Making a joyful (Velo)noise unto the lords

January 9, 2012January 9, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments

Thanks to one and all for playing VeloNoise on Sunday. It was an interesting experiment in what may well be modern journalism’s ultimate corporate goal — one unpaid staffer using his own tools to transform free resources into paying copy.

The only downsides, from management’s vulturine perspective, is that (a) there was no paying copy, since WordPress does not permit advertising on its free blogs; and (2) the enterprise lacked the customary seven layers of senior executive vice presidents farting through silk and issuing contradictory edicts to the pixel-pusher at the keyboard.

I slapped the website together for less than a hundred smacks, most of it spent to nail down the domain names and the rest to point those names to a WordPress blog that uses the same template as this one for simplicity’s sake. The banner I built in Photoshop Elements 8. The only thing left to do was digest video and excrete words.

Where’s it all leading, you ask? Beats the hell out of me. I basically did it for laughs, a bit of performance art directed at Pharaoh as I fled Egypt. “How’s this for bricks without straw, bitch!”

With that accomplished, VeloNoise could become many things — a blog, a column title, a T-shirt. As usual, I’m just making it up as I go along. Whatever happens as a consequence is liable to be a surprise to all of us.

Hey, children, what’s that sound. …

January 7, 2012January 8, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

VeloNoise — One bad idea deserves another.

It struck me today, as I was enjoying a leisurely spin around Bibleburg, that this was the first weekend in the better part of quite some time that I hadn’t been confined to the VeloBarrel, shoveling frantically to keep my breathing apparatus above … well, I suppose you could call it water.

Of course, it was also the first weekend in the better part of quite some time that I was “at liberty,” or “resting,” as Steinbeck said the theatrical people had it, or “down to two part-time jobs,” as I describe it.

This gives a man time to ride, weather permitting. Also to think.

So, as Sunday seems more of a snow day, maybe I’ll do for free what I used to do for money at the other place — watch streaming video of the Belgian and U.S. national cyclo-cross championships and pop a short recap of each up on the Innertubes at www.velonoise.com.

That’s Velo-Noise, by the way. Sound it out: velo-noise. And no disrespect to my fellow Velo-comrades is intended. But it’s a new season, and we’re wearing different jerseys. I’ve just reverted to amateur status — which means I’m doing it for fun, not money.

• Late update: I’m gonna try a little experiment and embed the code for the streaming video over at VeloNoise, just ’cause. I owe it to science.

Top off your lap, sir?

January 7, 2012January 7, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 12 Comments

The 13-inch 2011 MacBook Air — All I've ever asked is everything I've ever wanted. Does that make me a bad person?

When Competitor Group Inc. and I parted ways on the first day of the New Year I suggested that Herself should buy me a new MacBook to ramp up my mobility to full rumormongering speed for 2012.

I won’t tell you what she suggested that I do.

Some people hit the pubs or the comfort food as the wolf howls outside the door. Me, I examine the toy box and generally find it lacking a certain something. One wonders why Santa discriminates against the bad kids. There oughta be a law.

It’s not as though I’m lacking for laptops. The main machine is a 13-inch 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook circa 2006, but there are others: a 12-inch 1.5 GHz G4 “Little Al” PowerBook, a 14.1-inch 500 MHz G3 “Pismo” PowerBook and even a 12-inch 800MHz G3 iBook that smells like a pencil eraser when I boot it up because of a poor adhesive selection by someone at Apple HQ.

The problem is that they are all old, slow and heavy, like their owner. And also nearing the end of their useful lives, but let’s not go there, even metaphorically.

All still work, but frankly the G3 ‘books are way off the back — still suitable for checking mail, writing screeds and light photo/cartoon editing, but the equivalent of Nash Metropolitans when navigating the modern Infobahn. The G4 is better, but it’s 7 years old — no biggie for a car (my Forester is also a 2005 model), but senior-citizen country for a computer.

And the MacBook? It’s only a year younger and has already disappointed me once, FUBARing a hard drive after less than three years of light use. I’ve never trusted it since — and never really had to, since the lion’s share of my work for the past few years involved helping edit the VeloNews.com website, which is tough to do on any laptop, unless you have a giant external monitor attached.

I used a 2009 21.5-inch 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with a second monitor, a 22-inch ViewSonic. Charles Pelkey used a PC with three monitors. His office looks like the bridge of the USS Enterprise.

Having abandoned professional web editing, I no longer require that kind of visual real estate. But I’ve gotten used to the speed of the newer computer, and it’s hard to go back in time when I hit the road, something I’d like to do more of in 2012 if only to rub up against some fresh ideas for irritating people.

Let’s see here — a guy can pick up a refurbished 2011 1.7 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 MacBook Air for just over a G at the Apple Store. I wonder how much plasma I’d have to sell.

I need to lose a little weight anyway.

Give ’er a hand

January 5, 2012January 5, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Pikes Peak peeks out from behind the Garden of the Gods.

One nice thing about quitting a pain-in-the-ass job and not being pissed off all the time is that I find myself noticing the little things again, now that the red haze of homicide unrealized no longer clouds my vision.

Case in point. Having shot a Velo-sized hole in my wallet I’ve spent a couple of days test-driving grocery stores that are not Whole Foods to gauge the extent, quality and price of their organic offerings. Yesterday it was a Safeway, today a King Soopers. Neither was particularly impressive, barring a real steal on Greek yogurt at the King Soopers.

As I walked into the Safeway some pretty young women of color were walking out, weaving around an elderly white man in a motorized wheelchair. One complained, “I’m hungry.” Another said, “So eat, nigga!” The poor old boy in the wheelchair did a slo-mo double-take, wearing the sort of expression you might expect from a pro-lifer who just saw an abortion-clinic janitor pitchforking defunct fetuses into a Dumpster.

Then today, going into the Soopers, I noticed another attractive young woman who seemed very pleased with herself, strutting along as though she were a model on a runway. I’m guessing her mood had something to do with the dusty, perfect imprint of a left hand on her right butt cheek. That’ll put some spring into the step of just about anybody, even a 57-year-old underemployed rumormonger of the cycling persuasion.

Speaking of which, between bouts of people-watching I squeezed in a nice 90-minute ride today. Goddamn shiftless disloyal Fenian bastards. Can’t hold onto a part-time job for more than 22 years and yet they have the cheek to insult the working man with bouts of casual cycling during business hours.

The cheese does not stand alone

January 4, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Fear and Loathing, Campaign Trail style — The more things change, etc.

So, dead heat between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in Iowa, eh? Guess nobody bothered to write in Haywood Jablomie, Jack Meehoff or I.P. Freeley.

Watching the food fight over the GOP pestilential nomination has been like watching a Coen Brothers treatment of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72.” Or maybe a round of musical chairs with all the participants crazed on mescaline.

Mitt Romney keeps smiling because he owns all the chairs, the building in which they sit and the surrounding properties to boot. But that doesn’t make him any less a bag of runny owlshit that nobody’s buying as long as there’s anything else for sale.

The big cheese may eventually stand alone. All the smart money’s on it. But right now he’s doing a tango with Man-On-Dog Santorum, and he can’t be feeling too frothy about it.