Yes. It is fun
Joy.
I haven’t ridden as much as I want to. It seems that I really want to share the fun with you, but since I can’t because you won’t enjoy this from the fatcyclist.
Mount Ventoux
So far, Le Tour has been slightly disappointing. It hasn’t been as exciting, because Astana has been making mince meat of the GC category. They’ve locked it down. No one else has come close, except for the Schleck brothers. They threw a wrench into the Astana train’s gears by climbing onto the podium on Wednesday, the last day in the Alps. It took the long individual time trial to dislodge the oldest, Frank, and Lance Armstrong, the old man, to show them how it’s done.
Today was the Mount Ventoux stage which would sort out the contenders from the pretenders. Usually, a mountain top finish would not be anywhere near the penultimate day of Le Tour. Usually. The GC contenders threw themselves up the slopes of the Giant of Provence. Andy Schleck showed that he was a young rider to contend with. He attacked, and attacked hoping to drag his brother back onto the podium. It did nothing. Lance Armstrong sat on their wheel all ride up not allowing them to breach the strangle lock that Astana has. The other top ten sorted themselves out keeping their places. Contador wins. Tomorrow will just be for the sprinters and the victory laps around the Champs Elysée.
And that’s why it was boring. The same things have happened as when Armstrong won his seven. The strong team goes out and locks down the GC, and the other contenders can only watch. More fireworks.
Afterwards, I went for a quick ride in the heat of the late morning. I should’ve ate breakfast, because their was not gas in my tank. Today was my own suffering on my Mount Ventoux.
Baseball, baseball, baseball!
Toronto Blue Jays @ Baltimore Orioles, July 10, 2009
Originally uploaded by browsermetrics.
I’ve been to a lot of games this year. Eight in the first half of the season. If I keep going, I would’ve gone to as many as one of the season passes. But then I wouldn’t have gotten awesome seats such as the Seattle game and the second Toronto game. And I wouldn’t have had the chance to miss that stupid ball. Stupid glove. Why!
┏( ・_・)┛
What is Aya-chan saying? I have no idea, but the thing is crazy cute.
ダッシュε=┏( ・_・)┛
さっき不覚にも遅れをとった分をなんとかここで巻き返し！
Perfect
Perfect games in baseball don’t come around very often. Twenty-seven up. Twenty-seven down. No hits. No runs. No errors. And your team wins.
Dude on the Chicago Whitesox did it yesterday.
Read the wikipedia link. It’s got some fascinating tidbits about “almost” perfect games. Some games are heartbreakers, lost on the final batter. Some are past perfect because of going to extra innings. The Babe was involved in one. As the starter for Boston he was thrown out of the game arguing with the umpire after walking the first batter. His replacement pitches a perfect game afterwards. This I learned at the Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore.
“Flash is kind of useless if the content is unviewable.”
This is why the new smartphones don’t allow Flash. The user experience is the suck. I wonder what happened to his battery life just then.
Link of the Day [7.22.09]
I love me a good salad. It may also help me to lose some weight. Or to
keep off of consuming too much salt.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Leaving the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I was livid in what they had done to the story. They pealed away the best parts (IMNHO) of the book that of Tom Riddle and the how and the why he became Voldemort. They also took out the fireworks, the battle at Hogwarts. What was left was a 2.5 hour prequel to the final book and to the two final movies. It just didn’t have to be that way.
This adaptation loses the context to what is going on in the wizarding world. The stakes were raised since the last movie as the resurrection of Voldemort meant increasing conflict with the muggle world, but except, for the opening, you don’t get the tension between our muggle and the wizarding world. It is glossed over and meant to have been extrapolated by those that have read the books. The danger to our world is part of the reason that Harry and his allies must defeat Voldemort. The bad want to inflict harm on us muggles. The good wants to live in harmony. The high stakes are not laid out in the movie.
For me, the high stakes are what was central to the books. Not only is it about Harry Potter, but it is about the wizarding world co-existing in our universe. It is about Hermione and Ron, Harry’s pals who end up falling for each other. It’s about the Weasleys and Ginny. It’s about the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Army, and augurs. It’s about the long line of Hogwart’s head masters. It’s about Tom Riddle and Voldemort, and Snape and the Deatheaters. It’s more than just Harry Potter.
But the movies don’t give us that. For me, the books progressed from being about Harry to being about his world. He wasn’t always the most interesting character. It was the others around him that made him interesting, and his nemesis, Tom Riddle was the most interesting of all. The story expanded around Harry in the books, but the story seems to coalesce around him in the movies. Just as the story gets interesting, the movie jettisons those elements that make it more interesting in order to tell Harry’s tale. It’s like a meal without salt: there’s something off about the taste.
When I got home, I had to read the last chapters of the HBP to remind me of how good the book was. I got the battle at Hogwarts details wrong. Yet, I decided to put the book on my night stand, to read it again and to remember that a story about Harry Potter is more than just about him but of his world.
3 of 5 stars.
“The Eagle has landed”
It’s the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon mission. Join in real time as they land on the moon and experience it just as our parents would’ve during that July day.