I've deferred the negotiation with Mark Knippa given my need for some 
information from James and Kevin on our ability to avoid peak usage, etc.  
Steve Harris and I talked this morning about settlement authority and our 
going in position, obviously, is that ECS should pick up the whole $300+ K.  
I expect that Knippa will angle toward a split the difference approach and 
then try to put his share of the value on some future deal.  To counter 
that,  I think I'll need to hit him pretty firmly on the "relationship 
issue."  I.e., he's got to fix this problem or his chance of doing more deals 
with the pipeline group will be seriously hurt.  That should be a big deal to 
him and may get us the resolution we need.  To push that I need three things 
from you:
1.  Rod, have we already communicated to ECS, or at a higher level like 
Redmond, that we won't do any more deals with them?  Obviously if we have 
already told them we're done working with them, my threat won't carry much 
weight.
2.  Are you all OK with the threat?  I suspect that our threat to quit doing 
business with them will go immediately up their chain of command and that 
Redmond or someone will call Stan to complain.  
3.  Can we agree conceptually to do future deals if Knippa needs a bucket to 
put our dollars in?  He may propose something specific and I'd like to be 
able to agree that we will "work with them" on future deals.  

Thanks.  DF