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Mary-Eve Croteau passing Alexander Mask in a corner http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/D%C3%A9fi+Sportif+Marie+Croteau+proves+fluke/6537974/story.html

Mary-Eve Croteau passing Alex Mask in a corner

I’ve just returned from Montreal, Canada where I have competed in the Defi Sportif. The weather on the day of my arrival was a balmy 6 degrees Celsius, about 42 degrees Fahrenheit, a bearable temperature as I had packed clothes for riding in cooler weather.

Upon arrival of my bike at the hotel I took it to the room they had arranged for bike storage, assembled my trusty Walker and then took it out for a quick jaunt around the streets of the Avenue du President Kennedy, which is where my hotel, the Delta Montreal, was located (a good section of town, I thought, and but a few blocks away from some very good restaurants, a few mediocre ones and a bit further away one that I found to be excellent) and one that had only one item on their menu, a 5 course meal, and another by the name of L’Autre Version , which I had a 9 course meal at that I found to be amazingly appetizing, but I will discuss this at some other time.

The first race was a Time Trial at Parc Jean-Drapeau, an F1 circuit a few miles from the restaurant L’Autre Version. I woke at 5:30 AM to catch the bus from my hotel to the race course. I was joined by 6 or 7 other athletes whom all loaded their bikes onto a separate bus that would transport the bikes to the racecourse. In total I believe there were about 40 other cyclist whom attended.

The temperature had dropped the night before and we were sitting at a negative 1 degree Celsius, about 30 degrees Fahrenheit, with the windchill factor dropping it to a negative 6 to 7 Celsius, which is about 20 degrees Fahrenheit… with snow falling on occasion. The temperature differential between south Florida and Montreal, Canada had messed with my bike’s settings and I had to ride over to a bike shop a few miles from the hotel to have them fine-tune my shift levers and disc brakes. Special thanks to ABC Cycles & Sports, 5586, Av Du Parc, Montréal, QC H2V 4H1, for helping me apply those last-minute fixes. During my ride home from the bike shop a light snow was falling to the streets with a slight westerly wind blowing… it may surprise some that this snow is not a common south Florida occurance and took me a bit aback. I arrived back at the hotel with 30 minutes to spare before the bus departed to the race course.

The first race was the Time Trail, in French contre la montre, meaning Against the Watch. As the count-down buzzer went from 5 to 0 I breathed in slowly to clear my mind; tick, 5 seconds, breath in, tick, 4 seconds, tick, breathe out, 3 seconds, tick, 2 seconds, tick, breathe in, 1 second, tick, breath out and go go go! And off I went, spun my crank and…. ca-thunk. My chain had fallen off my gear. I Hopped off my bike to throw my chain back on to my large ring, fumbled in my long-finger gloves for a moment and after a bit removed them and began to work with my bare hands.

Approximately 2 minutes later everything checked out, I hopped back on and began my race to catch the individual whom began 1 minute behind me. The 4.4 km course, which I was to perform 4 laps of, began with a 100 foot, about, straight shot which turned into a slow 90 degree hairpin turn followed by another long straight away. The straight away was followed by a quick chicane followed by another straight away that led into a sweeping 110 degree left turn that went slightly uphill for a few hundred meters. The whole time I made sure to stay in my big ring while keeping my cadence above 90 to 100 rpm so that I could minimize the chance of dropping my chain again.

After the slight uphill climb a quick downward chicane was followed by another sweeping left hand turn, another quick chicane followed by a straight shot to the start/finish line.

With one lap complete and the individual whom began 1 minute after me not yet in my sights I doubled my efforts to catch him. The hairpin and the long straight followed and I caught sight of his bike and with re-doubled efforts I was able to catch him after another 3/4th of the course behind us. I continued my chase and passed 2 hand-cyclists that had begun a few minutes beforeme but the end result of my delay in starting still placed me in 5th…

Posted in Bicycling | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Cycyling : Défi sportif

I received an e-mail update on Friday from my coach at U.S. Paralympic Cycling that there is going to be a race held in Montreal, Canada on Friday, April 27th, 2012. Although there are a few other things that I have to blabber regarding, such as a wine tasting featuring wines of the Jean-Luc Colombo winery that I attended at the Brickell Mariott last week but, sadly, have not gotten around to yet. These wines call the terroir of southern France in the Languedoc and Rhône Valley home.

