Am I unusually cynical in that I assume that all elite athletes in some sports are probably doping? And cycling is perhaps the biggest.

It is absolutly rampant in cycling. It's also one of those situations where the cure is quite possibly worse than the disease and there are those who argue that the only way to sustain cycling as a sport is just let it go already and decide not to care.

The thing with Armstrong as well is that they're going to have to figure out who to award those titles to, because all of his biggest competition was also doping, like Jan Ulrich.

I'm bargaining on Sail (uh, not SailAweigh--I don't want to put that burden on her) to calm me down after this call. It's not this call, it's our data center.

We tried to get them to do a file copy this evening, but they can't do it, because it involves copying from prod to dev, and they can't do it without opening a firewall. No one is going to approve a firewall opening for something that stupid. Copy it to a staging location and then to dev. Don't act stupid. You're a data center. You are computers. I also don't care how long it takes you. If you didn't want to do these kind of tasks, get into rocket science. And I still bet you'll copy a file or two.

Now, we have yet another Sunday 12AM task. Our email system is under maintenance, so I would like them to call me when they're done with their task. Apparently this is too complicated. No one ever asks them to do this. Uh, I don't give a fuck? If you tell me you need to move the task to when email is working, I will think very ill of you, but don't tell me that I'm out of line asking you to use a working means of communication when email is down. And no, I don't want you to use my personal email. Fuck off. I said call or text me--just fucking do that.

I already have stress. I don't need diva sysadmins who can't copy files telling me they can't send text messages or make phone calls. These people call me all the time, it seems, and read my change requests to me, and ask if that's what I meant, and I say yes, and then they hang up. Get that guy to call me. He knows my number, and he likes it.

Yeah - of the 70 top-ten finishes in those 7 years, somewhere over 40 have been caught doping. Rampant doping is rampant.

Right now, it looks like I’ll be starting work on Sept 4th, after Labor Day. One more week of freedom for me!

Yay!

The thing is it really should be up to them to prove it. No physical evidence, and most of the evidence against him was anonymous testimony. That strikes me as a really bad precedent. The judge ruled against LA beause he agreed to the mediator that made the decision based that anonymous testimony. But I really think that even if LA is an asshole (have not followed closely enough to know) he was convicted on an absurd level of evidence. I gather he is being punished for not confessing and repenting.

Yay Tom!

I just realized that my kitchen window is right on the fire escape, so maybe I don't want to leave it open all the time, which is bumming me out. It was so good open at night! I need to check a little more closely, but it does look like someone could just walk right up and in the window, so.

It's Friday, maybe I'll start drinking now.

Good news! It's National Duck Out For A Drink Day (Observed)! [link] (I am still paranoid to make a pretty link...)

That's 'cuz in a few billion years, our galaxy will merge with the Andromeda galaxy. 100 billion years from now some of the remnants of our solar system (along with stuff from Andromeda) will have formed new solar systems.

That's if expansion due to dark energy doesn't result in the Big Rip happening about 20 billion years down the line, as I've heard posited by a recent theory.

OK, I think this belongs in the Good Stuff blog:

Surgeon Commandeers Pink Bike to Get to Work

Dr. Catherine Baucom was on her way to the Elliot Mastology Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where a patient was waiting for her to perform surgery on Wednesday morning. But an accident on I-10 created a huge traffic jam in which hundreds of cars were stopped. That's when Baucom took matters into her own hands, creating a scene right out of a Hollywood movie. She recognized the neighborhood, and knew a colleague that lived nearby.

"Catherine called, she was outside my house. She said 'Hey do you have a bike?' I walked outside and said yea, its a kids bike," said Dr. Brian Barnett. After a quick test run, Dr. Baucom decided the bike was her only choice to get to the hospital. "I got the air pump out and aired the tires up as much as I could."

He gladly loaned her his seven year old daughter's bike and helmet and the nearly six foot tall surgeon resumed her journey to the surgery center.

"It was hot pink and small," Dr. Baucom said, describing the bike. "The helmet was pink with princesses." He added he was laughing so much he couldn't get video of her before she peddled away. "But she did utilize the plastic basket on front, to put her cell phone in. Showed her experience with the bike."

She says she traveled down Tara Boulevard, onto Fairway Drive, crossed Jefferson Highway and over to Essen Lane. When she reached I10, she was stopped by police. After explaining the circumstances and where she was headed, she was escorted through to meet her patient.

The police couldn't resist taking some video of the doctor.

eta: News report with interview and video: [link]