Technology is not always our friend. For example, when I awakened this morning to the sound of the furnace fan running endlessly while the bedroom only grew colder, I surmised that our ditzy Heil heater was on the fritz again (ain’t no flies on me).
Then I clocked in over at VeloNews.com only to find the site down and some arcane error message about “guru meditation” and “varnish cache server.” Nobody told me the cache server required varnishing, and anyway, can’t the guru do it between meditations? I’m a busy man.
• Late update: Ho, ho. Seems “Guru Meditation” is the name of an error that occurred on early versions of the Commodore Amiga computers when they crashed. And here I thought we’d been running the site on a Mac SE. Live and learn. Speaking of which, looks like new-furnace time. Time to start logging some OT somewhere.
Mad Blog Media 
“Speaking of which, looks like new-furnace time. Time to start logging some OT somewhere.”
Pardon the schradenfreud, but this is why I rent. Whenever my kindly and elderly landlord drops by to fix something I don’t want or feel like taking on he always laments “In my next life I want to be a tenant”. Not to mention the advantage of not being constrained to the local zip codes when searching for that elusive job-thing.
Back when the price of real estate was going sky-high around here and we were enjoying the “gas and oil boom that will NEVER end!!” (it ended), everyone told me that I should buy, buy, buy. Foolish me, I didn’t heed their advice.
And now I have the flexibility to leave here when I finally find that new paradise to call home. I’m looking for a place with good roads, little traffic, polite drivers and happy, friendly, open-minded, progressive people. I’m thinking Bibleburg, what do you think?
True dat! We rent our shack in Sioux City for the same reasons. Of course we heard plenty from the “American Dream Homeowners Club” about how we’re “throwing our money away” but don’t hear it so much these days. Our landlord DID ask me the last time I wanted something fixed – “do you want to buy the place?” I replied “not if I can avoid it” but decent rental housing seems tough to come by here nowadays (all the foreclosed folks must be livin’ in ’em?) so if he sez, “Buy it or get out!” we might have to start thinking about happy-homeownership..AGGHHHH! Meanwhile, it’s time to start the ravioli party–Buon weekend tutti!
Gents,
I hear and understand. My folks didn’t buy their first (and only) home until the old man was in his 50s, but I’ve bought three now (including the original family homestead). Were it not for Herself, I’d be a renter. It is her contention that people of quality own property. I, as the peripatetic child of itinerant parents, am dubious of all fixed locations. For example, people can find you there, and not all of them are bearing gifts. Also, sometimes their components fail and someone must repair them. Preferably not me.
Right now we’re looking at a plethora of projects — a new roof, fresh insulation, the removal of one diseased tree and the installation of a couple fresh ones, and suddenly the friggin’ furnace. This device always saves its fainting spells for a weekend, when the repair people charge an arm, a leg and both nuts to pop round to tell you your furnace doesn’t work. Thanks, Sparky, I kinda got that feeling when I woke up freezing my ass off. Now get your greasy hands off my nuts, please.
You can always move to the PetroMetro. It’s almost never cold here (I won’t mention the staggering heat and humidity for nine months). Housing is very reasonable (because we have no zoning). There are numerous jobs to be had (in both oil and gas). You get damn good at 40k time trialing (’cause it’s tabletop flat). The air you breathe stimulates four out of your five senses (see, smell, feel, and taste). We have alligators. We have West Nile virus. Thirty-percent of our population is morbidly obese. We have over 8,000 restaurants. We have over 135 golf courses. You can see I-10 from space (it’s 26 lanes wide). Fake boobs were invented here. We have both Joel Osteen (Lakewood Church) and Pastor Ed Young (Second Baptist Church, 53,000 members and growing). In fact, I’ll let Pastor Young tell you more about our fair city and it’s surrounding communities. http://www.second.org/
Help me, Jeebus.
I hear the Islands are nice this time of year. But the $8 loaf of bread and $10 gallon off milk might put you off. But who needs that when there are pineapples aplenty! Not to mention ice.
The islands were nice, if you liked bulldozers, overpriced food, overpriced housing, and overpriced everything else. A 1300 sq. foot home 12 miles from work, one half of a duplex built on a postage stamp plot of land (5,000 sq. feet), cost us 330,000 bucks in 1992 dollars and was up to 700k during the housing boom about five years ago–of course we sold our home and moved to the Southwest before the price went sky high and so we missed out on the gravy train. Not to mention, Honolulu has wall to wall traffic to cycle in.
