Loose Ends

Wondering just how good Discovery Channel Cycling is this year? Reasonable question since Lance has been isolated twice so far - once on a relatively modest climb. Consider this:

• Armstrong safely in yellow 2:46 over Basso. Ivan isn't gonna catch Lance in a 55km TT.
• Yaroslav Popovych, who is also good against the clock, sits 6:28 ahead of second place in the young rider competition.
• By virtue of having two riders in todays break, DC took over the Team classification and are now 37 seconds ahead of T-Mobile. This is decided by accumulating the top three finishes on each team each day. With the TT on Saturday, DC should increase that lead.
• Paulo Salvadelli won today's stage. At 239.5km, the longest of this year's Tour. He also won the 2005 Giro d'Italia.
  
• George Hincapie won Stage 15, the hardest stage of the race.
• DC won the Team Time Trial on Stage 4 (admittedly a narrow victory over CSC, but a win nevertheless).

So yeah. Solid team.

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If you are keeping track of Dr. Maverick over at Got My Philosophy, I have a couple of fun sites to add. One is Wil Wheaton Dot Net (yes, the child actor from Stand By Me and Star Trek). I occasionally run across his blog (this time, because of the death of James Doohan). Wil has this gem in his FAQ, on a question about advice for aspiring actors:

I want to be an actor. Do you have any advice?

Yes, I do. Eventually, this site will have a whole section devoted to aspiring actors. My immediate advice is: study, study, study. Read the classic plays and see the great movies. And for the love of Bob, study! And read Backstage. Get yourself into some sort of acting program or workshop. Just avoid anything that tells you they'll give you a free book by L.Ron Hubbard. It's a scheme to recruit you into Scientology.

That made me laugh really hard. I got this link from the same place: Operation Clambake

Good stuff.

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J comes back from his grandparent's house tomorrow afternoon. Expect pictures of J with the previously mentioned Jedi Starfighters. Speaking of J, he just started riding a two wheeler. Now we need to work on starting and stopping. The current methods are, respectively, "Dad, push me" and falling off the bike. I think we can improve on both.

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M went to play soccer tonight for a few hours. It went well, but her 34-year-old body is now suffering. She's trying to get in shape, so playing soccer with a bunch of college women seems like a good approach. She's hurting right now, though. So E and I had a short evening together. Dinner (grilled cheese: excellent; diced apples: excellent; corn: so-so), a bath and to bed, after roaming around the living room for a bit. All in all, she was easy on me. Since she has teeth coming in, that could have been really hard.

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I bought a 1,200 page Java reference book today. Should be an entertaining read. Actually, I've been reading The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman (patent abuse keeps me from linking to Amazon, but they are mentioned in the book in a positive light). In a nutshell, the book is about the rapid reduction in the size of our planet, metaphorically speaking. He goes into detail about the economics of globalization and the forces that have flattened the world - fiber-optic linking of the planet, open source software, the fall of the Berlin wall. It's really interesting, and surprisingly entertaining.

Ok, time to work. Indian kids are clamoring for my job.