Le Tour de Lance

First of all, it's amazing that Lance Armstrong is even in the race to begin with. The last time he raced in the Tour it was 2005, and he retired at the end. After the Pyrenees, he looks like one of the top two legitimate contenders for the yellow jersey. If the other top contender wasn't on his own team, he would look even more likely to win. I think the only one who could really take Lance out of race is Johan Bruyneel. To me Lance looks just like he did in his previous Tour wins, biding his time and riding intelligently, avoiding any mistakes before he picks his opportunities to make time against his rivals. He certainly didn't lose any time in the Pyrenees, when Contador attacked (against his own team!) Armstrong and Leipheimer were forced to turn off the gas so as not to help the other GC contenders. And after the initial sprint, Contador didn't make any more time against the pack, and I think Lance had a good bit of energy he held back. He's still got a long ways to go, but he is certainly a legitimate contender. When the race started, I thought he would just be tarnishing his reputation, one more champion who couldn't go out on a high note. I couldn't understand him insisting that he could be the leader of the team, since I didn't think he would stand a chance against Contador in the mountains. But he certainly has held his own so far.

The public opinion seems to be in his favor. The journalists, especially the French journalists, continue to claim he is unpopular, but if you listen to the crowds the seem to be much more for him than against him. Journalists have to earn a living, though, and saying Lance is a good cyclist is not news. If you offered a journalist, not just a Frenchie journalist or a sensationalist, but any journalist, a fair-minded journalist who doesn't have anything personal against Lance Armstrong, the choice between documents that absolutely proved Lance Armstrong had taken performance-enhancing substances and documents that absolutely proved he hadn't, I think almost all of them would chose the proof that he was dirty. And it's actually a much bigger story if he hasn't, since that would make him even more superhuman. Athletes that cheat to get ahead are a dime a dozen; an athlete that utterly dominates his sport even when the others are cheating is epic. And there are many journalists who do have a personal against Lance, maybe because they root for the underdog or don't like his arrogance or his ruthless style or single-minded focus on winning the Tour, or hate Americans, or cyclists, or whatever.

I heard on the Versus converage that Lance has been tested forty times since he announced he was returning to the Tour last August. That's before the race even started. That's forty out-of-competition tests, not counting the daily testing during the Tour and other races. Lance without question is the most-tested athlete in history, and has never once tested positive. There are riders in the race who have been proven to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, and they are all more popular with the press. I can understand why a fan (especially a French fan) or a journalist might be against Lance, I cannot understand why the Tour and the are against Lance. There seems to be a personal grudge against him, backed up by the testing abuses and nasty comments and leaks of (later documented) false information to the press.

All of this, on top of his teammate's seeming betrayal, is just more motivation for Lance to win another Tour. And if he can overcome the world vs. Lance at 37 years old, he will be in my mind the most dominant athlete ever.

EPILOGUE
I heard a sports analyst on ESPN ask Bobby Julich why Lance finished in 41st place today. Bobby said "um, because it was a bunch sprint finish? And, Lance isn't a sprinter, you ass-face?" Well, that's not exactly what he said, I am paraphrasing, but the question was asked.

Le Tour 2009

It's been an exciting Tour so far, and diabolically difficult even before we hit the mountains. The time trial in Monaco was an amazing course, and the team time trial course produced the carnage that the riders were predicting.

Some initial thoughts:
- Finally the Tour is in high definition. Even if you don't like cycling, it's worth watching the three or four hours just for the countryside of France.

- If Lance Armstrong hadn't retired in 2005, he would have won the Tour in 2006 for sure, with most of the favorites out for doping. He may have beaten Alberto Contador in 2007, and he would have beaten Carlos Sastre in 2008 for sure. That would have been his 10th yellow jersey, and he would probably be retired for good.

- Lance looks like he's in at least as good a shape as he was in winning the Tour in previous occasions. He's a viable contender until we see who's got the goods in the mountains. My guess is that he won't be able to stay with Contador, but Contador has already made a dumb mistake or two. There's a reason the Tour is three weeks long.

- All of the questions about who the Astana team leader have got to be wearing on Lance and the other Astana team members. I can only imagine how it antagonizes Contador, but he doesn't speak English so we don't see him on the television coverage.

