Got Purpose?

I saw this a car last night. ;)

More Drama At The Tour.

Just when you think it is as bad as it can get... It gets worse.

Three days ago cycling hit another all time low. The Danish tour leader Rasmussen, was thrown off his team and the race, by his own team. The decision was made after it was discovered that he lied about his whereabouts earlier this year. The sport of cycling runs random drug tests throughout the year and leading up to the Tour de France. Rasmussen missed two such tests on May 8 and June 28. He claimed that he was in Mexico with his wife, when in fact he was training in Italy. Was he trying to avoid being testing because of doping? We may never know. Reports that the Danish national team suspended him surfaced earlier in the race, but seemingly as soon as the story was fully understood, Team Rabobank acted as well. The whole story is another shock to the sport of cycling. But the tour rolls on...

The action has made it a very interesting race for Team Discovery. They now have two riders that could win the tour and definitely will end up on the podium; veteran and team leader Leipheimer and the young Contador

Astana Withdraws, Vino Suspended

It's a sad day for the sport of cycling. After all the respect that was given to him for his courage for continuing while being injured. Vino has tested positive for intoducing "homologous blood" into his system. Below is an article from versus.com. Also a link to an article from BBC:

Vinokourov fails Tour doping test

Astana Withdraws, Vino Suspended

By Phil Liggett
July 24, 2007

Alexandre Vinokourov’s positive blood test announced Tuesday has stunned everyone from riders to organizers. Since his crash, he has been portrayed as a limping hero of what, so far, has been a marvellous Tour. Now, he seems to have been caught introducing homologous blood into his system just before the time trial he won in demonstrative fashion.

His Astana team has withdrawn at the invitation of the organizers and Vinokourov was suspended by Astana pending the confirmation of his positive test in his B analysis. It is very unusual for the second test not to confirm the first. In short, Vinokourov, one of the most respected riders in the peloton, will now leave the sport in disgrace.

British rider David Millar, himself a reformed drug taker, has been leading the campaign to clean up the sport. His comment during his own Saunier Duval team’s press conference in Pau, sums up the feelings of most: “I just feel like crying right now.”

Paul, Bob and I are, for once, speechless. We are all very upset with such a stupid action at a time the sport looked to be putting its own house in order. It is incomprehensible that Vinokourov could do such a thing when he must have known he was under suspicion because of his dealing with disgraced doctor Michele Ferrari in Italy. He must have known he would be tested at every opportunity and the time trial was the perfect occasion.

Tomorrow we will know more.

What is your Mexican name?

My Mexican Name Is...

Don Elbanco (Does this mean I'm 'money'?) ;)

What's Your Mexican Name?

This guy never gives up!

Vino continues to amaze everyone and comes back to win stage 15, gaining back more than 5 minutes on the tour leader. This doesn't put him back in the running to win the tour, but shows just how much heart this guy has.

The story on versus.com

How hard is the Tour de France?

They say it is one of the hardest athletic events out there. Three weeks of torturing your body everyday, just to get up and do it again the next day. Just imagine if you were injured. Unfortunately that's just what has happened to the favorite, Alexandre Vinokourov. He crashed in the first week and struggled through the alps. Then yesterday he came back with an amazing time trial and jumped up 14 places. Everyone thought he was back. Today, he looked like he was still in a lot of pain and lost 29 minutes to the leader of the tour. Will he continue??

Check out this article from NYTimes about the tour.

Just a Bike Race, You Say? Think Again

Joost : TV anywhere, anytime...

Joost beta is finally open to everyone now. So, I thought I'd check it out.

Joost a highly disruptive site is a creation of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis who were also behind Kazaa and Skype. To use it you download the player, create a user name and password, log in and you're ready to go. Old media companies are looking at making deals with Joost to distribute their shows, some say they are using it as an answer to YouTube. Companies like Reuters, Warner Brothers, BET, Comedy Central, MTV and more have made programs available. I expect as popularity increases so will the number of companies and programs we'll find on Joost.

I'm viewing with a 19" flat screen monitor on a cable connection, and so far the quality is very good. When there is a lot of motion you do get a bit of fuzziness, but nothing that is unbearable. There are advertisements but they are very short less then 30 seconds at a time. Every so often a small image will appear on top of the picture in the lower right hand corner advertising products. Nothing more than what you would see when watching a soccer match.

