ShadowRAM: September 13, 2004

This week, the distributor is hosting the VTN Fall Invitational for close to 1,000 people at the enormous Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. But we got an e-mail last week saying the show is overbooked and CRN is among 400 attendees who have been bumped to the Paris Hotel, "which is just a short walk to Caesars Palace." Yeah, right! We've been to enough Comdexes to know that nothing in Vegas is just a short walk.

Speaking of good walks spoiled, we hear Ingram Micro's Bob Stegner had to open up his wallet and give back some of IBM's money to Big Blue's Frank Vitagliano. The two were in Madison, Wis., a couple of weeks back at a golf outing in conjunction with Inacom Information Systems' 20th anniversary. We figure Stegner, a devoted Ohio State Buckeye fan, was a bit off his game that day. The course just happened to be close to Camp Randall Stadium, where the Wisconsin Badgers ended Ohio State's winning streak last year. It all happened after an Ohio State player choked a Wisconsin quarterback, forcing him out of the game. His substitute subsequently threw the winning TD pass. Stegner still mourns that loss, and the game gives real meaning to the clich, "One throat to choke."

Speaking of football in Wisconsin, if Brett Favre and the Packers fall flat this year, a solution provider will--at least partially"share the blame. Rick Chernick, president of Camera Corner/Connecting Point in Green Bay, sits on the Packers board of directors. A litmus test for how the season is going is to call Rick and ask him what his role is as a Packer director. If he says it's largely ceremonial, that means the team stinks. If Rick says that he's intimately involved in strategic personnel decisions, that means the Packers are on the cusp of another Super Bowl win.

We're glad someone in this industry is concerned about others RIM co-founder Jim Balsillie had this to say about the fact that many people are unnaturally reliant on their BlackBerries: "Hey, we didn't make people obsessive-compulsive! We only enable them!"

Hewlett-Packard's services unit is notorious for informing solution providers of program changes after they've been implemented. In an HP Services Channel Flash e-mail sent out Aug. 27, the division noted, "Warranty terms and conditions are revised for HP Industry Standard Servers (ISS) purchased on or after Aug. 15, 2004."

Adding insult to injury, the e-mail went on to say, "Partners are encouraged to emphasize the value of customer self-repair to enable the customer to resolve problems as quickly as possible."