Month: December 2009

What has nine fingers and no new iMac?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Got outdoors yesterday for my first ride since dislocating my communications system (the middle digit on my left hand), and while it felt good to be cycling outdoors for a change, it also felt kinda creepy and weird.

The reconfigured Voodoo was just fine. But I haven’t had to rehab’ a damaged body part since my last broken collarbone in 1994 or thereabouts, and I had forgotten how tentative it always makes me. I kept lifting the damaged paw off the bars for every little bump, which is not always such a hot idea. But I lasted an hour without incident and was glad to have taken the plunge.

Especially when I awakened to 18 degrees, which is pretty much where the thermometer has been pegged all day. Got to get ’em while you can in December. And the splint came off today, so I may be riding inside for a while anyway, even when and if the sun shines.

Meanwhile, for everyone who called me a sissy for not immediately leaping on the chance to buy a new Mac, scope this out — seems the 27-inch iMac did an end run around quality control.

I read some of the comments and a few of these poor sods are on their third bum iMac. The things apparently are showing up with shattered screens, flickering screens, bootup issues, wireless keyboards and mice that won’t hold a Bluetooth connection, or just plain DOA. And the problems apparently are not confined to the 27-incher — there are a few 21.5-inchers in there as well.

Is it hardware? Software? A combination of the two? Or the fact that at least some of these iMacs are shipping in anonymous brown boxes that don’t tell the purchasers — or the delivery people — anything about there being pricey computers inside?

So, pffffbbbbllllllhhh to you and yours, wiseguys. I think I’ll wait until Cupertino chases the Chinese cooties out of this lot before I lay another truckload of Dead President Trading Cards on the Black Turtleneck Mob.

The forever war?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Well, there you have it: More meat for the grinder, says the prez (video here). Can’t say I’m happy about it, especially the caveat about withdrawals beginning in July 2001 to be dependent upon “conditions on the ground,” the ground in that part of the world being unstable in more ways than one (earthquakes and crazy mean bastards). Here’s the CIA World FactBook rundown on the joint for those of you who, like me, have never been there.

I like the idea of a deadline: “You have this long to help us kick the bad guys’ ass or you can fight them by yourselves.” Ditto the diversion of American money from the mayor of Kabul — a.k.a. President Hamid Karzai, a gent who by all accounts is so crooked that he can meet himself coming around a corner — to local officials in the boondocks.

I also like the long-overdue recognition of the financial toll here at home: “Um, yes, wars cost money, just like everything else, only more so. This one will be in the budget; we don’t care how the last guy did it. Will there be anything else? May I interest you in some health care, environmental action and jobs, perhaps?”

The fact that the Repuglicans are lining up against the prez should be encouraging, but is not, given their behavior to date. It’s not hard to get a dumb dog to bark.

Dexter Filkins, author of “The Forever War,” appears to have his doubts. So do I. I just don’t articulate them as well.

• Late update: Looks like Steve Benen at Political Animal shares my skepticism.

Down and all the way out

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
A Farm Service Administration photo of families camped roadside during the Great Depression, taken from the Library of Congress\' American Memory collection.
A Farm Service Administration photo of families camped roadside during the Great Depression, from the Library of Congress' American Memory collection.

Here’s a sad story for you, straight out of “The Grapes of Wrath”: A homeless bricklayer profiled in the Bibleburg Gaslight on Monday was found dead outside his tipi on Thanksgiving morning — four days before the story ran.

Ray Medina, 53, told reporter Carlyn Ray Mitchell that he came to Bibleburg three years ago from Function Junction, hunting construction work at Fort Cartoon. Four months ago he moved to the banks of Fountain Creek, living first in a tent, then in the tipi. He gave the tent to a camp mate once the tipi was finished.

“None of us really want to be here,” Medina told the G. “I’m hoping (construction) will pick back up, hopefully in the spring.”

Added officer Dan McCormack with the Bibleburg Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Team: “He was convinced he was going to get a job and get off the street. Obviously his plans weren’t working out for him.”

Lots of plans are failing to reach fruition these days. Paul Krugman writes that there are six times as many of us looking for work as there are job openings, “and the average duration of unemployment — the time the average job-seeker has spent looking for work — is more than six months, the highest level since the 1930s.”

Here in Bibleburg, the unemployment rate is hovering at 7.5 percent, a slight improvement over the first half of the year attributed not to an improving economic climate, but to discouraged job-seekers dropping out of the labor market because there is no work.

So many tipis; so little hope.