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This is really cool: Time. With a kid on the way, I think Jana and I are going to start something similar. |
Alexander Vinokourov rode an amazing race today to win the final stage on the Champs Elysées! This is one of the biggest stages for a sprinter to win, it has the biggest crowds and gets the most attention, and it's the last chance before the whole Tour is over. Vino showed that he's one of the strongest riders around by winning today, and it's extra cool that he was wearing the colors of the Kazakhstani national champion. The other big winner today is Lance Armstrong. After rolling across the line in Paris, it was official: Lance Armstrong won his 7th consecutive Tour de France, a record that will surely stand for many years. Also today, Michael Rasmussen was awarded the overall polka-dot jersey for best climber, and Thor Hushovd won the overall green jersey for best sprinter. Due to confusion about time bonuses today, 5th place Leipheimer did not put any extra effort into defending his overall position during today's stage, which shouldn't have mattered much except that Vino's victory resulted in a 20 second time bonus, thus bumping Vino from 6th overall into 5th, ahead of Leipheimer. Before the finish, the race commisaries had declared that no time bonuses would be awarded today due to rain-slicked roads, so it's clearly a small pile of crap for Leipheimer to lose his spot on GC when they decided to award Vino with a time bonus. But what can you do? The final podium for general classification for the 2005 Tour de France is Lance Armstrong, Ivan Basso, and Jan Ullrich. The overall top 10 looks like this:
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Today's final time trial was the last chance for the overall contenders to fight for their final placing in this year's Tour. Before the start, Lance had yet to win a stage in this year's race, Rasmussen desperately needed to put in a great performance if he was to hang onto his 3rd place podium spot, and Ullrich had to do a good ride if he was to move from 4th overall and step onto the podium in Paris (thus displacing Rasmussen). After each rider had crossed the line, Lance had obliterated the field with the best time of 1h11m46s, winning today's stage. Ullrich rode superbly for 2nd place, just 23 seconds behind Lance, which means his overall time will put him on the podium in Paris (sorry Rasmussen). Vinokourov finished 3rd best at 1m16s back, with Bobby Julich in 4th (1m33s) followed by Ivan Basso in 5th. Hincapie was right up there again with the best, finishing in 8th place. Levi Leipheimer also rode very well, finishing in 14th place, moving him into 5th on overall classification. The big loss of the day was for Michael Rasmussen. His 3rd place overall went straight into the toilet when he crashed, had various mechanical problems and multiple bike changes during the time trial. It was extremely painful for all to see, as Rasmussen dropped from 3rd overall down to 7th in just over an hour's worth of racing. Laurent Jalabert later said that Rasmussen basically just freaked out, making the situation much worse than it actually was. As one of the most successful cyclists ever, Jalabert knows what he's talking about. Senator John Kerry, a cycling enthusiast, was hanging around today, signing autographs and doing interviews. The overall standings after today mean that, barring total disaster on tomorrow's stage into Paris, Lance will win his 7th consecutive Tour de France with nearly 5 minutes over 2nd place Basso, leaving no doubt that his retirement has nothing to do with his ability to keep winning. The top 20 overall standings look like this, and they'll most likely look the same after tomorrow's final stage:
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Why are all breakfast cereals made of corn, rice and oats? Isn't that what they feed horses, cows and deer? Did you eat a sack of grain for lunch today? No way! How about a bag of corn for dinner? Of course not! Don't follow the herd anymore! After all, you are not livestock. Isn't it about time you started eating real food for breakfast? To lead the way, I've made the World's First All-Meat Breakfast Cereal: Shredded Beefy Oh's! Now available at your favorite grocery stores. If you don't see it on the shelves, just ask the clerks when they expect it to arrive in stock. Breakfast will never be the same again! |
After riding in a breakaway group for most of the day, Giuseppe Guerini attacked with more than 1km to go and won the stage. After winning the stage, Guerini told the press, "The last road in was very straight - I jumped away and got a good gap. They didn't chase me immediately, so I knew I could win it and I am delighted that I did." Not suprisingly, he made no comment about the hairiness of his forearms. Talking about tomorrow's final time trial, Lance said, "Big day tomorrow - I'll give it everything I have. It's difficult to really enjoy yourself too much because it's the Tour de France; every day, there's attacks going up the road. No-one's throwing their retirement party just yet." |
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Microsoft is all over the news today after they revealed the official product name for the next version of the Windows operating system. But the actual product won't be available for another year (possibly longer). They missed a huge opportunity to come up with a unique name, and I'd like to know how much money they spent before deciding on "Vista". I just google'd "vista" and it shows 20,400,000 results. Nice. The Register put together this informative, concise description of what Vista will offer, according to the announcement video (Microsoft passes da Vista baby): The corporate video accompanying the announcement went some way to filling in the details. It seems using Vista will, at last, enable you to: sit in front of a computer, show someone your tablet PC, show someone else your mobile phone, get into cars while carrying a laptop and walk through sun-soaked rooms with highly polished floors, even while being buffeted by pulses of multicoloured light. |
Marcos Serrano took today's stage, soloing to victory on the mountain-top finish. It's good news for his team Liberty Seguros, who have had an otherwise disappointing Tour with Roberto Heras and Joseba Beloki - both contenders for overall victory - coming up short for anything impressive (at the start of today's stage, Heras was in 45th overall at 1 hour 29 minutes behind Lance, while Beloki was in 74th overall at 2 hours 9 minutes back). On the steep climb just before the finish, the overall contenders shook things up a bit, so now here's how things stand in the top 10:
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This table shows the different quadrants associated with the Strengths Finder personality test (Now, Discover Your Strengths, Strengths Finder online test). Note: I posted an updated version of the Strengths Quadrants for Strengths Finder 2.0.