- Fabian Cancellara's descent in the stage 1 time trial was amazing, too bad we didn't get to see any of it on television. He was fourth going up the mountain and finished , he gained 26 seconds in about 10 kilometers on the best riders in the world.

- Previous winner Carlos Sastre was denied the right to wear yellow for the first stage. I bet this wouldn't have happened if the previous winner was a little more popular than Sastre.

- Mark Cavendish will win a huge number of stages, he looks absolutely unbeatable. If he can make it over the mountains with a team I think the record of eight stage wins is not unattainable. Leaving the Tour last year to lose in the Olympics was (in retrospect) a dumb decision.

I can't wait to see what happens in the mountains!

See my posts on previous Tours here.

How to Pay for a Home

- More than 2.2 million homeowners are more than 60 days late on their mortgage payments
- One in six homeowners owes more on a home than it's worth.

When I was starting to look for my first house in 2004, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get a loan, or really that I wouldn't be able to get a loan big enough to buy the house I wanted. I was making pretty good money, I'm not rich but I had put away enough for a decent down payment, I didn't have any debt (other a credit card that I payed off every month) and I had a virtually perfect credit rating, but I had never been through the process of getting a mortgage and I expected it to be difficult. I wanted to live close to town, in a part of town near where I was renting at the time. I had become addicted to the short commute to work and all the conveniences, but it is more expensive than living in the 'burbs. Not California or Manhatten expensive, but my house would probably have cost less than half of what it did if it was in the area of Houston where I grew up.

I put together a spreadsheet to figure out how much money I could spend on a mortgage payment, using the last five years of data in my Microsoft Money database to estimate irregular income and expenses, things like bonuses, vacations, gifts, charitable contributions, and car maintenance. I averaged everything into a monthly expense and then used what was left over to figure out how big a mortgage I could afford based on my current income (I am a salaried engineer, so my income doesn't vary much). When I filled out the loan application, the bank approved an amount almost twice as much as the maximum amount I had calculated. I was amazed, I couldn't imagine how anyone could cut back that much to be able to handle such a big a mortgage payment.

When the opportunity came to buy my house, I had to act fast, the seller wanted to close within a month because she was using the money to buy another house. If I hadn't already been prepared with all the financial calculations, I couldn't have made an informed decision about the financing. I figured out how much cash I could scrape together, and it was right at 20% after closing costs if I spent every cent I had, and I wasn't sure exactly how much the closing costs would be. I was dealing with a fairly conservative mortgage company (Wells Fargo) and they required 20% down or private mortgage insurance (PMI). I had been reading up on PMI and I knew that paying for insurance for the bank was dumb in my case. I had a short term cash flow problem, PMI wouldn't go away very quickly, and it was absolutely zero benefit to me. I also knew that if I spent all of the cash I had to get a 20% down payment, something unexpected could very easily come up and I'd be in trouble. The bank proposed a piggyback loan to make up the difference, so I borrowed 5% of the mortgage amount to apply to the down payment at a slightly higher interest rate (I think 2 percentage points higher than my mortgage rate, which was under 6%). It had a seven-year term but I paid it off in less than a year, since I basically already had the money. Once I paid off the second mortgage, I started applying that amount to the principal on the first mortgage. I have been aggressively paying down principal, although I quit at the beginning of this year to build up a bigger emergency fund after recalculating what 6 months of bills would be without my brother as a roommate. The value of my home continues to go up, but at a slower rate, but even if it had dropped I wouldn't owe more than it is worth.

One of the mistakes I did make in my estimates was the real estate taxes. I looked online and at the tax bill the previous owner had paid, around $1,000/yr, and I used that number in my estimate. My real estate agent warned me that the property taxes were fairly high, but I didn't listen, and I was surprised at the closing when I realized that appraised tax value of the home would double and the next year's taxes would be more than $7,200. This would have been a big problem, even with the mortgage company escrowing the amount, if I had used all the cash I had to make my down payment or if I had tried to buy more house than I could comfortably afford. A couple I know had to refinance their loan after only one year because the previous appraised tax value on their new home was just the lot value, and their taxes were 10 times what they had paid their first year.

