I've been slacking most of the day, so I'm only just getting around to posting my blog entry. I started the day by reading the newest installment of the Straight Dope. The question was: When toast falls, what's more likely: Buttered side up or buttered side down? I'll let you read why for yourself but the basic answer is that the laws of physics decree that it has to be so just as surely as they govern the motion of the planets.
Other than that, this afternoon has mostly been defined by heat, which is sapping my will to live and also my will to write. They keep saying that it's going to rain; I can only pray that "they" are right. I also have a pounding headache. I'm not sure if it's a separate issue from the heat or not, but the two together have combined to emasculate me in a way not seen since Spielberg and Geffen teamed up with Katzenberg.
T.G.I.F.
Ross
The brief hiatus in activity I've been experiencing seems to be likely to continue until at least GenCon, and filled with the optimism that it may stretch on even longer than that, I've decided to start running another D&D campaign. In order to reduce the time I have to spend preparing, I've decided to run Dungeon's second Adventure Path, and set it in Eberron (man, I love that setting). So far it looks like three of my old friends from college and my brother-in-law are going to be playing. It will be pretty low key -- we plan on meeting once a month on Saturday, so I don't imagine that it will go very fast, but I think it will be fun.
I should have warned those that have no interest in D&D or computer games to just skip this entry, but perhaps it's not too late. Anyway, moving on it's shaping up to be a fairly interesting party. Only one of the guys is 100% sure what they want to play, but tentatively it looks like we'll have a psychic warrior, a monk and a ranger. Perhaps I can talk the final guy into playing a ninja; that would really be the cherry on top of the sundae for this highly eclectic party. In addition to the four characters corresponding to the players, I'm planning on creating a fifth character who will sort of be mine, and serve the dual purpose of somewhat scratching my itch to play, and filling any holes in the party. Of course during actual play, one of the players will take control of this fifth wheel on a rotating basis.
Those of you who were warned at the beginning of the last paragraph to stop reading are probably regretting that you didn't. Of course as this is still nominally a D&D website, the idea that I may talk about that from time to time has certainly occured to you, I imagine. On a related topic, this summer seems to have been a real dry spell for computer games (I'm not the only one who is of this opinion), but the first D&D RTS (real-time strategy) is coming out in September. Early reports have been very solid, so I think that maybe the next game I pick up. Until then, I guess I'll have to limp by on my waning enthusiasm for World of Warcraft and the occasional game of Minesweeper.
I'm a big geek
Ross
I decided last night that it was time for me to try a canyon. Of course rather than just driving to the mouth of the canyon and biking from there I rode from my house, which is in the valley floor, to the mouth, which is up on the bench. Using my US Geo map in my cube I figure just getting to the mouth I gained 540 feet over about 3.5 miles, which makes the slope just about 3%. Pretty tame as hills go, but when you're overweight, horribly out of shape, and a cryer, like me, that right there is enough to wipe you out.
I knew I didn't have the time or the energy to make it to the top of the canyon, but I really wanted to make it past the really nasty hill near the bottom, which I did. After that I decided to see how far I could get in an hour (from my house) and then use that as a benchmark for the next time I went up the canyon. Despite my pathetic performance, I wasn't passed by any joggers, though I did get passed by quite a few mountain bikes, which is almost as embarrassing. I guess I still have a long way to go...
I was watching "The Royal Tenenbaums" the other day and it once again struck me how much I like that show. I hesitate to give anything a #1 ranking because it's so dependent on mood and genre, but I may have to tentatively give that title to the Tenenbaums. Interestingly enoughn yesterday there was an article which argued that Wes Anderson has been improperly credited as the genius behind those movies, when in actuality it was Owen Wilson who should get most of the credit. I really like Owen Wilson, so I have no problem with that. I think he would have to be my favorite comedic actor (see, there I go again, declaring something the best...)
Less sleepy than yesterday
Ross
I can barely keep my eyes open this morning, and I'm not sure why. I got 8 hours of sleep last night; I didn't do anything really physical yesterday, so I'm at a loss why I can't stay awake. Maybe I'll wrap up the blog here, skip getting something to eat and take a nap during my lunch hour... Course we had another guy do that here and he slept until about 2:00 and then called his boss and told him he was going home. Maybe I'm coming down with something?