Along with watching TV shows and movies, you can chat with viewers and rate shows. Over all I would say it's pretty impressive. They actually have a couple of episodes from Max Headroom.

Check out this demonstration from the site What's Joost?

Microsoft, Apple and other companies are still trying to bring the PC and internet to the living room. Joost may give them more incentive. Could this be the future of TV?

Healthcare and Taxes

Every once and a while I post something that is.. well political. Last Friday, I had a very brief discussion with a friend about taxes. One of my comments was that we are one if not the lowest taxed industrialized countries. I also, said I think we are under taxed. Well, I was reminded of this today when I read a statement from Michael Moore (see quote below). Of course about now many of you are probably branding me as a bleeding heart liberal intent on big government blah, blah... Just for saying that I think we are under taxed, and I must be a liberal if I mention Michael Moore. I will only caution that we should all drop the silly categorizations (Liberal, Conservative, etc..) and actually think about things. If we can get past the laziness of these labels, maybe, just maybe some things will actually change for the better.

With that said let me clarify. Our government spends billions upon billions on a war that was never officially declared war. (For it to be an official war, congress must declare war. The president has a constitutional right to move troops but not to declare war.) Congress never declared war on Iraq. Here's an article to support that. Who Can Declare War? Backgrounder and Research Guide and Section 8: Powers of Congress But, that is another topic. Even as the US goes further and further in debt, taxes are cut and the administration claims it is trimming the budget. Now, none of the trimming is coming off of the "War in Iraq". It's coming from things like after school programs, literacy programs, they tried with social security as well as health care. Now, it would seem very obvious to me, what is more important use of US tax dollars: A widely discredited "war", or programs that directly help the American people? In the end though, the USA general public is broadly mislead to believe that a tax cut is really going to help them and help put more money in their pockets. And still we continue to have alarming numbers of bankruptcies in the US. One of the major causes of bankruptcy is medical bills. This brings me to the Moore quote. I leave the rest to him:

"THAT'S the only thing we should be talking about. How profit and greed are killing our fellow Americans. How profit and private insurance have to be removed from our health care system. CNN should join me in asking why our 9/11 rescue workers aren't receiving medical care. Somebody should send a crew to Canada to find out why they live longer than we do, and why no Canadian has ever gone bankrupt because of medical bills. And all of the media should start saying how much it costs to go to a doctor in these other top industrialized countries: Nothing. Zip. It's FREE. Don't patronize Americans by saying, "Well, it's not free -- they pay for it with taxes!" Yes, we know that. Just like we know that we drive down a city street for FREE -- even though we paid for that street with our taxes. The street is FREE, the book at the library is FREE, if your house catches on fire, the fire department will come and put it out for FREE, and if someone snatches your purse, the police officer will chase down the culprit and bring your purse back to you -- AND HE WON'T CHARGE YOU A DIME FROM THAT PURSE!

These are all free services, collectively socialized and paid for with our tax dollars. To argue that health care -- a life and death issue for many -- should not be considered in the same league is ludicrous and archaic. And trust me, once you add up what you pay for out-of-pocket in premiums, deductibles, co-pays, overpriced medicines, and treatments that aren't covered (not to mention all the other things we pay for like college education, day care and other services that many countries provide for at little or no cost), we, as Americans, are paying far more than the Canadians or Brits or French are paying in taxes. We just don't call these things taxes, but that's exactly what they are."

Driving restrictions in MD

I was just doing some work for Google and came across a site about Maryland Driving Laws. I found this "Passenger Restriction" below interesting:

Passenger Restriction

• Effective October 1, 2005, provisional drivers under the age of 18 are not permitted to carry passengers under the age of 18, except for family members, for the first five (5) months of licensure.
• Violations may result in a suspension of driving privileges.

That just seems odd to me. Is this because they think people under 18 aren't mature enough to decide for themselves whether or not they should get in a car with a new driver. Did someone's parents get sued for an accident their kid had? Maybe it's just me, but it just seems odd. I guess it goes along with their slogan on the signs when you enter MD "Drive Gently" I'm not quite sure how you do that. ;)

The Tour Rolls On..

