In the March, a colleague — a contract specialist named Wes Aldaco, who is good at his job and who has done nothing wrong in any of this — came to my office and asked me an informal question about a market research package he was assembling.

It was a five-minute conversation of a kind I have perhaps four hundred times a year.

And one of the seven firms on his list was Dupont Enterprise Group.

And I said: “Wes, DEG’s my husband’s company.

Don’t ask me anything about this one.

Take it to Dell.”