As part of my continuing attempt to make myself obsolete, here's a link to Snopes Daily Weird News Page. Once again further allowing you to skip the middle man, as it were.
Why am I so tired?
Ross
Since my eyes had started to feel better, I went bike riding on Saturday. It was quite the comedy of errors. I realized shortly after I arrived at the park where we planned to start that I had forgotten my helmet and gloves. Fortunately, my friend, who had brought his mountain bike to make things fairer for me, had over-inflated one of the tires and it had popped on the drive over. So we both had to jump into our cars turn around and go home. 20 minutes later we returned and I asked him when the last time he had put air in his tires, he said it had been awhile so I offered him the floor pump I had brought along. Unfortunately, his stem was a little too big for the hole, which wasn't a problem when we were getting it on, but when we tried to get it off we ripped his stem right off of the tube.
So while he put in his replacement tube, I took a short loop to warm up. After meeting up with him I figured our problems were over and indeed for a while that seemed to be the case, but about 20 minutes into the ride something landed on my leg just left and down from my knee and I guess as my knee bent on the upstroke it freaked out and stung or bit me. It actually hurt quite a bit, but them's the breaks, so I continued riding, ensuring that the venom got maximum distribution through my entire system. On Sunday the spot around the sting was red and hotter than the surrounding skin. So I put some ice on it and drew a circle around the extent of the redness. This morning it's still hot, but the redness has contracted, so I'm probably okay, right?
I left to go biking before the end of Saturday's time trial, so I had to wait until I got back to discover what had happened, including the horribly unlucky ride of Michael Rasmussen, which guaranteed Ullrich a podium spot, which finally discharged my debt, so that was good, but it was pretty sad to see him fall apart that badly. I can hardly wait to see what happens next year. Without Armstrong as the presumptive winner I'm hoping it will be a lot more competitive.
I can't feel my leg
Ross
Tomorrow's time trial should be pretty exciting. No one is going to catch Lance (without something really out of the ordinary happening) and I think Basso is pretty safe, but there's plenty of room for movement in the rest of the top 10. I'm confident Ullrich will jump past Rasmussen, and based on Mancebo's performance in the opening time trial, I would be suprised if Levi didn't jump past him into the number 5 spot. 53 seconds is all that seperates 7-9 and I'm sure Moreau, who had a pretty good tour, would like to take the #10 spot back from Pereiro.
The allergy medicine appears to be working (though given that I haven't biked since Monday, it's hard to tell). So now that my eyes have recovered I'm planning on biking tomorrow morning; I need to decide if I want to wait until after the stage is over or whether I want to go as early as possible while it's still cool. I think I might try one of the canyons. It's still kind of early in my "recovery" to be doing a lot of climbing, but there are a couple of canyons that aren't too bad. I may be going with a friend -- we'll see what he wants to do.
I'm looking forward to Saturday. It's the first time in a while where the day isn't already pretty full before it even begins. One of my co-workers lent me the Lonesome Dove mini-series, so maybe I'll spend the day watching that. I'm not sure, but the possibilties of all this free time are pretty exciting. Of course generally when I've got a whole day with nothing really to do I end up pissing it away, so hopefully that won't happen tomorrow.
Finally for the link today, we've got a story on the negative affects of the constant interruptions we experience while working on a computer. I know I've taken to closing my e-mail so that I'm not distracted by the constant need to check and see if the new message which just arrived is important or yet another piece of spam.
I can see!
Ross
So I went to the optometrist and she figured that it was allergies, which is kind of unusual since thus far I haven't been allergic to anything. Although looking at the brochure she gave me, I do appear to have all the symptoms, and it would be nice if the eyedrops she perscribed cleared the problem up. Course, I didn't say that it would be cheap...
She prescribed Patanol, 5 ml, which is suppossed to last me two weeks. With my insurance it was $16.48; without any sort of insurance it's $82.69. Each ml conveniently contains 1 mg of the active ingrediant (olopatadine), so divide $82.69/5 which equals $16.538, and then times that by 1000 and you get a product that's a mere $16,538/gram or 16.5 million dollars/kilogram or 7.5 million dollars/lb for those more confortable with English measurement. This calculation has exacerbated what was already a fairly substantial reluctance to use eye-drops. I mean it's bad enough trying to stick something in your eye, a task your body rebels against with every reflex at its command, but imagine that the stuff you're putting in is far too expensive to waste on an aborted effort?
