Month: March 2009

Below the belt(way)

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
The Mighty Turk views with alarm as winter returns to Bibleburg, however briefly.
The Mighty Turk views with alarm as winter returns to Bibleburg, however briefly.

I’ve been trying very hard to ignore the Repuglicans’ screeching, holding of breath and stamping of pudgy widdle feet, reasoning that, like Oscar Wilde — or perhaps a gasbag with a microphone who is better fed than taught — they have decided that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

But damn, am I sick of the racket.

I don’t agree with everything going on in the Obama camp, either, perhaps because I’m not smart enough to unravel the grand design. But after eight years of enduring that other guy, I’m willing to give Obama a little time to assess the situation and determine his response, free of snarky asides about how he’s already going gray or uses the teleprompter more than Honest Abe.

And seriously, if you voted for that other guy the last two outings, you really need to shut the fuck up for a while. Firefighters at work are not obliged to take criticism from arsonists.

Another advocate of reasonable behavior in the face of idiocy, Robert Sullivan, argues in The New York Times that cyclists have begun acting like cars instead of people. He never really defines himself as a cyclist (commuter? recreational rider?), though he does sneer weakly and tritely at Lance Armstrong wanna-bes and fixie kids. And his essay wanders around more than I’d like. But his basic point is one I support — treat others as you would be treated. It’s hypocritical to bitch about psycho motorists if you ride like a bonehead.

Knob job

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
If that big bald-headed sonofabitch can work this thing, I should be able to. He isn't so much of a much.
If that big bald-headed sonofabitch can work this thing, I should be able to. He isn't so much of a much.

What does Turkish want for his birthday? Opposable thumbs, so he can open the goddamn door. He wants out! Out! Out out out out out, as in right fucking now, thank you very much.

The great furry swine turned 2 years old today, but he’s been very deep into the terrible twos for the better part of quite some time, stalking about the joint complaining about this and that and reminding me very much of me, only sober. Plus he can lose all the white hair he wants and never go bald.

Just be careful what you wish for, big guy. You ever get those opposable thumbs you crave so desperately, we’re making you clean out your own litter box. The presents you leave for us in there could blow a buzzard right off a gutpile.

Wanted: RoboScribe

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Q: A Seventies-era newsman would have used which of these eight tools? (Hint: Batteries not required.)
Q: A Seventies-era newsman would have used which of these eight tools? (Hint: Batteries not required.)

The Rocky may be no more, but the Gazette is very much with us — and looking for a roving reporter:

Gazette.com, in Colorado Springs, is looking for a morning person in our newsroom. Your job: update gazette.com by 7 a.m.; record a quick vodcast with headlines and promos to upcoming coverage; hit the streets and post breaking news throughout the morning; update your blog; then polish selected stories for the Gazette’s print edition. You’ll be mobile and wired, and will have a police scanner and a camera. You need strong reporting and writing skills. You need to be an early technology adopter, able to pick up on new and better ways to get the news you report to your readers, wherever they may be and through whatever channel they prefer. This is critical: readers will not come to you; your job is to go to them. You need dependable wheels. We’ll give you the tools and space you need to make the beat your own, and to let your personality and authority shine through. Journalism degree or relevant related experience required. Send letter, resume, clips to managing editor Larry Ryckman: larry.ryckman@gazette.com. See us at gazette.com; on Facebook (colorado springs gazette), and Twitter (csgazette).

Well, that sounds like a day’s work and then some. When I was a sprout pounding out the word count for what was then called the Gazette Telegraph, in the late Seventies, it was not uncommon to write a half-dozen pieces a day, massage a few rewrites and then go out and get good and drunk. We were often both mobile and wired, but not in a strictly professional — or even marginally functional — sense.

Happily, that was then, and this is now. Anyone who’s charging around 21st-century Bibleburg with a backpack full of esoteric electronica, grilling the brass as to why the troops dick around with C4 during red-flag warnings and otherwise making themselves unwelcome between Twitter tweets, Facebook postings, website updates and hard-copy journalism is liable to find the pubs shuttered come quitting time — assuming he or she can afford a few glasses of ale on what the G is willing and able to pay in this market.

