Month: November 2008

A loss of focus

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 2 Comments
"Without my super high-powered glasses I'm helpless!"

I’ve finally managed to lose my damn’ reading glasses after thousands of unsuccessful attempts, just in time for tomorrow’s shift in the virtual barrel at VeloNews.com. Expect typos in abundance.

I do have a set of bifocal “computer glasses” that I rarely use for actual computer work — they seem better suited to drawing cartoons — so, unlike Fearless Fly, who only had the one set, I am not entirely powerless. But these double-jointed sonsabitches give me a headache.

Come to think of it, so does editing. O, Lord, I will be gobbling the Advil like popcorn tomorrow.

Are you ready for some football?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Trying to add to my limited stores of cultural literacy, I switched the idiot-box controller from “video” to “TV,” manipulated the rabbit ears and plunked down in the rocker for a Sunday afternoon’s worth of Entertainment, American Style — the NFL on CBS, starring the Denver Broncos vs. the Oakland Raiders.

That lasted, oh, about 10 minutes.

Judas Priest, how can people watch this crap? Every other play was punctuated by three or four minutes of ads for wee-wee drugs, fast cars, watery beer, bad TV, worse movies and pricey electronic gizmos (including the new BlackBerry Storm, a Verizon-only iPhone rival).

And you know it’s only gonna get worse from Black Friday onward as panicked retailers start discounting this, that and the other in hopes of getting us to retrieve the Visa cards from cold storage, march down to the mall and do what Americans do best — buy a whole shitload of stuff they don’t need and can’t afford.

I’m no different. I like toys. Ask Herself, she’s keeping a list, and that sucker is longer than the original manuscript for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” There’s another guy who had trouble controlling his appetites.

But I’m trying really hard to be sensible these days.

“Hi, I’m Patrick, and I’m a shopaholic.”

“Hi, Patrick!”

I have not rushed out and bought an iPod Touch, or an iPhone, even though I know Steve Jobs may have to start wearing mock black turtlenecks if I continue to refuse the Kool-Aid. A Honda Element does not, as yet, darken my doorway. I haven’t even augmented the Mad Dog arsenal, though the local militia seems convinced that Obama is coming for our guns and it’s time to buy buy buy before the blue helmets leap out of the black helicopters onto our brownish lawns.

Your call is important to us

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

Herself and I have been trying to learn something any 10-year-old knows — how to send multimedia messages from our AT&T cellphones.

Mia Sopiapilla atop the fridge, wondering why I'm pointing a cellphone at her.
Mia Sopaipilla atop the fridge, wondering why I'm pointing a cellphone at her.

I’ve been wanting to take pix on rides, but didn’t want to lug a camera along. Even my little Canon PowerShot SD600 fills up a jersey pocket, once in its carrying case, and there’s always the chance of yard-saling and destroying the shooter. Then I remembered I always pack a cellphone, and that cellphone has (wait for it) a camera, built right in. Duh.

But how to get the pix out of the phone? My old Samsung SGH-c417 doesn’t have a USB port, so the only exit is via e-mail, and I couldn’t find the door. This meant I faced a call to the dread tech support, probably a Hindu robot linked to a Chinese satellite phone in Spaminacanistan.

Imagine my surprise when I got a series of pleasant, helpful English speakers who walked me through the laborious process of reconfiguring various factory settings, changing the IP address and finally resetting the phone. It took about 45 minutes, but that was partly because it was a lengthy procedure and partly because I only use this phone as a phone. I don’t download tunes, text my peeps or IM; I ring ’em up. Hell, I didn’t even know how to toggle the keypad from numbers to letters and back again.

The procedure is not error-free; sending this pic of Mia atop the refrigerator took three tries and two reboots of the phone. And the pictures suck, frankly. Still, I suppose it’s better than packing a real camera and taking the chance of waking up trailside in a pile of prickly pear with the damn’ thing embedded in one lacerated kidney, busily snapping pix of your ruptured spleen.

Bike Friday

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Your Humble Narrator, circa 1980 at The Arizona Daily Star
Your Humble Narrator, circa 1980 at The Arizona Daily Star.

Nice Q&A with John Howard in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Asked what he likes about cycling, Howard replies: “The fresh air, blue sky. Just being out there. At this stage of my life, it’s all about the (mental) therapy.” What he said.

To the east, El Tour de Tucson rolls out tomorrow, and The Arizona Daily Star — which in 1980 had the misfortune to employ Your Humble Narrator — has a profile of multisport athlete Kathyrn Bertine, who is now focused on cycling. The Tucson Citizen, meanwhile, takes a look at Team Xood, formed by local pro Scott Blanchard. Nice to see the MSM paying attention to our sport for a change.

I wasn’t paying any attention to cycling in 1980. I had a bike, a beat-up old Schwinn Continental, but it was strictly transportation and rarely used even for that. Mostly I worked, drank beer and swam, in the landlady’s pool off Orange Grove Road and at the University of Arizona, because Tucson is hotter than Hell and a single guy could keep cool while ogling a lot of scantily clad female forms. I developed a fine tan along with many evil ideas, none of which came to fruition.

Late update: Almost forgot — there’s a cyclo-cross tomorrow in Bibleburg. You can download a PDF flyer here. My man Mikey O’Schenk, believed to be the last Mad Dog still racing, may or may not renew his duel to the death with Dennis “The Menace” Collard. The two fought right down to the wire in the local winter running series, with Dennis winning the final race by a couple seconds but Mikey holding a comfortable dozen-second cushion in the overall. Alas, Rumor Control reports that Dennis may forgo a bid for a second consecutive beating because he’s working the event (been there, done that, Hoss).

Fun, fun, fun

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

I was off on a little web-surfin’ safari this morning and ran across a story in The Los Angeles Times that says Angelenos are abandoning mass transit and crankin’ up their little deuce coupes again, now that gasoline prices have plummeted to $2.30 per gallon. Good news, Detroit: You won’t be needing that bailout after all. SUVs for everyone! She’s real fine, my 409 . . . .

In other auto news, failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney — whose dad ran American Motors in the good ol’ Rambler days and then became governor of Michigan — took a giant dump on Motor City in The New York Times the other day, and The Detroit Free Press called him on it. It’s a pretty interesting read for those of us who haven’t paid much attention to the U.S. auto industry of late. Meanwhile, here’s some number-crunching from The Detroit News regarding the industry’s employment effects beyond Motown.

And in DeeCee, House Donks have voted to replace auto-industry pal John Dingell of Michigan as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee with Henry Waxman of California. Steve Benen calls this “a very encouraging development” that will make a meaningful energy bill more likely.