Nothing but blue skies

August 4, 2024August 4, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

The North Diversion Channel Trail, just below the Osuna-Bear Arroyo connection.

Too bloody much going on lately. Trying to corral my thoughts, if any, has been like chasing jackrabbits through a funhouse with a lacrosse stick, wearing clown shoes and oven mitts. In a word: unproductive.

I won’t bore you with the details. We’re talking First World problems here:

The Soma Double Cross at Elena Gallegos.

Buffing the rough edges out of El Rancho Pendejo in preparation for a houseguest. Stalking the elusive turnip for a promised dish (Whole Foods and Sprouts, nyet; Albertsons, da). Learning that I had failed to acquire the ingredients for another anticipated dish, the promise of which I had not been made aware, and the subsequent acquiring of same. Yet another round of flat-fixing, this time in the garage.

My favorite annoyance was an appointment at the local Apple Store’s Genius Bar, where I expected to be advised in fairly short order to hand over my elderly 15-inch MacBook Pro for a vigorous wash and brushup to resolve its “Apocalypse Now/Ride of the Valkyries” fans issue. There’s either some demonic technical haint in residence or enough hair in the case to build an entirely new cat to keep Miss Mia company. Whichever it is, I ain’t going in there looking for it. That’s what we pay Geniuses for.

But no. What I got was straight out of “Nothing but Blue Skies,” by Thomas McGuane. The scene where Frank Copenhaver and his estranged wife, Gracie, visit a Deadrock restaurant for conversation and something to eat. Conversation they get (Gracie insists). But eats, not so much, as waiters glide past without a glance in their direction, the thundering lunch herd slowly thins, and Frank comes to a rolling boil.

After the place empties out Frank finally takes the bull by the horns, flags down a table-wiping waiter, says they’d like to order.

“I’m sorry, but we’re closed,” replies the waiter.

The Apple Store wasn’t closed. But apparently upon my arrival I had not been properly logged in for my 3:30 appointment, which I did not learn until 4:15, when I was ’bout yay far from knocking over chairs and chasing a Genius through his kitchen.

And now I have another appointment on Tuesday.

So, yeah. That’s the scenic route toward explaining the lack of postage around here lately.

Speaking of scenic routes, the pix are from the rides I’ve been taking lately to keep my blood pressure on simmer as I await service.

2024: A Spaced Odyssey

February 10, 2024February 10, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 28 Comments

I am not a senile old fool.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply taking a cheap political shot, hoping to stop me from serving another term as Your Humble Narrator here at whatever the hell it is that we, or you, or I am doing at this whatchamacallit, the thing. The … bog? You know.

Now, it’s true that I may occasionally stare blankly at my iPhone, the way that monkey did at the glossy black rectangle in that movie — c’mon, you know the one — because the nice lady on the phone asked me for my phone number and I’m trying to look it up in Settings without hanging up on her because hey, I never call myself. Do you?

Hello? Hello?

Shit.

But I can assure you that while I’m pawing helplessly at that glossy black rectangle I no longer make the plaintive hooting sound. Like the monkey. The one in the movie. You know, where the bone turns into a spaceship and Siri or Alexa or Elon is trying to kill everyone and the young guy in the spaceship turns into an old guy in a Home who can’t remember his phone number? Is it HAL9000? No?

I do? I’m making it right now? I’m sure you’re mistaken. Whoever you are. Ook ook ook.

And sometimes I may forget who the president is, but only because I’m pretty sure it’s not the Red Skull or Pumpkinhead or Dick Tater, whatever the crazy orange fella’s called, the one who looks like a giant circus peanut with beady little eyes like a big fat rat with a mouth like an asshole and is always in the news because he keeps doing stupid shit and getting caught at it but nobody seems to be able to put him in jail and somehow they all think the other fella is the problem because he can’t remember who the King of the Moon is or the name of that movie with the monkey who can’t remember his phone number or how to find it in that big black iPhone that the Space Baby left somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, where the bones turn into Great Red Sharks driven through Bat Country by Hunter S. Thompson to Las Vegas, where an infinite number of monkeys are writing “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’24.”

Anyway, whoever’s president now seems to be a little quieter and more laid back and I don’t have to think about him all the goddamn time and I kind of like that because it’s restful and I seem to need a lot of naps lately. Like right now.

Piece of Cake

April 7, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

OK, I know you folks floating around out there in the Innertubes are dying to know all the deets about the exotic life of the retired velo-scribbler.

So, hold my fake beer and dig this:

Yesterday I went to Lowe’s for some lawn soil to spread over the recently seeded bare patches in the yard and gave ’em a good watering, then mowed the healthier bits of grass. Later I cooked up a big ol’ pot of jambayala.