Defi Sportif ScheduleWhat I’m going to be covering in this Blog Post, though, is my prospective attendance of the Défi sportif in Montreal, Canada at the end of April. The races I would be attending are the time trial and road race held on Friday, April 27th and Saturday, April 28th respectively. I’m looking in to flights and can book one for a reasonable amount and, besides getting fired, have little to worry about. Truthfully, I have the time off saved up to attend and am going to be working hard over the next few days for a project that I’m working on to be complete by Wednesday but… we shall see.

Posted in Bicycling | 9 Comments

Laissez-Faire Books : South by Southwest : Mobile Hotspots

Mr. Jefferey Tucker of Laissez-Faire Books, http://lfb.org/, meaning Free-Market Books, published an article today (linked here) expressing his view on this event, one that was attacked by many, including Wired.com which wrote that it “sounds like something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.” ReadWriteWeb called it a “blunt display of unselfconscious gall.”  However, Mr. Tucker took it differently and after copy and pasting what I found as the most important part of the article, I’ll express my own opinion.

What seems to be in question was the use by BBH Labs, an advertising agency, of homeless people as mobile hotspots.  What they did was walk around with 4G Wireless routers that individuals could connect to freely.  These homeless individuals wore a white t-shirt stating their name followed by sentence “I’m a hotspot.”

Snipped from the LFB article, <snip>In economic exchange, we become important as individuals, and others become important to us. This is why market-based societies are also societies in which human beings flourish and feel a sense of being important and valued.</snip>

In this instance, the individuals walking around as hot spots are not worthless mounds of carbon, rather, they become sought-after resources whom provide value to mankind and isn’t that what everyone seeks in life? To be valued by others?

I think that 100% the Free Market wins in this instance.  Those employed win because they are now desired and compensated, not only by BBH Labs but by the individuals acquiring their services in tips that are directly linked to how much the individual using the good that they provide deems it is worth.  This is similar to how the compensation for waitstaff works…

One may say that this is a horrible thing to do; however, is it?  In the European Union, for example, with minimum wage set, depending on the state, at 1398 Euros per month in France,  and 1202 Euros in England, I’m of a strong belief that there is a strong correlation to the unemployment rates that the Euro States experience and the minimum wage.  After all, for a business to hire an individual, they have to produce more for the employer than the employed consumes from the employer, and in many Euro States the unemployment levels are significantly higher than the U.S.

I could blabber on and on about how the simple cost does not reflect all of the social contracts that goes into hiring an employee, as there is more than the salary that an employer has to produce to make hiring them economically viable; however, I will leave it at that.  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Posted in Random blabber | 2 Comments

Happy New Year!… much after the new year…

I’ve not been posting much and want to apologize to anyone and everyone whom reads my blabber.  Hopefully, in the near-future, I will be.  On a sidenote, I’ve purchased an ASP.Net hosting package to use as part of my development environment for an application I am in the process of developing for a friend’s school.

It will be written in ASP.Net 4.0 with C#.Net and interacting with a SQL 2008 database.  This project is turning out to be more difficult than I had first thought and am doing a good amount of research in my spare time.

Posted in Random blabber | 1 Comment

Copied from my conversation on Facebook

I was involved in a conversation regarding the Republican Nominee for President in the 2012 Elections. The first message I posted with opened with this, a reply to a statement the Gingrich should be it, “I wouldn’t vote for Newt if he was the last person on Earth running against Obama. Newt is just as two faced as the Obummer.

If you’re voting Republican just because it is the individual that is running against Hussein, than your vote has no meaning. There are more than two parties, as much as everyone seems to want you to believe there is not.

Look at the Libertarian Party and, more specifically, Alexander Snitker whom ran for President under the Libertarian platform in 2008. I wish I knew about him in 2008 as I had begrudgingly voted for McCain that year.

Never again. From now on, I vote principles. The R & D parties are nothing more than an insignificant title slapped onto, in the last 120+ years, the same sides of the same coin, differentiating themselves in the nooks and crannies of George Washington’s face.

Give me liberty or give me death.

This was then followed by some blabber on their part where the main point being that Gingrich is so much better than most of the other Republicans and that we need a President, to which my reply was “I agree, in principal. It is better to have anyone in office that is not a Socialist, Communist, Statist, etc. that the Chosen One, our Lord and Savior, OBAMA! (These Obama titles and comments are all sarcastic, if it’s not obvious) However, 99.9% of politicians are just that; shiny fluff covering slop and even if the President is a person that fights for your liberty, we have the House and Senate and the Judicial system working against you.