The good news was the Trade Winds generally blew the smog away and the Aloha Spirit really exists. As my wife used to say, “Live Aloha, Die Broke”. A friend of ours silkscreened that quip onto a t-shirt and made some money off of it, ironically enough.
Trying to escape the proliferation of developers, we kept moving farther and farther east on Oahu until we were overlooking the Maui Channel; the ‘dozers finally trapped us there like Paulus in Stalingrad, but we had a plane ticket. The next move was The Big One. We might not have the lovely ocean and volcano view in BombTown, but we don’t have the hassle of super high prices and smelling your neighbor’s armpit in the morning, either. Plus, a cup of coffee at the end of North Mesa, overlooking the Rio Grande Rift towards the Sangres, is pretty damn nice.
I loved Hawaii and still do, but it wasn’t easy.
Should have noted that I (almost) never had the hassles with angry and aggressive drivers in Honolulu that I do here on da Mainland. Not sure that has changed out there, but in spite of the traffic, Oahu was a fabulous place to ride once you knew the roads.
One of the wonderful things about living in Kalama Valley was we could roll out of bed in the morning and get in a 40-50 mile tandem ride on the Windward side with nary a traffic light to be found, riding through the back roads of Waimanalo, Kailua, Olomana, and Kaneohe. People really were more laid back, in spite of the pressures or maybe because of them. Even the ride home from UH Manoa to Hawaii Kai, if done right, had a lot of quiet (for Oahu) roads built into it and could be a 15-17 mile workout, which I often did instead of the straight, 11 mile shot down the highway. One thing you would NOT want to do is to drive a car to town during rush hour (6:30 to 8:15 a.m. when I lived there). That was like being stuck on flypaper. But that bike lane on Kalanianaole Highway was godsent, or Campagnolo-sent, depending on your point of view.
A very few cycling friends of mine predictably would get jerked around in Waimanalo but I once told them that they telegraphed “obnoxious haole” exceptionally well; it didn’t surprise me that they got stink-eye in that traditional Hawaiian community. Slow down for the keiki playing on those backroads, brah, and the locals will respect you. It was all about community. Be part of it.
So I keep asking…what the hell am I doing here? Like Larry, I am getting increasingly alienated from this formerly great nation of ours.
I’m impressed, O’G. How is it you managed to qualify for a mortgage with a job description of “cartoonist and editor for a bicycle magazine”? Especially with a resume, like mine, that reads like the yellow pages? Perhaps it was back in the day when they were handing out mortgages like Halloween candy.
And Jeff, thanks for the invite to Petro-Metro, former home of Ken Lay and Enron (Ken’s still alive and well, by the way). Not that long ago I was inquiring about jobs around here for a geologist such as myself when I frequently heard the question, “Willing to relocate to Houston?”. No offense, but the conversation tended to end about there.
Khal, thanks for the insider info on the Sandwich Islands. I figured that Mark Twain’s travel advice on the place might be getting a bit dated, and we never did hear back from Cap. Cook on what he thought of the Isles. Unfortunately, I doubt I could afford even the plane trip right now; besides, I plan on moving everything with my lil’ Toyota pickup, and the last I checked it couldn’t swim very well. Thinking ahead, though, I’ve decided to get in on the “ground” floor by buying property on Lo’ihi, which ought to be cheap right now since it’s still 970 meters underwater.
http://cycleitalia.blogspot.com/2010/10/lights-camera-pasta.html has details and photos from last night’s ravioli party. Our gorgeous fall weather continues here, so nice outside I’ll probably keep going out on the bike until I get tired of it — doesn’t happen like that for me around here often. Should we start sending blankets (or firewood) out to Bibleburg for OG?
I dunno, John. With speculation being what it is these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is already selling overpriced Lo’ihi futures.
re: Guru Mediation – This brings to mind my favorite error message haiku:
Errors have occurred.
We won’t tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.
But now back to the more pressing issue……Amiga?!?!?!!? No wonder the VeloSnooze site is so late 80s. Give ol’ Max there a Coke and see if that picks him back up. Ya think they could run with something from this century??