This morning I toasted and tea’d Herself, who has a full day at the lab. Then I fed and watered Miss Mia Sopaipilla, giving her a few head-bumps in a sunny spot for dessert, and emptied her litter box.

Next I got a loaf of bread going and set about watering a few shrubs and one tree out front, using SuperDuper! to back up The Main Mac to an external drive, downloading an OS update, and washing the breakfast dishes (two cups of strong black coffee and one of strong black tea will lead to multitasking).

And now the garbage is going out. Boom! You can’t stop me, so don’t even try.

I hate to go all Hollywood on you little people like this, but I figure the few of you who still have jobs deserve to know how I’m pissing away your Social Security contributions on my rock-’n’-roll lifestyle.

Macintoast

February 5, 2022 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments

Progress marches on, towing me along behind it like a water skier who refuses to leave shore. You can practically hear the skis dragging across the lakeside gravel.

I’ve been noticing various hitches in the gitalong of my 15-inch 2014 MacBook Pro, which is the workhorse here at El Rancho Pendejo (“Your Gateway to Giggle City!”).

And as usual, the problem lies not with me, but with everybody else.

WordPress, The Washington Post, Esquire, and other stops along my daily dawdle all have been pissing on me from their considerable technological height, proclaiming that the MacBook’s 5-year-old OS (High Sierra, 10.13.6) and equally antiquated browser (Safari 13.1.2) are so 15 minutes ago, which as sayings go is likewise about as au courant as “Twenty-three skiddoo!”

It finally became so irksome that I felt compelled to take hold. WaPo and Chazbo Pierce’s site had both gotten as creaky as a geezer’s knees in February. And WordPress wouldn’t even let me swap headers on the blog, which is pretty basic stuff.

In a support chat I could sense the Happiness Engineer’s forehead bouncing rhythmically off the keyboard.

“Safari 13 is several versions behind the latest versions so I suspect that may be what is causing the issue,” s/he typed. “I would recommend that you try to access the site through a different browser such as Chrome if you’re not ready or able to update the Macs yet for whatever reason.”

Well, sheeyit. High Sierra is as good as it gets around here, Scooter. It’s on everything newer than mid-2012. And Google is evil no matter what they claim to be.

Still, it is winter, and I am retired, and also slightly bored. So I decided to do a little tinkering.

Not on the Main Machine, mind you. My testing bench would be the 13-inch 2014 MacBook Pro, the ’Book I use for road trips if I’m sleeping indoors. The 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air gets the callup if I’m tenting it.

First I paid a visit to my old buddy Mozilla, and hey presto, Firefox 96.0.3 works like a charm. But Firefox is awful needy — “Can I be your default browser? Please? Pleasepleaseplease?” — so I thought what the hell, let’s just bump the OS up a notch, see what happens. Can’t sing, can’t dance, too fat to fly.

I’ve been hinky about this shit ever since a long jump from Snow Leopard to Mavericks gave my 2009 iMac a brain bleed. But High Sierra to Mojave is only one little hop, just a year between releases. So I gave the boot drive a once-over with Disk Utility, downloaded a fresh copy of Mojave, and let ’er buck.

And so far, so good (knocking on wood). The 13-incher is my kitchen Mac when I’m not on the road, because I don’t like sitting down first thing, and anyway I have coffee to brew, breakfast to make. And as you see, all is smooth like Irish butter on homemade bread.

Old year, new Mac

December 31, 2021 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments

It’s an early Happy New Year for Herself …

Herself has been upping her MacGame this holiday season.

First she scored an iPhone 13, a Christmas present that replaced a beat-up 7 (unlike Your Humble Narrator, Herself works a phone like a rented mule).

And now, with the New Year climbing in our window with a dagger between its yellow teeth, she’s acquired a new M1 Mac Mini to supplant her 10-year-old MacBook Pro.

… assuming the migration goes as intended.

The MBP still functions. I had long since maxed out the memory and dropped in a 512GB SSD, but this was like adding a spoiler and a flame paintjob to a Datsun B210.

A rat’s nest of cables hooked to this, that and the other — an ancient ViewSonic monitor, USB hub, label printer, and so on and so forth — the MBP took up more space than a fat cat but rarely purred.

Neither of us is exactly a power user these days. I get by with a pair of 2014 MacBook Pros and in my Golden Years don’t really need anything with more oomph. But Herself is a big earner with her eBay sideline, and who wants to watch The Spinning Beach Ball of Boredom when you’re busy trying to skin some bargain hunter?

So, after briefly considering a pricier iMac, we pulled the trigger on the Mini. What the hell, someone has to keep Tim Cook in NFTs and Krugerrands.