Tour-wise, my man Ullrich managed to put 37 seconds into Rasmussen which means his deficit has been reduced to 2'12". On the initial time trial of 19 km, Ullrich managed to put 2'6" into Rasmussen. Saturday's time trial is 55.5 km so it's hard to imagine that Rasmussen will be up to the task of keeping his spot on the podium, particularly since Ullrich appears to have peaked (which generally happens for him in the latter half of the tour).
I leave you with a link to a story on a 1191 lb shark which lost the "monster shark derby" because the ship that caught it was 6 minutes late.
Amazed at the price of drugs
Ross
I was going to bike in this morning, but I decided that I couldn't handle another 24 hours of not being productive (moreso) because my eyes were bothering me. So I took the day off and made an appointment with an eye doctor for tomorrow morning. At this point I'm debating whether I should ride my bike around tonight to re-damage them so that it will be easier to diagnose or whether I should just see what the doctor has to say. I guess the idea of intentially causing damage seems kind of silly, but I dread going to the doctor and having them tell me, we can't see anything wrong...
Kloden dropped out of the tour today. He broke his wrist in a crash yesterday and decided he couldn't complete the race. There was an article in Velonews about whether he can be the next German contender. The article also goes into the German disappointment with Ullrich. I think it uses the line "afraid to love again," but I could be mistaken. Certainly it looks like whatever happens that next year will be exciting. Another quote from the article, "Klöden agrees with CSC's Ivan Basso that the only truly invincible cyclist is Lance Armstrong; everyone else, he has a shot at."
One last thing before I sign off, Slate has an article about a revamped periodic table. Apparently, it's the first since Mendeleev's original to gain widespread acceptance. Make sure to check out the slide show -- it's really cool.
Blinded by exercise
Ross
I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to bike to work. It seems like every time I do I'm so wiped out that biking is kind of all I get done that day. I got a good night's sleep last night and still woke up this morning feeling that I was in the middle of the Bataan Death March. Part of it is that my eyes are bothering me. This was the same problem I was having last year and I'm still not sure what's causing it. I tried out the symptom checker at WebMD, but it didn't help that much. I guess the best theory is still UV burns to the eyes, but I am wearing sunglasses, so I'm not sure what else to do.
In cycling news, an 18 year old woman lost control of her car (whatever the Hell that means) and plowed into the Australian women's cycling team, killing one and injuring five others (two seriously). In honor of his fallen countrywomen Cadel Evans got into a breakaway and managed to jump from 11th in the general classification to 7th. It would have been nice if he had won the stage, but since he did the majority of work in the break there was no gas left to fight for the stage win. I'm still confused by this lost control of her car: did she take a corner too fast, did the steering wheel pop off suddenly, was she drunk? In my experience, unless road conditions are really bad (black ice, etc.) or you're going way, way too fast you don't just lose control of your car.
In reference to some of the comments from yesterday, since I no longer have OLN there was very little choice between watching and reading, though I did read HP6 while I followed the progress of the race using the Live Update page on Velonews.com. And as far as the page prediction, I haven't had a chance to look it up, but the prediction was for more pages than 5, which was clearly not the case. If you have finished reading and you're interested in someone else's take on what happened in the book, check this (WARNING: SPOILERS. ONLY CLICK IF YOU HAVE FINISHED HP6) out.
Old and fragile
Ross
I biked in again today -- it may have been a mistake. I went biking on Friday evening (18-20 miles) and then stayed up late to buy my copy of Harry Potter 6 (I went to Smith's. I was the first in line at 11:45 and I got my copy at 12:01). I slept a fair amount Saturday night and Sunday, but last night I didn't sleep very well, particularly after 4 am. Given that I was tempted to postpone my ride until tomorrow, but I had everything laid out, I just went ahead with the original plan. Now I'm having a really hard time staying awake. I probably need some caffeine.
Tour-wise there were a couple of huge mountain stages over the weekend. Lots of big names lost huge time and are basically out, like Heras, Beloki, Mayo, Botero. The big surprise was that Hincapie won Sunday's stage, widely regarded as the hardest of this year's tour. There's even talk that Hincapie rather that Popovych will take over as team captain once Lance is gone. That would be interesting. It's actually looking a lot better with respect to my Tour bet: I said Armstrong and Ullrich on the podium. Ullrich's still in fourth but a lot of experts expect him to pass Rasmussen in the final time trial.
