Rabid reseller: Technology that sells

It's about time we ordinary resellers got a chance to get our hands on the same technology used by the big end of town. After all, those mega-monster department stores don't think twice about stealing our customers, so we might as well steal their technology.

No, no, we don't mean breaking in at night and taking their toys away in a truck. We might be rabid but we're not robbers. We just want to enjoy the benefits of their enterprise-level technology.

We read all about it in some reseller mag, and now we're mad as hell that we can't have access to the same top-end tech to help run our business. Of course there was the minor problem that we didn't even know we were missing out on this stuff - as the song says you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Oh, wait, wrong song. We haven't got it yet so we wouldn't know what we don't have until we get it then lose it and ... oh, never mind.

First thing we needed around here was a mainframe computer. Yep, a really big mother of a mainframe. Who knew they were still using those things uptown? Everything we read made us think they'd gone the way of the dinosaurs. Although we should have known that was a con job. For starters, why would all the world's mainframes be gathered together in the Gulf of Mexico when the meteor hit? No matter.

The good news is we've already ordered our very own mainframe. We'll soon be able to crunch the numbers from our data warehouse and with the click of a button we'll know exactly which of our eleven stock lines is the slowest mover and needs our attention.

And we'll also know exactly which one of our thirteen customers spends the least. We reckon it's the old age pensioner but who knows? It could be the homeless guy or the primary school kid. The mainframe will settle the dispute once and for all.

The really amazing news is how cheap this mainframe is to buy. For some reason we thought they cost a lot of money, but the nephew's found a good used model on "ePay" and with a bit of clever bidding he's won the auction. We reckon $2500 for a pre-loved mainframe is a downright bargain. We've cleared some space out the back to park the thing and we're expecting delivery today. Gotta go! Here's the courier with the technology!

You learn something new every day around here. We learned we should have asked the nephew for a few more details. He now tells us he got the mainframe for free - zip, nada, nought. We just forked out $2500 to the courier company for transport. And the mainframe is a tad larger than we'd allowed for - it's not quite going to fit in the storeroom. It's not quite going to fit in the display room either.
In fact it's not going to fit inside the shop at all.

We also learned that "a few years old" incudes anything up to 50 years old. While we were beating the nephew with a stick he protested that the mainframe was a "classic" and gave us curry about our 40-year-old old Land Rover which, he reminded us, has been sitting in the garage for some considerable time. He just doesn't understand cars, that's obvious. However, we stopped hitting him when we realised we'd drawn a crowd - didn't want social services knocking on the door again.

But the crowd just kept on growing despite the cessation of hostilities. They'd all come to look at the mainframe, which now took up the whole of the footpath in front of the shop. And sure enough, they drifted inside and started perusing the shelves and actually buying stuff! We've cracked it! Now we understand the value of enterprise technology!

Gotta go! Valves to replace!