Geezer with a Grudge: So Much for Our Data

Apr 21, 2014

So Much for Our Data

The Geezer used bike spreadsheet has been pretty much wreaked. Some douchebag named "ahmed" has been playing with the sort feature, scrambling the bikes and the rest of the data. Overall, we found that the average Craig's List bike was ridden about 1,700 miles. There was a lot of cool data in the spreadsheet, but the last time I backed it up was last fall. So, I pulled the link from the website. It was fun while it lasted.

4 comments:

Unknown said...: Too bad about the spreadsheet! Google Drive should have the complete revision history, so I'll back up the current version and see if there's any way to recover the data. Worst case scenario, I might be able to put together another version that's a little less error-prone whenever I get some free time.; 4/22/14, 3:56 AM
Unknown said...: I've reverted the spreadsheet to the last good version, and I've gone through the changelogs from when it was created up until now. It looks like it started getting sorted and re-sorted only a few months after it went up, but the data didn't end up garbled, thankfully! (Although the stats at the top-right certainly wandered all over the spreadsheet during the sorting)

Whenever I get some free time I'll see if I can put together something to make it easier for people to sort and play with the underlying data without the risk of corrupting it, since people clearly like to sort it and look for trends.; 4/22/14, 5:24 AM
T.W. Day said...: Cool. Thanks William. I'll put the link back up on the front page when you have time to make the changes.; 4/22/14, 9:37 AM
Trobairitz said...: A chosen few ruining it for everyone.

Why is it people feel the need to f*ck with things that aren't theirs? And why aren't you allowed to flog them?; 4/22/14, 9:59 AM

The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.