Busy, busy, busy. It’s Cobbles Week over at VeloNews.com, and today that means the Tour of Flanders. You want to find out who won, drop on by. They sell ads and stuff and need the eyeballs.
Editor in chief Ben Delaney is laboring across the pond, as is editor at large John Wilcockson. Euro’ correspondent Andrew Hood is pretty much always there, as is ace shooter Graham Watson, and so we do not lack for postable news nuggets as the hard men bang bars in the sleet and cowshit.
On days like this I drag ass out of bed far too early, grab a cup of mud and plunk down in the office chair to play editor from a distance, fielding e-mails and instant messages from the far-flung VeloGang, which operates in press rooms, pubs and home offices in Europe, Colorado and Wyoming, where longtime web geek Charles Pelkey hangs his ten-gallon hat.
It’s hard to believe that when I first started working with VeloNews back in 1989, a Mac SE with a 1200-baud Hayes modem hooked to a BBS constituted the pinnacle of journalistic technology. I was still FedExing original black-and-white cartoons and faxing stories from Santa Fe to the mothership in Boulder.
There are downsides to a smaller world, of course. Today, colleagues can poke their long, snoopy noses over your shoulder via AIM, iChat or Skype. It’s almost like having them right there in the office with you. Happily, you can always unplug the sonsabitches like Dave Bowman did the HAL 9000, another digital presence famous for erratic backseat driving, and go back about your business.
Mad Blog Media 
Was joking with my mom about her dial up innertube connection. She’s still putting her phone receiver into the two rubber cups and cinching it down with velcro straps, a la Matthew Broderick in “War Games.”
A little prezzie for all Mad Dog Media readers: download our cookbook for free (warning: it’s a big’un, weighing in at around 160 megs or so, so you might want to hit the download button and then go for a little ride). If nothing else, it’s worth the price of admission (free) just for the granola recipe (page 22), so you can have something tasty and nutritious (and a Nebraska State Fair blue ribbon winner, if I can say that without separating my shoulder patting myself on the back) with your cup of mud and cup of yogurt.
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/great-tastes-our-favorite-recipes-for-2007/561427
Again, it’s free, dammit, so no complaining!!
Ah, yes … reminds me of the Xerox Telecopier, which HST called “the mojo wire.” We had one of those at the Gazette in the late ’70s and used it to fetch stories home from distant reporters. It was about as reliable as an Irish housekeeper around a liquor cabinet and made more bad noise than a busted chainsaw.
Now Patrick, just because you bring up the good Dr.’s name does not mean you should follow in his footsteps….especially when things look bleek. There are no cannons near you, right? We know Johnny Depp is probably not hanging around Bibleburg either; so far so good. Just remember: you could be in Flanders. However, from the look of some of the photos I saw it was not looking half-bad (at least weather-wise). I can’t say how the waffles were though because I am here and they are there. Ah waffles…..
Aah the good old days of doing literature searches, some with abstracts(!), for a room full of police officers and secretaries trying to get an associates degree using a TI 100thermal paper printing terminal with acoustic coupler (round rubber thingies for handset) while standing up at a pay phone dialed into an 800 number in California.
Oh Lockheed Dialog, BRS, AT&T, Texas Instruments where are you all now? 600 baud always meant you had time for another Coke while awaiting the chance to fix a typo in the search query.
Let’s all go out for waffles. Preferably some place warm.
Hey, I’m down for waffles. I bet Smiley’s, on Tejon, has great ones. Not sure how many of the DogS(h)ite posters are in the Springs, however…
To all you Johnnycomelatelys; I started with punched cards and finally quit about Windows 95 time. but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
Cali’s warm, about to get cooler and wet though. Belgium has better waffles, and the weather will be a push. Waffles are better when it’s cool though….Warm waffles, yum!