Category: Bloggus interruptus

Hand me the Bravo Foxtrot Hotel

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

OK, I’ve done a little research, hollered for help, cursed a whole bunch, sipped a glass or two or three, and finally repaired and optimized my WordPress database, so let’s see if this has sent the censorship gremlins packing.

If for some reason you find yourself unable to comment on one of my brilliant online observations, please fire off a NastyGram® to our retarded IT guy, otherwise known as Your Humble Narrator, to wit, me. But if I were you, I’d spend my time enjoying the Fourth of July weekend instead of hanging around here, waiting to see if I can come up with a fresh way of saying, “This fucking sucks.”

Or, if you’re truly, hopelessly and spectacularly bored, pop on by VeloNews.com at 9 a.m. Mountain time on Friday, when the Boulder-based Journal of Competitive Cycling will be running its second 2010 Tour de France Round Table. It’s set up like one of Charles Pelkey’s live updates, but instead of following a bike race online you get to ask the editors and reporters how we’ll be following a bike race online — to wit, the impending three-week dash around Frogland.

I skipped the first TdF Round Table for reasons that are better left unsaid, but I may chime in tomorrow, because it will be the last chance I get to crack wise for three long weeks.

Ghosts in the machine

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

OK, folks, bear with me here — the WordPress install on this site is getting buggier by the moment, like a GI’s skivvies in a Thai whorehouse, and I may have to attempt a software update or a shift to a new hosting provider.

I’ve backed up the database and the entire WP folder, and the automatic update is just sitting there in the admin tool, winking frantically at me like a strumpet with a crack habit. But the thing is, I have a clusterfuck with the VeloFolks tomorrow and a visitation by the mom-in-law on Thursday and a BRAIN deadline on Friday and the Tour de France on Saturday.

So what I’m sayin’ is, don’t be surprised by a bit of weirdness — like comments shutting themselves off without authorization from the Home Office — and a lot of radio silence in the next few days. It ain’t that I don’t love youse, y’crazy bastids, youse.

If the whole shebang should blow up in my face, look for me at Mad Blog Media (The Freeware Edition) until the dust settles. Peace out.

WordPressed

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 1 Comment

Looks like the comments done went and shut theyselfs off again, dagnabbit. All this new-fangled technology ain’t worth a warm bucket ‘a spit, you ask me. It’s a helluva world when the damn’ software makes the meatware’s decisions without so much as a by-your-leave.

A casual search through the WordPress forums finds many references to this issue, but no solutions. And since VeloNews.com is also a WordPress construct and has many of its own interesting gremlins, I’m not certain that upgrading to v3.0 of the software will solve my problem.

Anyway, the yak factory should be back in business, for recent posts, anyway. When this happens the only way to re-enable comments — which are supposed to be permanently enabled for everyone who has had one previous observation approved by the Sultan of the Sandbox, to wit, Your Humble Narrator — is to go into every post, click the comments-permitted box, save the post, rinse and repeat. Life, short, etc.

Until the next time, then, you may fire at will.

Are you ready for some football?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Trying to add to my limited stores of cultural literacy, I switched the idiot-box controller from “video” to “TV,” manipulated the rabbit ears and plunked down in the rocker for a Sunday afternoon’s worth of Entertainment, American Style — the NFL on CBS, starring the Denver Broncos vs. the Oakland Raiders.

That lasted, oh, about 10 minutes.

Judas Priest, how can people watch this crap? Every other play was punctuated by three or four minutes of ads for wee-wee drugs, fast cars, watery beer, bad TV, worse movies and pricey electronic gizmos (including the new BlackBerry Storm, a Verizon-only iPhone rival).

And you know it’s only gonna get worse from Black Friday onward as panicked retailers start discounting this, that and the other in hopes of getting us to retrieve the Visa cards from cold storage, march down to the mall and do what Americans do best — buy a whole shitload of stuff they don’t need and can’t afford.

I’m no different. I like toys. Ask Herself, she’s keeping a list, and that sucker is longer than the original manuscript for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” There’s another guy who had trouble controlling his appetites.

But I’m trying really hard to be sensible these days.

“Hi, I’m Patrick, and I’m a shopaholic.”

“Hi, Patrick!”

I have not rushed out and bought an iPod Touch, or an iPhone, even though I know Steve Jobs may have to start wearing mock black turtlenecks if I continue to refuse the Kool-Aid. A Honda Element does not, as yet, darken my doorway. I haven’t even augmented the Mad Dog arsenal, though the local militia seems convinced that Obama is coming for our guns and it’s time to buy buy buy before the blue helmets leap out of the black helicopters onto our brownish lawns.