Archive for July, 2005
OK eBay don’t let me down
Alright, my auction was a success. The winning bidder on my 15inch Powerbook is on the hook for $1750. I just hope I haven’t landed a deadbeat. Cause that money would come in handy.
UPDATE: It’s been a day, and no response from the winner. How long should I wait before sending a second chance offer to the runner up in the auction?
7 in a row. It’s over!
Lance is the winner of the 2005 Tour de France. His streak of 7 ends today along with his cycling career. He has stepped down in his prime and is moving on to the next phase of his remarkable life.
I’ve been following the TdF since 2001 when I watched it obsessively during my time of unemployment in Erie. I saw the Look and was immediately hooked on Lance and the Tour. It’s sad that his time of racing is complete, but now we get to bear witness to a new era in cycling and I’m very excited about this. I hope that many of Lance’s fans will stay with the sport, even though he is no longer racing. Lance’s story is unique and there will never be another racer like him, but cycling will always be exciting to watch.
Thanks Lance for making me a fan. Can’t wait to see what you do next!
That clinches it…
Lance dominated the time trial today, winning his first stage of the tour, and last stage of his career. But honestly, we expected as much. The really interesting story today was the battle between Ullrich and Rasmussen.
Rasmussen started the day in 3rd overall, about 2 minutes ahead of Ullrich. Ullrich is a renowned time trialer however, and Rasmussen is a climber. This gave Ullrich the advantage. In fact, when they were out on the course, Ullrich had made up the time in just a few kilometers. But then disaster struck Rasmussen. He crashed, had to replace his bike twice, crashed again, and had to replace his bike 2 more times. Humiliation!
So the final podium into Paris will be Armstrong, Basso, and Ullrich. And Lance has won his 7th straight Tour.
Hard to believe it’ll be over tomorrow.
Powerbook for sale
Well, in light of the fact that I’m changing jobs and won’t really be needing my Powerbook, I’m selling it on eBay. My reserve is quite low considering a new one of these will set you back $2000. I’m not too thrilled with selling it, but having two laptops is a luxury right now. And since nobody gives a rat’s ass about HP laptops, the Mac must go. But I vow to get another one!!
Anyway, check out the auction.
Cool idea
Check out this website: Flipbook!
I used to make flipbooks all the time. Thanks to The Dayjobs for the link.
Big news
OK, I’ve been away from this site for a few days. The reason: I have been offered a position at the company in Atlanta that I used to work for. I accepted the position and put in my two weeks notice as of today. So it’s been a hectic few days around here.
I’m pretty excited about going back to Combest. I’ll be doing some really interesting work with voice over IP phone systems. I’ll also be doing some serious work towards getting my CCNP and CCIE certifications. However, I do have to resume commuting to Atlanta every day. The good news is that Combest has moved their office further up 85 so it’s not as long of a drive.
So I have 2 weeks to get my shit together for my CCNA, which I’m aiming to take within the first two weeks. That’ll be occupying my time for now. That, and cramming some bike riding in before I start working longer hours.
Stage 11 News
The Madeleine and the Galibier. Two legendary climbs. Today was a surprising day in the peloton. Alexander Vinokourov, who struggled all day long yesterday, managed a miraculous recovery and won today’s stage. Lance and Discovery let him get away on a break and win. He was over 7 minutes back at the start of the stage so he had some leeway to go for the win and he did.
Discovery had a great day with the team out in front of the peloton all day. Big George Hincapie actually paced the team to the top of the Galibier, a horribly long and steep climb. George hasn’t been known for his super strong climbing in the past, but he has been getting better and better over the years.
Other tidbits on the stage: Tom Boonen, the current sprint points leader, crashed on the descent of the Madeleine and fucked his knee up. He may not start tomorrow, which will put the Green Jersey on Thor Hushovd’s back. It will also give Robbie McEwen a new chance to compete for that Jersey.
Breaking news: Jens Voigt is out of the Tour. He failed to finish within the time cut today. That’s too bad.
