Participated in the 2010 PMC this year – 4th year and counting

Kay and I participated in our 4th PMC event this year – riding 163 miles to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and specifically for the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation.

This year Kay only was able to ride the first day as she has a herniated disc.  Never the less, she was able to ride a total of 97 miles for the first day.  No pain, just a numb leg and a lack of strength in her left leg.

I have attached some photos, first of Kay and myself, the Smarter Travel Media Team, and our friends, Steve and Lisa.

Kay and Nick along the way

Kay and Nick along the way

Jay, Sonja, Nick, Matt, and Massimo

Jay, Sonja, Nick, Matt, and Massimo

Steve and Lisa

Steve and Lisa

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Gabriel Branby of Gränsfors Bruks – Interesting Business Philosophy

My father sent me a link to the below video where Gabriel Branby discusses his business philosophy while rebuilding the Gränsfors axe company. Highly worth watching.

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Been a while – video of me driving at Mont Tremblantx

Kay and I drove to Mont Tremblant for a 4 day vacation.  Most of the day was taken up by my driving at a local road course with the NER PCA group.  During the evening we spent time with newly found friends and listening to blues music.  An added bonus was the week long blues festival taking place in the village.

Below you will find a quick two laps of the track I was driving at.  Great fun.

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Cool estate sale

Today I stopped at an estate sale on the way up north. Part of the sale included woodworking tools. I found some nice Stanley planes and some nice pipe clamps. I also came across some old folding measuring sticks. I love those so I picked up a few. All in all a nice find.

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New Race Car on the Way

I so enjoy tracking cars and participating in the Porsche DE events.  DE is not racing in that there are no trophies, no timing, no reason to “win”.  It is all about learning to drive better, smoother, and with that, faster.

I have been hunting for a track purpose car for a while now.  My street car was fun, but a) too expensive to run and maintain, and b) too expensive if something were to go wrong.  I found a gentleman who built a wonderful track car, great for beginners, and well sorted.  The PPI went smoothly with only one issue – the rear main seal required replacing.  It has been replaced and all is looking good.

The car should be shipping out next week and in the meantime I need to figure out how I am going to trailer the vehicle.

Here is a video of the “orange beast”.

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Are Gold Stars Next for Arizona?

This week was troubling with the new law in Arizona allowing police to stop those who look “suspicious” and ask for immigration papers.  Now, anyone who actually thinks about this will see that this will result in racial profiling.  Pure and simple.  I am pretty sure the local police in Arizona, or anywhere else, don’t have the ability to read minds and thus determine that someone in fact is here illegally.

Therefore, the will instead bucket those most likely to be from an illegal country by looking at their skin color.   This blatant  stereotyping is just plain wrong.  No amount of justification can be made to support this position.  The Nazis did this under Hitler and look what happened.  Is this the individual he people of Arizona what to identify with?  The new Nazis of the south?

I, as a US citizen, will never travel to Arizona as long as this particular law is in place.  I have friends in Arizona, and I hope they are ashamed.  I through we as a people were moving beyond this, but we tend to find those who will stoop to a new low to gain political power.  Frankly, how can people be so ignorant?

Does anyone from Arizona care to comment?

But please, don’t tell me they are taking your jobs.  These are jobs people just don’t want, and frankly, there is a long history of this as our country grew.  Irish? Greek? They all came in both illegal and legal and took the jobs no one wanted.

Also please don’t use the argument about draining our social resources such as health care and schools.  How many people live below the poverty line and a) don’t pay taxes, b) utilize medicare, and utilize the schools.  By the definition above, those individuals are also receiving a free ride.   How many individuals live well above the poverty line and cheat on their taxes?  How many corporations shift their money offshore to skirt paying taxes?  Unfortunately, these individuals have money and power, while the immigrants have little of either.  We like to pick on the weak.

Shame on Arizona, and shame on this country for letting this to happen.  BTW: Don’t look to Europe. They are just as bad, if not worse, than Arizona.  We still have the best system, but it requires mending.

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Evernote 1.8.1 Beta finally clips web sites correctly

I have been using Evernote for a while now.  I use it to clip web pages that I have visited,  take notes on my iPad, and sync with my various devices.  My biggest complaint to date as been the inability of Evernote to correctly keep the formatting of a web site that I want a snapshot of.  It has always ended up incorrectly rendering the actual page. Mind you the data has never been lost. It is simply that they could not capture the layout correctly.

Well, that has changed with this new release.   Going to a web site and selecting “Add Page to Evernote” now correctly captures the web page AND formatting.  It also displays the information correctly on my iPad. Well almost. There are some instances when lines appear to overlap one another.  I am sure they will release a newer version for the iPhone/iPad and correct this issue.

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Nice day to bike

Today Kay and I took a nice 16 mile bike ride through Weston. Our first ride outside for this season. We have been participating in a spinning class for the month of March. We definitely found that the 3-4 days/week of spinning helped start the season off nicely.

Looking forward to more days of outdoor riding.

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New ipad is here

The new iPad showed up this afternoon. So far I am impressed. I am writing this on the ipad right now and the typing is pretty quick. The overall machine is very quick. The typing works and I can type with two hands pretty decently.

I have downloaded a bunch of new apps including iBook. I have a kindle and I like iBook better. Faster, cleaner fonts, nicer user experience. On the negative side, the kindle is lighter. Holding the iPad is going to strain my hands after a while.

I have not tried any games but I did end up streaming a movie from netflix using my son’s account. Very nice with no jitter.

More later.

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iPad going to be delayed getting here?

According to UPS – my iPad is stopped in Louisville, KY due to an exception.   I wonder what the problem might be. Does it affect a whole bunch of other iPads?

Location Date Local Time Description
LOUISVILLE, KY, US 04/02/2010 8:35 A.M. SHIPMENT IS HELD TO VERIFY COMMODITY DESCRIPTION WITH THE CUSTOMER FOR CORRECT CLASSIFICATION / BROKERAGE RELEASED SHIPMENT. SHIPMENT IS SUBMITTED TO CLEARING AGENCY FOR FURTHER CLEARANCE
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