I remember watching the marathon at the Olympics. Near the end of the race they enter Athens, which is the signal that they're just about to the finish. That's about where I am in the marathon that is getting ready for the Origins convention. I'm just about to re-enter the city. As you can imagine, I'm kind of worn out, and just hoping that I have enough left in my reserves to give that final kick that will put me over the finish line ahead of the competition. Wish me luck.
Staggering towards the finish line
Ross
Generally speaking, when the Tour de France is not actually being ridden I try and keep my coverage to a minimum to avoid alienating those readers who have not yet discovered the magic of cycling. However, since after tomorrow the next time I'll blog is Tuesday the 5th (taking all next week off to focus on the Origins convention), I need to get my pre-tour coverage in while I can.
In addition to T-Mobile announcing their team, we also have the Phonak line-up, which is missing Tyler Hamilton but includes Floyd Landis, one of the many dark-horse contenders for the podium. Then of course, there's the Discovery Channel team. Supporting Armstrong is a lot of the people from last year, but also includes Paolo Savoldelli, the guy who just barely won the Giro.
Levi Leipheimer has switched from Rabobank to Gerolsteiner and along with the aforementioned Landis and the perennial Armstrong, my dream of an American podium is alive and well. I got to tell you, I'm getting pretty excited. Now I just have to figure out how I'm going to watch it.
Too fat to cycle, but just the right size to watch it
Ross
My sleep schedule is starting to return to normal. Last night I slept between 4 pm and 6:30 pm and then again between about 1:30 am and 7:00 am -- still not ideal, but getting better. In more good news, they found the boy who had gone missing in the Uintas. He had been lost for four days, which if you think about it, is a long time. I guess he had seen some searchers but had avoided them. I suppose that's an example of making our children too wary of strangers.
I watched part of the AFI's 100 top movie quotes show last night. It was nice to see so many quotes from Casablanca and I confess to not realizing that the great quote of, "We don't need no stinking badges," was not originally from Blazing Saddles. Speaking of lists, it was nice to see that the five finalists out of the Discovery Channel's top 100 Americans did not include Dr. Phil or Michael Jackson.
And finally after years and years of splitting their efforts between Zabel and Ullrich, T-Mobile (fomerly Telekom) has decided to leave Zabel off the roster and focus all of their efforts around Ullrich. And let me tell you, it's an impressive team. In addition to Ullrich, they have Kloden (#2 last year), Vinokourov (#3 two years ago) and Seville (best young rider a few years ago). I think Armstrong will have to ride as well as he's ever done to keep ahead of that team.
Awaiting the hour of my doom
Ross
Here was my sleep schedule for the weekend: It started with me staying up until 5 am Saturday morning, and I slept till only 7 am. I took a nap in the afternoon of about two hours, but then was up till 7 am Sunday morning. I slept until around 12:30 and then woke up to go to church (where ironically enough, I had to teach a lesson partially about the need for sleep). I lasted until 7 pm Sunday night before going back to bed. I hoped to sleep until the next morning, but ended up waking up at midnight. That's when I realized that my sleep schedule was completely screwed.
After waking up yesterday at about midnight, I slept for an hour in the morning and then for two hours between about 6 pm and 8 pm. When I went to bed at 6 I intended to go to bed for the night, but that was not in the cards. I tried a couple more times to go back to sleep, but it wasn't until around 1:30 am that I finally was able to go to sleep. 7:30 (the drop-dead time for me to be able to make it to work on time) came far too early.
My friend Ed asked why they could pay you for plasma, but not for whole blood. Apparently they worry if they pay people for blood that they will start to lie about whether they have AIDS and stuff like that. But apparently because of the "simpler" nature of plasma they're able to heat sterilize it which elimates that risk... PBS has a on the shady practice of plasma donation.
So very, very tired
Ross
Driving to work today, they were talking about how California was hit last night by its fourth earthquake this week. I guess everyone in California is pretty edgy right now. Though I guess seismologists will tell you that this is no big deal; this sort of thing happens all the time in an "active zone." But I guess that's the way foreshadowing is -- if nothing happens, you forget about it, and if something does happen you say, oh I should have known, there were all those signs...
I'm going on another big work binge this weekend and taking Monday off. I'm not sure what I'll do for Monday's blog; last Monday's entry had a decidedly mixed reaction. Perhaps I'll just refer people to someone else's blog. Course, then they'll probably never come back. I guess you'll just have to wait until Monday to find out.