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Paolo Savoldelli, the winner of this year's Giro d'Italia, won today's stage into Revel. Andreas Klöden abandoned after 18km of racing today after breaking his wrist yesterday, a sad way to go out for last year's runner-up. No changes in overall standings today. |
Oscar Pereiro got into a breakaway early in the day and managed to win the stage. He finished 2nd just behind Hincapie on Stage 15, and let the world know how angry he was that he had lost that stage. So today is not just a stage victory, but a bit of a revenge. Cadel Evans was also in the break, but his interests were increasing his standings on GC. He started the day in 11th position, and finished in 7th so that's good news for him to move into the top 10. Current top 10 on general classification look like this:
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George Hincapie won the stage today! Everybody has talked about today's stage as being the most difficult of this year's Tour, full of big mountains with a difficult mountain top finish. Since Hincapie is not a climber, he was definitely not among those expected to take the win today. This is his first stage win (not counting the Team Time Trials that he's won) in any Tour, made even more special on one of the toughest stages ever. Cyclingnews posted an interview with Hincapie after his awesome ride today. "I knew it was going to be a tough day," said the visibly moved 32 year old after the finish. "I actually wanted to just go in the breaks and get a head start on the group, possibly wait for Lance and help him out at the finish. But we ended up getting 18 minutes. Johan said 'you guys aren't coming back, George do your race.' They gave me the go-ahead. It is a dream come true today." Lance and Basso finished together several minutes behind Hincapie, but Ullrich lost time today to Lance, as did Vinokourov and all of the other GC contenders. Today was a special stage because it passed the memorial to Fabio Casartelli, who rode for Motorola back in the mid 90's. Hincapie and Armstrong were teammates of Fabio, and when Fabio was involved in a fatal crash while descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet in the 1995 Tour, everybody was shaken. I remember the next day the entire peloton rode slowly in memorial for Casartelli, and when they reached the finish, without saying anything, everybody in the peloton dropped back leaving just the Motorola riders in front. It was powerful, beautiful and spooky. So it's extra special for Hincapie to win today on the 10th anniversary of Casartelli's death. After the finish today, the top 5 overall classification looks like this:
Also in today's stage, a crazy fan ran alongside two riders, and showed the world his stupidity by doing so right in front of a motorbike which proceeded to run him over. |
Austrian rider Georg Totschnig managed to take off and win today's mountainous stage. For the rest of the riders, everybody seemed intent on breaking Lance. T-Mobile worked hard along with other riders from different teams, but in the end Lance proved as strong as ever, finishing in 2nd spot two seconds ahead of Ivan Basso, 20 seconds ahead of Jan Ullrich, and even more time on everybody else. |
Out of the French Alps and headed to the Pyrenees, today's stage was relatively flat and one for the sprinters. In the end, Robbie "Hey Don't Blame Me!" McEwen took the stage and maximum finishing points in the green jersey competition. Stuart O'Grady took 2nd, and Thor Hushovd managed 5th. No change in GC, except 5th place rider Alejandro Valverde abaonded today due to a knee injury. That's bad news for him, he can't be happy about that, but there isn't much he can do with a bad injury. |
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After the recent bombing in Madrid, a letter was sent to several newspapers from a terrorist group claiming responsibility (see "'Al-Qaeda' warns of more attacks"). Among other things, they wrote the following, directed at George Bush himself (emphasis added in the interesting, poignant parts): A word for the foolish Bush. So let's go over that last sentence again: "your [that's Bush, remember] stupidity and religious extremism is what we want". Well, way to go Bush! By being so easy for the rest of the world to hate, Bush makes it not only easy, but possible, for the terrorists to create an "us vs. them" mentality in terrorists' minds (in fact, Bush does a great job of creating an "us vs. them" rift on his own). So without Bush's help, terrorists wouldn't really be able to do anything cause nobody would rally behind them. |
