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Canadian air. That's what I felt this Sunday morning as I rode over to shoot some baskets. I don't get it. It's in the 90s during the day... and then we get in the low 50s for the morning, with strong gusts of wind? Very annoying.

--Ahh the sights of Denton... First, I had to ride around a vomit patch in front of my neighbor's door. Very charming. Then at the court I had to pick up all kinds of trash--fast food bags, cokes, beercans, cigarette packages (cigarettes! at a basketball court!). I should mention that there are three large trash receptacles surrounding the court, but apparently some folks can't be bothered. Then on the way home I passed a tandem team of honest-to-god dumpster divers, each with a ladder. I've actually seen one of the guys a few times. Is this why they illegally immigrated to the US? Is our trash better than what Mexico can provide? Then I passed a hugely obese (but tall) woman wearing nothing but sweat pants (ugh, no top, and yes, it was disgusting) screaming at somebody to open the gates to the apartment complex she'd apparently locked herself out of. Yes, indeed, Denton is a wonderful place.

--Watched the third game of the Mavs-Kings series. I don't know if I can handle another one like that. Mavs won after two overtimes. Both teams were exhausted but just kept slugging away with massive offensive onslaughts. Nick got 40 points. Dirk played all 58 minutes. Walt Williams came up huge in the overtimes. It was a phenomenol game, phenomenol. They have to do it ALL again Sunday.

But what of those cowbells? If the team physician for the Mavs has to distribute earplugs to every Mavs player and coach on the sideline, to protect their hearing, that's almost assault. The league should do *something* about that. What the Hell are you allowed to do as a fan?

On the other hand, Jack Nicholson walked out onto the floor at the Lakers game and screamed at the ref in his best "You Can't Handle the Truth!" voice. He said "This is the NBA, you can't tell me to sit down!".

--I should note that my allergies still qualify as "light", but they're also "late". The worst the last few days is my EYES! I come in from being outside and it feels like somebody sprayed mace in my eyes! (yes, I've experienced mace in my eyes before.) They itch terribly for an hour afterward.

--Did you hear about the man who cut off his own arm to escape a giant boulder? I'm telling you, this is big, this is revolutionary. He used a small pocket knife for his... incisions. But he couldn't cut bone. So he put the knife down, calmly reached over, put his good hand through flaps of mangled flesh and a mess of blood in various states of coagulation and snapped first his ulna and then his radius. Then he finished himself off and just "yanked" real hard till he was free of his crushed hand and wrist. That's something you'd expect Data or Bishop to have to do. Wow. He said "the mountain was very giving of its solitude". Magnificent.

--Cycle World did its test of nine "naked" liter bikes available in the US for 2003. I think they forgot a couple: SV1000, Buell Lightning, ZRX, Bandit, etc. (not to mention the ones the Japanese forgot to bring over here--X11, GS1400, CB1300, XJR1300). But they liked the Z1000 a whole lot. It came in second to the $4000 more expensive Aprilia Tuono.These are all amazing bikes, no doubt about it. They can do so much so well--commuting, two-up, short touring, track duty, attacking backroads, around-town errands, cruising, etc. But IF I were in the market, I'd have to look closely at the SV1000, for $500 less than the Z1000, or even the naked Bandit for ANOTHER $1000 less than the SV. Hmm. The thing is, I LIKE the sportbike riding position. I like being able to rest on the tank and lean forward. I found my Interceptor to be okay, but I could have used lower bars on the highway and on the course/bendy roads. Maybe a new Interceptor or pre-2004 ZX-9R would be perfect? Next year, the Austrian Duke 950 twin will probably rule this class when it debuts.

--Are you ready for COLORED TIRES? The newest way to rice, I mean spruce up your bike. Apparently they behave very similarly to normal street tires (not track tires, as they have too much silicon content).

--HERE is Blair trying to dispel the notion that President Bush isn't "intelligent" enough to run the country. I just love it when I read or hear someone cutting on his education or grammar. Something about stones and glass houses usually comes to mind. Der Slickmeister was supposed to be "intelligent", but as he demonstrated amply, being smart doesn't make you a great man.

