Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan.

Drew Interviewed for NPR

I got an email this morning from Scott Horsley, the business correspondent for National Public Radio. He asked me a couple of questions about the BP pipeline that was shut down for corrosion problems. I had been called a couple of times in the last few weeks, by Oil & Gas Journal and New York Times, just for background information. I found out that some folks at NACE had been suggesting me as a knowledgeable guy (hah! shows what they know). I sent him some answers to his questions, and this afternoon he called me and interviewed me for the radio. He asked me about a dozen questions and recorded the answers for Morning Edition some time next week, probably Wednesday or Thursday, and that the show would be available on the web site as well.

I'll keep you posted.

Quiz of the Day - Grammar

Take this grammar quiz. I scored 8 of 10, and learned two new grammar rules.

Market Forces by Richard Morgan

Market Forces by Richard Morgan.

Broken Angels by Richard Morgan

Broken Angels by Richard Morgan.

What does your name mean?

I usually don't post internet memes like this, but this was was fun and makes you feel better. And it makes me sound kewl.

A- You like to drink (it's true)
N- You are absolutely beautiful (well, I've been told...)
D- You have one of the best personalities ever (true)
R- Really sexy (I've heard that on occasion)
E- Darn good kisser (not sure, since I can't kiss myself, but no complaints so far)
W- You are very broad minded (true)

G- You never let people tell you what to do (errrr, not exactly...)
E- Darn good kisser (I just heard that somewhere)
N- You are absolutely beautiful (that too)
E- Darn good kisser (is there an echo in here?)

H- You have a very good personality and looks (so I've been told, thanks Mom!)
E- Darn good kisser (definitely an echo in here)
V- You are not judgemental (ahh, do you really know me?)
L- You live to have fun (true, I was born to be wild)
E- Darn good kisser (alright, if you hear it often enough, it must be true)

===============================================

A- You like to drink.
B- You're a laid back, like to have fun kind of person
C- People tend to judge you because you are popular
D- You have one of the best personalities ever.
E- Darn good kisser
F- People adore you.
G- You never let people tell you what to do.
H- You have a very good personality and looks.
I- You have a fine body.
J- Everyone loves you.
K- You are really silly
L- You live to have fun.
M- Success comes easily to you.
N- You are absolutely beautiful.
O- You are one of the best in bed.
P- You are popular with all types of people.
Q- You are a hypocrite.
R- Really sexy.
S- Easy to fall in love with.
T- You're loyal to those you love.
U- You really like to chill.
V- You are not judgemental.
W- You are very broad minded.
X- You never let people tell you what to do.
Y- One of the best bfs/gfs anyone could ask for.
Z- Always ready

Thanks Leanne!

No Posts

Alright, alright, I know that I've been negligent in posting. So, what have I been doing? Well.

Two weekends ago I went to Las Vegas for the weekend to visit Tony, we stayed away from the strip and did the local thing. Saturday we went up to Mount Charleston and the Floyd Lamb National Park Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, did some hiking and drank beer at the ski lodge. I'll post the rest of the pictures when I can.



Last weekend I bought a refrigerator and clothes dryer from a guy at work who was moving, my dryer hadn't been working very well, and the refrigerator is an upgrade, so it worked out perfectly. I rented a U-Haul and dolly, and picked the two appliances up with no problem, he lives in Old Oaks, just down the street from where my parents live. I got them into my house without too much difficulty, and spent the weekend getting them hooked up and running. It doesn't sound like much work, but you pull the old refrigerator out, and you say "well as long as I'm here I'll clean out underneath" and then after you transfer all the food, you say "well, as long as everything is out, I'll give the old refrigerator a good cleaning" and "I need to run new dryer exhaust vent" and "I think I'll run a water line to the old refrigerator so I can have ice in the garage too" and pretty quickly it becomes a weekend job.

What next? I'm taking the next couple of days off, trying to get caught up with some personal projects. I'm going to Alabama for a week in September, and then I'm spending a week in Orlando at NACE Corrosion Technology Week (this is like a corrosion engineer's convention, only more technical).

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan.

Le Mort de Landis

As I predicted previously, Landis' B sample tested positive for a high T/E ratio, and he has since been fired by team Phonak. He will most likely be stripped of his Tour de France title. For all the reasons I listed previously, I still don't believe that he is guilty, but he may be in a position from which he cannot extricate himself, guilty or not guilty. There are many questions about the tests, the testing procedures, the testing laboratory, and how the results of the tests became public, but these are probably insufficient to clear Landis of all suspicion. The fact that previous and subsequent tests did not show a positive result are difficult to resolve with the one positive test, but the issue of doping is too serious for the Tour to ignore. Stripping the title will stain the race even more than the 1998 Festina scandal, even more than the Operation Puerto scandal. Read more about cheating in the Tour de France here.

Ironically, this satire site pokes fun at the race administrators and jokes that Landis was stripped because his hipular injury gave him a psychological advantage.

Here and here are articles reporting that Lance Armstrong was to have been stripped of his sixth and seventh Tour de France titles, respectively, so perhaps there is some hope for Landis.

Read more in my series on the 2006 Tour de France:

First | Prev | Next | Last

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

More on Landis' Bodily Fluids

Up until yesterday, I was pretty certain that Landis was not guilty. I still felt he had a coin's toss chance to prove it, and I felt that because of the following reasons:
1) Testosterone is not a performance-enhancing drug in the short term. It helps to build muscle, which is why the body produces it in the first place. This is not a drug you would take in the middle of the Tour de France for any reason.
2) Landis' previous six drug tests during the Tour did not indicate anything unusual about his testosterone levels
3) Landis' testosterone level was very low, not elevated, it was his T/E ratio, or the ratio of testosterone to another naturally occurring hormone
4) Industry consensus (not the cycling industry, the medical testing industry) is that this test is susceptible to a wide variety of problems
5) Every test of this type that has been challenged has been overturned
6) There are many alternate explanations for Landis' high ratio, including a naturally high testosterone to epitestosterone level, bacterial contamination, hormones he takes for his adrenal glandular problem, cortisone injections he takes for his hipular problem, alcohol consumption the night before the test (variously reported as one shot of Jack Daniel's or two beers and four shots of Jack), natural depletion of hormones due to the efforts of the race, or contamination of the specimen during testing
7) You'd have to be stupid to get caught, since there are many ways to take testosterone without elevating your T/E ratio

What happened yesterday? The New York Times in this article indicated that an IRMS (isotope ratio mass spectrometry) test showed that some of the testosterone in Landis' sample was synthetic. While that doesn't change any of the reasons above, it's unlikely (at least to me) that two different tests gave false positives. There are many problems with the IRMS test as well, but... every single athlete caught at doping claims he (or she) is the isolated case of a false positive. The AP in this article said that the leak came from the International Cycling Union. [Note: I previously reported incorrectly that the leak came from the French national antidoping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry.]

Landis' B sample will be tested and the results will be announced on Saturday, but I find it unlikely that the results will be significantly different. If Landis wants to avoid a two-year suspension and being stripped of his Tour de France title, he's got some 'splainin' to do.

Read more in my series on the 2006 Tour de France:

First | Prev | Next | Last