The time has come to do what I’ve been saying for along time. Anyone who knows me probably won’t believe me because I’ve been saying it for so long. But the time is now. If you don’t know me, you won’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Sweet justice isn’t it. Stay tuned.

A while ago I was going to put my fairly large post up about the internet filtering stuff, but I couldn’t quite complete my argument for my point of view without seeming to support dodgy stuff. So instead I’ll just link to it’s time to tell mum because that’s got the same point of view put up way better.

So the Menzies classic was fun. Somehow I managed to get second place in the D grade Criterium and actually won money. About 8-10 minutes in I got frustrated with being blocked and kept mostly at the back of the group by the other riders and somehow managed to find enough energy to not only pass one or two, but to pass the whole pack, and launch off towards the break away where Matt was at the time. That little manoeuvre nearly burnt me out so a lap or 2 of recovery behind Matt and we went to work on it. After quite a few laps Matt was dropping back and somehow I managed to stay out there, solo, chasing after the leader, for what seemed like an eternity. Another rider managed to escape the pack and bridge to Matt and then eventually to me, she passed me for a lap or 2 which gave me a much needed rest but I was able to regain second place. Between us it was a sprint finish for second/third and I managed a 1 second lead by the official timings, but it was surely less and wasn’t much more than a bike length or so. The data logged off the Garmin was amazing, apart from it lapping on the up and back not just the up of the course. Note: Average HR: 186 bpm for nearly 29 minutes. Wot tha !

The following day was the actual Menzies classic race. Basically a 132km sprint. We left Kalgoorlie on the bus with a wet forecast and someone on the bus said they’d done the ride 15 times and it had never rained. That clearly jinxed it, because from at least half way to Menzies it was wet, and it was raining in Menzies on arrival, and didn’t stop while we were there. The gutters were flowing and there were pools of water in the road. It was cold and wet. So we spent an hour or so sitting on the bus to keep warm and out of the rain, before setting off at 10am. Thoughts running through my mind over the first 5 km where along the lines of what the hell have I done, why am I here, what am I doing and so on. Before the official start on the neutral section lead out, we got splashed with red mud (Kalgoorlie White as its known) all over our glasses, computers and what was clean team kit. I don’t exactly remember when it stopped raining and when I stopped being cold (fingertips especially), but by about 30km out we were working quite well as a group, cruising at about 40km/hr. The pace granularly slowed slightly as we went and it bumped up about 5km/hr back to 40 around the time C grade caught us at about the 75km mark. When B grade caught us at about the 95km mark the speed jumped again. From when C caught us, I was just able to hang on the back, and with B it was even harder. The group was surging to try to shake us off, and it very nearly succeeded, but with the slow downs between various inclines (there’s no hills out there) we were able to grab the tail of the group again. If it wasn’t for a guy crashing into a road sign about 1-2 km from the finish I would have been in the first main pack across the line, instead I was about 10 seconds behind. Still I was 39th across the line, and 16th for D grade. Not bad for a first go. Matt managed to win one of the interim sprints and got cash for that too. I’ve got no doubt that this would have made a nice bump to my average speed for the year. Averaging over 40km/hr for 132km is no easy task. So for what started out with me in a never again mood I finished quite pleased and will return next year to try to improve my result.

Now for an iinet support update. Reporting a no dial tone fault resulted in it being resolved for less than 5 days before the fault reoccurred. Of course I was not informed when it was fixed; we wouldn’t want to communicate with the customer after all. Logged the fault again, and after a few more phone calls they were able to fix it on the second go however the Telstra tech booked for 8-12 arrived after 12 and took quite a while to trace the fault and fix it. Epic fail, but it is iinet.

The Tour de France is on again, and to make sure I didn’t miss any of it, I setup a quick mythtv box. Using the PlayTV usb dual HD tuner on Fedora 13 was remarkably easy, and the box is running mostly ok. I still heavily dislike the overly complicated application that myth has become, to me it’s gone down the same bad road that poopnuke and so on did. Way too many modular features of varying quality. Poopnukes issue was poorly (insecurely) written modules and overly complicated design to support these modules. On the surface myth looks the same. Perhaps I’ll dig deeper; really all I want is a basic PVR (record, watch, schedule, EPG etc) and local media playback (video, music). Local – none of this DLNA bullshit, just plain NFS mounts from my NAS box. Really I don’t even care much about the PVR bit, it’s a nice to have. First off I’d ditch all this BS about weather, applications and so on. Reminds me of an old African saying my Dad told me; The more you have; the move problems you have.

I’m still watching a fair bit of TV too. Curb Your Enthusiasm has grown on me. New seasons of Eureka and Warehouse 13 have started; I’m yet to start watching either. Top Gear is awesome as usual. I’m slowly working my way through Treme, it’s good, but hard to explain why. I’m hoping it comes together towards the season end like The Wire did.

Oh one last thing. I made the team for the Tour de Timor. So I went out and bought a mountain bike for riding on dirt. Only taken it out a few times so far, and it feels like driving a big rig or a boat. I’m trying to come up with a suitably nautical name. Something like the SS Wally.

PS: word of the year so far, by a very long shot is: Credenza.