Archive for October, 2007
October 31, 2007 · Filed under Entertainment
This is absolutely the most terrifying photo I have ever seen. Honestly, who needs horror movies with this guy leading our country? 
My guess is the slasher industry has experienced a major decline over the last 7 years. I love the satisfied look in his eye. Very Clouseau. (For those of you who care about this kind of thing, I named this particular image “Bushkin”.) Apparently, there is something more to picking up a pumpkin when you’re the President.
Halloween is a great holiday, not only because I get to play with knives while drinking drinking glow-in-the-dark beer, but also because Michelle’s all-time favorite Halloween song gives me a perfect reason to give her hair a good, solid yank. Why is pulling hair so satisfying? If you haven’t done so in a while, take this opportunity:
HALLOWEE-EE-EEN! The witch is in the sky!
Have you SEE-EE-EEN her shadow flying by?
But be WARE! Don’t you DARE!
To ever BOAST! About a GHOST!
Or she will come and PULL! YOUR! HAIR!
Happy Halloween, everyone!
October 26, 2007 · Filed under Entertainment
Michelle and I have a sneaking suspicion that our dogs may not last very long if left on their own 
in the wild. There are three key contributing factors that lead to this:
- Their idea of “hunting” amounts to staring intently as we fill their food bowls while adhering to our “out of the kitchen” rule. Paying attention to this rule alone would render them almost useless in the wild. For them, “kitchen” means any area that has a threshold between it and the room they’re in; they’ll stay in the living room until they get a release command from us that says “it’s OK to come into the kitchen”. You may have noticed that most forests don’t have a staff cleaning service, so there are a lot of dead trees and sticks laying around. Basically, any of these objects constitute a threshold in their minds. They would never go into any new part of the woods until they get a release command. Most of the smarter prey would simply never say “OK”. Boom. No hunting for them.
- They are surprisingly clumsy. If anything exciting happens, they usually run into a wall, table, or tree. This will not work out well if they find themselves in a situation where they are being chased by something that can eat them. Which brings me to the last factor.
- A running animal means one thing: play. This will be equally disadvantageous both while hunting or being hunted. If a bear comes after them, they’ll actually run towards it and do a little dive-duck-swirl-hop to let it know they’re on top of it and ready to play. If they miraculously figure out that they could eat a squirrel and get it on the run, they’ll immediately switch to play mode and chase it until it turns at them, at which point they’ll do a dive-duck-swirl-hop to let it know they’re on top of it and ready to play. But it’s unlikely the entire chase would happen without having to pass a threshold, so this example is strictly academic.
We have always held wild animals in high esteem, mostly because they know how to survive without the internet or instant rice. Sadly, there have been two reports this week that have cast our image of wild animals into question.
The first was the a report of monkeys who attacked the deputy mayor of Delhi in India. Looking for food, a bunch of monkeys jumped on his porch and knocked him over the edge, causing him to fall to his death. Even viruses know it’s better to have a symbiotic relationship with your host that to kill it. Stupid monkeys.
The second was one where a bunch of partying elephants in northeast India got hammered on rice beer and electrocuted themselves to death. I thought elephants never forget, so why didn’t they remember that you’re supposed to drink in moderation, and never, ever drink and go out electrical pole tipping. While I’m encouraged knowing that elephants and I share a passion, I’m disappointed by their lack of self-control and their failure to name a designated pole-tipper.
October 22, 2007 · Filed under Entertainment
As many of you know, I’m a solutions architect for an international consulting company, responsible for software development 
projects up and down the West Coast. In addition to setting technical direction and managing teams of software developers, I have to write proposals and justify why companies should hire us to do their work. This often involves an ROI, or Return on Investment: how long will it take to see a benefit to undertaking the task. This is usually not just a question of monetary terms, but other conditions as well, such as easing difficult or cumbersome processes and thereby increasing worker satisfaction. It sounds difficult if you’ve never written one, but it’s a pretty straight-forward evaluation that most people perform in an indirect way in their daily lives without realizing it. Let me walk you through a real-life example.
