John’s Ramblings

He beat cancer.

He won the Tour de France.

7 times.

What new and lofty goal will Lance Armstrong seek next? He battled brain and testicular cancer, and came out of it a better athlete. To win the Tour de France is perhaps the greatest desire for every cyclist. Once you’ve done that, more times than any other human has ever done it, what achievement could could you seek that would even come close to the drama, the pursuit of a dream that lies beyond the grasp of countless men who would desire to attain it? What would that be?

Twins.

You would have thought that someone had spotted the Virgin Mary in a Slurpee or something…

In a promotion for the upcoming Simpson’s Movie, twelve 7-11 stores across the nation have been converted to look like the Kwik-E-Mart in the animated cartoon series.

Folks were actually lined up around the block to go into a 7-11. Marketing savvy, meet public gullibility.

No, I didn’t stop and go inside.

I was in Los Angeles over the weekend visiting the folks. No riding, so it’s back on the bike today. STPOD looms.  Which, in it’s own way, ties back into the Madness of Crowds.  there are 9,000 registered riders for the STP this year.  Registrations sold out a month or so ago.  While Cascade rides often have riders participate that are not registered, I would expect that the turnout of unregistered riders will be especially high because of the sellout.  The first 100 miles could be especially crowded (and dangerous due to the shoulder-to-shoulder passing that occurs) if the weather is good.

I stumbled across a short movie today on The Internets that I really enjoyed, and I knew that my cyclo-centric friends would enjoy it too.

The basic premise is our young San Francisco hero sets out to climb the six steepest streets in San Francisco on his bicycle, in a single day. It is actually quite well done. No major love interests, sex scenes, or violence. A nice touch of humor runs through it. Follow this link, then click “download”. You’ll have to make that personal choice thing about Quicktime or Media Player. I’m sure you can do it!
Russian Hill Roulette

I was surfing my cycling links on the web the other day, and ran across a entry on Our Obligatory Blog, a cyclist in the Los Angeles Area. This particular entry was about the new music release by Disney of pre-teens performing the music of Devo.

I read the article, then clicked the link to the CD website, curious to see if the tracks included “Whip It”. It does.

That got me thinking about how I had always been led to believe that “Whip It” was a tribute to, well, self-pleasure. Being the curious and surf-capable dude that I am, I popped up another window, and started running Google searches on “Masturbation Songs 80s Whip It” and the like (it never ceases to amaze me how many hits you can find seaching like this. I suppose now this page will be among them [gasp]). As I started to find out by delving into my search results, the song wasn’t intended to be about THAT subject at all. Go figure.

My work phone then rang upstairs, which forces a mad-dash around the corner and up the stairs to get to my work phone before the end of the 4th ring. Forgotten was what I left on screen downstairs. Needless to say, the wife was quite curious about what I had been doing when I was supposed to be working!

I have been getting quite a bit of spam lately. I feed them to my spam filter in Thunderbird, or ship them off to SpamCop if I’m feeling particularly vindictive. Lately, the nonsense that shows up in the Subject line appear to be attempts to get around such filters. The one I just got takes the cake. And I quote:

“If you c*m with Spermamax on July 4th, people will take it for the firework.”

I’m sure I’ll be the hit of the blockparty this year…

I like to keep a web-based email account that I use when I am forced to enter an email for a software download or other such sites. This way my normal email inbox is at least somewhat less cluttered with Spam. Lately I’ve been using my GMail account for this.

GMail has some spam filtering which throws all suspicious mail into a spam folder. Google has also added a small advertising banner across the top menu bar of the mail display, which shows links to commercial sites related to the email or folder you are looking at. The net result you can see here:

So, the menu bar of my GMail Account’s Spam folder is a never ending generator of recipes for that canned pork product. Refreshing the page provides me with a link to yet another delicious recipe!

As I drifted in and out of consciousness this morning, the talking heads were reading a story about how Royal Carribean Cruises did not want investigators to throw a weighted mannequin off one of the ships balconies while there were passengers on board. The mannequin was to be a part of the investigation into the disappearance of George Smith from the same cruise ship last July.

To me, this goes down in the “Missed Marketing Opportunities Hall of Fame”. Right up there with getting Yasser Arafat to endorse electric razors.

Here’s the concept: Mystery Cruise. You literally have a boatload of retirees & honeymooners who have spent countless hours reading Agatha Christie and watching Columbo. Make the re-enactment of the disappearance part of the cruise, you may even get a clue or two from the passengers.

I figure that the odds are better relying on the passengers at this point. The investigation has decided to throw it’s lot in with Dr. Henry Lee, a forensic specialist who worked on the O.J. Simpson case (nice job, Hank), and the JonBenet Ramsay case (oops).