I think I’ll stick to cycling journalism. I don’t have to teach a seminar on Open Records 101 to any uniformed governmental dysfunctionaries on a daily basis, I can work in my skivvies, and the ‘fridge full of ale is only a few shorts steps away. Say, it must be 5 o’clock somewhere, don’t you think?

Tom Sawyer lives

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments
Must ... not ... buy ... new ... iMac ... ngggh.
Must ... not ... buy ... new ... iMac ... ngggh.

Many things demanded my attention today, but it was 70-something outdoors and so I showed them all a clean pair of heels. I went for a longish run-hike in Palmer Park, took the cats outdoors for an airing and in general wasted the day in creative loafing. Judge not lest ye be judged. You’re lucky I didn’t con you into whitewashing the fence.

If the economy perks up it’s because I bought some light groceries from Vitamin Cottage-Natural Grocers, not because I raced out to grab one of the updated iMacs or Mac Minis announced today. It’s just like the Black Turtleneck Mob to tempt me with shiny baubles after a week of herding dented and stained G4 and G3 relics from the digital tar pits. Get thee behind me, Apple.

It would be the height of stupidity for me to buy a new computer in these troubled times, working as I do in the publications industry, a career path with all the stability and longevity of a gig delivering nitroglycerin via pogo stick. So, naturally, I’ll probably do it. What the hell, it’s only money. Take out a loan, everybody does it. Dude, where’s my bailout? Surely I’m too big to fail. Just ask anyone who’s seen me in Lycra lately.

Low-end mac

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
The 800 MHz G3 iBook feels like a Nash Metropolitan next to the Maserati that is the MacBook. Unlike the Maserati, however, the Metro' still runs.
The 800 MHz G3 iBook feels like a Nash Metropolitan next to the Maserati that is the MacBook. Unlike the Maserati, however, the Metro' still runs.

I visit Low End Mac frequently, because I have so many — a Quadra 650, a Power Computing PowerBase 200, a G3 250 MHz “Wall Street” PowerBook, a PowerBook Duo 2300c, a G3 500MHz “Pismo” ‘PowerBook, a G3 800 iBook, a G4 450MHz “Sawtooth” Power Mac (upgraded in all directions save a better video card), and the black 2.0 GHz Intel Dual Core MacBook that blew up on me last week in mid-edit. The high-end Mac, just shy of 3 years old.

Anyone with this much old crap cluttering up the vicinity needs backup, and plenty of it. I have enough ancient machinery to start up a newspaper, if I were interested in filing Chapter 11 by St. Patrick’s Day. And it’s nice to have multiple redundancy systems in case something gets sideways come deadline time. I recall a story, perhaps a bit of writerly folklore, that the famously prolific Isaac Asimov kept three IBM Selectrics on hand because he feared one croaking on him in mid-novel.

I’m clearly no Asimov for a variety of reasons, most of them literary and scientific, but especially because my backups are not identical. When the high end crumbles, I start sliding down a slippery technological slope. It’s like a bad “Star Trek” episode: “Engage auxiliary power … switch to manual override … fuck it, where are the oars?”

As we speak I’m working on the dual-boot G3 iBook, which I upgraded to OS X 10.4.11 as soon as the MacBook croaked so I could use Flash 10 and a webcam and a whole mess of other nonsense that has little or nothing to do with writing columns or drawing cartoons.

The thing has that adhesive stink much discussed in Apple forums, its LCD display is non-awesome and the keyboard sucks — maybe one of the worst Apple has ever inflicted on its long-suffering fanboys — and Twitter drags on it like a three-legged dog with a butt full of buckshot. I’d switch to the Pismo, which has an excellent keyboard, but it’s three years farther behind the technological curve, even more video-challenged and sports an LCD that is starting to look like an art-class watercolor of a laptop screen as painted by a glaucoma patient with a head full of medicinal ditch weed.

If I were a good American I’d dash right on over to the Apple store, buy me a brand-new MacBook and use the old one for backup, when and if it returns from the Apple depot. I confess to having lust in my heart.

But I have no bucks in my bank account, and an early-riser of a wife who knows where the guns are, so I’ll forgo showing Steve Jobs my stimulus package in hopes that it will remain attached to my body.