Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Tests

It's the final week of classes and so I'm giving tests all week which, of course, means I have to grade them. I haven't had much time to do too much of that yet but the papers I graded for one class were interesting. I could really tell that some students had done the last minute thing because they didn't have nearly enough research for what they needed to write. Based on what I read and graded, I kind of fear for the future if we ever lose spell checkers and grammar checkers.

Finals week is coming up and with it a period of liberation for me. I'm ready to be done. I love teaching and I love working with students but I need a break (as do they, I'm sure). What I'd love to do is ride and watch the Giro but the Giro isn't being shown by OLN this year (Lance isn't riding in it, so no one will tune in) and I have lots of other projects to start on. there's the Web-Based courses I'm teaching, the Physical Science text I'm co-authoring, the Lab book revision that I'll need to do, the yard and garden work and repairing/replacing parts of the porch. Still though, the unstructured time will be nice to have for two months.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Lance Retires

As I'm sure you've heard (or read or mentally intuited or something), Lance Armstrong has announced that he is going to retire after the 2005 Tour de France. Not too surprising really; I expected him to retire after number six but I think the obligation of getting a new sponsor stretched him one more season.

Here in Georgia, it was really neat to see him pass the torch to Tom Danielson on the Queen stage at the Tour de Georgia. It was also prety impressive to see four Americans, all teammates of Lance's at one time, finish in the top five for the stage and the top four overall. A lot of people say that American cycling is in trouble with Lance's retirement and Tyler's suspersion but I'm thinking that things look good for American cycling. With Danielson as the up and comer and Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer and Bobby Julich riding strongly I feel that American cycling is in pretty darn good shape. Also, don't forget George Hincapie with his strong 2nd place showing in the hardest one-day sporting event in the world, Paris-Roubaix.

I see Tom doing really, really well. Tour contender for sure and very likely a winner if he can learn a few more skills. What's really great to see is his humility and respect for the sport and it's champions. Dropping Levi on the Brasstown Bald climb in the TdG was a really big deal as Levi has finished in the top ten in the TdF twice. I won't be too surprised to see a high finish in the Giro de Italia by Danielson in May. He will be riding in support of his team leader, Paolo Salvodelli but if 'Il Falcone' falters, I expect we'll see something special from Danielson.

As for me, I continue to train and race. My ride at Raccoon Mt. this year was good. I climbed well but lacked explosiveness for the final sprint. I finished 25th in a field of 100 and climbed in the top 15 riders. The race was a little more negative than I would have liked but it was a good outing for me. I've been doing some big gear work over the last week or so to continue to improve my power. Now if I can just lose some weight I think I'll be pretty scary at Augusta.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, April 25, 2005

Meme Thingy

OK. So I guess I've been tagged to do this Meme thingy described below so here goes:

Behold, the Caesar’s Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can’t really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), "Nice. Nice. Not thrilling . . . but nice."

1. Memes...I'm just not into this whole list your life on the internet thing. I'm mean, who really cares what I'm not into. Most people don't really care about what I am into.

2. American Idol...seems like a way for record executives and talent scouts to get someone else to do their work for them. All for a shot to be the next Brittney Spears. That's somethign I wouldn't wish on my enemies.

3. Piercings...I have enough holes in my body and I sure don't need stuff poking out of 'em.

4. Cars...what a pain in the hinder. I do get the point but I have a hard time getting worked up over them. They have a function and as long as they serve that function, great. Most of the time, there are better ways to do most of what we do with them.

5. Cell phones...again, I get the point for some folks but do you really, really, really need to be in touch that often? All the crap that goes with them too. If I hear the Nextel beep one more time in any of my classes I may unlease all of my physics wrath on the stupic company, NASCAR sponsor or not.

Now that you've got me going...

6. Dale Earnhardt Jr...what's the big deal over this dude? I don't reckon he's real cute and so far this year he doesn't seem to drive that car (see above) of his so well.

7. The 70's...look, I lived through these years as a kid. They weren't really great. Actually, they pretty much sucked (and not just the music). Why the big rush to reinvent all things 70's? Will people start doing huge quantities of PCP and LSD soon too? What's next?

8. Reality TV...is this like people who don't have lives of their own???

9. The NASA channel...Who needs to watch the ISS float around in space for hours on end?

10. Did I mention Memes???

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Tidbits

Cycling
I finally notched my first win of the season. As might be expected it was in a time trial and I did it in the Cat 4 race down at the Savannah Georgia Cup event. I was pretty dominating though that's to be expected as I should probably be racing Cat 3. The year I took last year to race Masters hasn't panned out as a bunch of former pros have decided to crash the Georgia Master's race scene. It makes competing in the class really hard so I've decided to go back and work through the catagories. The Sunday crit was scary with four crashes. I didn't go down but I did have to unclip for the first time in almost two years in a race because of them. Hopefully I can get some results over the next few months and move up to the threes.

Committee Work

Tons of meetings this week and last. I'm on committees to deal with creating an honors program and a pilot program to help high risk studnets. Lots of work but we're making progress. I'm just tired of getting home so late and then having to get on the bike. I can't wait until May.

The Yard

I've been trying to get out and hack away at the jungle that our backyard has become. Our neighbor bent the blade on my lawn tractor so I haven't been able to use that which means mowing takes a lot longer. That means I have a lot less time to do other stuff. I'm still clearing damage from the winter's ice storm as well so progress has been slow. Again, I can't wait until May.

Thanks for reading and I'll try to update again soon.

The Physicist   Link Me    |