A review of Shimano's 50 tooth chainring. An inexpensive way to go compact. Read More...

The weather here in Wisconsin sucks. Sucks! Sucks! Sucks! September is supposed to be the month in which we get rewarded for a long, cold winter, a wet, cool spring and a hot and humid summer. September is usually brilliantly sunny, warm and dry. Not this year. Cold, wet, windy. Pick any two of the three from that list and you can describe every day this month. As I write this it's 55 degrees, heavy rain and winds of 17mph gusting to 23.

Since I can't ride my bike I thought I'd post a quick one just to make Darin happy (see his comment under the 9/17/06 entry). That's right Darin, complain that I haven't posted anything all week just so that you'll have something to do at work. Never mind that I've been working diligently on a couple of equipment reviews and a couple of political rants so that you and my other dear readers will have something to enjoy. Never mind that I've been working diligently at my job, traveling across the country just so I can feed my family. It's all about you, isn't it?

Noticing these two pretty views of the final sunset of Summer 2006 I actually stopped the car to snap some pictures, just for Darin;



Even while stuck in construction zone traffic I was thinking about my next blog entry, just to please Darin;



Then, just to please Darin, I spent hours scouring the internet for funny, cycling related videos. Here you go Darin. I hope that you're happy now;

Here's one of a knuckle-head wiping out before getting to the steps he was going to jump.

And here's one of a guy jumping his bike off of a rooftop.

And just because Elvis cares so deeply about Darin, Elvis himself, just for Darin, travelled all the way to Lambeau Field and smuggled in a camera (violating several State and Federal laws (not to mention the USA Patriot Act)), just to shoot this VIDEO of the Navy F18 flyover. For Darin.

Another cycling video for your enjoyment.

Lean On Me

If a picture tells a thousand words a video tells a million. There is nothing I can add. Click to view the video;

Celebrate after you cross the finish line.

Cubicle Dwellers: There is sound on this video. Make sure that The Man doesn't hear you goofing off at work.

Watching some of the 9/11 specials on television really makes you stop and think. That was one incredible day and we all remember where we were, what we were doing and who we were with. That stuff is easy to remember. One thing that seems harder to remember is how vulnerable we all felt in the days, weeks and months following that day. It's hard to believe five years have gone by without a further terrorist attack here in the USA. On 9/11/01 no one thought that we could go five years without another bad day.

I hate how both parties, democrats and republicans, politicize terrorism. Republicans talking about how the democrats would rather hug Osama bin Laden than kill him. And democrats saying that the republicans are exploiting death and destruction. I'm confident that all Americans, including guys like John Kerry and Al Gore, want bin Laden dead. And President Bush should be able to talk about successes in stopping further terrorism without being charged with being a power hungry imperialist.

In any event, the current administration should be congratulated for keeping us safe these past five years. Well done!



And for all of you out there that are buying into the latest conspiracy theory that the U.S. government was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks (as you can read HERE and HERE), let me just say this; you're a bunch of freaking morons! Conspiracy theories are for simple-minded folks who can't get their heads around reality. September 11th was chaos. Conspiracy theories usually arise from knuckle-heads trying to make order out of chaos. Sometimes crazy, wacky, terrifying things happen. Nobody wants to believe that 19 guys with box cutters and plane tickets could cause so much grief - but it happened.

I'm no demolitions expert (although I sometimes stay at Holiday Inn Express and I frequently watch the Discovery Channel) but it occurs to me that for the controlled implosion of the Twin Towers someone would have had to drill holes in the center support columns (all 48 of them) at every floor (all 110 of them) and place some dynamite. And then run precisely measured wires at, to and in between each of the placements (all 5,280 of them). And do this at each tower. But no one noticed this activity? No one saw or heard the drilling, wiring and so-forth? The conspiracy people say that this would have been relatively easy. Really? I visited the World Trade Center with my kids in August of 2001 and there was an enormous amount of security just to get into the plaza area and into the elevators to whisk us up to the observation deck in the South tower. I also visited the 48th floor of the North tower on numerous occasions in 1999 and 2000 when I worked for a company that had Empire Blue Cross / Blue Shield as a client. Again, lots of security, check-ins, badges, sign-ins, sign-outs and so-forth. And yet we're to believe that many dozens of people were able to drill 48 holes into the steel at every floor without arousing suspicion. The drilling of the center columns probably wouldn't be enough, you'd likely need to place more dynamite on the skeletal columns (280 on each building) as well as on certain sections of the trusses at each floor.



Suppose for a moment that you could in fact place all 10,560 sticks (minimum) of dynamite without anyone noticing. You still need two small details to make this thing work. Hi-jack, commandeer and fly two commercial airliners, full of people, into the towers so that you can use that as an excuse for triggering the dynamite. And make sure that your inexperienced pilots could put the planes, traveling in excess of 500 miles per hour, at a precise location so that when you explode the top of the tower it looks as if it's breaking off right where the plane hit.

And one final item; since Flight 93 was headed for the Capital building in Washington, D.C. surely that building was full of explosives too. Is the stuff still there just waiting for an opportunity to be triggered?

Really, you people are idiots. But you're in good company with Charlie Sheen and Hugo Chavez.

For Popular Mechanics magazine's debunking of these myths go HERE.

For a much sillier conspiracy theory involving the folding of a twenty dollar bill go HERE.

And finally, I'm going to post a photo of myself and two of my daughters made in August of 2001, a few weeks prior to 9/11. We were in the observation deck gift shop of the World Trade Center and we had a nice young man make this for us as a souvenir. He took our pictures in front of a blue screen, did some photoshop magic and then superimposed it on a picture of the towers, looking up. It was very funny at the time. It was very creepy post-9/11. It had been on our refrigerator but on the evening of 9/11 my wife pulled it off, handed it to me and with tears in her eyes said, "This isn't funny anymore".

And now I post it in hopes that the kid who made it did not go to work early that day and is happily doing funny photoshop projects at the Statue of Liberty, or the NY Times, or somewhere - anywhere.

A review of the conneX chain link by Wippermann. We also answer the question about the compatibility of this device with Dura Ace chains. Read More...

The New York Times and Valerie Plame. Hatred for President George Bush leads to lies, lies and more lies. Why do we let the "Newspaper of Record" get away with it? Read More...