Stage 10 News
A great day for Lance and Discovery. They set a crushing pace up the final climb today and dropped all the favorites. Lance attacked with the finish in site and dropped everyone but Alejandro Valverde, who somehow managed to beat him at the line. But no matter, Lance put minutes into all the favorites and came away with the Yellow locked down. Lance will win the Tour, if he can stay healthy and upright.
Notes: Michael Rasmussen is showing a lot of grit as the King of the Mountain. He was able to hang with Lance all day almost to the very end. His poor time trialing will keep him from being a threat.
What happened to Vino? He picked a bad day to have a bad day.
Glad Ullrich was able to limit his losses. I’d like to see him in second. His expression as he was grinding up the climb is what did it for me. He showed some emotion, and he usually doesn’t do that.
Tomorrow, 2 giant legendary climbs, the Madeleine and the Galibier. I predict another strong showing by Discovery, and more folks getting chewed up and spit out the back.
Stage 9 News
Today’s stage was a good one I think. A long breakaway by Michael Rasmussen of Rabobank for the stage win and the King of the Mountain jersey. Also, Discovery let Jens Voigt of CSC move into the race lead by a couple of minutes. This will take the pressure off the team for a few days as Jens isn’t a favorite for the overall win. This means he can’t hang in the big mountains when the real pressure will be on. So Discovery has some time to get their shit together. They rode much better today, keeping a presence in the front of the peloton the whole day. Lance should be happy with that. Tomorrow is a rest day.
Sad note, David Zabriskie had to abandon today. He never fully recovered from that accident during the Team Time Trial. I feel bad for him.
“Time for death, it’s to the left…”
Posted by Chris in Athens Night Life on 7/10/2005
“Gotta smash my chin till I got a cleft.”
What was your first Athens show? I remember mine vividly. GWAR! At the 40 watt! I loved GWAR all through high school. Such awesomely vulgar and silly lyrics. The band had (and still has) a legendary reputation for over the top shows. I remember going into a record store in Mobile AL. The owner of the shop looked like Sloth from the Goonies. He was huge and scary looking. I bought a copy of America Must Be Destroyed. When he saw it he looked at me with fearful eyes and said “Dude, I’ve been to a lot of shows, but I’ll remember that GWAR show for the rest of my life”. Then he showed me a gnarly scar that ran the length of his bald scalp. “I nearly lost an eye!”
Dude.
So when I found out they were coming to the 40 watt, I bought tickets right away. Me and my brother went. When we walked into the 40 watt, we knew we were in for something awesome. The whole place was covered in black plastic wrap. Even the frikkin ceiling. Like they were expecting copious amounts of blood to be spilt.
The opening act was absolutely awful. I don’t remember the name of the ‘band’ but they sucked ass. Picture some dudes on stage dressed in black with makeup on making over the top satanic gestures while a giant red pentagram on a black background is lit up behind them. Meanwhile a chick with her gut spilling over her waistline was belly dancing wearing black leather. They had a mercifullly short set.
Soon the curtains covering up the stage were pulled back. The lights were lowered. A sound like whirling wind filled the air. A man was on stage. It was Jacques Cousteau. If you know the mythology of Gwar, you know that Cousteau discovered the band frozen in Antartica and unleashed them on an unsuspecting world. Jacques began to explain his discovery in a thick French accent. A slow, plodding, stomping was heard as the drummer, with a huge coglike protuberance from his head, took his place on stage. The crowd was waiting with baited breath. The bass player came next. I think his entire head was a steel bear trap. The rest of the band slowly marched on stage and into position as Jacques continued to expound. Finally, the lead singer, Oderous Urungus himself appeared, towering over all by a good 2 feet. In his hands was a giant sword at least as tall as himself. Jacques’ voice was lost as the wind built to a crescendo and then BAM! Oderous swung the sword and Jacques fell in twain as blood geysered to the ceiling. The band started playing as the fatal blow was struck. I forget the song but they were tight. Jacques’ legs and trunk continued to spray blood like a firehose into the crowd. People were crowd surfing to the front of the stage to drink from the gory fountain.