The Straight Dope website gets updated every Friday and this time they really had a great collection of articles. The first was a debunking of the story behind the term "missionary position," the second was an examination of a study done to determine why the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard was so annoying and finally, to cap it all off was an examination of why women athletes are always small chested. Truly a cornocopia of knowledge and entertainment.
Revolution in the making
Ross
In reference to the question about Tyler Hamilton in the comments: He was suspended for two years. He's still trying to appeal, but I certainly can't imagine any scenerio under which he would be able to ride in the tour. Actually my wife has been following the whole thing much more closely than I; maybe she'll post her own version of events in the comments. I am still inclined to believe that he's innocent (for purely visercal reasons) but after talking to some of the pathologists I work with here at the lab, I'm less inclined than I was.
My wife and I watched "Meet the Parents" last night; she didn't really like it. She said that there were no sympathatic characters in the movie. While I certainly agree with that assessment, I don't think it necessarily detracts from the humor of the movie. Certainly many of the funniest movies are based on being completely deviod of sympathetic characters. Think "Animal House."
Finally, someone is claiming they found 137 gold bars in Delta, Utah. Besides the fact that there has been no indiependent verification, 137 gold bars don't go missing every day. So unless they can tie this find (which also includes Civil War era weapons apparently) into some historical event, I have even more doubts as to it's authenticity. I guess the hold up is that the finder is willing to tell the government where he found it, but only if he gets 40% of the money....
Running on about a quarter tank
Ross
For those not interested in cycling, you should probably just skip this one. Well, the Tour is right around the corner and once again it's time to make my annual bet with my dad. Each year we go double or nothing, but each year (at the insistence of my mother, I imagine) he makes the bet easier. This year it's up to $320 and I can choose to either predict the winner or predict two of the three podium finishers. I'm choosing the latter and I'm going to pick Armstrong and Ullrich. Ullrich is in the lead at the Swiss Tour and Armstrong and Discovery are looking very strong in the Dauphine.
As a cost-saving measure we got rid of extended cable last year, so we currently don't get OLN. I'm not sure if I can make it through July without being able to watch the tour. I know I'll be kicking myself if it's really close. Maybe I'll call up Comcast later today and see how much it would cost to add enough channels to get OLN back. Of course, Tyler Hamilton is not going to be in the tour, so my enjoyment is somewhat lessened right from the beginning.
Of course while on the subject of cycling I'm sure everyone wants to know if I went riding last night. And of course the answer is no... I had a goal for what I wanted to accomplish on Monday in order to feel good about biking and I fell far short of that goal. So at this point, I'm just going to push it back to July. Once I get back from Origins, my hope is that things will be much quieter.
Gas light came on around 4 am this morning...
Ross
The floor is all but done. The outside door needs to be undercut before the final ~6 square feet which comprise the entry can be taken care of, but the rest of it is done. As I look at it, it's pretty nice, neat even, but when I counter-balance that with how much we spent, I'm not sure it's that neat. In addition to finally getting the floor finished on Saturday, I was also blessed with the priviledge to help move one of my wife's relatives. My back is still recovering from moving the washer up the stairs. I guess the connection between the two is that given how horrible moving is, and the fact that we just got a new floor, it will probably be awhile before we move again.
Of course no weekend would be complete without some sick kids; this time it was three out of four. That may be a new record. There were lots of symptoms to this particular illness (including vomiting) but mostly it seemed to be characterized by a high fever which responded well to medicine. I'm guessing some kind of flu, though you can never be sure. I also apparently lost all chance of an inheritance over the weekend as well, though I'm told there isn't much there anyway.
Mostly I went on another huge work bing. Maybe someday I'll be able to tell you about it. Oh, and Michael Jackson is innocent.
Abject Panic
Ross
Greatest Hits
Every year I convince myself that this will be the year when I'll really get out and ride my bike, rack up a thousand miles, do a couple of centuries, keep up with the 67 year old CEO... But then...
One of my kids had already demonstrated an ability to vomit with astonishing accuracy (I'll leave his target to your imagination, but just think of the worst possible place).
The transmission was already going quirky and a lot of people told me I should just buy a whole new car, but I decided to replace the head gaskets.
Most of my "blogging time" was taken up deleting well over a hundred spam comments (though thanks to the help of my underpaid South American labor it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been).
A three-hour meeting with consultants, marketing and sales is like listening to Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva argue about post-modern feminism in French. (Again, it's left as an exercise for the reader to determine which group is Cixous).
