Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah

"Eep Opp Ork Ah-Ah"!

Say what?!?

Yeah, I know, that's a pretty obscure reference from The Jetsons where Judy wins a date with a rock star...circa 1962.  The song has also been performed by the likes of The Dickies, which is included on the Killer Clowns From Outer Space soundtrack, and (better still) the Violent Femmes.

Anyway....I remembered that old song when I was doing this one of Jane Jetson.  Call me crazy (or lazy), but I kinda like it without all of the shading and shadowing.
 
This one is also posted on deviantART....and be sure to check out MurderShow72's other works.  Yeah, he's THAT good.

Original Sketch by MurderShow72

Inks and Colors by Phillipthe2

Vending Machine - Part II

Back on April 4th I attempted to deactivate my phillipthe2 account on deviantART, but was met with the standard "You are not allowed to access this part of deviantART because you are banned".  Naturally, I contacted DA support the same day....and waited.....and waited....and waited....

So, flash forward three months....yes, you read that correctly, three months....I finally get a response from them:

spinegrinder, Jun 15 12:43 pm (PDT): 
 Hello phillipthe2,

Since your account is banned, it cannot also be deactivated. If there's any material you wish to remove from this account, you will have to do so manually. :)

Kind regards,

Oliver

---
Oliver Rohrwild
deviantART, Inc.

Uh-huh.  So, it took them 100+ days to not only tell me what I already know, but also to inform me of something that I accomplished nine months ago.  Wow.  That's....incomprehensible actually.


I've been told that DA's support staff is comprised mostly of unpaid volunteers....we're talking roughly 98% here.  Logically, the remaining 2% are paid managers.  Now, personally, I've done unpaid volunteer work on an as-needed basis for the American Red Cross for some ten years now....they call (usually after a major storm / hurricane) and I work.  In a previous life I worked as an full-time (paid) Animal Control Officer for four years, dealing with countless volunteer workers.  I can assure you that if any of their part-time unpaid support personnel didn't at least ATTEMPT to contact a customer within 72 hours, then the line from "There's Something About Mary" applies:

Hitchiker: Step into my office.
Ted: Why?
Hitchiker: 'Cause you're fuckin' fired!

Mistress Shego II

 Well, I obviously regained the power of the information superhighway...no thanks to the county public works department.  My Jeep on the other hand, is still up on jack stands...I got a new rear axle installed, but the drive shaft yoke had a crack in it.  It'll probably be back on the road tomorrow.

Oh, but I wasn't merely puttering around the house during my brief internet hiatus....

Original Sketch by Gomez 

Inks and Colors by Phillipthe2

Make Lemonade

No, I haven't fallen off the proverbial map quite yet....just have a lot of issues that have prevented me from posting in the past week or so.  What's the old saying?  "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade."

I hate lemonade.

So, where to start?  Friday morning, my vintage 1978 water heater finally met it's maker.  Friday afternoon I buy a brand new, eco-friendly, and insanely expensive water heater and haul it home in a trailer towed behind my Jeep Wrangler.  I stopped at a local grocery store on the way home and was in the there for no more than twenty minutes.  Within that twenty minutes a drunken idiot with no insurance and a revoked license (because of multiple DUIs) barrels through the parking lot and into my pride and joy....and then hauls ass.

Awesomeness.

The local cops are there in less than five minutes and within ten minutes they'd caught said idiot.  Apparently he had damaged his car to the point where it only got a mile down the road and was forced to abandon it.  They caught him a few hundred feet away from his mangled car, staggering up the side of the road.  My Jeep however....well, no cosmetic or sheet metal damage, but he did manage to snap my rear axle at the "pumpkin".  I ordered a remanufactured axle for it, but was the wrong one and had to send it back.  Thanks gawd for "free return shipping".  The new axle will be here this coming Friday.

I managed to get the water heater home unscathed, but had to wait until Monday to install it...or rather, a plumber friend of mine who owes me a couple of favors couldn't do it right away.  I can't really complain about three days of cold showers considering that it's been nearing 100 degrees outside this past week.  Installing a new residential sized water heater is a relatively easy task.  Conversely, removing a '70s era one is...well, go out into the woods and find yourself a good sized bear.  Pick a fight with him.  You get the idea.

