CenturyStink

November 24, 2024November 24, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments

Our Innertubes punctured at 11 a.m. Friday, a flat that that didn’t get fixed until 8 p.m. So that was … fun.

Actually, it was hardly an annoyance at all, barring the dealing with CenturyLink “customer service,” a maze of domestic bots and overseas humans whose basic American is much better than my Hindi but still something of a guessing game, tech-support-wise.

Herself wrangled the bots with her iPhone while I dealt with the Subcontinent on mine, and as per usual she brought home the bacon. So I got to tell my guy, “James,” that yes, there was an outage in our area and it would not be resolved until 11 p.m. Ever the newsman, even in retirement. I should’ve sent him a bill.

Anyway, even when it works, we have shit Innertubes in our little corner of The Duck! City (“Gateway to Los Lunas”).

We pay top dollar for bottom-of-the-barrel DSL, same price as in Bibleburg for half the speed, and it inches ever higher from month to month because of course it does.

Our Actiontec C1000A modem-router dates to 2012, making it two years older than the MacBook Pro I’m using to write this. It is of course “retired” — the Actiontec, not my Mac — and I don’t see any point in replacing either device because El Rancho Pendejo apparently isn’t wired for the zoom-zoom all you fiber-optic types take for granted.

When the place was built in 1970 the telephone pedestal box was installed at the east end of the property, as far from the house itself as it is possible to get without actually being in the arroyo. The wiring to said box may have been upgraded over the past five decades; the wiring to the house has not.

Thus we limp along with download speeds ranging from 6 to 12 mbps, and uploads under 1 mbps.

So, when we lose our DSL, well — ain’t no thang. Because our iPhones — with maybe two bars from Verizon down here at the bottom of the cul-de-sac — turn into personal hotspots that work just as well as our DSL router-modem. When it works.

So, winning? I guess. In a losing sort of way.

Getting big air

October 5, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 15 Comments

The 2024 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is off and running (well, flying), and proud we are of all of them.

One rarely sees this many swole-up gasbags outside a meeting of the U.S. House Budget Committee. But we can’t see ’em at all, buried as we are in a Foothills cul-de-sac, which is as close as I intend to get to the “action.” Mustn’t distract the tourists from their primary mission, to wit, pissing away their hard-earned moneys here in The Duck! City, “Gateway to Los Lunas.”

I may celebrate the kickoff by riding my ballooner, the Jones with its 2.4-inch Maxxis Ardents, just because I can. Them big fatties come in handy when a fella has to bunny-hop onto the sidewalk to dodge a distracted out-of-towner watching the skies instead of the road.

But I’ll confess I am curious about this evening’s skydiving, if only because of its sponsorship. Here’s hoping nobody has to take one for the team.

Schooled

August 14, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 43 Comments

In which local news coverage fails to pass the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.

This morning I have read three stories trumpeting $6.9 million in federal aid to help Albuquerque Public Schools acquire 20 electric school buses and related infrastructure — in the Albuquerque Journal, City Desk ABQ, and at KUNM — and not one of them tells me where APS will be getting its e-buses.

One would think that after the Albuquerque Rapid Transit debacle — in which e-buses from BYD began falling apart like big-box bicycles, and the understudy, New Flyer, suddenly faced a fraud complaint over charges that it failed to hold up its end of a wage-and-benefits deal — our local newsdawgs might want to sniff out something other than a PR flack’s farts. Especially since, as far as I know, diesel, hybrids, and compressed natural gas remain the modus operandi for the bulk of the city fleet.

This will apply to the APS fleet, too — once all the e-buses are buzzing along The Duck! City streets, they will represent about 10 percent of rolling stock.

So, after two cups of strong black coffee, two slices of toast, and much bad language Your Humble Narrator surfed hither and thither along the Infobahn before finally zooming in on a bus-dashboard photo in the City Desk ABQ story, where I spotted an IC logo, which, hey presto — belongs to IC Bus, which claims to be “the market leader in school bus manufacturing,” though I’ve never heard of it. But Wikipedia has.

Drilling down through the IC Bus website in the faint hope of finding out where these rigs come from I find the following: “We build them right, right here at home. “IC buses are made in Tulsa, Oklahoma, using quality materials, and are tested to rigorous safety and efficiency standards.”

Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Go Furthur, ladies and gents; go Furthur.

Surf’s up

June 10, 2024June 10, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 14 Comments

That garden hose will not be needed this morning.

“Dude. It’s actually raining,” I told my man Hal Walter yesterday via Messages. “If it continues at this torrid pace we could have an ounce of water on the property in two, three days.”

Ho ho, etc. That was at 2:19 p.m. Over the next four hours we got nearly an inch of rain with a side of hail that shotgunned more than a few leaves off the backyard maple.

We were under a flash-flood warning and our cul-de-sac looked like a pond tipped on one side, draining into the arroyo behind the house, one of many that funnel water from the foothills to the Rio.

We were happy to get the rain, seeing as we have a couple stupid-hot days coming up later in the week. The neighbor girls were dancing barefoot beneath umbrellas in the runoff.

And I was delighted to have logged a little trail time in and around Elena Gallegos Open Space before the mierda hit the abanico. Those trails hold up pretty well, but 0.86 inch of rain in a few hours is a big ask. We got just 0.27 inch in March, 0.33 inch in April, 0.06 inch in May, and none at all in June. Until yesterday.

In its absence it’s easy to forget the sheer power of running water. A few people got a harsh reminder yesterday; at least three were swept away in the arroyo system, and only two made it out alive.

(Not) for the birds

May 16, 2024May 16, 2024 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The April showers are a little late this year.

Hm. The weather seems less than ideal for the old bikey ridey this morning. The weather widget says we’ve gotten 0.15 inch since I oozed out of bed two hours ago, it’s still bucketing down, and I am no Laura Killingbeck. I prefer my velo-adventures sunny-side up with some toasty 65°-degree-plus temps if I can get ’em. Just ’cause I have mudguards doesn’t mean I wanna use ’em.

We Duck! Citizens enjoyed a high of 81° yesterday, well short of the record — 92° in 2022 — with zero precip’. In fact, the National Weather Service reports that we have had but a trace of moisture so far in May, and just 0.33 inch in April, a mere dribble compared to the usual half-inch.

Up to 0.24 inch since I started typing this post. Woof. We could corral those missing April showers today.

Anyone who has forgotten/is unaware how important water is to us here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where the yappy purse dogs roam free, can become wise following the online musings of water wizard John Fleck. Buy him a coffee if you can spare the funds; I attended one water-board meeting in the Seventies, as a cub reporter fueled by vile percolator joe, and I can assure you John needs all the proper java he can get.

In other news, our man Charles Pelkey is working the early shift in Laramie as local host of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and anyone who misses the glory days of Live Update Guy can catch his act on the Innertubes at Wyoming Public Media. That other fella he used to work with at LUG remains unemployable in print, broadcast, and online.

I do serve at least one small purpose, however. After my own cup of coffee I scattered some bird seed around under the patio cover so the tweeties could enjoy a snack out of the wet. Queuing up at the feeders today must feel like being a hobo outside a Seattle soup kitchen.