4th of July/Tour de France

4th of July

Yesterday was the 4th of July, we had hot dogs and hamburgers, then watched "Cloverfield", interesting movie, it's Godzilla taken from the person on the streets perspective. Most of the monster films are taken from the Monster or Military perspective (always by a 3rd person), this was taken first person from the street view. This also meant a lot of jerky camera scenes which made me a bit sick. After the lights went out we went and set off some fireworks with the neighbors, one of which was celebrating his 4th birthday.

The fireworks were pretty cool, but I noticed an increase in price this year. I'm always very careful with fireworks, so I wore eyewear (of course I discovered on my last firework that the eyewear was tinted yellow, which took away from the effect, note to self, next year wear clear eyewear). The neighbors loved the fireworks, the little boy in me has always been a pyromaniac, so I loved lighting them off. It was raining, but that didn't dampen our spirits. Some of the neighbors set off very big fireworks, I've never liked doing that in a neighborhood, too many things that can catch fire.

Tour de France

Well the TDF has started. I just found out that one of my favorite sprinters, Tom Boonen, has been DQ'd due to a positive result for cocaine during the off season. I'm sorry, Tom is an idiot, I feel bad for him, but he should know better, it's a witch hunt and the big riders like Tom are a focus. This of course leads the sprints open to one of my other favorites, Thor Hushovd, I like Thor because he's a big guy, 180lbs, which is huge for a cyclist. As I have previously mentioned Astana is out, which is unfortunate, but we do have two American Teams in Garmin/Chipotle and Columbia.

It's great to see more American companies spending money on cycling. Cycling is an incredibly tough sport and anyone who thinks it's easy has never tried to climb a 20 mile long mountain, has never gone over 100 miles in a day, has never sprinted up a hill, has never fallen hard and gotten back up, nor have they gone over 20mph for more than a few seconds (the guys in the TDF will do over 30mph for an hour, and without help of a team). It's not a sport that requires big pads or hitting, but it does require tons of endurance, and they do have some hitting (I've seen people get punched in the gut or hit in the head with an elbow during a sprint).

Official

Comment

OK now I'm official, I've gotten the first comment on my blog, of course it was from my niece Claudia, who for that has won the honor of always being my niece (I'm sure if she would have known that before hand she might have kept the comment to herself).

TDF

Yep it's getting to be TDF time again, that's Tour de France for most of you out there. It hasn't even started and there's already drama (which is pretty much normal for the TDF these days). First we have Astana not being able to ride, I have mixed feelings about this, the team was dropped last year for doping allegations, this team is a completely new team, except for the name, but the TDF banned them from riding anyway. They are saying it's due to doping, but I think it's also due to the team is actually the same team from US Postal/Discovery and the TDF officials don't like that team (too American I guess).

Today we have Floyd Landis being denied his final appeal on doping for his 2006 win. Personally I like Floyd, he seems to be a good guy and a hard worker, but from my observations, I never saw him ride like he did on that day, it was remarkable, I think he rode beyond his capabilities. I'm not to say he isn't a great rider, I just don't think he's great like that, that ride was something that Indurain, Armstrong, Hinault, LeMond, Merckx could pull off on a great day, and Floyd isn't any of them.

Speaking of Armstrong I saw Bryant Gumbel give his expert opinion on Lance and the sport of cycling. All I really have to say about Bryant is that if all news was good, then he wouldn't have a job. The guy's a hack, he loves to attack and be-little people, he'd probably pull something if he managed to say something nice or defend someone. Lance has won 7 TDFs, I'm not saying he wasn't doping, I'm just saying he won 7 TDFs in a row, I think if Lance was doping then half the peleton was also doping and therefor they were all on a level playing field and even if he was doping, it takes a hell of a lot of skill, strength and luck to win 7 TDFs in a row.

What's really interesting is that after Operacion Puerto many cyclists got picked up (including Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, if these two could be doping then anyone could be doping). What was also mentioned was that there were both soccer and tennis players on the list, but you didn't hear the details on them, why is that, well because unlike cycling they aren't as big into anti-doping and are much more concerned about their image.

Tour de France

Well I'm sure I'll be landing a great new job soon, you see it's almost time for the Tour de France :). While I enjoy watching to Tour, I'd rather have a good gig. The Tour this year will be launched with yet another controversy. Last year the Tour DQ'd the Astana team for drug use, this year the Astana team is only the same in name, everything else about it has changed and is essentially the old Postal/Discovery squad, but due to the name of the team the Tour is not allowing them to race. What does this mean? Basically one of the best teams in the world won't be able to ride. This will taint this years winner, since they weren't able to race against the best (cycling's in trouble, and the TDF isn't helping out).

People ask me if people like Lance Armstrong could be doping, I'm not sure if he did or didn't, I think Lance is smart enough to do it and not get caught, I believe most people who get caught are either the dumb ones or let their guard down. Personally I think if Bjarne Riis could be doping, then anyone could be doping. I also think that even if Lance was doping, he still worked harder and longer than anyone else and most likely competed on an even playing field. Do I think doping is right? I'm not sure, being a science type I hate to make judgements without knowing the facts, what I do believe is that regardless of whether or not it's harmful to the athlete, the organizers have said that it is illegal, so therefore it should be treated as such.

Refresh-DC

The meeting at Refresh-DC was interesting last night. I tend to be shy in big groups like that, but hopefully after a couple of more meetings I'll be able to break out of my shell and be the wonderful, lively person that people know and love :). The speech was fantastic, it spoke about Flash and how to use it. The speaker made some good points, such as passing information into Flash via HTML or Javascript, he liked the idea since it makes that information viewable to search engines and such and allows you to build javascript versions of the product without having to replicate data (which is fantastic), I enjoyed it because of those reasons (which I've used before for other issues), but it also takes the developer out of the picture if there needs to be a small change to text (it's all in HTML now, the SWF doesn't need to be modified or recompiled).