Apple, Samsung and Hanes

February 2, 2015 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 34 Comments

What director Quentin Ferrentino sees just before the iMac hiccups, stutters and croaks.

Is the Super Bowl finally over? No, I see we’re still second-guessing coaches, lip-syncing sharks and that crucial, botched call — Nationwide’s decision to run that dead-kid ad instead of throwing it into the trash.

We didn’t watch any of it here at Rancho Pendejo, not even the ads. Herself was on a mission from God to clean up the joint, and I was doing a job of work, hammering away at a video review of the Novara Mazama for Adventure Cyclist and trying to troubleshoot ongoing technical glitches with the old iMac.

At 6 years of age, this ‘puter may be nearing the end of its useful existence, though a 15-year-old G3 “Pismo” PowerBook is still ticking right along with all its original equipment. Not so the iMac. Its optical drive croaked a while back, and ever since I “upgraded” to Mavericks I’ve been enjoying occasional and inexplicable freezes that force me into an irksome hard reset that occasionally costs me a bit of work. Kindly old Doc Google tells me I’m not alone in my suffering, and this is one of the reasons I’m dragging my feet on the Yosemite and iOS 8 upgrades.

Last night after a weirdo crash that left both monitors black, but with a moveable cursor, I booted into Safe Mode, which runs a few diagnostics, then said fuck it and booted again, this time into the Recovery HD, and ran Disk Utility.

The hard drive “appears to be OK,” says DU, so I repaired permissions and called it good. This morning nothing was on fire or defunct, which is better.

Now if Samsung will get around to installing a new drain pump in our 5-month-old washing machine, we’ll really have it going on. The goddamn thing has been on the sidelines for a week and I need to upgrade my undies to something a little, um, fresher.

Shhh!

September 28, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

The Erna Fergusson Library has rows of tables with power strips for the techno-fortunate who fetch their own machinery hither and thither.

Today my “office” is at the Erna Fergusson Library on San Mateo. I pulled the early shift at the Northeast Heights Satellite Coffee outlet, because a day without a breakfast burrito is like a day without sunshine, and then moved over here to free up some parking space for the caffeine-deprived. I’d have used the Juan Tabo branch, which is closer to Rancho Pendejo, but it’s closed on Sundays.

The phrase “your tax dollars at work” has become a punchline for eons, but I doubt it’s funny to the three dozen or so folks who were queued up outside in the hot sun, waiting for the library to open at 1 p.m. Most of them were in the line to use the facility’s computers. Having mine in a messenger bag — two of them, actually — I felt slightly yuppified and ostentatious.

Imagine doing without the Innertubes and computers in this day and age. If you want to go low tech, that’s one thing; but having to is something else, especially if you’re trying to find, oh, I don’t know, a job or health care or child care or something.

Zap comics

May 6, 2014May 6, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments

We had a spot of fun around here yesterday.

The Martin Drake Power Plant, the downtown eyesore that Moses brought with him from Egypt, caught fire and had to be shut down. Not to worry — the coal-fired relic only supplies a third of Bibleburg’s power — and as you can see from the photo at top, the city has a backup in place.

Boy, I bet the City Council wishes they’d given a green light (ho ho ho) to recreational-marijuana sales now. They’d have enough sales-tax revenue to build a solar array, six wind farms and a nuclear plant.

I can already see the slogan: “Puffin’ for Power: Get Lit And Stay Lit.”

Stoned again

April 13, 2014April 13, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

Niki Terpstra caught ’em napping en route to the Roubaix velodrome today. I was thinking maybe Sep Vanmarcke would be the guy this time around, and he was certainly one of them, but it was the Omega man who sealed the deal after 257km of dust and cobbles.

Comrade-Attorney Charles Pelkey decided on the spur of the moment to crank up the Live Update Guy machinery for the occasion, but technical difficulties prevented my participation. Chuckles is test-driving some new jabberware developed by a legal colleague, and it didn’t like me for some reason. Can’t imagine why — I’m such an easygoing, compliant, sweetheart of a fellow.

Speaking of dicks, Boom-Boom is coming off as something of one post-race, wondering at some length and volume why nobody seemed interested in giving him the old palanquin ride to a fifth cobble trophy. How big is your mantlepiece, anyway, Tommeke? Haven’t you been stoned enough for one lifetime, Boombeleh?

At least the winner was from your team. You could’ve gotten punk’d by Vanmarcke, Peter Sagan or (horrors!) Brave Brave Brave Sir Wiggo. Whoops, looks like you did.

Look for Belgium to change its name, move, and not leave a forwarding address.

Looney Tunes

February 19, 2014February 20, 2014 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 23 Comments

If you ever feel the urge to drive yourself stone batshit crazy, I recommend shooting a bunch of video with two GoPro HERO 3 Black Editions, only one of which works with any degree of reliability, and then editing the pile in iMovie 10, which you have never used, on an 11-inch MacBook Air, which is basically an iPhone with delusions of grandeur and a keyboard.

Good God awmighty. My brain hurts. Especially when I recall that I did this for free, just to see if I could. The next time I see a beach ball spinning that wildly, that often, I’d better be on an actual beach, and full of drugs, too.