I believe most of the blame for the "financial crisis" is not on banks but on borrowers. People spending more than they can afford to, either because of overly optimistic estimates of their costs, failure to plan for the unexpected, or just plain short-sightedness. I read about a woman with two kids who's initial mortgage payment was only $100/month less than her take-home pay. That's not ignorance, that's stupidity. And now her house is being foreclosed upon, and yes, the banks are partly to blame, that's a loan that never should be made, but the person who signed their name to the contract is the one responsible. No one forced her to borrow more than she could afford, and she shouldn't have allowed herself to be talked into such an obvious disaster just waiting to happen. When I look at the small amount of basic planning I did preparing to buy my first house, I know anyone else could have done basically the same thing, and then been better prepared to make financial decisions. I know I could have borrowed more than twice as much as I did, and had a house twice as big as the one I bought, but it would have been way too risky, and I didn't want to gamble my financial future. And now a lot of the people that did make that gamble are seeing the results.

This is the second part of a series, see part one How to Pay for a New Vehicle here.

Texas Longhorns are Still Number 1

I went to the Texas Longhorns(1)-Missouri Tigers(11) game last weekend with my brother Aaron. We drove to Austin on Saturday afternoon with a buddy of his and tailgated until the game started at 7pm. I hadn't been back to Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium (formerly Memorial Statium) in at least 10 years, and there have been a lot of changes.

The university spent $150 million to reconfigure the north end zone, boosting capacity above 90,000 by adding suites and seats that will face a new scoreboard. And a big new scoreboard it is. They call it the Godzillatron (it's too big to be called a mere Jumbotron). The high-definition LED scoreboard is 134 feet wide and 55 feet high. Measuring diagonally, like they do for televisions, that's a 1,740-inch screen.

Texas dominated the Tigers from the first series, scoring 35 straight points in the first half and not allowing a point until Missouri kicked a field goal in the final second of the first half. It was great to be back at a college football game, singing and chanting and clapping and yelling; the noise is amazing.

The Longhorn band did a Tribute to Led Zepplin at the halftime show. Here they're playing Heartbreaker (Get it? Heart breaker?)

This is one of the first years that at the start of the season I thought Texas didn't have what it takes to go all the way. I hope I was wrong, and I won't doubt them that early again.

Labor Day 2008

Because it’s Labor Day, I’ve been thinking about all of the jobs I’ve had in my life. I don't remember what I wanted to be when I grew up, my earliest memory of a career path is when I was in high school. I wanted to learn about computers (they were pretty new back then, I was one year removed from punch cards on a mainframe at UT) but my dad talked me into majoring in engineering, he said that I could always work with computers with an engineering degree, but if I majored in Computer Science and discovered that I didn't like computers, I was stuck. Even though I really didn't understand what an engineer did, I agreed, and in my first semester I realized that engineering was my calling. There was a big construction wall around the new Mechanical Engineering building, and someone had spray painted "Engineering isn't everything, it's the only thing" on it. Other graffiti was removed, but they left that. It was inspiring, and at the time, I agreed. One professor said (tongue-in-cheek) "I consider anyone not working in the engineering field to be a leach on society." I regret now that my college career was so focused on engineering and left-brain activities. I've come to value my creative side, with reading, writing, and other "liberal art" outlets. If I won the lottery I would go back to university for sure.

My first real job (other than paper routes and mowing lawns) was at the Oakwood Glen swimming pool. A couple of my friends got summer jobs there as lifeguards, and they hired me to come in the morning and clean the pool. It was about 30 minutes of work, six days a week, and I got paid $20/week, which paid for a tank of (leaded) gas!

When I went to school I didn't work my freshman year during the school year, but my sophomore year I had to get a job. I went down to the local Wendy's and applied, and was hired on the spot. That was a tough job at first, mostly mopping, wiping, cleaning grease, on your feet all day long, and then I worked my way up to the salad bar. I occasionally did fries and made burgers, one day I even got to work the grill, but that was a skill position, you had to anticipate how many burgers to have going at the same time. Too few, and everyone has to wait. Too many, and there's a lot of waste. I think I lasted one semester there, I eventually gave my notice when the semester was up. The next semester I was a pizza maker, a much nicer job. No grease, and we ate and drank for free on the job.