I was on a major energy lull this afternoon and decided to get myself a cup of coffee at the cafe up the street from my office. The coffee there is my least-favorite in the area, but it’s still good. (This is Seattle, after all; most gas stations have in-house espresso stands and serve better coffee than the majority of the cities I’ve been. )
This particular joint is run by a guy who appears to have a near-zero interest in performing his duties and hangs out in the back in a cloud of cannabis smoke. I usually have to throw a shoe at him in order to get his attention. In addition to the cost of the double espresso ($1.85) my investment includes the dread I feel approaching this situation knowing that I’m going to have to pick a shoe to throw (which involves thinking all the way back to that morning and trying to remember which of the two socks I’m wearing is cleaner and has fewer holes) as well as knowing that I’m going to have to explain to him that I need the shoe back and that it is not a bong.
I placed my coffee order and waited patiently for him to pull the espresso and request the payment of $1.85. I gave him a $5.00 bill after which he gave me my change of $18.15. All in all, not a terrible ROI but only barely good enough to warrant going back again.
October 18, 2007 · Filed under Cycling, Doping
This will be a very short follow-up on yesterday’s post regarding the suspension of UCI ProTour leader, Danilo Di Luca. Cycling’s governing body,
the Union Cycliste Internationale, has decided to disqualify Danilo Di Luca from the UCI ProTour due to his suspension. That means that the rider will loose the ProTour which he was leading and Aussie Cadel Evans will take over as the leader.
While Evans has had a spectacular season by placing second in the Tour de France and just off the podium in the Tour of Spain, but to win the ProTour this way has got to be almost as meaningful as Oscar Pereiro’s 2006 Tour de France win, which was awarded to him after American Floyd Landis lost his crown last week.
I’m all for fighting doping in cycling, but the various cycling governing bodies appear to be more interested in appearing tough on drugs than actually being tough on drugs, as is evidenced by the fact that the UCI failed to conduct any doping controls at last week’s Paris-Tours ProTour event.
October 17, 2007 · Filed under Cycling, Doping
The Italian cycling federation is so eager to appear “tough on doping” that they are now suspending riders for the following offense: Maybe looking like 
they might have talked to a doctor who might have had something to do with doping at some point. But no one is sure yet. And might never be. We’re Italians. Some chick will likely walk by and we’ll get distracted before we figure it out.
Danilo Di Luca, who won this year’s Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Giro d’Italia, and is the current UCI ProTour leader, has been suspended for three months for alleged involvement in a doping case which dates back to 2003, dubbed Oil For Drugs.
Di Luca has not been suspended for failing a drug test or for possessing drugs, or for being involved in a drug investigation. No, he has been suspended because he used to work with a doctor who now is under suspicion of supplying doping products to cyclists. Di Luca worked with this doctor several years ago when the doctor was a member of the Italian Cycling Federation as a sports doctor.
His lawyer…clarified that the suspension was not for anti-doping offenses, but for collusion with [Dr.] Santuccione, and also pointed out that during the period in question, Santuccione had been re-admitted into the ranks of the Italian federation as a sports doctor.
What makes the Di Luca case odd is that he’s not being suspended for any wrongdoing. His suspension is for working with a doctor who was then working for the Italian Cycling Federation but has since come under suspicion for being at the center of a doping ring. Even though Di Luca has since cut off ties with this doctor, he has been suspended for having worked with him in the past.
Compare this to the case where Lance Armstrong was working with Dr. Michele Ferrari who was facing similar accusations. At the time, Armstrong claimed that Ferrari had never suggested anything illegal to him, and continued to work with him until the doctor was convicted of sporting fraud. At that point, Armstrong finally stopped working with him and there were never any consequences for Armstrong.
As much as I believe Armstrong used doping products during his career, that is the proper way to handle a case like that: governing bodies can’t go around suspending riders without evidence. If doping is causing damage to cycling’s reputation, what does suspending cycling’s top stars for no reason do to it’s image? As Cartman says, “I used hangover brown on this wall.”
(Interesting side note: Dr. Ferrari has since become active as a sports doctor in cycling again. Alexandre Vinokourov was a client of his and famously returned a positive dope test for homologous blood doping during this year’s Tour de France.)
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