I finished Harry Potter Saturday evening. This was a pretty good installment, though I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the plot. The longer it goes, the more I like it, but initially I felt pretty used. I've probably already given away too much, but I will say one other thing: I think J.K. has bitten off more than she can chew with respect to book 7, or in other words, I don't see how she can wrap everything up in just one more book. My prediction is that it's going to end up being over 1000 pages or two books. I'm sure the publishers wouldn't mind breaking it into two books.
Cycling is tiring...
Ross
I finished Lonesome Dove. I would recommend it to anyone. It was great -- definitely in the 90th percentile of books I've read. My one complaint would be that at 945 pages you would expect that there wouldn't be any hanging threads, but as it was, the book really needed an epilogue, something like the one at the end of "Animal House:"
Newt went on to become Govenor of Montana
Clara ghost wrote War and Peace
Po Campo founded a religion
I guess there's a sequel and two prequels, so now that I'm hooked, I'll probably have to read those as well, eventually. I told my wife she should read it, but she immediately saw it as a ploy to get Harry Potter all to myself. I assured her that she could read LD after HP6.
As far as the tour goes, it's starting to look unlucky to wear any of the jerseys. Both yellow jersey wearers other than Lance are out of the race. Tom Boonen, the green jersey holder, dropped out yesterday and Valverde, the white jersey, dropped out today. This means that 1/7th of all of the people who have dropped out so far have been jersey wearers. I have no way of checking, but I imagine that's as high as it's ever been.
Finally in the happy link category, China has threatened to use nukes against us if we get involved in any war they are having with Taiwan.
HP6 tonight, I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl
Ross
Well, as usual, the part which hurts most after the first bicycle ride of the season is my butt, though I can feel it in my legs as well. When it came time to ride home last night the temperature was 102, but I noticed that there was a big cloud in the sky obscuring the sun, so I quickly changed and hopped on my bike, hoping to take advantage of the shade for as long as possible. It lasted until I was off the hills and onto the flat, which was exactly the point where I would have really liked it, but I think it did keep me cooler than I would have otherwise been. After getting home, I hopped into the shower and immediately went to an outdoor BBQ where I was placed in charge of the steaks -- not the best way to cool down, so yesterday evening ended up being a heat-induced nightmare.
Okay maybe it wasn't that bad, but I really do hate being hot. I need to decide when to ride again. It's not supposed to be quite so hot today, but there was no way I was going to do it two days in a row; I need time for the nerves in my rear to all die. Tomorrow is suppossed to be even hotter than yesterday, so I guess I could do it then, though even tomorrow is still probably too close to yesterday for me to have fully recovered. I was thinking of biking again on Saturday, but that's when Harry Potter Book 6 comes out and I have to confess that I have an embarrassing level of excitement for that book.
Actually, there's kind of a story there: we had initially ordered HP6 from Amazon with the assurance that we would have it on the 16th. Well just recently I started getting worried about when exactly on the 16th it would arrive, particularly since the bulk of the afternoon would be taken up by a family party. So I thought I'd just go to some midnight sale and pick it up and cancel the Amazon order, but by the time I had that idea it was too late to cancel the order. I still wanted to buy a copy at midnight, but there was the problem of what to do with the extra copy. But yesterday I managed to talk a co-worker into purchasing one of the copies, so guess where I'll be Friday at midnight?
Man my butt is sore
Ross
I finally got off my lazy butt and biked into work today. I guess the Tour inspired me, though the only similarity between what I did this morning and the Tour was the prominent role played by a Trek bike. Trust me, there was no other resemblance. It was ugly; I was being passed by joggers. Part of the problem was that I was wearing a heart rate monitor, and in order to keep it below 160 I had to go about four miles an hour. In a sense, I was glad when the joggers pulled away from me because then they couldn't hear the HRM beeping as it tried to tell me I was about to have a coronary.
Of course, I would have to wait for the hottest day of the summer so far to bike into work; it's suppossed to hit 103-104 today. Fortunately the ride home is mostly down hill, and I have a camelback, so I should have plenty of water, but I imagine I'll be half-way through the family dinner scheduled for tonight before I stop sweating. Last year I had trouble with my eyes bothering me, but I brought a bandana with me. Hopefully that will keep the sweat out of my eyes.