Technically, The People is the 4th branch of Government in a Democracy but with the Government robbing Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul’s support. Throughout history, that’s how Democracies have collapsed.

As with Matt Guerra I’m a Paul supporter, although, truthfully, my principles are more Anarchist than anything else. I believe that nobody is better at controlling my life that I am and that through mutually beneficial co-operation (which is what trade is) is when real progress occurs. Not when the Mafia that is the U.S. Government is scraping off a percentage of your profits to give to those tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free that it feeds without any need to pay back, just asking for the votes to support them, keeping them in office.

Throughout history, trade has brought tens and hundreds of millions even billions of people from utter poverty to sustainability and beyond, however, Obama and the cronies on both sides of the isle (and the fight between Liberty and Submission goes back further to the beginning, the Jefferson – Hamilton times of our Government) are working to slowly build the State’s all-encompassing powers around you.

At least, that’s what my studies of history has shown me.

Those are some of my thoughts… I have more but I will leave those for later.

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The $300 bike ride

Today is an unlucky day for me. I lost both a new blinking light that attaches to the back of my bike and which I use for early evening riding that might carry over to dusk or even twilight and my new pair of Oakley sunglasses. Actually, the frame wasn’t new, per se, as they were ones that I had purchased last year, however, the were holding a new pair of lenses that I had bought and installed over the weekend.

Both fell when I hit a bump in the road. My sunglasses were on my helmet, as it was too dark for me to ride with them on, and the light became detached. I thought the light was pretty securely attached; however, it appears I was in the wrong.

Consider it an offering to the Road Gods, I suppose, may the roads be safe and no cyclists are injured…

Posted in Bicycling | 2 Comments

Rum Sour

Before this drink is mixed, simple syrup is a required ingredient. Simple syrup is, as the name implies, very simple, and is the combination of equal parts white sugar and water. Place the water in a pot and heat and add the sugar while increasing the temperature until the sugar molecules dissolve. Once that has occurred, allow the syrup to cool to room temperature (depending on the temperature of the room it is prepared in), add the contents to a glass jar and then place said glass jar into a the refrigerator and allow to cool.

As a side note, I’ve also made simple syrup using brown sugar instead of white. Using brown sugar subtracts from the overt-sweetness found in white sugar simple syrup and adds a slight molasses-undertone to the palette.

Pretty much the same drink as the whiskey sour; however, with white rum instead of whiskey. Interesting drink.
Lime juice

  • 2.5 ounces of white rum (Cruzan aged rum was used)
  • 1 ounce of simple syrup
  • 1 ounce of lime juice

The lime juice used was fresh squeezed lime juice, picked up at a local grocery store for about $ 0.10 each; nothing special. Often substituted are lime mixers, however, I find the taste of preservatives added to most lime-mixers to detract significantly from the final product.

rum sourAdd the above listed ingredients to a strainer, shake, and empty the contents into a whiskey glass. Voila.

Posted in Food, Random blabber | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Hoover, FDR, and The Great Depression

The Creature From Jekyll Island A friend of mine, a friend of his and I recently had a short conversation regarding the validity of Keynsian Economics and how it is as much the solution to the world’s fiscal ailments back in the 1930s as it is now. He was of the opinion that if the Republicans just let President Obama do as he pleases, everything would be fine and he agrees with the belief that racism drives the ideology of the Tea Party. There are several other issues that are of concern to him that I won’t raise at this time but I am going to bring my post on Facebook which was in reply to his.

I do agree that racism, pure hatred of a race that one does not belong to, could be behind some; however, I am of a belief that most people want the freedom to do with their lives as they please, which is my reasoning for hating all overlords, no matter their race, gender, sex, or any other classification. The article that he linked to which is in question can be found here.

Following, find a clip from my blabbering from our discussion on John Meynard Keynes and his “solution” to the Great Depression is not the correct solution and how the approach advocated by President Eisenhower would be the correct solution. If there is anything that you disagree with, please comment on why you feel it is incorrect. Thanks in advance.

Pre-Panic of 1907, before the creation of the Federal Reserve, there were plenty of Market crashes, significant falls in employment, etc.; however, thanks to the fact that there was no one, or a small group of individuals, looking to command the economy, a la Soviet Russia, the recovery was quick. Although there were several other attempts to create a bank that could control U.S. Monetary supply and policy, none had been as powerful as the Federal Reserve and all had been dissolves several years after inception.

