I've finally gotten my response from HP's email support. On the plus side, they're providing me with a new adapter (it seems) and free of charge (it seems). On the minus side, I won't claim to be completely sure that that's what the mail said (like their telephone support, HP's email support only communicates in cryptic sentences that don't actually answer the questions you're asking), AND from what I DID gather from the mail, the delivery time for the adapter could be up to
14 days. :( Which means that potentially, I won't be online again before frickin' EASTER! >.<
I want my compuuuuuuuteeeeeeeer! ;_;
Gah!
This is just a short notice to tell you that my adapter-situation STILL hasn't been solved. Blargh. And since my mom's going to London this weekend, I won't even be able to borrow her computer during the weekend, so I only have computer access here in school. Conclusion:
No scanning, no answering messages on my behalf for this weekend. I'll try and draw to make up for it, though. ^_^
And if anyone is interested, here is the long, winding and angsty tale of my recent progress in the quest for an adapter:
After finally finding out how many watts I needed, I decided that I'd rather be on the safe side and buy a genuine HP adapter (rather than the no-brand product that might or might'nt work that my local electronics store was trying to sell me - and no, insecurity isn't a plus when you're paying what equals $ 80 for the thing) - only to realise that after hours of browsing HP's labyrinthine website, I couldn't figure out which one to buy! (Not-so-sublimal message#1: HP's homepage is crap.) Because the last time I phoned HP's customer service (within the 1 hour where
they are open and
I am not in school) I had to sit through 30+ minutes of 80ies pop before finally getting through to a (very sweet and helpful) technician - with whom conversation would probably had been a breeze if only I spoke farsi (not-so-sublimal message #2: HP's phone customer service is crap), I had my mom call them and ask for the
exact serial number of the adapter I needed (because she's able to phone in the day hours, when the waiting time should logically be shorter). No such luck. Instead, my mom was (according to her, at least) subjected to as mucg 80ies pop as I was, before being showered aside by a rather rude technician who refused to give her a serial number and just directed her to a specific homepage, where I should buy the adapter (not-so-sublimal message #3: HP's phone customer service is crap AND rude). Okay, but at least the adapter (which WASN'T the one I thought I needed, so the phone call was a good idea) was a good deal cheaper than the one I'd thought I'd be buying - in fact, cheaper yet than the no-brand one I almost bought - or that's what it was before the add-ons. That store, y'see, not only charges about $20 for shipping (keep in mind that their physical location is less than 1 hours away from where I live. On a BICYCLE!), but adds all sorts of extras, before calculating the 25% danish sales tax. In the end, the price was almost doubled due to taxes and outrageous shipping costs (not-so-sublimal message #4:
www.eet.dk is crap), and since HP hadn't given me their serial number, I had no way of checking out the alternatives (like, say, stores, that don't charge 4 times the normal postage in shipping). In the end, I'd probably have swallowed it down and bought the overpriced adapter if I hadn't received an email from HP (I'd written them Monday, asking for the serial number for the adapter) claiming that they'd send me a new adapter (I've no clue if I'm supposed to pay for it, though) if only I sent them the serial number for my laptop (not-so-sublimal message #5: maybe, just maybe, HP's customer service is actually good enough).
The (bitter-and-subject-to-change) moral of the story? Don't buy a HP computer, peeps. Their computers are great as long as they work, but if you lose some part of them, getting a replacement will be unbelievably diffucult. They also like 80ies pop. Boo.
(Yeah, I bit the sour apple and upgraded my blog to the google stuff... so much for standing up against "the man"... ^_^;)
All right, guys, getting a new A/C adapter for my computer turned out to be a good deal more difficult than I'd expected (please HP, would you be so kind to include just a itsy-bitsy tiny bit of information - like WHAT ADAPTER WAS INCLUDED!?!?! - with your computers? Please?) so I'm still power-less. This minor essay was written on my mom's computer, which she's been kind enough to let me borrow while I'm cut off from the real wor...
internet, but since she has neither a scanner, PSP or the patience to let me occupy her computer for the 4-5 hours computerwork on a comic takes me in average, I can't finish this week's update before I get my adapter. And I can't get my adapter before HP re-opens their phone support line, which is closed on weekends, so I can find out which one I need to go out and spend 500+ kr on. -_-; In short: I can't update this Monday. On the other hand, not having (constant) internet access gives me plenty of time to draw, so I hope to finish as much as I can of this (and possibly the next) week's pages (inking and touching up) so I can color them both as soon as I'm able. ^_^
And now for a semi-political and only vaguely comic-related rant. Those with no knowledge of oor interest in the matter can leave now; the comic-related thing will be unimportant for you, too.