In the summers, I became a lifeguard and a swim team coach and swimming instructor at Willow Forest. I made enough money in the summer to last me most of the school year, living large until around April and scrimping by until the summer. Eventually, the pool company I worked for got out of the business of managing lifeguards, and I stayed on as a chlorine delivery truck driver (the world's best!) and commercial pool repair. That was a tough job, I worked 100+ hours a week most weeks in the summertime. The boss worked just as hard as we did, and I really learned a lot about the rewards of hard work and a job well done, and also I learned what I didn't want to do for a living for the rest of my life.

In a break from school I worked as an engineering intern for 3D/International, designing HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems for office buildings. I also worked on the construction of the George R. Brown Houston Convention Center, although I was disappointed when I saw the architectural styling. After returning to Hancock Pool Services for another year, I started working at FERA Corporation as a CAD (computer-aided drafting) technician while I finished up my degree. When I graduated, they hired me as a corrosion engineer. Four years later I went to work at El Paso, and with a brief interlude at Enbridge, I'm back where I was.

Phelps Miracle Finish

Sports Illustrated has a series of underwater photos here showing how Michael Phelps beats Milorad Cavic in the 100 Butterfly for the closest of his now presumptive eight gold medals.

I was a swim team coach for summer league age-groupers (ages 4 to 18) during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and we watched some of the swimming events as a team. I saw how important the finish is in winning races, and I showed the team some of the techniques the Olympians used. One of the girls, a 14-year old (her last name was Thomas, I think, her mom was the organizer of the swim team at Willow Forest) came to the pool every day that week and practiced that finish. At the meet on Saturday, she was about a half-length behind this big brute of a girl coming in to the finish of the 13-14 girls 100 IM, and she beat her out at the finish by using the touch she had practiced. It was one of the most rewarding moments I've ever had. Then the other girl's dad came over and asked me to step outside.

How to synchronize files on more than one computer

In a previous post, I talked about how to check email from more than one computer. Like most folks who work for a company, I have a computer at work and a computer at home. My work computer is a laptop because I travel a lot, and when I'm gone I also need to do things like pay bills, work on my fantasy football personal correspondence, etc. and so I need to share some files on two computers.

I used to do it the old-fashioned way (heh) by emailing files back and forth. This was tedious for synching a lot of files, so I bought a USB hard drive. I'd periodically copy personal files I'd need onto the hard drive, and then copy those files to my laptop. I keep everything like that in a separate directory (called Personal, it's kind of a code) and I would just copy the entire directory. The problem with that is that if I changed any of my personal files on the laptop, they would get overwritten.

Then I discovered FolderShare, now owned by Microsoft and part of their Windows Live (whatever that is). FolderShare is a free service that you can use to keep your files synchronized between your computers, share files with friends or colleagues, and download your files from any computer that's connected to the Internet. It's been working great for me, behind my firewall and router at home, and even behind the corporate firewall (allegedly). I don't run it all the time, but once a week or so I'll leave my computer on at home, I leave the software running all the time, and I'll start the software on my computer at work, and bingo bango bongo, it's done. The software is careful enough not to delete multiple versions of a file, but saves them them under another file name.

There is a limit on the size and number of files, a single directory can't have more than 10,000 files. I synch most of my Personal folders, although I don't include my iTunes library (too many files) or My Pictures (too large). I also synch my Favorites list (I have 2200+ links) between home and work, this works great, our corporate pushes out new links periodically and they appear at home automatically.

FolderShare is a great way to work seamlessly on multiple computers. All of your resources are there no matter where you are. It works great, and best of all, it's a free download (it's in beta now, but I suppose that they may charge for it down the road, after all Microsoft has to make money somehow).

Gasoline Costs

One of the nice things about using personal financial software (I use MS Money) is that you can very quickly break down where your money is going. Here's my expenditures for gasoline, not counting vacations or business travel (I use different categories for those), over the last eight years. One note, I have a company car that I use for commuting to work, and the company pays for the gas. In the summer of 2005, I left El Paso for Enbridge, and returned in November of 2007. I didn't really think that having a company car helped with my gasoline bill much, since I only live 8 miles from work. I calculate that my commute contributes about $400/year, but from the graph it appears that there is a larger contribution than I thought. I do drive to the airport 20 or 30 times a year, that contributes another $300 or $350 per year. Maybe I'm getting a better deal than I thought? For once?