--I watched a show about the JSF--Joint Strike Fighter. It was excellent. It was Boeing vs. Lockheed-Martin in a fight to the finish. The JSF has to be able to serve all branches of the military, it must be able to land vertically and take off in a short distance, it must be as stealthy as the stealth fighter, it must be agile in the air but also able to carry huge amounts of ordinance, it must be able to execute mid-air refueling and "mach" flight, and it must be less than one-third the cost of the LM F-22 Raptor and must be a design that can serve for forty years.

Lockheed-Martin won the fight. Their plane just did everything better and looked alot cooler in the process. They use this "lift-fan" to let the thing hover indefinitely at 10 feet or 200 feet. When they busted out the lift-fan, it was a very "Robotech" moment. Extremely nice. The plane uses millions and millions of lines of software code. It will probably be the LAST manned fighter plane ever designed by the US. Unmanned flight is the future. The show was enthralling as it detailed all the challenges and troubles faced by each company during the five years the competition lasted.

--I got my CD in the mail a few days ago. I really like it. The singer's voice is stratospheric. He does sound alot like Jeff Buckley, but higher and maybe less "soulful", whatever that means. And of course he's lending his talents to create a very different kind of music. In fact, this album is quite different than their second (which I used to have on MP3). It's much more sweeping and reverby. It's more consistent--there's nothing as good as "Amnesia Valley" or "A Place in the Sun" here, but every song is great.

I sampled a song from Failure ("Saturday Savior"), one from the Shins ("Caring is Creepy"), one from Interpol ("Leif Erikson"), and one from the Doves ("Down to Sea"), since Amazon keeps telling me I'll like these bands. I like all four of the tunes I acquired okay, but the Shins tune is really really good. I hear alot of Three Mile Pilot in the vocals and the song structure, although I could as easily say Strapping Fieldhands or Black Procession or Elephant 6 amalgam. I like what I hear alot.

But I went and did a little digging, and found out that the Autumns have a new full-length album coming out this Summer called Nocturnes and Subades. Woo-hoo! That's something to get ready for. They also have some EPs and their first album to collect. Not only that, but Dada also has a new album coming out! Three of them actually, if the fan site is to be believed, a brand-new full length, a live album, and an album of cuts and B-sides. Dang. I didn't even know about Butterfly Jones, Gurley's side project. I may even pay full price for the new Autumns and Dada discs. You gotta have a soundtrack for the Summer.

--Gas prices are dropping fast all around the country. Nice. Anything to stave off the tide of hydrogen (which isn't as clean, "well to wheel", as some would have you believe). {*snicker*} New cars are so clean (and yet so powerful, take that) that now they're having to go after brake dust and tire residue as the major pollutants.
--My dating pool is about zero.
--Dallas passed laws against panhandling. It's now illegal to beg for money on the side of the road. So stop. Hey wait, don't they feed you if they arrest you?...
--E3 is just a day or two away now. Oddly, most of the companies have already blown their loads by dropping huge announcements on us BEFORE the show.
--My portfolio is huge. I'm up like $6000 now. I had no idea I'd see these kinds of gains. nVidia is just climbing every day, but the rest isn't too shabby either. Dang I wish I had real money in that account! If my trust fund was in there, ATI and nVidia would have bought me a brand new car in just the past month!

--I get a kick out of reading some of the banner ads at Diaryland for various Gold diaries. Wow, people go to some great lengths to appear deep and profound.

--Want to know the number ONE reason I like Windows 98SE much better than Windows 2000? It's simple. In 98, when IE crashes, I get to keep working. I've worked for hours after a crash before, just pushing the "illegal op" popup to the far side. As soon as I click "Close", it's all gone, and usually one IE window is dead (I usually have five to fifteen windows open at once), but it's not a catastrophe. As a matter of fact, IE performed an illegal operation a while ago, but here I am still working.

2000, on the other hand, presents me with one of two scenarios. Sometimes it'll close EVERY IE window just like that, with no warning at all! Other times it apologizes for the inconvenience but then gives me NO choice but to close all the IE windows. No chance to bookmark, or CTRL-C my work, or even to write something down. This is progress? Maybe 2000 doesn't "blue-screen" as often, but from my perspective (since IE is most of what I use these days), 98 is vastly less frustrating, stability-wise. You can keep yer XPs and yer NTs and yer 2Ks and MEs.