Keine Quarken Vergnügen

It's against my nature to use expletives in a blog, so substituted (very possibly incorrect) German to express my frustration at installing a new version of Quark. It sounds angry enough. I do almost all our graphics for our shops, and for years I used an old version of PageMaker. It's all pretty primitive, if you're a more serious designer, but you know, that old PM was a workhorse that never let me down. Then we got our new Mac several years ago (only macintosh in this household: there can be no others). Bought Quark for it, because it was supposed to be a better page layout program. Turned out to be quirky and a bit buggy. But, you know, once you invest in it, you have to upgrade sooner or later; it's cheaper than starting over. So I bit the bullet yesterday and bought the upgrade online (buy Quark 7 and get version 8 for free! Yeah!). Hours later, with smoke coming out of my ears, I finally had it installed (but still not sure I got all the bits and pieces).

I had to fill out multiple forms with two different 13-character serial numbers. Had to sign in again and again, because it kept kicking me out. The clincher was having to enter a 47-digit 'validation code' that I had to write down on a piece of paper and then painstakingly reenter. 47 characters! My eyesight is not good enough to follow a string that long. Had to do it multiple times because if you get one little number or letter wrong, it won't go through. Du böse bube! I bin zehr gestrecht! I have no idea what that last bit means. I may have made it up, or it came up out of the memory ooze that remained after this exercise.

Oh yes. The Quark 8 for free? You get that by registering version 7 (just try to do it! ha ha ha), then clicking on a buried link to version 8. The 4pt. fine print (again, I need reading glasses on top of my tri-focals) tells you that after you pay $19.95 for shipping (huh?), you will receive version 8 sometime after October 15. Not even sure that went through, because it all went in circles for 15 minutes before I gave up. It's scheiße.