Just like celebrity deaths, thing always happen in threes.  Yesterday evening the county public works department was in front of my house digging for something....gold, buried treasure, who knows?  They did however, manage to dig up something....my telephone lines.  So, for at least the next day or so I'm internet-less at home and forced to use this old, antiquated piece of shit computer at work.

I absolutely hate lemonade.

MUTHA-FUCKA - Update 2

Narc, stool pigeon, snitch....call me what you will.

Not long after reading Gérard Métrailler's post on the Corel website I got an email from the would-be software pirate stating that this was all a big misunderstanding, the software serial number issue was some sort of bulk sales foul up on Corel's end, and could I please drop the PayPal dispute.  Ok, that's understandable...but I wasn't completely convinced.  Even at Corel's bulk rate, Mr Pirate would still be selling his wares on Ebay at a loss.

I half-heartedly emailed Mr Métrailler via Corel, not really expecting any reply, asking about any bulk order issues with the software and stating that I may have been a victim of a wares pirate.  A few hours later....well, guess what?  I get a reply from him stating that there weren't any issues and could I please forward any info I have on Mr Pirate to him for further investigation.

At this point I'm just plain PISSED OFF!  Sure, I did recoup my losses from the sale and could have stopped right there, but...GODAMNIT, I hate being taken for a sucker!  So, not only did I forward Mr Pirate's info to Corel, but I also filed a report with the Toronto Police Service.

Yep, I'm a narc.

MUTHA-FUCKA - Update

It would seem that my pirated software dilemma was fairly short lived.  Corel is now offering a "no questions asked" option to buy a legitimate version of Draw X4 for $99 if you can show a sales receipt or $199 for those who cannot.  Unfortunately however, I'm a cheap bastard.

I downloaded and tried out GIMP for a few hours, but it's just not as user friendly as I'd like.  Not unlike Photoshop, performing even the simplest of functions such as stoking a line requires you to do two or three extra steps compared to Corel's software.  Zooming in and out....yeah, gotta go into a seperate window for that whereas Corel's allows your use a mouse's scroll wheel irregardless of what tool your using. I did like it's fairly simplified layering, but it's something that I rarely (almost never) use.  GIMP met the trashcan a few hours ago.

Being the cheap-ass that I am, I was originally gonna seek out some sort of "less-than-legal" means of getting X4 to work.  Instead I found a whole myriad of sites devoted to creating patches that allow legacy 32-bit software to run on Windows 7 64-bit platforms...and now I'm back in the old school, Corel Draw 8 (circa 1997).

Hallelujah, it's a miracle.  Somebody call Jebus and thank him for me.  Call collect....

MUTHA-FUCKA !!!

Well....shit.  Not much say here, so I'll let my PayPal dispute do the talking:


This is a pirated copy of Corel Draw X4. Yesterday (June 1, 2010) I experienced an "Product Installation Unsuccessful Please Reinstall Error 24" error code and was not able to launch the software. Upon reinstallation, the software would not accept the serial number. I immediately contacted Corel customer support and was told that the serial number was not generated by the Corel Corporation. 

Furthermore, the same day I discovered that this software was pirated Gérard Métrailler, Senior Director of Product Management for Corel posted the following on the Corel website: 

Earlier today, some CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 users started reporting that their product stopped working at launch with the error message "Product Installation Unsuccessful Please Reinstall Error 24". After extensive research with some of the affected users and our internal teams, we can confirm the following: 
* People who have purchased CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 from either Corel Corporation or Corel's approved channel partners do not appear to be affected by this problem. 
* To the best of our knowledge, this problem is only affecting installations of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 with serial numbers that have either expired and/or have not been created by Corel Corporation. 
* Recent updates/patches from other software (including operating systems) do not appear to have any link to CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 no longer launching. 
* This problem might also impact some WordPerfect Office X4 users, for the same reason as CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 users.
In summary, if you are encountering the error message "Product Installation Unsuccessful Please Reinstall Error 24", you may be in possession of an unauthorized version of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite and be the victim of a software pirate.


This dispute was submitted at 8:02pm today....and by 8:12pm this Canadian douchbag software pirate had taken down all of his eBay listings.  I won't be surprised if by this time tomorrow he's deleted his eBay account as well.  I won't tell you what I actually paid for it (it wasn't that much), but at least I got the money back.  Naturally, I also tracked down every single person he sold to and gave'em an ear full.


Unfortunately, I'm now stuck without any illustration / image editing software since my old legacy one doesn't wanna work with Windows 7.  Mutha fucka!