Who better to win on Bastille Day than a Frenchman? David Moncoutié managed to do just that (riding for a French team, no less). The locals in France go nuts for this kind of thing, and certainly Moncoutié will be hero there today. Tom Boonen did not start today's stage after his injuries from crashing on Courchevel worsened. Cyclingnews says he tried riding the rollers this morning as a test, but it was obvious he could not continue racing. With Boonen out of the Tour, that leaves the green jersey up for grabs. Thor Hushovd will take over, but it's close between Hushovd and Stuart O'Grady, and of course Robbie "Nothing Is Ever My Fault!" McEwen is still in it. Discovery lost one of their riders when Manuel Beltran crashed on his head and eventually abandoned (they took him to the hospital and he seems to be ok condition). No real changes in the overall classification today. Here's where they stand:
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After a bad day yesterday, Vinokourov and Botero rode very well today to stay off the front over some huge climbs, and Vino took the stage win. Often when two riders reach the end of a long breakaway, they'll play cat-and-mouse games with each other in order to win the stage. But Vino and Botero have so much class. When they reached the final kilometer or so, they rode alongside each other and did a straight-up sprint. It's a pity when one rider has to lose, especially for guys like them. But unfortunately for Botero, Vino really wanted to win (you could see how much power he was delivering by watching his back wheel). Other highlights from today: Boonen crashed while descending Courchevel, and seems to have hurt his knee pretty badly, but he managed to finish the stage. A lot of the big names finished in the yellow jersey group, but a few didn't do so well. Roberto Heras was among them, finishing more than 16 minutes behind Lance. I noticed that Manuel Beltran and Jose Luis Rubiera (fellow Spaniards and former teammates of Heras) finished the stage with Heras, which is very cool for them to support each other despite being on different teams (they came across the line in 43rd, 44th, and 45th position). Iban Mayo also had another crap day, finishing more than 22 minutes off the pace. Ouch. |
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I've posted several articles and studies about cell phone usage that show the effects of talking on a phone while driving, but this one is a bit different. Unlike the U.S.-based studies, where most of the data and findings are based off of experiments and lab studies, this new one is based off of real life driving data and cell phone records. The results are absolutely consistent with all of the other studies (that show drivers are much shittier at driving when they're talking on a phone), but this one correlates the actual occurrences of accidents with cell phone records (something that isn't possible in the U.S. due to privacy laws). I just went ahead and copied the whole article here, but the original is Hands-Free Cellphone Devices Don't Aid Road Safety, Study Concludes: A study of Australian drivers found that those using cellphones were four times as likely to be involved in a serious crash regardless of whether they used hands-free devices like earpieces or speaker phones that have been perceived as making talking while driving safer. |
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Just about everybody I know hates realtors (including me). When my wife and I decided to shop for a house, we didn't want to deal with a realtor, but we needed the help. So we were really happy that two of our friends were realtors, because we they're good at what they do, and they don't suck. Basically, they have the good qualities that you want in a realtor (smart, helpful, knowledgeable, competent, plus they're just interesting people) without any of the crap that makes you want to puke (fake personalities, pushing you to do what they want instead of listening to what you want, being annoying, etc.). They're there when you need them, helpful when it counts, and they give you all the room you want to do things your own way. So if anyone is looking for cool, competent realtors in Austin who are not fake plastic puppets, check out www.escapesomewhere.com. For starters, they can hook you up on automated mailings that flood your inbox with interesting leads, and then you just give them a call when you find something interesting. |
On the first day of riding in the high mountains, the overall classification was blown apart just as everyone expected. Alejandro Valverde won the stage, but Lance was right there with him in 2nd place. But most of the serious contenders finished way behind, pushing Lance further ahead of the rest of the field. By the time all of the riders reached the finish, Ullrich had lost 2.14 to Lance, Vinokourov 5.18, Beloki 5.36, and Roberto Heras was more than 9 minutes down. Ivan Basso is still somewhat of a threat, as he managed to hang onto 5th place on the stage, limiting his time loss to 1.02. Several American riders did pretty well on today's tough finish, with Levi Leipheimer finishing in 6th place 1.15 down, Floyd Landis in 11th place at 2.14, Chris Horner in 20th place at 3.44, and Bobby Julich finishing in 25th place at 5.18. The top end of the overall classification now looks like this:
