France Update 1

There will be more pictures later, but I thought I'd get this one up right away:



Yes, that's what you think it is. I'll let christinelh post some more information.

Beer in Paris

We're sitting at the "Beer Station" near the Arch de Triumph in Paris. I like to call it "Beer Land", just because it sounds even more American than this tourist bar already sounds. We have lots of pictures and updates, but we'll keep you waiting until we get back. I had envisioned being able to post at least a couple updates while we were here, but our Internet access was sparse.
Au revoir!

Super Mario Marimba Jam

Link courtesy of my brother:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3117004324521250241&q;=marimba

It's some high school kids playing some Super Mario tunes on the marimba. Complete with costumes and stage decorations. Pretty cool if you were an old-skool Mario player.

Let's Ride - Part 2

Christine and I took a motorcycle class last weekend. We both passed the test, so we just have to take our MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) card to the DMV and we'll get a new license with a motorcycle endorsement.

Let's Ride

My new alpine touring gear is ready for action. Atomic TMX skis, dynafit TLT bindings, and Garmont Megaride boots. Bring on the snow.

386

(Warning, if you're not a computer geek you probably won't find this at all entertaining.)

One of the vendors I work with is coming here to flash the firmware on a bunch of their cards (because they sent us a bunch of crap). They asked me if we had a 386 that they could use because their flash program won't work on anything newer. 386!? This division didn't even exist in the late 80's (when 386's were the latest and greatest). I did a quick survey around the lab to see if we could find one, and pretty much every just laughed. I think it's time they rewrite their flash program.

Photo Credit

I emailed a link of my Tom Danielson pictures to The Paceline (Lance's fan site), and they posted them up. I even get a photo credit. Here's the link, but you need login to their site to access it: http://www.thepaceline.com/members/featureditem.aspx?cid=1719.

Here's a PDF version of the page: The Paceline- Dan and Tom in Colorado Photos

Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team's Tom Danielson

HP held an event in Fort Collins this week to showcase our products to our sales force. The event includes presentations from some of our higher profile customers, and since we've struck up a new partnership with Trek they came to Fort Collins along with Tom Danielson of the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team. Our group at work was allowed to send one person to the event, and I lobbied hard to be that one person when I found out Tom Danielson was going to make an appearance. I won. As it turns out, one of the local bike shops took the opportunity to have Trek and Tom come into the shop, so I got to see them twice.

Most people probably do not know who Tom Danielson is. Yet. He's frequently considered America's next great stage racer. He won the Dodge Tour de Georgia this year, placed 8th in the Tour of Spain, and holds the record for riding up Mount Evans. Lance calls him GWH - the Great White Hope. Time will tell if he'll live up to his title.

The presentation at the bike shop was pretty good and I got there early enough to get a good spot. The disappointing thing was that the Trek representative didn't mention anything about the HP workstations they used. Hrmph! But I got some pictures:



Today I showed up to the HP event a little late because I had a meeting (which I ditched early in an attempt to make it on time). I stood at the back of the room so I could look around for a seat, and I noticed that Tom Danielson and the Discovery PR guy (Dan Osipow) were sitting behind the last row of chairs. What luck! It's not very often you get the chance to be around a pro cyclist when there aren't a bunch of other cycling fans around to mob them. I didn't really want to impose, but eventually I just had to say hello and get a picture. I think I was probably the only one in the room who recognized who they were. (Or maybe nobody else cared.)

Later I got Tom to sign his promo shot and one of our workstation chassis (a little something for the lab).


Michael Sagan (the senior designer at Trek's Advanced Concepts Group) was hanging out at the AMD booth so I went over to bullshit for a little while. It was interesting to hear about some of the considerations that go into designing their bikes. Cycling's governing body has a lot of rules that they have to follow in order for their bikes to be legal. For example, the downtube on their time trail bike can't be any wider than 80mm, otherwise it would be considered an illegal fairing. Also milling around was Scott Kasin, who played an important part in getting AMD to sponsor the Discovery Team. Now he lives in Carbondale, CO and runs a sports technology consulting company. Pretty sweet deal, because it gives him lots of time to train.

Here I am with Michael Sagan and one of Lance's time trial frames from the 2005 Tour de France:


More pictures on Flickr

Bad Car Week (already)

On Saturday, someone hit my bumper as I was backing out of a parking spot. I would love to go after this person's insurance since they were clearly driving too fast in the parking lot, but in the end I think the effort required will not be worth it. It doesn't look too bad after I buffed it all out, so I think I can live without having the bumper resprayed.

On my way home from Old Chicago's tonight I got pulled over. Not because I was speeding (I wasn't), but because the cop says I "hammered it" leaving the traffic light. Right. I'm in a 250 HP hatchback, you're in a ginormous SUV. If I "hammered it", you would NOT be catching me any time soon. And who would floor it at a traffic light when there's a cop in the other lane? I guess I'll be going to court on January 30th. It's an actual court date this time, none of that bogus DA's office plea bargain crap.

And to top it off, I'm pretty sure I have an ear infection brewing. I'll be skipping some fun offsit work stuff tomorrow so I can go to the doctor. The week has surely got to get better than this.

Paris

For those of you that don't read christinelh's LJ, we're going to Paris over Thanksgiving. Look out France, here comes a stupid American.

Windy Enough?

It's was pretty windy last Thursday and I came home to find this sight:




That's some shoddy worksmanship if I've ever seen it. I should find the people who built that piece of crap...

LiveJournal and RSS readers

I thought I'd check out Bloglines for reading LiveJournal and various RSS feeds, but it seems to be missing something. I can't get it to show "friends-only" posts, because it has no way to authenticate with LJ (I guess). I've tried using a URL like: http://username:password@www.livejournal.com/users/username/data/rss, but it still doesn't work. Has anyone used Bloglines to view LJ posts?

So maybe I can't get Bloglines to work the way I want. Does anyone have a recommendation for another RSS reader? There's a ton of them out there, but I have no idea which ones are actually good.

Jackson Hole

Anyone want to go to Jackson Hole February 10th-ish? A friend of mine is coming out, so Christine and I are going to head up there with him and get...extreme. We'll probably drink some mountain dew and jump off really big ledges because we're so totally extreme to the max.

Box Turtle Love

After much searching, I finally go my hands on the video from the 7/14/04 Daily Show, where they talked about gay marriage and made fun of a senator who put gay marriage on the same footing as marrying a box turtle. It makes me laugh just to think about it.

Here is the whole segment :
http://s65.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=02KZP2HXFJVO51PFE68IKX1XJ2

Here's the edited down version that just has the bit with the infamous box turtle equation:
http://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=06WW4L2JM1MBP199D0NYJOGZ1B

Enjoy. They'll only be available at that link for a short time, so I suggest downloading it and saving it on your computer for those moments when you need a good laugh.