I think it's my kids fault. It's not like they don't sleep, but they sometimes scream. My wife claims that it's night terrors but I think they do it just to be mean. And then there's the "jiggy arm." Whenever they get into bed with us (which is frequently, we live in a scary neighborhood) they always fling out their arms as far as possible; that's when they're not sleeping perpendicular to the normal direction of the bed. As a result, I end up sleeping in something of a horseshoe position on the final six inches. But I don't think that has anything to do with me being tired.
Formatting Fool
Ross
The painful saga of the floor continues. They were supposed to come yesterday morning and even out the prefloor; instead they didn't arrive until 5:30, which was a little inconvient since I was leaving in 15 minutes, but they agreed to lock up so I took off. When I returned I found that they had left us a note. Apparently so much of the prefloor has drained down into the vents that even after using all of the bags the had (14 at $55/bag which gives us the addition $800 rounded up from $770) the were going to need to get even more bags and come back and pour more today. But they swore up and down that the floor would be in tomorrow.
I was all set to take an extra long lunch and finally go see Episode III, but the co-worker I was going to go with had some sort of horrible reaction to his contact solution and nearly blinded himself, so we called it off at the last minute. It's probably good I didn't -- it would have really been a long lunch. I would kind of like to see it before I go to Origins primarily because I don't think they'll let me in if I haven't seen it. I'm sure it's an admission requirement. Instead of the movie I went to my FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store for those who've forgotten) and picked up some new D&D books. The big score was the DMG II, which I had been led to believe by Amazon wouldn't be available until July 6th.
Finally in news that is almost too cool to believe, JPL thinks they might have discovered an ice volcano on Titan.
Reckless and Irresponsible
Ross
I mentioned earlier that my wife's book club invites the spouses once a year. That's happening tonight. I also mentioned that we were reading Seabiscuit. Well I finished it last week, and turned it over to my wife to read. She is having a really difficult time making it through the book. Which is unusual, normally she tears through books like an English Major on Meth, but this one has been pretty slow going. I told her that for all the people appalled by the selection of Seabiscuit, the fact that she had difficulty with it may raise her standing.
Apparently my friend Scott's rendition (or perhaps distillation is a better word) of my blog is proving to be wildly popular, perhaps I'll just copy and paste that for Monday or maybe I'll whip up few quick random selections and paste them together in no particular order. As far as the floor goes, the "prefloor" did leak into the basement a little bit though at a threshold above annoyance, but below panic. They're suppossed to come back this morning to touch things up, so we'll see what they say about that.
I know there are not many Americans who car about it, but regional qualifying for the 2006 World Cup is half over and the US is doing very well They just beat Panama to move to a 4-1-0 record this was just after beating Costa Rica right here in Salt Lake City. That was something I was sorry to miss.
Angry at the establishment
Ross
So far no one has volunteered for the guest blogger position. I'm not surprised -- it's pretty thankless and largely unrewarding. Maybe I'll try and talk my wife into blogging, though I'll probably have to change the password after she does... I can only imagine what sorts of edits she would make if she had unrestricted access. I mentioned that after much pain and tribulation we're having the floor installed today. Well, apparently the pain and tribulation isn't over yet.
I forget how much I mentioned about the problems we had ordering a new floor for the kitchen and dining room, but I can hardly imagine that I covered the full horror that was just getting the order in. We had problems ranging from them constantly forgetting which floor we'd ordered, to massive delays missing parts, to a bid that kept getting bigger every time we called. Well, the full horror was yet to be visited on us. After ripping up the carpet the installers told us that our floor was horribly un-level and that laminate floors did not play well with floors that weren't level and it was going to be another $800 to prep the floor.
We investigated other flooring options, but they were all more expensive either in material or installation or bribes paid to 3rd world dictators so we just told them to go ahead and we'd add it to the lengthy inflammatory letter we were already composing. When my wife first called I felt like throwing up, but that only lasted for a minute or so until I switched to complete indifference. I imagine it's similar to the zen techniques the tibetan monks practice to deal with the overwhelming oppession by the chinese governement. I definitely see an analogy.
There was a huge piece of news on Monday which I neglected to mention was Steve Job's announcing that Apple was going to switch to Intel Chips. An interesting decision with lots of repercussions I won't get into.
Still slogging
Ross
As STI pointed out, I generally don't blog on my days off, particularly on days when I'm trying focus on one thing. I find it interrupts the flow. Of course work is nothing but interruptions, so it works out better, plus I have a completely useless meeting every morning which I use to outline my blog and in some cases write it entirely. I am planning on taking a lot of time off this month, so maybe I'll try and line up a guest blogger or two. Let me know if you're interested in the job.