Le Tour 2008 Week One (or should I say Weak One)

As I predicted last year in this post, "there will be many more drug scandals before I regain confidence in the fairness of the race." Former US Postal and Discovery team member Manuel Beltran was arrested by French police Friday after testing positive for the banned red-blood cell booster erythropoietin (EPO). He was re-tested on Saturday July 5th after pre-race blood tests showed abnormalities, but the results of the followup testing weren't available until last Friday. (Photo from lequipe.fr)

Under a new French anti-doping law, Beltran faces a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of $121,600 (€76,000). He has been expelled from the Tour, and will be fired from his team pending the results of the testing of the "B" sample. He will likely get a two-year ban from professional cycling, which will be in effect a lifetime ban since Beltran was planning to retire this year after a 14 year career as a top climbing team rider.

This is yet another of Lance Armstrong's teammates who have proved to have been doping. That doesn't make him guilty, but the fact that Lance was able not just to beat but to dominate the best cyclists in the world, when many of them have subsequently been proven to have been doping, makes it more difficult to defend him (and Floyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton).

Top 10 Tour Disappointments
10) Time-trial specialist and US team Team Garmin-Chipotle member Dave Zibriski's absence due to a back injury.
9) David Millar promised to be a GC contender in the Tour for Team Garmin-Chipotle. After the first mountain stage, he isn't even close. On a day he needed to gain time, he finished 55th in stage 8, losing more than four and a half minutes, and is now 25th overall.
8) French polka-dot jersey winners who can't climb. What an attention-whore Thomas Voeckler is. Not one of the polka-dot jersey wearers so far could hold a real climber's bike shorts.
7) After a fantastic time trial in stage 5, Stefan Schumacher fell near the finish in stage 6 when he ran into the back wheel of Kim Kirchen. He lost the overall to Kiki by 16 seconds, and probably would have had three more days in the yellow jersey.
6) Fabian Cancellara's time trial, the presumtive favorite as a time trial specialist and world champion for the last two years. Everyone was ready to give him the stage win and the yellow jersey. He finished fifth.
5) Robbie McEwen. Or lack thereof.
4) Some of the greatest sprinters in the world are absent from the Tour once again. Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was banned for one year after testing high for the asthma medication salbutamol. Petacchi holds a therapeutic-use exemption for the otherwise banned substance, he is presumed innocent with levels of up to 1,000 ng/ml, but tested at a level of 1,320 ng/ml. Tom Boonen, last year's green jersey winner, was barred because he tested positive for cocaine outside of competition.
3) Juan Mauricio Soler, last year's polka-dot jersey winner, abandoning because of a fall on the first day of racing.
2) No Alberto Contador (last year's winner) and American Levi Leipheimer (least year's third place finisher) because of the arbitrary ban of Team Astana.
1) We're still talking about drugs in the Tour de France.

Top 10 of the Tour
10) Having a commentator that seems to know something about cycling. Craig Hummer replaced Al Trautwig and he seems to be growing on me, he's dominating the commentator picks. TDFblog described Al Trautwig as combining "bombast and ignorance in staggering proportions!" Hummer doesn't quite have the chemistry with Bob Roll that Trautwig had, but he's doing a great job. Much better than Kirsten Gum. Although not in a sweater.
9) The commentary of Jonathan Vaughters. He's a thousand times better an interview than Johan Bruyneel, and Bruyneel is better than the rest of the team managers. When he used the f-word on live TV, Robbie Ventura's expression was priceless.
8) After a 200 km breakaway, William Frischkorn of Garmin-Chipotle almost pulled it out at the end, settling for second place on the day.
7) Thor Hushovd winning a stage and the leading sprinter in the standings for the green jersey.
6) Bernard Hinault pushing the protester off the podium. The only thing worse than socialist Frenchies are activist socialist Frenchies.