As far as the tour goes, Botero and Vinokourov broke away fairly early and managed to stay away till the end with Vino' winning the stage. The rest of the big names came through 1'15" later. Right now the podium is Armstrong, Rasmussen and Moreau. I'll tell you I never would have picked those last two...
For the daily link I offer you guess-the-google. It's an addictive little game where you are provided with a montage of images and you have to guess which search term generated them.
Ass in the saddle
Ross
First mountain-top finish of the Tour today. As usual, Armstrong put in a pretty big attack; not big enough to drop everyone or win the stage, but big enough to drop just about every big name you can think of (though, I guess Mancebo is a fairly big name). Basso and Leipheimer were a minute back, Kloden, Landis and Ullrich were 2 minutes back and Vinokourov and Beloki (and Julich, unfortunately) were five minutes back. The real interesting story is Rasmussen, who won yesterday's stage on a huge 167 km breakaway and still had the energy to match Armstrong all the way to the top. Already it looks like it will be a battle for second and third on the podium, but not for first, which I have to say kind of sucks.
Tomorrow sees two Hors category climbs: the Madeline and the Galibier, but with the top of the Galibier 40 km from the finish, my guess is that there will be some regrouping on the descent. Still it should be interesting to see if a guy like Rasmussen can keep it up. Another interesting note: for all the talk about T-Mobile switching to supporting Kloden or Vinokourov, Ullrich is back to being the highest placed of the three, though not by a huge amount. I have a soft spot in my heart for the guy. I mean, how can you not?
I'm still working through Lonesome Dove. I passed the halfway mark yesterday. So far I've found that people who notice me reading it have one of two reactions, either "What a great book!" or "That's the last thing I thought I'd see you reading," as if I should be reading nothing but Dostoevsky. After I'm done with that, I'm going to read Harry Potter 6 ( a few copies of which have already leaked out), but I'm not sure what I'll read after that, or if I'll even have time to read...
Enjoy the silence
Ross
Overall, it was a reasonably productive weekend. The biggest disappointment is that despite copious amounts of water, vast patches of my lawn are still dead, but them's the breaks I suppose. In addition to lots of watering, I took my two oldest kids to buy bikes for their half-birthday. It somewhat spoils the surprise attached to the actual party this evening, but they were pretty surprised when I got them to the store and into the bike section, though it took several minutes to convince my son that he would prefer a bike to some Star Wars Legos.
I also took my oldest daughter to a dinner theater on Saturday. We saw "My Big Fat Utah Wedding," a satire based on "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." It was pretty good, though far too quick for anything resembling a plot to emerge, but the meal was decent and my daughter enjoyed it, so that's what counts, though I think a lot of the jokes required a cultural knowledge that she doesn't yet possess (like all the Utah MLM jokes).
The Tour is getting exciting. They had the first thing resembling a mountain on Saturday and Armstrong ended up without any teammates: a really bad sign for the rest of the tour if it continues. Today is a rest stage and I'm hoping to get someone to record the recap. It's a great way to get all the highlights.
Someone sent me an e-mail that contained the phrase, "enhancing communications amongst all of the stakeholders," and it reminded me how much I hate business, or as the author likes to call them, weasel words. Looks like an interesting book.
Back in the saddle
Ross
I started reading "Lonesome Dove" a couple of days ago. I had started it once before, but I got interrupted before I got hooked. This time around I'm far enough in that I've been hooked, so I'm sure I'll finish it. Additionally, Harry Potter 6 comes out a week from tomorrow, so I have to finish LD before then. My wife and I have a deal that I can have it on Saturday (Amazon has promised it will be there that day), then she gets it on Sunday, and then if for some reason neither of us is done, she gets it while I'm at work and I get it when I'm home. In an effort to keep me from finishing first she scheduled a big family get-together on Saturday to reduce the time I would have to read.
Well, rather than spend too much of my lunch on my blog I think I'll read more LD. See you on Monday.