After the impressive opening number, Oderous brought it down a notch.
Oderous Urungus: “How ya’ll doing here in Athens?”
Crowd: Unintelligible noise
OU: “Isn’t REM from here? Michael Stipe, I want to suck your pipe”
Another song, this one seemed to be about killer Antartic pengiuns. In fact, one of them comes on stage and Oderous peels its face off in one swipe. Blood sprays from the eyesockets and more crowd surfing and moshing begin. The crowd is now soaked in gore. I’m watching from the back with my bro.
OU: “What’s this I hear about Marylin Manson? Do you know what the difference between Marilyn Manson and Oderous Urungus is?”
Crowd: “What’s the difference?”
OU: “Oderous isn’t a mule faced faggot! HA hahaha!!”
The crowd loved that one.
More songs. Soon, Slymenstra Hymen, the resident ‘woman’ in the band showed up on stage breathing fire, with a radioactive green glow coming from her crotch. The band finished up with a song about Jon Benet Ramsey. Oderous procured a life size replica of her corpse, pulled out a huge fake penis from his groin area, and proceeded to have sexual relations with the dead deceased corpse. Then he threw the corpse into the crowd and proceeded to ‘masturbate’ all over the crowd as some kind of goo began to spray from the fake penis. Again, people in the crowd surfed up to the front in order to be drenched. The corpse of Jon Benet was torn to shreds in the crowd.
The rest of the show was a blur. I recall their being a giant reptile named Gor Gor being on stage fighting with Techno Destructo. The moshing was intense and there was goo and gore everywhere. It was awesome.
Drunk as a bicycle
I was going to drink some beer with Brent tonight, but he’s at home watching movies with his brother. So I’m instead at Hot Corner drinking coffee and screwing around on my Mac.
Story time boys and girls.
I mentioned before that my dad was an alcoholic. If you have an alcoholic parent, then you probably have at least one good story about them busting their ass in a spectacular fashion. My dad didn’t disappoint.
I was probably in fifth or sixth grade. My friend Kris Ansley lived a couple miles down the road from me. My brother and I had ridden our bikes over to his house and were playing basketball or something out in his driveway. We were just out screwing around. Well, dad drove up and got out of his car. I think he told us to ride home or something. I’ll be honest, I can’t remember how he got this idea, but all of a sudden he wanted to show us that he could ride a bike. At the time, my dad was rather overweight. He weighed close to three hundred pounds. Did I mention that he was drunk? So Matt (my bro) and I were standing there, embarrassed as hell, as Dad straddled one of our bikes and began to ride around.
Then it was wheelie time…
Boom! Dad tried to pop a wheelie and the bike shot out from under him. He crashed down on his back with amazing force. Long story short, he broke many ribs and fucked his back up. We were too poor for him to get crutches, so he hobbled around the house for weeks using a rusty pogo stick. I can still hear the god awful screeching that thing made as he limped around the house. Not too long after this, my parents got divorced.
This is why we say “Drunk as a bicycle”
It worked!
I was able to successfully upgrade my site to WordPress 1.5x. The new version of WordPress has theme support, so I’m going to be messing with the way this site looks for the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the Zen Minimalist theme.
Apple coolness
I’ve been playing with iCal and I’ve created a personal calendar of local bike rides. You can subscribe at webcal://www.icalx.com/public/chrisdriggers/Cycling.ics. So if you have any rides you’d like to appear in this calendar, shoot me an email. I’ve already sent an email to the Nitty Gritty guys to see if I can include their rides in the calendar. Hopefully they’ll be cool about it.
Rituals
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip that I think about from time to time. In it, Calvin is talking about rituals, and that his favorite ritual is to get up early on a Saturday morning, eat tons of cereal (Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs) and watch cartoons all day. I am a man of habit and ritual. My personal favorite ritual is to get up on Saturday and go to the Grit.
