ozoneocean wrote:
I dunno what's happened to the Quackcast this week… Maybe you guys in the US have a long weekend or something…

Precisely this.

You know sometimes… I dunno.
Sometimes I think we need new admins here to take over instead. People who're more with it and current with the site, such as it is.

Somehow, I have my doubts that there's anyone who has the patience, willingness or skill to put up with it half as well as well as you manage the job. Right now, at risk of turning this into another “what's wrong with DD” shit-fit, I'd say it's the same problem that causes all the other problems around the site.
That being said, I'd love to contribute, but unless you guys want to do an entire conversation about the field of making graphics for t-shirts, coffee mugs and other useless crap that people still buy, or marketing a new and small brand, I'm kind of useless I think. I'm completely incapable of even so much as editing together 5 seconds of sound without screwing it up much less 5 minutes or 50. But if there is some way I can lend a hand, like providing and interview or some content or something not too technical-related, just tell me what and I'll do it.

Guys, that would be cool! I will keep you both solidly in mind for that!

————-

Heh, graphics for T-shirts and coffee mugs… man… I really hate doing both of those.
-Shirts because clients want too much info on them and it ruins any design you come up with (they ALWAYS come back with changes that require more info), and if they come up with their own design 80% it's horrible.
-Mugs because all mugs are different, some have strange requirements, and the suppliers are lazy at providing print specs. Without exception.

Constant irritation with clients generally: greys, black, white, and tones of colours are ALL different colours! When I ask for a one colour version of your logo do not provide me with something that has 5 colours!
That's not just an issue with non-graphic artists either. over 50% of the time it's graphic artists that supply so called “one colour” logos, made up of several colours that can't be simply made into one colour without violating corporate guidelines. I'd say about 35% of corporate logo guidelines are complete balls.

————-

Here's something weird-
So many people I have met have this bizarrely romantic, nostalgic impression of milk from farms. Including my mum!
They say it's the best they ever tasted, nothing like fresh milk etc…
But when I was little my dad was the bank manager (when that still meant something) in a small regional town, and he would often take us kids out to see the farms when farmers were applying for loans and things… I saw a few small dairy farms and there was NOTHING romantic about them!
Milking sheds were concrete floored, with steel rails, concrete ramps, stainless steel equipment, the ground was always wet from being hosed down, it reeked of cow-piss… the poor cows are separated from their calfs, they're visibly sad, their full udders are terribly uncomfortable, they crap everywhere, and the milk tastes nasty.

Pasteurise and homogenise that stuff please… I've never seen anything romantic about dairy farms and they must be one of THE worst places to work.

Growing up in rural NZ I've milked a few cows in my time. My favourite job was hosing down the milking shed after the milking. That high pressure hose could really make the shit fly!!!
Farm fresh milk does taste great–rich, creamy, and oh so fatty. And if a farmer is drinking his own milk you can generally be confident of it. In NZ at least every batch is tested before it is taken by the milk tanker, and if the shit to milk ratio is too high (and it's a very low tolerence) the milk is dumped and unpaid for, so farmers do their best to keep it clean-ish.
But as a history student I'm fully aware of the historial reasons why pasturiation came into being, and would not want to see commercial unpausterised milk entering the market. Farmers giving to friends and neighbours I have no problem with, but once you step beyond that you run the risk of the bad old days returning. As for supposed health benefits of unpasterised milk … you have to remember that any ‘back-in-the-olden-days-they-did-this’ health cure that is touted always overlooks the incedibly low life expectancy of the past, and the incredibly high infant mortality rates.

In my all time list of shitty places I've worked, dairy farms come in third after hog farms and my last job. The last job for the obvious reasons anyone hates a desk job, but multiplied by a factor of 10, and the hog farms for the stench. If you think cows stink, wait until you get a whiff of the joy that is an American hog farm. The stenchdoes not evercome out of anything. period. You'll step into a shed they haven't used in 4 or 5 years, and you'll still gag and choke on the leftover scent. It's unbelievable that it can still linger after that long, but it does.