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Only 4km from the start of today's stage, Michael Rasmussen attacked. He managed to stay away for the remaining 167km to win the stage while also scoring more points for the polka dot jersey. The top 10 GC shifted a bit, as Jens Voigt moved into 1st overall and Christoph Moreau moved into 2nd overall. Today was both good and bad for CSC, as they now are leading the Tour with Voigt in yellow, but Zabriskie was forced to abandon due to continuing problems from his crash several days ago. And speaking of crashes, Ullrich crashed on a fast descent. After the stage, Ullrich said, "I was in a pretty sharp twist of the road, doing about 60 km/h, when I caught a gust of wind which brought me to the right hand side. So I went off into this ditch and somersaulted three or four times. I have a couple of bruises but I'm fine." Some riders are known for being excellent descenders, but unfortunately for Ullrich, he is not among them. |
The Tour left Germany today and re-entered France, ending with a photo-finish between Pieter Weening and Andreas Klöden (Weening won the stage by a hair). The overall standings changed a bit, and although Lance is still in yellow, he didn't have a super day. In fact, he told French TV's Jean-Rene Godard in a post-race interview that it was a "shitty day". After the race, Lance told the press, "Clearly the team was not really on today and I wasn't feeling really good either, and the other teams did feel good. With situations like (today), it'll be hard to win the Tour, day in and day out. So now we have to evaluate where we are and make some adjustments. I don't know. Perhaps we've been a little too active in the race, worked a little too much, maybe the guys are tired. I can't really comment without actually sitting down with them and saying 'what's wrong with you, how did you feel, what's your problem, was it your legs, was it the rhythm? It's a strange climb too; it's a long climb but not very steep, so you can keep 30, 40, 50 guys there and they can take shots at you from the back. It's hard to follow those. Definitely was isolated, definitely was suffering... I have an idea of what to do in the next week. Not a great situation to be alone on a climb like that, with a fast downhill, it's difficult for my teammates to come back. I think we had a bad day; we have to go home and evaluate where we are and where the others are. We can't cry over spilt milk. There's a long way to go, but not a good start for us today, and I think definitely a good start for some others. We held on to the jersey, but I think there's some bruised egos on our team tonight." Personally, I think it's a bluff by the entire Discovery team. Today's finish wasn't too critical, as the final climb was followed immediately by a 15km descent. But by holding back a bit on an easier finish like today's, Lance and the rest of his team created a tempting situation for Vinokourov, Ullrich and the other competitors, so it became a bit of a test for them. Who among Lance's competitors was feeling strong? Who felt like they ccould take advantage of Lance's "weakness"? As it turns out, it was Vino who tried to capitalize on the moment. Vino's efforts amounted to nothing, as Lance responded immediately, but Ullrich did nothing on his own to threaten Lance, nor did the other big GC riders. Lance was able to finish the stage with the same time as his main competitors, but he gained a little bit of insider knowledge into how they're feeling. Specifically, how Vino is feeling, as he is the only rider who really played with the opportunity today. Whether or not Lance and co. were in fact bluffing, Vinokourov told reporters after the stage, "We really tested his legs, and we saw that he is in pretty good form, but that his team is not. Even though this is hard to judge in a medium mountain, it's good for morale. It's a good sign. We wanted to attack him before the high mountains. We didn't want to wait." |
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For several months, I have been unable to use my iSight with iChat, as all chats resulted in the error "Can't get video from the camera". I finally decided to get to the bottom of this, and a little bit of research revealed a conflict between iChat/iSight and Postgres. The problem is that one cannot run while the other is also running. As a test, I left Postgres running and verified that I could not initiate video chats with iChat. After bringing the db server down, iChat was able to initiate video chats using my iSight. I found several things discussing issues of limited shared memory between iChat and postgres, but none of the suggestions helped me (the first thing I found, which points to a postgres doc about shared memory). Initially, the only solution I found was to shutdown postgres before using iChat with iSight. I did eventually find a way to get my iSight working again with iChat while leaving postgres running, and here's what I did. Looking in postgresql.conf shows these default values for max_connections and shared_buffers: max_connections = 40 I tried descreasing shared_buffers to 80 (the smallest value allowed following the math rule of max_connections*2) and leaving max_connections at its default value, but iChat still failed on video chats. This was logged to console output: 2005-07-17 06:37:13.894 iChat[8259] WARNING: Freeze-frame failed: couldn't get local buffer for layer Local! When I decreased both max_connections and shared_buffers, as below, I found that I could leave postgres running and use iChat with iSight for video chats: max_connections = 20 I suspect that the numbers could be bumped up a little higher than 20 and 40, but I am perfectly content to leave "good enough" alone. |