This, of course, is about Ungdomshuset ("the Youth House"). For those who don't know, Ungdomshuset is (or rather, was) an old, run-down building on the outskirts of Copenhagen's Nørrebro neighborhood, which has served as the hub of Denmarks punk and anarchist subcultures for 25 years, since the house was supposedly given to it's users by the municipalty. For all those years, the house has been an invaluable scene for the city's alternative music culture, a political experiment and a much-needed hang-out for those young people who simply didn't fit in anywhere else. Sometimes, the people from the house were at odds with the police due to graffiti or an old feud over McDonalds, but most of the time, Ungdomshuset was simply an integrated part of it's neighborhood. However, in the year 2000, the municipalty decided to sell the house (why this was done has never been explained, but it most likely has to do with certain convervative politicians' dislike for pierced youths who do graffiti) - to a pseudo-christian (when asked, my religion teacher disgustedly swore that they have nothing to do with christianity) sect named Faderhuset ("the Father House" - anyone seeing the irony in this? I knew you would.) who bought the house with the expressed purpose of "cleansing it of Satan". The house's users took the case up in court twice but lost both trials, and last week, the house was emptied. Monday March 5th, while I was busy whining about my lost AC adapter, it was demolished.
In the days since the the emptying, there have been several riots, burnings of cars and battles with the police started by the ex-house users. I'll start out by saying that I in no way support using violence to further one's goals, and though I can partially
understand why some people have acted as they did, I do not
accept it. That being said, I believe that the selling and subsequent demolishing of Ungdomshuset is a tragedy and a scandal for the city.
I'm not a regular user of the house (in fact, I have only been in the house once, and that was mostly to do research for the comic), but I live and have lived in the neighborhood for all of my life, and the house is a natural part of my world. Nørrebro is generally a very tolerant (we have a large immigrant community as well, but unlike "true" ghetto areas, they live side by side with ethnic danes and the mutual integration is above average) and multicolored neighborhood, and without Ungdomshuset, it has lost a large part of what makes it such a wonderful place to live. I see this development as yet another brick in the uniformation and streamlining of central Copenhagen that has been going on constantly in the last 10 years. Everything that doesn't fit with the café latte-drinking mainstream middle class ideals is demolished, removed and "normalized" and instead the neighborhoods are flooded with identical, soulless noveau rich youths from the provinces who complain whenever anything is a little out of the mouse-colored ordinary.
And as for "Faderhuset": While I respect their right to buy something which is legally being sold as well as their right to be in the neighborhood (after all, tolerance is only tolerance if it includes the people you disagree violently with), I cannot respect their ideology nor their agenda behind buying that house. For a longer rant about them, I point you to
Skyen's blog - and limit my own ranting to pointing out that the last time Faderhuset had a house in this neighborhood, they send a maniac carrying a wooden cross on his back on a crusade to "cleanse" the (again, 50% muslim) area of islam.
So, what has all this got to do with A.N.T? Quite a bit in fact. You see, the next main character to be introduced after Kin (and the last one to be introduced for a loooong time) is a punk whose identity has always been tied to Ungdomshuset. She's an old, well-grounded part of the story and the main reason I became interested in this whole affair several months ago. Because of her, Episode 5 takes place in and around the house, and several plot points are all the way to the ending are tied to it. Since the possibility of the house being destroyed has been there for several years, I decided long ago to go through with my story and have the house appear in the comic no matter what happened in the real world. Now, however, I'm not so sure anymore. I suppose I'd expected to at least begin episode 5 before it happened, so I could use continuity as an excuse for keeping the house, but now that I can't, it seems weird to just pretend that nothing happened and draw the comic as if we were still in 2004. On the other hand, not using the house would require me to completely scrath an essential character as well as several plot points. Part of me thinks keeping the house in the story would be ignoring the harsh reality - and another part of me thinks not keeping it would be fleeing my principles. What do you think, would including the house be an over-romantizised anachronism? - or do I just put too much thought into this?
Ungdomshuset is gone. It can never completely be replaced, though I still hope that some sort of solution is still possible. In the last few days, serval major (peaceful) demonstrations have swept the city, which give sme hope that the mayor might actually pull out her earplugs and listen to us (yes, I'm proud to say that I participated in two of those demonstrations). No matter what, I will miss that colorful aspect of the neighborhood, and I will most certainly not welcome the sect that has taken the place. I don't accept violence, but I'm sad and I'm angry over what has happened. And now you guys know where I stand.
Back to discussing homoerotic walnuts.
