http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_molasses_disaster

Yes I am only posting this so I could use “tragically delicious” as a title.

“Where do you keep your icecream?”
“freezer aisle.”
“OH! thank you.”

yeah… I always have trouble locating the icecream in small-town grocery stores too. I always check the bakery first.

-dean

Now there’s something I don’t see every day. No one at all on facebook.

So, Last week, a month before my computer’s warranty was up, It had a sudden hardware failure (that or their EFI firmware upgrade botched something… time will tell). And, since I was planning on selling it and upgrading anyway, I bought a new machine. (I’ll sell the old one when it comes back from the repair shop.)

Anyway, So this necessitates the chore of re-installing all of my software. Today i re-installed photoshop. Software which I (unlike most photoshop users) actually paid real money for. And I ran into their anti-piracy scheme. Software activation. In order to use their software you have to contact adobe and prove “yes in fact I paid for this” by typing in the included serial number when the installer prompts you. Then the verification application connects to adobe’s servers, checks to see if “yeah, this is a legit serial number and no one else is using it” then it sends a code back to your software that says “go ahead and work, this guy gave us cash”.

So I got to the prompt, typed my numbers in aaand… nothing. didn’t activate. It said something like “it’s possible there was communication error, check your firewall settings” etc. So I do, and there’s no problem and I try again and it still doesn’t work. So whatever, They also supply an “activation help line” where you can phone Adobe up and activate via the telephone if the internet activation doesn’t work.

I call up the number. It’s a robot. I type in my long serial numbers and it says “there could be a long silence, please stay on the line” (several minutes of silence) then it repeats “there could be a long silence, please stay on the line” (several more minutes of silence) aaand finally “sorry, we couldn’t activate at this time. you are being transfered to a human operator.” So I’m on hold for a long while…. and then when the operator comes on he says “yeah our activation system is down, try back in another hour.”

So, meanwhile, while I’ve been on hold all that time, I’ve googled “Photoshop software activation” and found a crack (a hack that lets you use illegally obtained versions of Photoshop. The sort of thing that these anti-piracy measures are instituted to prevent in the first place) for the thing in less time than it took me to find out “Oh sorry, we can’t let you use your software yet. because our system is broken.”

yes. Your system IS broken.

-dean

I somehow don’t think she’ll be too impressed when she finds my clever message.

-dean

“For a guy with dreds, you do disdain really well.”