I can’t begin to express to you how much I love that restaurant. I tell people that it’s one of the main reasons I wanted to move back to Athens. While I was in exile in Erie PA, I used to dream about eating brunch there. My ritual is to go to the Grit, order 2 scrambled eggs with cheese, grits, and a multi-grain bagel with cream cheese. Oh, and some sweet tea (the other reason I wanted to move back south). I will then proceed to drink at least 5 glasses of tea and eat a lovely breakfast, all while reading the book du jour, which lately has been The Dharma Bums, by Kerouac. I don’t read this book at any other time, just when I’m eating brunch. I usually choose a book that helps me reflect on my life in a spiritual way. Again, this is part of the ritual. I’ve been doing this for as long as I have been in Athens and it’s very important to me.
My wife doesn’t much care for the Grit. And this particular ritual is one I practice by myself. But I’m always looking for new rituals. The brunch ritual I share with Meghan is to go to Bischero on Sunday, order two Caeser salads (they make the best I’ve ever had) and order the special, whatever it is.
Another ritual is to go to the Engine Room Friday nights, drink myself into a stupor on PBRs (yet another reason to move back south) and play pool with Brent.
Rituals are an important part of my life. I like the regularity. I can depend on them.
Time to make a little change up in here
OK, I’ve had this site up for a while now. I was looking around the internet the other day and found another WordPress blog using the exact same theme as me. So I have to change it up now. I have zero experience working with php, style sheets, and themes, but I’m really good at reverse engineering. So I’ll hit the internet and find some WordPress 1.2 themes, modify them, and slap em up here.
Also, I think I need to upgrade my site from 1.2 to 1.5 or whatever the new version of WordPress is. I just haven’t had time to even think about doing this lately. But I get bored.
On second thought
I smell a rat. It’s impossible that all of Discovery sucked so bad today. Is it possible that this was just tactics? Johan Bruyneel has been known to screw with the other teams by having Lance and other riders play sick. Could they be drawing the other riders out, having them attack thinking that Discovery is weak?
We’ll see over the next few days.
A bad day for Discovery
Man. Today was a nail biter. The first day of hard mountains and Discovery falls apart. Lance was left to his own devices on the hard climb of the day. For some reason, all of his teammates fell away to leave him to defend the many attacks on his own. I’m sure he’ll be chewing some ass tonight.
Andreas Kloden managed to get away and gained a few seconds, but he’s still about 2 minutes back. Lucky for Lance, he was able to handle the attacks by Vino, Landis, and Julich. But having him out there by himself is not good.
Pieter Weening from Rabobank won the day just a hair ahead of Kloden. Tomorrow we see if Discovery can recover their form. There are 2 tough climbs on the day.
Stage 7 News
Another long rainy day for the peloton. We had a breakaway as was expected. The Tour was coming to Germany today and everyone expected a German rider to try to break away for the glory of being the first to ride into Deutschland. Fabian Wegmann was the man today. He stayed away for most of the day but was caught before the end. He did manage to get the KOM jersey, so he was the German of the day on the podium.
Another few crashes as well. The worst was when the peloton was crossing some railroad tracks and some guys went down hard. No one important though. At the end, it was a bunch sprint with Robbie McEwen taking the win again. He’s getting closer to the Green Jersey. He keeps saying he’s not going for it, but that’s bullshit. He’s all for it.
The days of sprint finishes are over for the time being though. Tomorrow, the mountains begin!
Stage 6 News
Pile up!!
Today was a heartbreaker for Christopher Mengin, a French rider who lead a break away that lasted till the last kilometer of todays stage. He lived near the city the stage was finishing in today. Anyway, when he got to the last bend in the road before the finish, boom. He crashed and flew into the barricades. To make matters worse, the rest of the peloton fell down too and it looked like they all landed on him. Some other guy won. The only interesting thing about that is that Vino escaped the carnage to finish second. He was able to score some bonus points and drew a little bit closer to Lance. I think he’s in third now about a minute back.
Tomorrow? 2 categorized climbs and a downhill sprint finish. Hopefully no more carnage.
Also, today is Bob Roll’s birthday. He’s 45. Happy B Day Bobke!