Yard-work avoider
Ross
While I was gone, everyone in my group at work got a new computer. Yesterday afternoon I finally got around to setting mine up. Before I even pulled it out of the box, I could tell something was wrong. The side of the case was hanging off, for one. Once I dumped it out it was apparent that lots of things were wrong: there was a big blue 'X' on the side of the case and a little sticker on the front which told me that this computer was designed to work best with Windows 95. The upshot was that they had decided to play a joke on me while I was gone. As jokes go, it was a pretty good one.
So after I cleared that up, I started setting up the new computer. I tell you, there really has to be an easier way to switch computers. As it is it takes most of the day just to get close to where the old computer was and then another month of tweaks before it's really back to the way you wanted. One of the first things I decided to do was visit windowsupdate.com and download all the critical patches and what not. Well somehow in the course of doing that, my video driver got screwed up and when I rebooted I was doing 640x480 with 16 colors (if that). As you can tell, I just love setting up a new machine.
Of course, the big news today is the bombings in London. I think Tony Blair's statement was excellent; I can't imagine adding anything to that. I heard about the attacks on my way into work, but only during the last 30 seconds or so of the drive when I switched from the music station to NPR. The music station hadn't bothered to mention it, though they did give me a point by point rundown of everything which happened last night on "Dancing with the Stars." Pretty depressing, if you think about it.
In desperate need of a real vacation
Ross
I was reading a co-worker's blog earlier today and it was amazingly good. Of course, he really gets into the nitty-gritty, detailing every fight he has with his soon-to-be ex-wife, his deepest fears, etc. Since this blog started out as a "business blog," I've been rather reluctant to get that personal. My niche is whining with occasional commentary on interesting events in the news. Course that's a fairly overcrowded space, so maybe I should try and put in more personal detail. We'll have to see.
In Tour de France news, Armstrong initially refused to don the yellow jersey out of respect for Zabriskie. I guess there was some precendent for the move, but the race stewards threatened him with heavy sanctions if he didn't. Overall I think that's a pretty classy move. McEwen finally found his form and won the stage, though by coming in second, Boonen is still doing very well in the green jersey competition. I am curious who's going to try for King of the Mountain this year. It's obviously far too early to tell.
I was quite suprised during the convention when I heard that Sandra Day O'Connor was retiring, primarily because I expected that Rehnquist would be the one to go at the end of this session. The first thing that came to mind was an episode of the West Wing, where they had two vacancies: the chief justice and one other. After discovering that the only candidates they could get both parties to agree on were moderate lightweights with the intelligence of cabbage, they decided to nominate one ultra-liberal and one ultra-conservative. This made everyone happy and allowed them to pick some great judicial thinkers, rather than someone who's never even expressed an opinion. There are worse ideas. Like the idea of nominating Ann Coulter.
Suffering from post-partum depression
Ross
I'm back. I can only assume that by going eight days without posting that I have lost what little readership I have. Nevertheless I'm back, the holidays are over, and I'm finally posting a new blog. First, to get the Tour update out of the way, David Zabriskie, an American from Salt Lake City, of all places, won the opening time trial and as a result was in yellow for the first few days. It looked possible, even probable, that he might keep it today, given that his team (CSC) was posting the best time at all the checkpoints during the team time trial, but 2 km out Zabriskie crashed. CSC came in 2 seconds behind Discovery (Armstrong's team) and Zabriskie limped in a few seconds later. Two seconds was the time difference, so It's interesting to guess whom the jersey would have gone to if Zabriskie had finished with his team.
With that out of the way, I can talk about Origins. I went to Origins to take care of some DireKobold business and in that respect it went really, really well. Better than I expected. I still unfortunately can't comment on any of the relevant details, (I know I say that a lot) but hopefully that will soon change. As a result of the business I had to take care of, I didn't get a lot of gaming done, but an old friend of mine flew in Friday night, so we did get to spend all day Saturday having fun. A big problem was because of the preparation involved for the business side of things I was too tired to do much before then.
In fact I'm still pretty tired; it always surprises me how long it takes to recover from prolonged sleep deprivation, or at least how long it takes me to recover. I always imagine that one good night's sleep of ten hours and I should be back in the saddle, but then of course it always ends up being several weeks before I finally am back to "normal." Part of the problem is that it's never "over" -- it's just "less." As a result, my run of good nights is always interrupted by some backsliding. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll be more on top of things.
Triumphantly returning from battle
Ross