pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



nullpat
@nullpat
when you need to post, remember to always use unlicensed chost-it brand adhesive micro-notepapers
and don't forget to use your best handwriting!

cathoderaydude
@cathoderaydude

My first job was at a store that sold surplus electronic components and electronics tools, things like resistors and capacitors, wire nippers, solder suckers, that sort of thing. The person running the place was a total bastard and we knew things were going wrong with the company due to his incompetence.

This was before the days of govt. subsidized ecycle programs and whatnot, so our stock wasn't collected locally, they got it Elsewhere and sent a van up every week to bring us new product. Except that as things got worse, the van came less, and eventually didn't come at all.

We weren't certain that we were all about to lose our jobs until the day we received "new stock", in the form of several boxes of Bazic brand office supplies. Post-its, notepads, pens, etc., every bit of it literal, actual-fraud garbage. It simply didn't work.

The paper would tear in half when you tried to pull it off the notepad. The pens didn't fucking write, they just didn't. The markers smelled like carcinogens. And the post-its were so bad that I actually felt sick looking at or touching them - just knowing that someone, somewhere, was willing to make this literal trash made me so crushingly sad and nauseous.

They came in eye-searingly bright colors, and the adhesive was at once too strong and incredibly weak. The act of peeling them off the pad put a curl into the paper that only got worse. They would continue curling until they pulled themselves off of whatever surface you stuck them to, and they didn't accept ink. They were clearly the wrong kind of paper, because that's where shit like this comes from. It's some companys garbage that some other company realized could stand in for a legitimate product just long enough to make the sale, and then they could disappear into the woodwork.

The management ignored our desperate complaints that this made no sense, that nobody would ever buy any of this, and even if they did, the damage to our reputation would be irreparable. They made us replace a whole aisle with it - an aisle they had not bothered to stock for six months. Nobody ever bought a single item out of that aisle.

A year later, if that, the store was closed. Ten years later, and two states away, I knew the end was coming for Fry's Electronics the day I walked in and saw an entire aisle of Bazic brand office supplies, including sticky notes in neon yellow and green.


pendell
@pendell

Bazic is one of those "companies" that are definitely harbingers of doom, one of the horsemen of corporate apocalypse. You know when you see those quote unquote products you're either in a store that's going to close in five months or the only reason they won't is because they make their main income off the crack den in the basement.



pendell
@pendell

I am currently downloading shady torrents of supposedly cracked dll files so I can install Office 2007 on my Thinkpad. Objectively the best looking Office ever made. Best boy deserves more recognition. Rechost if you appreciate Office 2007.


pendell
@pendell

Update: it worked. But in a fascinating way.

Most software cracks for earlier versions of Office constitute a simple "drag this dll here to replace the old one, there, it's cracked." But 2007 was one of the early models to implement online activation, so the process got a little funky.

First, you've got to find any old product key for your version of Office 2007 online, because otherwise the setup program won't even let you install it. However, the setup program will also instantly check any product key you give it with Microsoft's servers, given the chance. So you need to take away that chance, and disable your internet connection before putting in the product key, so that Office can't confirm the key's current state with any outside resource, it just has to assume it's still a valid key and let you progress - kind of like what Windows does at install.

And just like Windows, this puts the software in a pseudo-activated state. Activation superposition. Schrodinger's activation. It gives you 2 options for activating your install in the 30-day time limit before the bomb Microsoft has put in your home goes off. One option is to join the 21st century and connect to the internet. The other is to be your grandpa and activate over the phone.

Keeping your internet off, you replace the appropriate dll file. It's just one. Then, opening any Office app and navigating to the Activate by Telephone screen, you select your country - in my case United States, and then fill all the boxes with 0's. Your screen looks like 0000-0000-0000-0000-0000, it's hilarious, and made even more funny by the warning dialogue below the country selection telling you Activation by Telephone is no longer supported for the United States. Despite this, you click Activate, and it works perfectly. And continues to work after installing every update. It's a very clever workaround, jacking into the short-lived telephone activation mechanism. I wonder why Microsoft doesn't support that anymore...