There was a serious accident during the first stage of Le Tour de France today, with only 400 meters to go before the finish line. American Tyler Hamilton is out with a broken collarbone; Levi Leipheimer has a broken hip (read his journal about it here) and several others were also hurt, including Lance Armstrong although he says on his website that he is OK and it was “nothing serious.” That would have sucked big-time for him to lose his shot at 5 Tours in a row in the first stage. Let’s hope this is the one big accident for this year’s Tour, eh?
Month: July 2003
Tribble Mill Day Three
I rode my bike out at Tribble Mill Park again today. That makes three days in a row, each day going further than the last. Today I rode the paved double-track twice; once in each direction. Both directions seem to be about the same difficulty level, contrary to what someone told me yesterday. After the second time around I was almost out of water so I asked a passerby if there was a restroom and/or water fountain in the park, and she told me there was and how to get to it. I took off on the road and after about half a mile I came to a big-ass long hill. I made it about half way up and had to pull over for a few minutes of rest. I drained the last few drops from my water bottle then looked at the top of the hill and said “I will beat you!” I hopped back on the bike and made another go for the summit. Unfortunately, about 100 yards further up the hill I felt like I might barf up a lung if I continued, so I turned around and headed back down, saying “I’ll beat you another day!” over my shoulder.
After coming home and cleaning up I went to Wal-Mart to get a CamelBak knock-off. The one I got is a backpack that has a water reservoir that holds 70 oz. of water with a tube that you hold in your mouth. The pack has pockets and bungees to hold things in/on like cell phone, PowerBars, etc. It was half the price of an actual CamelBak but seems to be of good quality. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow when I take it for a spin.
Tribble Mill Park
I said earlier today that I was going to take some pictures at Tribble Mill Park. Well, during a respite from the rain, I headed out for a ride and took the digicam with me. You can see the photos here. It is really beautiful out there.
And I made it around the trail twice for a total of six miles.
New Riding Trail
A friend yesterday told me about a local park with a really nice paved multi-use trail called Tribble Mill Park, which is about a 10 minute drive from my house. I went out there and discovered a really lovely trail that is right at 3 miles long. There are some hills, but no gut-splitters. I made it around once and was starting to go around again when the weather turned on me, so I headed home. I’m going to go out there in about an hour (assuming no rain), and I plan to take some photos. There were some great wooded areas that seem quite photogenic.
No Joy With Hosting Companies
I said yesterday how I had been hosed by FeaturePrice.com so I’ve been trying to find a decent hosting solution. I signed up with EarthLink yesterday for hosting, and 10 minutes ago I cancelled that account. Why? My blog is powerd by Blosxom which is a beautifully simple Perl script that needs a relatively modern version of Perl. The latest version of Perl is 5.8. Earthlink’s version is 5.004, which is about six years old! I asked if there was any chance of updating it, but they said “no.” Alas… I’m just going to host the stupid thing at home for a while. Not great since that’s a DSL line and won’t be as snappy.
My office-mate suggested we get two other guys and go in on a box at RackSpace or ServerBeach, which would be a pretty good deal. We’re looking in to it.
In the meantime, can anyone suggest a decent hosting company? With a modern version of Perl?
FeaturePrice.com SUCKS ASS!!!
Those bastards at FeaturePrice.com have f@&ked every one of their web hosting customers today! About a month ago they sold the company to Atlantic.net in supposed “good faith.” I was prepared to wait and see if Atlantic.net was any good before I went with another host so I wouldn’t have to move everything. Well, today my website, mail server, ftp server, etc quit responding. When I got home and checked again, I was redirected to a page saying this:
Feature Price service currently interrupted.
[…]
Atlantic.Net has been working with the former entity of Feature Price to transition Feature Price customers safely to Atlantic.Net. However, today the former entity of Feature Price denied Atlantic.Net employees access to Feature Price’ equipment. Shortly after this occurred, all service to Feature Price customers ceased due to unknown factors at this time.
Now I am scrambling to not lose email and visitors to my blog. Fortunately I have joeygibson.net which is hosted at home on a DSL line (where you’re reading this right now…), so I’ve set web traffic to route there, and email to route to my ISP account… This will hopefully give me a bit of time to find a decent hosting company… I have looked into a couple of others before Atlantic.net came in to the picture because I wanted to 86 featureprice… but I wasn’t happy with either of them. One was Nureal.com and the other was FidelityHosting.com. I don’t know what I’m going to do now. If anyone can recommend a decent hosting company, that you personally have experience with, please do so. I have been paying about $35/month for my “service”, which gives me up to 5 domains and all the email addys I want. I have two other domains that I hosted on this same account that are just SOL right now.
Plus, I’ve got to reconstitute my blog from two different sources; my home machine and my office machine, because they weren’t in total sync… What you are seeing right now is just what I had at home, not the latest stuff that I’ve posted from my office… This should be fun. Not.
I do know that I hope the f@&kers at featureprice.com who pulled this shit die slow, bloody, painful deaths… Well, maybe not that bad, but I do hope, at a minimum, that financial calamity will be visited upon them all and they live the rest of their days as bums begging for money on the street corner…
Can You Spare An O-Positive Kidney?
Dave Jacobs, a friend of Dave Winer‘s, is in desperate need of an O-positive kidney. Here’s the story. I don’t actually know either of the Daves but I thought I’d help spread the word. If you or someone you know can help, please contact them.
And sign up to be an ORGAN DONOR! You only give your organs when you no longer need them, and you could literally save several lives in the process. You can go here for more information on organ donation. If your state lets you declare your intentions on your driver’s license, do it! My state, Georgia, actually gives you a discount on the driver’s license fee if you agree to be an organ donor.
Harry Potter and Uncle Vernon’s Bloody Corpse
That’s what I’d like the next Harry Potter book to be titled. I can’t stand the fact that poor Harry has to keep going back to live with those horrible Dursleys at the end of each school year. I’ve only just finished the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, so if he’s already killed and dismembered the Dursleys in one of the later books, could someone please let me know?
Joey Gibson's Blog 