rode bikes and ponies and whatnot with all those packard/hewlett/varian kids. i mean seriously: dad and jack varian (part of the famous varian family that did research with dave packard on vacuum tubes at stanford university) used to compete in team roping together. if running horses around an arena chasing horned beasts isn't bonding and 6-degrees of separation, then what is? (i think it's more like 2 degrees, in fact)
my qualifications as "nearly family" aside, i expect more from hp. i did a bit of assertive arguing with the customer service manager, and i will have my power cord tomorrow. i'm a bit miffed because i lost many days of work (so much to do!) on account of lappy's faulty equipment, but i'll live.
at least the lappytoppy doesn't have viruses.
oh
my
god
my life sounds so boring now that i'm not road racing
there you go. an exciting picture of me suffering! more to come in the fall, when us hotties on the vanderkitten cyclo-cross team hit the dirt. aw yeah!