In another stage for the sprinters with a crazy finish, Robbie McEwen beat Magnus Backstedt (by less than one wheel length) to take his 2nd stage victory. Green jersey leader Tom Boonen finished in 7th position. McEwen's win today bumped him a little higher in the points competition for the green jersey, but Boonen still has a solid lead. No changes in GC today. |
I couldn't find too much info about this, but I think it's a prize from the local town given to the yellow jersey rider. Right now, that's Lance, so he won his body weight in champagne. There are small prizes like this from the local race towns and stuff, but they usually don't make it in the news unless it involves a famous cyclist. |
In a rainy, crash-filled day, Lorenzo Bernucci got his first ever professional victory by taking the stage just ahead of Vinokourov. Vino, Bernucci and Mengin were off the front, and Vino would probably have won it out of the three, but Mengin went down in a corner, almost taking Vino with him, and Bernucci was able to finish just a bit ahead. It's a good result for Vinokourov though, he took 2nd in the stage and gained 16 seconds on Lance and the rest of the GC contenders. After today's finish, the top 10 GC standings are:
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Today was another day for the sprinters, and thank god, McEwen finally got a stage win. I know the Tour is still in the first week, but McEwen's constant whining and excuses during the first several stages (and really, throughout a lot of his cycling career) have gotten really old. Listening to him rant about everyone and everything is about as interesting as listening to a group of 7-year-olds blame each other for getting in trouble at home. The more an "adult" like McEwen complains and spews excuses, the more he brings himself down to the level of a 7-year-old. He has the classic "victim" mentality: everyone seems to be against him all the time, and no matter what trouble he finds himself involved with, it's somehow never his fault. Anyway, McEwen won the stage and Boonen got 2nd. |
Today's stage was the Team Time Trial, which Discovery won by a mere 2 seconds over CSC. Zabriskie had an unlucky crash in the final section of the course, which bumped Lance into the yellow jersey. T-Mobile came in 3rd. |
Boonen makes it two in a row! What a sprint today, with highlights on McEwen shoving his head into Stuart O'Grady in the final meters, which (obviously) wasn't taken nicely. It's interesting to note the frequency that McEwen is involved in sketchy sprint finishes, but he's always quick to blame somebody else rather than swallow a little bit of pride and acknowledge that he may have been involved in shoving his head at a 90-degree angle into O'Grady. |
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The 92nd Tour de France started today with the opening prologue, a 19km individual time trial. A bunch of American cyclists finished in the top placings, with David Zabriskie coming in 1st, Lance in 2nd, Hincapie 4th, Landis 6th, and my dark horse Bobby Julich in 11th. One rider who isn't happy at all with today's result is Jan Ullrich (he finished 12th, just behind Julich): After losing more than a minute to Lance in today's prologue, Jan Ullrich said, "I went flat out, I gave all I had. Of course I'm not satisfied with the fact that Lance caught me. I don't know if it had anything to do with my crash yesterday. I did lose some blood. I didn't have the feeling of being so bad [on the road], so I'll continue fighting. It's not my lucky day getting overhauled by Lance. I would have liked to ride better, and gave it all - it wasn't a nice feeling when he passed me. I'm down over it at the moment, but the Tour lasts three weeks. We'll see what's in it in time." |
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Here's another reason to trust the U.S. Government. About 100 years ago, the U.S. government passed a bill on "revenue to meet war expenditures" which would cover costs for the Spanish-American War (Repealing the Spanish-American War Telephone Tax). It was publicly stated as being a war tax, so everyone knew what was going on. But Representative Dingley wrote in 1898 that "all of these additional taxes are war taxes, which would be naturally repealed or modified when the necessitates of war and the payment of war expenses have ceased." So after the war was over, people should expect the Spanish-American War Tax to go away. Seems pretty clear. It eventually did go away, but it took 100 years. See? Our government leaders don't lie. |