For example, after WW2 ended, there was a platitude of people claiming that with the war over, and all the soldiers returning home, unemployment would be a huge problem and that we needed massive amounts of public works projects to keep people earning income so that they could re-channel it into the economy.

However, then President Truman decided to agree with the critics whom were exclaiming that, with all the soldiers returning home and the economy set up for war, unless we were involved in another war or spent huge amounts of money on public work projects, like the Hoover Dam which was begun during the beginning of the Great Depression, unemployment would skyrocket and we would continue the Great Depression. However, with the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the economy not being taken in control by the Government, we were able to transition, not smoothly, there were several hiccups along the way. However, and as most should know, the economy did not enter a Depression 2.0 or re-enter the Great Depression even without the huge amounts of public works spending.

So, yes, the majority of people whom side with the Tea Party may may not understand economics, but neither do most of the professors who try to teach economics, it appears.

I believe a strong fallacy exists in the notion that trade is a zero sum game, which I feel is the notion behind Keysian Economics. I, on the other hand, feel that trade is a trade-off between two, or more, parties where both parties end up befitting. For example, an individual goes into the store to purchase a new pair of shoes. When the purchase is made, the store is in a better condition than it was before the transaction because it was able to trade it’s good, the pair of shoes, for something that it sees to be more valuable than shoes, money to pay the employees of the store, restock inventory, exchange for the utilities, location that allowed it to make the sale, and any that is left over as profit which it can use in whichever way it finds most promising. The customer, on the other hand, was able to trade their money for something that they desired; the pair of shoes.

In this manner, trade is a transaction where parties on both sides of the transaction are better off than they were before the transaction took place. Keynsian Economics, on the other hand, feels that it is just as beneficial to the parties if party a purchases something that is made by party c, where party b is in the position to tell party c what it is that they will produce and in the process party b removes a commission from party c’s income.


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Thoughts on the debt ceiling and credit rating of the U.S.

A few quick thoughts: Recently, S&P downgraded the credit rating of the United States from AAA+ to AA+ (story linked to here). This move, to me, feels similar to how Volcker slammed on the brakes of inflation during the latter years of the 70s and early 80s by raising rates, to, if I recall correctly, near 20%. In a world where individuals and institutions are grasping for yield, doing so provides, in essence, the same effect that Volcker performed (money will come into the U.S. to purchase their bonds; however, a move from a AAA+ rating to AA+ means little as Japan also has a AA+ rating).

Although I am also on the side that believes we should not have our economy run by one or a small group of individuals, I am in agreement with S&P in so doing and, furthermore, feel that even with a slight move down from AAA+ to AA+ would mean very little in the rate of real inflation.

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Google Webmaster Tools : Google Site Verification without a Plugin for your WordPress Blog

Google Verify Ownership

Code to be added between opening and closing <head> tags

Adding Google’s site verification requires a few very simple steps when one is utilizing a normal website; however, things become a tad bit more complicated when your site is a dynamically generated site such as a blog utilizing WordPress. Thankfully, though, the process of doing this is quite similar to a previous post in which I added Facebook’s Insights web-monitoring tools to my WordPress blog and in a few steps one can integrate both Facebook Insights and Google Webmaster Tools to have a better view of their site’s utilization.

Google Webmaster Tools2The first step required is to have an account in Google’s Webmaster Tools, which a link to can be found here. After creating an account on the site you are required to verify ownership of the site(s) which you are claiming are yours. This can be done by uploading a file that is provided by Google to your web-server, adding a DNS record or by adding a meta tag to your home page. I chose the addition of a meta tag to my home page. The page that appears when you click the radiobutton for Add a meta tag to your site’s home page contains the code that requires aggregation between the opening <head> tag and closing </head> tag on your site’s header.php file.

Assuming one is using WordPress to manage their blog, navigate to the folder where you have WordPress installed and in that folder navigate to the folder /wp-content/themes/xxx where xxx is the name of the currently active theme. in your themes/xxx folder you should see the file header.php Access that file for editing and add to your code,

<meta name="google-site-verification" content="0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000" />

where the content="" is that which was provided by Google when you choose to add Meta-data to your website as verification of your ownership. Meta-name should be the same no matter whom the site is accessed by.

Upon adding the supplied meta-tag to your website you should now have a plethora of information regarding which Google queries are used to find your site, whom is linking to your site, and keyword usage in your blog posts, what the average positioning result is for your various pages in a Google search depending on keywords, which keywords are most activley searched that appear on your site, etc., etc.

Posted in Random blabber | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment