Unfortunately for me, Yahoo closed the customized station portion of LaunchCast last year. It was a sad day for me, as there wasn't much of a viable alternative to a station that would allow for the type of ratings that LaunchCast did. I started using Pandora, which at first was pretty good, but the rating system wasn't great, you couldn't specifically ban artists, there was a bandwidth limit per month, and you only got a few skips for an entire session. I could never really get into Last.fm, and the "real" streaming radio stations were mostly weird ones from Europe. Apparently Top 40 in Germany is NOT even in the same realm as Top 40 here in the States.

After I threw in the towel on Pandora, I brought up another Google search in the hopes that maybe a new customized radio service had been created… and that's when I discovered Slacker Radio.

Despite its name, Slacker Radio isn't a slacker. In fact, it's a pretty hard little worker, and it works on my government computer. The free service is light years better than Pandora's, as you are given six skips per HOUR (not limited per session like Pandora's), you can specifically BAN artists/songs (not this "thumbs down" or "I'm tired of this song" crap), and you can set how much "suggested" music you want played, AND they have comedians' albums! Oh happy day!

Like everything in the tech world, Slacker isn't perfect. Their rating system could use a little work, such as "I like this artist but you've played this song 74231 times but I don't want to ban them entirely," their mobile application only works on BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, Palm, and Windows mobile (no Symbian, but then again no one really has Symbian apps), and the ads on the free version are annoying and you have to actively click to "dismiss" some of them. For example, I love Jeff Foxworthy, but when I've heard the same track over and over and over, it's hard to go through and specifically ban them… plus whenever you ban something, you use up a skip. So the alternative is to listen to it again, then go back and ban it when it's finished playing.

Either way, I think I may have found my LaunchCast replacement. Let's hope they don't remove half the features on the free version so I don't feel compelled to shell out $50 for the Plus subscription.

Tour de France winner Floyd Landis admits doping, accuses Lance Armstrong

Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for doping, yet always denied cheating until now. He recently sent e-mails to cycling officials and sponsors detailing his blood doping. He also claimed that Armstrong and Bruyneel paid an International Cycling Union official to cover-up a test in 2002 after Armstrong purportedly tested positive for the blood-boosting drug EPO.

Gee, thanks Floyd! This really helps the sport. Good job, champ!

Oh wait… so you say you've been doping all these years, but yet you maintain that didn't drug during your 2006 season and therefore you're still worthy of the Tour de France title. Do you really think people are going to believe that after you've come out with this?

Dammit, I hate it when I'm wrong. I really, really, really wanted to believe Landis. I really did. After Tyler broke my heart at the 2004 Olympics and when Lance "retired" in 2005, Landis was one of the few Americans left that was a true contender for Tour de France greatness.

I've never said one way or the other that I thought Floyd doped - it was more of me laughing at the stupid French doping authorities for saying he hacked into their computers to change his test results, but now that he's validated their original accusations that he's been doping all along, this just doesn't help anyone - him, the sport, Americans in general.

…and on to the subject of Lance Armstrong. Floyd says Lance isn't as squeaky-clean as he's made himself out to be. My theory on Lance is that he probably DID dope — but back in the early 90s when he was racing for Motorola and Cofidis and not during his time with USPS and Discovery. In those days, the testing was much less stringent, and Lance was not as good of a rider as he is today. (One of the reasons being his body build was not that of a racer, but of a jacked-up football player… so he was at a huge disadvantage against the 120 lb. Italian mountain goats.) However, after Lance was diagnosed with cancer, went through chemo/radiation/etc., I think he realized that a) maybe all that drug stuff is actually BAD for you in the long run (see: cancer), and b) this time he might actually try going without and seeing what happens.

The only reason why I can [somewhat] confidently say this is because Lance is tested ALL THE FREAKING TIME. The French think he drinks EPO shakes for breakfast, so the doping guys are pounding on his door nearly every day to take his blood, even in the off-season. Lance has never failed a drug test to date [that I know of], so either he's a) a vampire, b) an alien, or c) clean.

The only bright side of all this is that it's given me an excuse to blog and rant a bit before going back to the grind.

Actually, the only reason why I logged on today was to clean up the 200+ spam comments I noticed yesterday, and to edit my blogroll. (Added There, I Fixed It to the Sites I Like category. I love this site so much that I actually have the feed on my iGoogle page… right above Lolcats. Don't judge me.)

Anyway, I always get a kick out of seeing the spambot crap that shows up in the modertion queue. (That also reminds me… obviously my anti-spam comment filter-y thing is not working quite as well as I'd hoped. Maybe the words aren't hard enough? I'd love to see if spambots have dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane in their dictionaries.) Apparently spammers think I have a serious insomnia problem, because about 70% of the comments were for Zolpidem, a.k.a. Ambien. The other 30% believe I'm addicted to painkillers and are pushing me to buy Darvocet.

Guess I should rethink tagging all my posts with "I love prescription drugs." [kidding.]

 Retired.

This past summer, I decided that I was tired of my Nokia 6126 and began the long and painful process of looking for its replacement. The 6126 actually was a somewhat decent phone, although there was a brief period where it would just randomly shut off during the middle of a call… oh, and the plastic casing managed to peel off. However, one time it fell out of my pocket into the riding ring, and I somehow managed to find it a few hours later in the dark. It was a little scraped and I had to use half a can of compressed air to remove the grains of sand, but otherwise it survived.

Being the techo-geek comp sci major that I am, I thought I owed it to myself to buy a real, honest-to-goodness smartphone. You'd think I'd be up-to-date with all the latest and greatest toys… not quite. I don't have an iPod (in fact, I actually won a Nano in a contest and then regifted it to my sister), my computer is circa 2002 (complete with 19" CRT monitor), and my cell phones have all been of the free 'n' crappy type.

Granted, I have not been living under a rock and had a basic idea of what I did and didn't want: No Blackberry. No iPhone, because a) I hate touch screen phones and b) AT&T requires you to buy a data plan in order to have one, and I wasn't ready to blow an extra $360 a year. Flip-style or slider. Good reception. GPS. Somewhat low SAR levels. (I would prefer to keep my brain cancer-free, thankyouverymuch.)

After many many MANY hours of research, I finally decided that getting another Nokia was the way to go, and this meant doing even MORE research on the OS/platform they use for their smartphones: Symbian Series 60, aka S60.

Turns out this Symbian S60 thing is actually pretty popular. In fact, Symbian OS is the most popular smartphone platform in the world, thanks to Nokia's popularity in Europe and other countries outside the U.S. (Side note: at the time of my new-phone-buying, the updated Android and Palm webOS hadn't been released, so the 4 major players were Symbian, iPhone, RIM/Blackberry, and Windows Mobile.) S60 also supports application development in a variety of languages such as Java, C++, and Python… which means a decent amount of apps are created by third parties, although nowhere near the number iPhone has.

Shiny and new!

Anyway, after a few more weeks of searching, I decided to go with the Nokia E66. As an added bonus, they come in white, which meant I could find my stupid phone slightly more easily in the black hole of my purse/bag.

It's been about six months since I purchased the E66, and so far I've been pleased with it. The GPS can take a loooooong time to lock, which stinks, but fortunately there's a positioning method that'll at least put you roughly in the right place while the phone attempts to find satellites.

Look familiar, iPhone fans?

Also, I can download podcasts directly to the phone, listen to the radio, view text messages in a threaded format (see pic on right), view PDFs, word documents, and PowerPoints (haven't had to use the last two yet), and more. The problems have been minimal, although somehow my phonebook got corrupted and about a third of my contacts were deleted. You'd think I would have learned my lesson from the Jesus Saves post I wrote last year…

Additionally, I've found myself looking into writing my own programs and tweaks for the phone. My first idea was to create a mashup for the Ovi Maps application that would show the nearest Metro stations and their closing times… but offline. Sometimes bars have little-to-no reception, and the last thing I want to be doing at 2:30 AM is trying to get online to find out where the nearest metro stop is and when it closes.

This idea was shelved for a bit while I decided my time was better spent finding a way to keep my job due to a sudden change in my project's contract. Recently, though, I've looked into putting together a basic Python program as a basic speedometer. I got the idea after playing with the Nokia SportsTracker, a neat application that uses the GPS to record your running/walking/whatever route and the speed/distance. Unfortunately, it does NOT allow for recording in meters per minute, the unit we use in the (horse) eventing world. (Granted, I can set the SportsTracker to record in km/hr, but mentally converting it to mpm while you're galloping along might be a bit dangerous.) There are special GPS watches to give you a real-time speed, but they're mucho $$$. Instead, I could try and use my phone and have it display my current speed.

So far I'm still writing/testing the program, because for some reason it works great in the emulator but refuses to work on my phone. Boo. Stay tuned…

French judge issues arrest warrant for Landis

PARIS — A French judge has issued a national arrest warrant for U.S. cyclist Floyd Landis in connection with a case of data hacking at a doping laboratory, a prosecutor's office said.
…
The American cyclist challenged the drug test results before an arbitration hearing in California - claiming that computer files were mishandled and erased - but he was stripped of his Tour de France title and banned for two years.

"Landis used the hacked files for his defense, that's how we discovered the whole scheme," [France's anti-doping chief] Bordry said. "He wanted to show that the lab made mistakes in the handling of the tests."

Okay. As if the French (more accurately, the Agence Française de Lutte contre le Dopage) don't have anything better to do (wait, don't we have some sort of major world sports competition going on right now?), they're now bringing this up again.

I still can't say for sure whether I think Floyd doped or not. At the time, I was skeptical considering the circumstances, but the evidence proved otherwise. So be it — Floyd gets suspended for awhile, Phonak decides to stop sponsoring a cycling team (thank you, Tyler Hamilton), and we forget about it. Then Lance comes back, and our clean all-American cycling hero helps rub away some of the tarnish left behind by the 2006 TdF.

Now France is insisting Floyd hacked the computer files. Let me point this out: not only is Floyd Landis considered to be old enough not to have grown up with computers, but he was raised as a Mennonite. Last time I checked, Mennonites weren't exactly the types to have access to such devices — especially considering they ban TV and shorts. So where on earth is the AFLD getting this idea that Floyd decides to sneak into their lab, perform some Mission Impossible or Hackers-esque work, and alter the files to be in his favor?

I have yet to hear of a computer hacker that hasn't had his hands buried in a keyboard since he was 6, so the notion that a kid raised in a Mennonite household in the 1980s actually grew up to be a quasi-computer hacker is a little preposterous.

Maybe AFLD is doing this to prevent Floyd from attempting the Tour de France again. (The warrant is only valid on French soil.) Who knows? But the fact of the matter is, he was convicted, sentenced, and has served his suspension without any issues. Hard to say the same for some other French riders that have tested positive and continued to dope after that! (See: Philippe Gaumont, Christophe Moreau, etc.)

Oh, and AFLD: P.S., we know you're on the verge of being shut down. Guess you got the publicity you wanted…

Anyway, I pay for my drink, and the register spits out a receipt about as long as my forearm. Seriously? A 14 inch receipt for a $1.50 bottle of yuckiness?

The offending receipt.

The worst part is, if I had paid with a credit card, the receipt would have been 3 inches longer because they print out a separate CC portion. Ridiculous.

What's the big deal, you say. Here's my problem with it: Giant tries to pass off this image of being an environmentally friendly grocery store chain. They have the bins in front for recycling plastic bags, they sell reusable shopping bags, their stores are energy efficient, blah blah blah. However, they apparently don't seem to follow the whole idea of conserving paper. Every other grocery store I've been to uses at least half the amount of paper in their receipts. From what I've seen, they use smaller font, shorter line heights, no stupid logo, and generally don't put erroneous crap that no one reads (e.g., sub sandwich points).

Ideally, grocery stores would be like gas stations and give you the option not to print a receipt… or, better yet, electronic receipts. The only downside to that would be missing out on those coupons on the back that everyone uses. (insert sarcasm here.)