It's that time of year again, the Tour de France is in full swing! The end of today's racing will complete the first week. It's been a rough first week too. My picks are in a bit of trouble after crashes yesterday. Andreas Kloeden and Alexandre Vinokourov are looking pretty rough today.

Astana's Woes Go From Doping to Crashes

The Team Discovery Channel (previously USPostal) boys are looking ok still although they did lose one of their riders, Tomas Vaitkus, to a crash in stage 3. Yesterday big George Hincapie took...strangely versus.com is reporting 5th and ThePaceline.com is reporting 6th. Their GC man, Levi Leipheimer has been off the radar so far, but is expected to emerge in the mountains. The first real day in the mountains is tomorrow.


Team CSC still have their man the Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara in yellow after he had a phenomenal time trial in the prologue.

Hot, Hot and more Hot

Man it has been stinkin' hot again. Yesterday I went to Panera to have an afternoon coffee... actually it was an Iced Green Tea. I took my laptop and thought I could get some work done and beat the heat a bit. But after about 45 minutes the electricity went out, and not just in the store. It was the whole neighborhood. Street lights and all. So, no internet access. So, had to head back home. I have an air conditioner here too, but it just runs and runs. I know it is going to cost me a fortune! But anyway...

It has been a frustrating last few or maybe even the last week. I have been hitting sort of a wall. With the business development. I really just need to get it out there and run with so I can make some money. I did make a positive step today though. I made an appointment with a guy at the Lancaster SCORE office. SCORE is an organization of retired executives that help small business owners like me. The guy is going to give me some counseling for getting my business plan finished.(financial part is giving me trouble) So, that should help.
Yesterday was bad too because I took care of a bunch of stuff that I have been putting off because I know it is stressful. I.e. dealing with the ex. Dealing with a company that is trying to charge me for a service they didn't provide.... you know all those annoying things that unfortunately have to be dealt with or they fester and get worse. Plus, there is some other stuff with dealing with people. Sometimes I thing we all just need to relax a bit and go with the flow. There is enough stress in life, why worry and make more...

Tonight I did have some good stress relief though and I feel a lot better. I played about 2 hours of soccer. I'm absolutely beat, especially with the heat. Soccer is always a great way for me to just blow off some steam, concentrate on the now and work up a good sweat. Something we can all use. Plus, I scored two goals tonight too! Woohoo!

Blame it on Mr. Rogers...

Well, not everything, but it is a good example of a mentality that many of us grew up with and what some think is even worse with todays teens and twenty somethings. Check out the article below on The Wall Street Journal site. It is an interesting article and I can see some truth in it:

Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled

excerpt:

"You're special." On the Yahoo Answers Web site, a discussion thread about Mr. Rogers begins with this posting: "Mr. Rogers spent years telling little creeps that he liked them just the way they were. He should have been telling them there was a lot of room for improvement. ... Nice as he was, and as good as his intentions may have been, he did a disservice."

Yahoo! under attack??

It looks like Yahoo! is having some sort of trouble today. Yahoo.com is not loading and pinging the domain doesn't get a response. Plus Yahoo! Messenger and Mail aren't working either. I wonder if they are experiencing a DOS (Denial of Service) attack??

Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

iPhone -- Industry Breakthrough or Just Another Expensive Gadget?

Do you have your iPhone yet? Is it living up to Steve Jobs' promises? It seems to be getting some pretty good reviews. So, far the biggest concern that I've heard is the speed of the internet connection, but that isn't really the phone but the network from At&T that it is using. I've also had a couple of other reports that the phone seems to freeze up a lot.

Check out what the folks at The Associated Press has to say.

Review: Slick iPhone Suffers on Slow Network
Q&A: Is the iPhone Living Up to the Hype?

One of the Good Ol' Boys..

Just another example of how far Bush is willing to go for one of his Good Ol' Boys...

Bush spares LIbby from prison

"I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison."

Yes, it is within the law for a President to commute a sentence or even pardon someone, but really...

It will be interesting to see how much more damage this guy does before he is out of office.

"Philly is on the Verge" -- Fast Company

The Magazine Fast Company recently released it's list of the top cities in the world. They created 4 lists: Fast Cities, Too-Fast Cities, Slow Cities and On The Verge Cities. There's also a great map showing all the cities. Philadelphia is ranked in the "On the Verge Cities" under "Urban Innovator". Go Philly! Check it out.