5) Mark Cavendish's domination in the sprints, with two stage wins so far, and possibly more to come if he can make it over the mountains.
4)The cameras and Tour coverage gets better every year. I remember watching Greg LeMond winning the Tour over Laurent Fignon of France in 1989 by 8 seconds. It was on a one-hour tape delayed special, and that was the only coverage of the race that week.
3) Christian Vandevelde in third place overall in the GC standings. Wow. I would have bet money that he'd be toast by now. Go Christian! Another American Tour de France winner would just kill the Frenchies.
2) American teams Columbia's and Garmin-Chipotle's performances. These are teams to be reckoned with.
1) Kim Kirchen of Team Columbia in both the green and yellow jerseys. So far...

Le Tour 2008 (or should I say La Tour 2008)

Well, we're four days into the 2008 Tour de France, and it's been exciting despite the absence of two of the three podium finishers, Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer, both of the barred Team Astana, and the green jersey winner, Tom Boonen, who was barred because he tested positive for cocaine outside of competition. The winners of thirteen of the yellow jerseys from 2007 were banned. The most interesting chapters of this Tour promised to be Mauricio Soler dominating the mountain stages (oops, he fell and broke his wrist) and Fabian Cancellara (who won seven yellow jerseys in 2007) again dominating the time trial events (oops, he came in fifth in today's individual time trial). No Michael Rasmussen, Alexandre Vinokourov, or Alessandro Pettachi. No Floyd Landis. No David Zabriskie. No Fred Rodriguez or Chris Horner. No Johan Bruyneel. No Al Trautwig, even! (although that might be a good thing, Craig Hummer seems to be growing on me)

I'll still watch every minute they broadcast (three hours a day on most days, today was four because of the ITT). There will always be compelling stories, most every day, with underdogs like Romain Feillu, wearing both the white and yellow jerseys yesterday after a 200 km breakaway (William Frischkorn of the US team Garmin Chipotle almost pulled it out at the end) and Stefan Schumacher, winning today's stage over the best time trialers in the world.

Tomorrow should be another great stage for the sprinters, and I think that's one of the most exciting things to watch in sports, which means that there'll be a breakaway that stays out. Or a big crash in the final turn. Ho hum, come on Pyrenees.

Analysis of a phishing email

I received this email at my work email address, it appeared in my Junk E-mail folder in Outlook. This is kind of unusual since I rarely receive spam at work, I think we must have pretty good spam filters.

-----Original Message-----
From: by-joc@sympatico.ca [mailto:by-joc@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2008 8:56 AM
To: winner@freelotto.co.uk
Subject: Congratulation

You won the sum of $2,000,000.00 you arehereby advice to get back to us, to claim your prize.

Contact Mr. Richard Smith
Email: (contactrichardsmith01@btinternet.com)

Claims Requirements:
1.Full Names:2.Home Address:3.Sex:
4.Phone Number:5 .Nationality

Clues that the email is not legitimate

People who speak the English language rarely use the term "Congratulation" in the singular form, as in the subject field of this email.

The email address winner@freelotto.co.uk is not my email address, there's no reason why my email wouldn't appear on an email to me, unless it's a bulk email, and I don't think a large number of people won $2M.

The sender's email address is (purportedly) by-joc@sympatico.ca, which is a free webmail address from an ISP in Canada. A legitimate email would be from an organization.

You wouldn't expect an email from Canada for a UK lottery, or vice versa.

"You won" is kind of abrupt; most would use "You have won" or "You've won". "Advice" should be "advised", and the language "get back to us" is very informal compared to the rest of the sentence. Overall it looks like it was written by a non-English speaker, which is unusual for a British official but may be normal for a Canadian.

"Arehereby" is a typo, also the language seems overly stern for a congratulatory email. You would expect an email of this type to have been proofread.

If this is an email from a lottery in the UK, you would expect the winning amount in British pounds "£2,000,000.00" or euros "€2,000,000.00", not in dollars "$2,000,000.00".

The email provides a third email address for contact, from a third ISP which turns out to be a free webmail address from an ISP in the UK.

The weirdly punctuated list of personal information to be provided to claim the prize. It doesn't seem normal to request the sex of the winner.