Awhile back (before the Vitamin Water incident), I even wrote Giant an e-mail asking about whether they were planning on modifying their receipt machines so they'd be somewhat shorter and less wasteful. The dude that wrote me back said they were planning on fixing this, but that was about 6-7 months ago, and obviously nothing has happened.

BESANCON, France (AP) — Lance Armstrong was unfazed about slipping to fourth place at the Tour de France. Instead, he was riled that his former lieutenant, George Hincapie, was deprived of the yellow jersey — allegedly by a rival U.S. team.

Hincapie, the only man to be a teammate of Armstrong on all seven of his Tour victories, came within 5 seconds of the race lead in the 14th stage won Saturday by Russia's Serguei Ivanov.

Starting the stage as the highest-placed rider in the breakaway group, 5:25 behind leader Rinaldo Nocentini of Italy, Hincapie had a shot to swipe the leader's yellow shirt.

Instead, as Armstrong and his Astana team claimed, the U.S. squad Garmin-Slipstream pressed the pace in a way that helped the Italian hold a slim lead over Hincapie.

Armstrong, on his Twitter feed, took aim at Garmin-Slipstream, which competes with Columbia for dibs as the top American squad at the Tour this year.

"No one wanted George in yellow more than me," he tweeted.

"Until 10km (6.2 miles) to go he was solidly in yellow until GARMIN put on the gas and made sure it didn't happen," Armstrong wrote.

Oh fer cryin' out loud. It's not Garmin's fault Hincapie couldn't catch the leader, Ag2r-La Mondiale (Nocentini's team) was pressing the pace to protect their lead. If Hincapie was truly DESERVING of the yellow, he would have sucked it up and actually fought for the lead, not go stomping off to the team trailer after the stage finish.

According to this Wash Post article,"Hincapie's breakaway group was more than six minutes ahead of the Italian, fanning suspense about the yellow shirt. Nocentini's AG2R-La Mondiale team, then American team Garmin both accelerated the pace, trimming the gap by the finish. Hincapie missed the yellow jersey by seconds."

"TV cameras showed a frustrated Hincapie as he watched Nocentini's pack cross the finish line. He did not speak to reporters before entering the team bus."

Two words: Sore. Loser.

"I mean that's a victory for everybody. That's something that would have gotten attention all over the U.S., that would have been good for the whole sport in America," [Columbia manager Bob Stapleton] said.

Okay, quick poll to non-cyclists: hands in the air if you know who George Hincapie is.

Anyone?

Yeah, I thought so. George Hincapie is about as well known as every other American rider on this tour. As sad as it sounds, Lance is the only one people care about, and Hincapie being in yellow for one frickin day would have made absolutely no difference on the sport.

"Garmin just wanted to prevent another American team from taking the yellow jersey. It's not right," Astana manager Johan Bruyneel said. "It's not very sporting.

No, it's called Garmin was doing what any other cycling team would have done: try to catch up on the lead so their top rider could advance. Also, if I'm reading correctly, having Hincapie in yellow would take the pressure off Astana and force Columbia (Hincapie's team) to work hard to try and defend the jersey… so I'm taking his statement with a grain of salt.

I don't blame Garmin for chasing down Ag2r, because chances are if they hadn't, another team would have. But then again, what do I know? I'm just an impartial observer, following the tour and crossing my fingers that maybe this year riders will stay clean and not dope. (So far, so good…)

More than 700 cyclists were on the roads of Loudoun County over the weekend, some pedaling up to 150 miles, trying to raise money for a debilitating disease, multiple sclerosis.

According to cyclists and Loudoun authorities, several cyclists failed to come to complete stops at some intersections, and a county sheriff's deputy was waiting to pounce. Eight cyclists were ticketed for running stop signs that day in the Lovettsville and Purcellville areas, authorities said.

To several who took part in the annual event… the tickets were poor form, even if cyclists had rolled through the signs. To authorities, who said they received numerous complaints from motorists about cyclists crowding the roads and running stop signs, the citations were necessary to ensure safety on the roads.