I went on a real work binge over the three-day weekend and I'm definitely hung-over. Okay, since I've never been hung-over in the classical sense it may be inappropriate to use the word definitely, but if this is what it feels like it only strengthens my resolve to not drink. We're replacing the kitchen and dining room floor; as part of that we had to move the stove, which required disconnecting the gas. Of course that sort of thing always makes you nervous, but the house hadn't blow up by this morning when I woke up, so I guess we're okay.
We got into a discussion in my family about Sasquatch and I brought up the old theory that bigfoot=Cain (as in the son of Adam). This led me to do a little searching on the internet. One of the pages I stumbled across was a guide to separating Utah reality from Utah myth, originally attributed to the Deseret News. A funny read for all of those who live here, and possibly an even funnier read for those that don't.
Hung-over from too much work
Ross
I'm taking Monday off in order to continue my secret plans for world domination. I find that Monday is the best time to work on the the total subjugation of humanity. Monday has always had a fresh, new-beginning, spring-time feel to it for me. Plus, there's the psychological boost on Sunday night I've mentioned so often. Given this, I've decided to take all of the Mondays off in June, which the exception of the last week where I will work on Monday and take the rest of the week off.
My children continue to conspire to interrupt my sleep. Last night at around 12:30 my #2 son got up, turned on all the lights, spent 15 minutes in the bathroom and finally went downstairs. When I got up to turn off the lights, I discovered he wasn't in bed, so I yelled for him and I guess that scared him, though my wife had to get up before we figured that out; I couldn't understand him through his sobs. Then around 5:30 my other son got up and went to the bathroom. This wasn't so bad except he didn't flush the toilet correctly and so after what felt like fifteen minutes of listening to it run, I finally got up and fixed it.
I listlessly wandered the internet for awhile looking for some interesting links, but nothing jumped out at me. So I guess I'll end here.
Morbidly obnoxious
Ross
Yesterday night my dad got the Teacher of the Year award from the high school where he teaches. The school wanted the family to show up and surprise him, so they called my mom. She promptly sent the info out to the family mailing list, of which my dad is a member. In the e-mail she wondered if he would figure it out; I replied "you mean through some means other than you e-mailing him all the details?"
At that point it became my job to figure out some way of preventing him from getting the e-mail. Of course, as you know, once something is out there it's pretty difficult to retrieve. Fortunately since he was our dad, we had an inside track. After proposing and rejecting several ideas, we finally decided to try changing his password. I sent my trust side-kick in (my brother-in-law) to reconnoiter and he returned with the information that all the ISP needed to change the password was the account holder's birthday, so I called them up, pretended to be my father and changed the password. Then I logged into their webmail interface and deleted the offending message. My mother still had to figure out someway to keep him from realizing that we'd changed his password, but that was her problem -- I figured I'd done enough.
In other news, as I'm sure you all know the identity of "Deep Throat" was finally revealed. Most people are treating him like a hero, and certainly that was my first reaction. Ben Stein, a speechwriter for Nixon (but probably better known for "Win Ben Stein's Money") has a different take: not necessarily one I agree with, but it's always fun to read the radical viewpoint.
Thrashing around in the starting gate (I may be reading too much Seabiscuit)
Ross
I would have biked into work today, but it was raining. Okay, that's a lie, even if it hadn't been raining, I wouldn't have biked into work, but the rain is a convenient excuse. Certainly I didn't expect it to rain, as evidenced by the fact that I left my driver's side window open. It was a soggy ride in this morning, I can tell you that. Though obviously not as bad as riding in on a fenderless bike.
Like all cities we have our local celebrities, one of whom is "Super Dell." He owns a chain of computer stores called "Totally Awesome Computers" and stars in all their cheesy ads. Well yesterday old Dell was speeding through a residential neighborhood, some of the residents stopped him, and got angry; at one point someone picked up a rock and threatened to break out his rear lights. That's when Super Dell pulled a Glock 10-mm out of the front of his pants and started waving it around, or so the residents claim.
As I was listening to them talk about the story on the radio this morning, one of the DJ's mentioned that the Glock doesn't have a safety. Not being a huge aficionado of handguns, this was news to me. Now of course, whether the gun has a safety or not, it shouldn't ever have a bullet in the chamber, but even assuming it doesn't have a bullet in the chamber, and even assuming that it has a safety, I think the front of your pants is a bad place to keep a gun. Apparently he also had some kind of hold out pistol strapped to his leg: now that really seems excessive.
Twitchy and timorous
Ross