Archive for July, 2006
Worst
Today is absolutely the WORST day of my life, bar none. If not, it’s my most furious day ever in my life.
No commentsDragonforce - Through the fire and flames
Dragonforce
Apparently this band, Dragonforce, has been around for a while eventhough I am just getting to know them. The track playing here is awesome with their twin lead guitar attack which is somewhat over the top, but that’s the point. Click the PLAY button below to give it a go.
Little heat never hurts anyone
The heat in the area has been downright nasty last few days. On Friday, we reached 120 degrees, and it was about 110 yesterday during Tyler’s pool party. (pictures to come)
It’s now 7:30 in the evening, and we are still at 100 degrees hot. No, it’s not nasty at all.
No commentsWhat Floyd was thinking
As he was destroying the peloton and running away like a mad man, this is what he was thinking. ”Come and get me motherfuckers!” Great ride Floyd!!! Tour de France has yet another American hero.
No commentsCycling - Men in tights
For lack of better description, professional cycling is a fascinating sport. It’s not a stretch to say that everyone is basically in for himself in most of sports. This is especially true for individual sports such as tennis. Even in sports like Basketball, each player is very conscious of his own stats.
Most cycling fans would know, but each cycling team basically has one captain and several supporting riders. For instance, a team that rides in Tour de France is made up of 9 riders in total, 1 captain and 8 supporting riders. The job of the 8 guys are to protect and make sure that the leader/captain has as easy of a ride as possible and to get closer to winning. It is just fascinating to see guys totally sacrifice themselves for the sake of someone else while riding up a mountain 16000 ft. high. You will often see suppor riders carry like 5 or 6 water bottles and move up to deliver them to the captain and so forth. On a steep hill at Alps, a support rider will ride directly in front of a team leader to shield him from any wind resistence and other road hazards like spectators. The guy would tireless pedal until he can no longer pedal, then just drop off, sling-shotting the team leader up the mountain.
All the in-game strategies are nothing short of fascinating. We are now closing in on the finale of the tour. It is still uncertain who will win this thing. Can Floyd recover 8 minute deficit today? I can’t wait to get home and watch the stage race.
No commentsBackup and Restore Windows XP Activation
This excellent tip from Windows Networking site.
When you activate Windows XP, Microsoft stores the data in the Windows Product Activation database files wpa.dbl and Wpa.bak in the folder %systemroot%\system32. If you change the motherboard or make significant hardware changes, XP will require you to reactive. But if you plan to reinstall XP on the same hardware, you can back up the activation status and then restore it after you reinstall and avoid the activation process. You can backup the Windows Product Activation database files to diskette. They are very small. A directory listing from my XP Pro workstation:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>dir wp*
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 8447-0571
Directory of C:\WINDOWS\system32
10/24/2001 08:28 PM 12,584 wpa.bak
01/14/2002 09:05 AM 12,642 wpa.dbl
After you reinstall XP, to restore the Windows Product Activation database files:
Start XP to Minimal Safe mode
Change directory to the \%systemroot%\system32 folder
Rename the newly created wpa.dbl to wpa.nonactivated and wpa.bak, if it exists, to wpabak.nonactivated.
Copy your backed up wpa.dbl and wpb.bak files to the system32 folder
Reboot
Tyler’s recital video footage
The video footage is ready. You will need Apple Quicktime to be able to view this.
The video can be viewed by clicking here.
No commentsTyler’s first piano recital
Tyler had his very first piano recital with some of the other kids who take lessons from the same instructor. We drove down to a church right next to USC for the evening recital. It was a hot day and the A/C was broken at the church to boot. Tyler had one small mistake during his performance, but all in all did really well making me proud. Unfortunately most of the pictures I took are blurry again due to me not stablizing each shot. I hope the video footage is better since the camcorder was mounted on a tripod. (video footage coming soon)
Lame Ride
Due to the recent injury on my right leg, I haven’t been able to go cycling. Yesterday for the first time in 2.5 weeks, I managed to drag my body out for a ride. Boy what a difference it makes when I hadn’t ridden for only 2 weeks. At mile number 7, an old man passed me by with ease while I couldn’t pedal fast enough to save my life. He was only going at around 18 miles per hour and I couldn’t even catch up as lactic acid built up in my legs VERY QUICKLY.
At mile number 11, I strongly considered calling my wife to come get me feeling like a wounded dog. Well I dug deep in my suitcase of courage (what is left of it) and managed to come home riding a 22 mile route. This was just a sad display of riding.
On a brigher note, my leg injury is getting much better. I hope to get out for another training ride on Sunday. Hopefully it will go better than yesterday…
No commentsAnnoyance
Faucet
At times, little things annoy the crap out of me. Today’s annoying item is a self shut-off faucet commonly found in public bathrooms. Ones that are done by motion sensors are usually great and I have no issues with them. The kind that I hate is the one where you push the knob to turn it on and it gradually starts to shut off. Usually the knob will return to off position before I am done washing my hands. That forces me to push the knob again most likely with soap still on my hand causing the knob to go soapy. A typical hand washing session will require 3 or 4 pushes which really annoy me. Is it just me?