Where do I begin… how about this: I participated in this ride but only rode on Saturday. Every single group/charity ride I've done (whether it be the Reston Century or Bike MS), there are the same ignorant people who don't respect the rules of the road. I'm not talking about stop signs — I'm guilty of doing a slow California Stop when I feel it's safe to do so. (Plus, half the time I end up putting myself in MORE danger by unclipping, stopping, starting, then attempting to clip in without falling over before that car gets to the intersection.)

However, and I've covered this topic before: I honestly don't blame the community for being upset with the bikers. As per usual, I saw too many people riding side-by-side (coincidentally, the majority of them were men on racing or tri bikes) when it wasn't appropriate. Riding abreast is OK if you're out in the middle of Montana on a 10 foot wide shoulder, the next town (pop: 24) is 30 miles away and the last time you saw a car was 2 hours ago. Riding in a pack on Halfway Road in Middleburg is NOT OK. Especially when there's a five ton UPS truck trying to get by you.

Jennings said he and another cyclist, a charity participant, slowed to about 1 mph before proceeding through a stop sign in Lovettsville, only to find a sheriff's deputy nearby, who flagged them down.

Um, yeah, it's physically impossible to ride 1 mph - trust me, I've tried (and promptly fell on my side). Maybe if you're track-standing, but normally the slowest speed someone can do while coasting through a stop sign is around 3-4 mph. Put it this way: if you were a driver and saw cops standing around at a seemingly innocent intersection, wouldn't you stop completely? Of course! Same goes for bikers. Duh.

"What was amazing to me was it seemed to me they were there because of the MS ride," Jennings said. "They've donated their time and all their money, and they've donated to a charity, and you've got the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office just sitting there waiting to hand them a ticket. It didn't seem right."

Bull. Sh**. Just because you've donated your time and money to a charity via a bike ride doesn't give you the excuse to ride like a jerk and not obey stop signs. If the police did this during the Reston Century (and I think they should, because most of it is on the W&OD and has even more intersections/stop signs than the MS Ride), you'd still complain.

So, really guys… I have no sympathy for those who blatantly disobeyed a stop sign and blasted through, because chances are you're the same person who thinks riding two abreast on a busy road is acceptable.

Bad News: Number of bird strikes is up. Good news: Damage done by birds is down.

Bad news of good news: they don't know why. The population of large birds, who do the most damage to planes, has increased, as has the amount of air traffic. Large birds, as in Canadian Geese.

Most aircraft, particularly large planes, are able to (for lack of a better term) "ingest" the bird and no harm is done… if the bird is small enough. A larger poop-spewing Canadian goose, on the other hand, will leave a bit more damage.

Needless to say, I've never liked Canadian geese. They honk loudly and make you depressed in the fall, because when you see them you know they're peace-ing out to a warmer climate while you're stuck in the frozen tundra. Also, if you've ever played on a grass field near a lake, then you probably understand my reasoning: GOOSE TURDS. Canadian geese leave these nasty slick green poops all over the place and consequently you come home and find your shoes covered in goose doo.

Additionally, they're MEAN mofos. Female geese have been known to attack humans, and I'm always afraid the ones at our barn might decide to challenge Cass to a game of chicken (or would it be goose?) when we walk by.

Now, according to this website, anti-goose techniques include scarecrows (yeah, sure, like those ever work), guard dogs (Stella the barn dog is not allowed to chase wild animals), propane exploders and pyrotechnics (which, as an added benefit, scare horses too!), toy water craft and helicopters (hmm…), and lasers.

I think a trip to Toys-R-Us might be in order!

I ended up messing up my directions and going down Glen Mill instead of the subdivision to the east of it, so needless to say I probably won't make that mistake again… a bit too much traffic for my tastes, not to mention the road is pretty cut up in spots. Still, I ended up doing a bit over 17 miles (MMR mileage is wrong). Pretty good, although at this point in time I'd like to be hitting at least 20 regularly, but I'd rather keep them short and frequent rather than long and once a week.