The stench is bad enough when driving by dairy, hog and chicken farms let alone actually getting anywhere inside. The wife used to live downwind of Tyson's so I'd get the stories. You get the smell some miles away on the highway.

NJ is famous for dairy farming and I used to go to one practically weekly as a kid to get fresh milk. I got to know that smell. NJ also has tons of horses. I got to know that smell. Just love going to ACW or AWI reinactments where they have cavalry so I can just get a good strong whiff of horseshit/sweat smell. Right by my house is a farm with goats, borros and they don't stink too much.
But then once upon a time people smelled pretty bad too. The other day I fixed the porch, worked up a sweat and went right to bed. The next morning the wife accused me of having some really nasty gas. No, it was sweat. Yeah people stink too.

Ewwww, Gunwallace: Hosemaster!

Lba, the first time I ever came across pigshit was a bad moment for me. I do not like anything about pigs.

Bravo, horse crap doesn't smell too bad because of what they eat and how little their body processes it, but horse piss is another matter. One of the all time worst smells. Especially on a cold, cold day when you're hit full in the nostrils by those warm steamy fumes.
I used to ride a LOT and I never got used to that stink.

Horse crap does wear on you though when you spend your mornings raking up piles off it then carrying heavy bags of the warm, wet stuff over your shoulder on the way to dumping it for the fertiliser truck to pick up.
I did that when I used to ride… and later on, that almost became my first paying job. SO lucky I dodged that bullet.

I'm a farm boy too, my dad was a dairy farmer and i spent a lot of my youth helping out on the farm doing the exact same things as Gunwallace mentioned. I miss those days.

ozoneocean wrote:
Horse crap does wear on you though when you spend your mornings raking up piles off it then carrying heavy bags of the warm, wet stuff over your shoulder on the way to dumping it for the fertiliser truck to pick up.
I did that when I used to ride… and later on, that almost became my first paying job. SO lucky I dodged that bullet.

I remember on my first job, driving a skidloader for a logging company, we used to help out the farmer's to get a deal on the logs we bought from their land, I used to end up helping out with cleaning barn lots a lot during the spring. The first time I did it, I maxed out the manure trailer 7 times and filled it 3/4 of the way again. It was a 10,000 pound load limit trailer. The poo had literally frozen in layers over the winter until it was three feet deep in a large part of the lot. But that's what happens when you have 150 head of cattle crapping in the same small area for 4 1/2 months. It's not as gross as having to carry it on your shoulder, but the thought of all that crap still brings a horrible scent to my nostrils.

ozoneocean wrote:
I do not like anything about pigs.

i used to have a ‘pet’ pig, named Muldoon after a New Zealand prime minister. Muldoon was a she, however … who liked to eat roses when she could, to my mother's horror. When she gave birth to a dozen little piglets I got to watch them being fired out of her like … well, like greased piglets. Man, those suckers were spat out of there. Here are some pitures of the event Guyanne Landry drew for me …

I remember Muldoon… for some reason I always thought he was a bit of a crook. Didn't he have a bad reputation at the time?
That pic is hillarious!

Listeing to Sing, Sing, Sing by Benny Goodman… Man, the start of that tune rivals The Levee Breaks by Zepllelin. Driving drumbeat full of threat, harsh learing trumpets cutting in… wow.
I've always liked that track, but never really sought it out just to listen to it.

I've tried to hang on for as long as I could, but I think I'm finally going to have to call it quits on DD. Every since that bar at the bottom was added the site has run ridiculously slowly for me, and the 502 bad gateway errors are completely out of hand. It was my birthday yesterday and I thought I'd do a little post about that, but this is the first time in two days that I've been able to get as far as posting.

Good luck to the rest of you still here.

That's a shame to lose you Hippy. aA real smae.
Happy Birthday! ^_^

The 502 errors yesterday were fixed up in good time. They come every now and again, and usually don't last,. When they come in strength I notify Wowio and a full restrat of the servers gets done and that puts it right again. Nothing really to quit over. :)

Sorry to hear that, Hippy - hope you change your mind though.
Happy Birthday!

Hippie Van wrote:
I've tried to hang on for as long as I could, but I think I'm finally going to have to call it quits on DD. Every since that bar at the bottom was added the site has run ridiculously slowly for me, and the 502 bad gateway errors are completely out of hand. It was my birthday yesterday and I thought I'd do a little post about that, but this is the first time in two days that I've been able to get as far as posting.

Good luck to the rest of you still here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ftWerL1Wcs

Awww… Hippie's gone now? That's too bad.

Maybe we could all cordinate a large commercial campaign on the internet?

If we'd all put our heads together and come up with something, we'll be able to get some more people interested in the duck. When traffic picks up over here Wowio will see it as a more profitable investment and give us more attention. I was thinking of at least the following:

- Converting the earlier chapters of some volunteering comics into motion comics for showing on youtube.

- Assigning fans of social media the task of creating and maintaining an active Facebook and Twitter account. Linking to interesting new developments in bith the comic book industra as well as DD itself.

- Starting competitions on the front page of DD and advertising these competitions over the social media outlets. (Who can make the best 3-frame comic about their cat?, Who can draw the best image of Duck and Quail, Bounty hunters? Who can design the best Drunk Duck Logo?) And then Announcing the winner on the Quackcast.

- Creating a collaborative online wiki of how to draw comics.

- Posting DD icons EVERYWHERE.

Ugh… I could read the forum just fine, but got that 50 something error every time I tried to post… and in other news…

I checked out the song that was featured in that chocolate M
I need a LOT of brain bleach…

Hippie's gone! NO! NO! NO! Loosing her just makes the forums kind of empty.

Though I have to admit she is right about that stupid block thing at the bottom. Couple of times there it's taken over the screen and there I am frantically looking for the icon to close the thing.

Guess I'm lucky I never worked on a farm and only did all that mechanical work with fuel, exhaust and lubricants. When it comes to animals or the mixture of fetid diesel fumes, sweat, hydraulic fluid and acrid cordite fumes, horse piss just doesn't smell as bad. At least it's not toxic and known to cause cancer in California.

bravo1102 wrote:
At least it's not toxic and known to cause cancer in California.

Just as well I'm not in California ;-)

There's a button on the right hand side of the “Meebo bar” to get rid of it.

Call Me Tom wrote:
There's a button on the right hand side of the “Meebo bar” to get rid of it.

It goes something like this:
I saw that button just a second ago, now where did it go… right… where is it, it was just there! Would the page stop scrolling and the animations stop animating just long enough for these tired eyes to find that god-damned button!
God-damn page designers design the pages so busy so they can hide the “close” button in some long forgotten corner hidden as the page scrolls up.

Kroatz wrote:
Awww… Hippie's gone now? That's too bad.

Maybe we could all cordinate a large commercial campaign on the internet?

If we'd all put our heads together and come up with something, we'll be able to get some more people interested in the duck. When traffic picks up over here Wowio will see it as a more profitable investment and give us more attention. I was thinking of at least the following:

- Converting the earlier chapters of some volunteering comics into motion comics for showing on youtube.

- Assigning fans of social media the task of creating and maintaining an active Facebook and Twitter account. Linking to interesting new developments in bith the comic book industra as well as DD itself.

- Starting competitions on the front page of DD and advertising these competitions over the social media outlets. (Who can make the best 3-frame comic about their cat?, Who can draw the best image of Duck and Quail, Bounty hunters? Who can design the best Drunk Duck Logo?) And then Announcing the winner on the Quackcast.

- Creating a collaborative online wiki of how to draw comics.

- Posting DD icons EVERYWHERE.

you know what? this is a GREAT idea.we've all been bummed about how many people the DD site has lost, but aside from updating our individual comics and trying to get people here through those, we havent really taken the bull by the horns, at least as far as i know!

Well if you could help publicise the DD Google+ page
https://plus.google.com/110836984835194848215/posts the Facebook one
http://www.facebook.com/DrunkDuckcomics and the twitter
http://twitter.com/drunkduck that could help ^_^
I'm open to anything to help DD

——

@Bravo-
I dunno man, it's a matter of perspective… When I was little dad
would take me Yachting with friends a lot and 4x4ing around the country
(always diesel engined vehicles). Got to smell lots of diesel and engine
stinks, and I rather liked it.
Diesel can get a bit much when
there's no escape from in in the middle of the ocean and you're feeling
woozy… but you get used to it over time.
Horse piss is still worse.
-a hot offensive mixture of ammonia and this horrible sweetness, like
boiling tomato sauce. It's vicious, like concentrated hobo.

I hate it when DD members leave due to the technical issues… I'm not going anywhere myself although I'm heavily distracted at the moment.

Income Tax Refunds are finally going to be passed out… though I'm not holding my breath. And just in time comes this Android tablet. I do want one, but as with all the hardware I buy I ask myself just one question… “What am I going to do with it?”

Now I'm sure there's a lot of things you can do with those tablets. Websurfing, playing games… but when I ask myself that question one answer comes out… that I don't really need one yet. A lot of family members have one and they're enjoying it, but I can't bring myself to go out and get one. If I was rich enough to have money spilling out of my ears then I'd get one just because I want it. But that's not the case, and I'd rather not spend money on something that I will not use at that moment…

ozoneocean wrote:

@Bravo-
I dunno man, it's a matter of perspective… When I was little dad
would take me Yachting with friends a lot and 4x4ing around the country
(always diesel engined vehicles). Got to smell lots of diesel and engine
stinks, and I rather liked it.

Did you ever walk through a truck loading yard with forty or fifty tractor-trailors idling? I did some time on loading docks and yards as my father was a broker. That's comparable to the engines I dealt with even if a little small. Tank exhaust is not mufflered or filtered it's just blown out the back all black and sooty. Then there's the heavy lubricants. To get a comparable whiff stick your head into a garage bay with a dozen cars up the lifts and dunk your head into a drum of used oil. Then put your face right next to the brake drum as the mechanic recuts the roter and follow it up with putting your nose right next to the lift piston as it goes up and down while someone sprays it with additional hydraulic fluid.

You're immersed in the smell. You wear it. It gets into your pores. As if you were immersed in the horse piss.
But you're right horse piss is definitely the greater irritant. Defintely a worse stink like that industrial strength pure ammonia used for cleaning. I'd take the smell of diesel any day, but then there's the sickly sweet smell of the various fire retardant hydraulic fluids. That is positively nasty. Imagine combining the smells of ammonia and pure ethyline glycol anti-freeze.

Throwing out a reminder to all, to not forget to check out Venus passing over the sun tonight. It's starting now in couple of hours, lasting from 10PM to 5AM, GMT (Starts 6 PM Eastern time).
More info here + a pretty picture:

*looks outside*
too cloudy for me… oh well.

There's always 2117.

Bravo- we will have to arange for a horse to piss on you ^_^

Sooooo cold… Why turn the airconditioner on in winter? If you're hot from doing stuff around the office, it does not mean everyone else is as well you little chunky freak!!!!!!!!
/rant.

Walked into a loacl restraunt the other day with a slim, atractive, blonde, female friend, and we were both greeted with “what would you like ladies?” by the waitress.
I don't care anymore that they make that mistake, what bothers me is they must think I'm a really butt-ugly girl!

ozoneocean wrote:
I don't care anymore that they make that mistake, what bothers me is they must think I'm a really butt-ugly girl!

How about saying something so your voice tells her you're a guy. Unless you're one of those guys whose voice is so high people think you're a girl… O_O

It's been raining all day, so there's no way I can see any astronomical events… :(

ozoneocean wrote:
Bravo- we will have to arange for a horse to piss on you ^_^

I hear it's good for rheumitism.

In this day of LBGT everything goes, timbre of voice is no indicator of gender. There was this butt-ugly girl visiting mom in the building and then I saw him the following morning. Female inpersonator. It is Asbury Park after all, an LBGT town where everything goes.