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.

Screen saver

November 27, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

I’ve committed a grave crime against capitalism.

My old ViewSonic monitor started acting up a while ago. It wouldn’t reliably wake from sleep, and sometimes I had to turn it on and off a half dozen times to get it to work more or less reliably.

A consultation with good old Mr. Google found that monitors from a wide variety of outfits have been getting sideways due to bum capacitors. A competent electronics type probably could have cracked the case and fixed it himself, but we’re talking about me here.

So, rather than bundle up and camp outside the Best Buy in hopes of knuckle-dusting my way to a new one at a door-busting, unbelievable, rock-bottom, low, low price, I hauled the old one over to Voelker Research and had it fixed.

I feel so … dirty.

Rise of the machines

March 23, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments

We seem to have a rebellion on our hands here.

First a video camera gets snarky with me on Thursday, and then yesterday my backup hard drive commits suicide and tries to take the iMac with it.

I’m talking refusal to boot, the blue screen with spinning wheel, all the dire portents of the End Times, which the Bible tells us will be heralded by an Irish-American bearing a smoking Visa card to the Apple Store (see the MacBook of Jobs, Ch. 10.6.8).

So I forced a shutdown, unplugged all the peripherals, reminded myself of the first of the Four Noble Truths (life is qualified by suffering), and hit the power button.

Banzai!

A series of diagnostics indicated that my 2TB miniStack v3 Firewire drive was FUBAR, and today the wizards at Other World Computing agreed and told me to return that bad boy for regrooving. It’s the only product of theirs that’s ever failed me, and they’re taking care of bizniz, more power to their Torx wrenches.

I won’t be able to back up my bullshit until they send a replacement, but I expect that the world can get by with only one whiff of my stink for a few days.