Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Evacuation underway as storm heads to Gulf spill site

by Alex Ogle, AFP

52 mins ago

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

I hope you got a chance to see yesterday’s exciting finish.  Contador and Schleck dueling up Col du Tourmalet in the fog as if the other riders didn’t exist.

Because it’s over.

Today is a sprint which means no change.  Tomorrow is the time trial where Contador is expected to dominate.  Sunday is the final stage ending with the Champs Elysees sprint.

I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed because that would be ignoring some realities.  Lance is done, if he ever comes back it will be as a commentator (and frankly he’s been dead on in his predictive abilities) or as a Team Manager (Radio Shack is largely his creation anyway).  The problem is that Le Tour is designed to feature the riders and not the teams so it’s not like staying loyal to Ferrari when Schumacher retired.

Without Armstrong Le Tour is much more difficult to get emotionally involved in.  I’ve tried rooting for Schleck but he doesn’t seem to have a killer instinct.  His difficulties aren’t just bad luck and equipment failure, his team is incomplete and his coaches and managers were never able to muster a convincing attack.  The ‘there’s always tomorrow’ attitude of sunny optimism may be good sportsmanship, but it sure lacked winning urgency.

Perhaps Contador has a personality I’ve yet to discover that will excite me in the future, but this Tour struck me as mechanical and emotionless.  I have no problem with his standards of ‘sportsmanship’, they provided the few interesting moments in a ride that was mind numbingly predictable and entirely lacked panache.

But maybe you are a fan who thinks that one perfect moment on the Col with the two top competitors locked in a head to head contest of strength and will, a yellow haze isolating them and turning both their maillot jaune, is worth 21 days of devotion.

Well, they bike through some beautiful countryside too.

• Cycling: Contador takes giant leap towards third Tour win
• Schleck wins Tour battle; war may be Contador’s
• Contador gifts stage win, looks poised for Tour
• Contador closes in on 3rd Tour title in 4 years

Schleck– I’m sure I’ll do a good time trial. I can see the yellow jersey in front of me, and I really want it, and I’m not going to give up until Paris.

Today’s stage is 123 miles from Salies-de-Béarn to Bordeaux (where they won’t produce plonk anymore).  Flat, 2 Sprints and the finish.

• Le Tour
• Wiki

No Keith.  No Jon.  No Stephen.

You can watch the end of Le Tour again OR you have these other choices some of which don’t suck so much-

• AMC– Blood Work
• ESPN– US v. Canada (Women’s World Cup Softball)
• History– Helicopters, Parallel Universes, The Sahara
• TBS– Guess Who (ugh, Ashton Kutcher)
• Turner Classic– The Courtship of Andy Hardy, Tammy and the Bachelor
• TNT– 300 (Do you like Gladiator movies?)
• Food– Tenderloin 1 & 2
• FX– The Simpsons Movie

But my pick is Comedy Central’s Futurama marathon that includes most of the new episodes and the Lethal Inspection premier.

Later-

• AMC– Heartbreak Ridge

Dave has Joan Rivers, Bill Burr, and Steve Winwood.

Alton does Scrap Iron Chef, Home Insecurity.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Storm forces Gulf oil spill ships back to port

by Alex Ogle, AFP

1 hr 31 mins ago

So last week I was asked ‘what is a normal question?’

I do upgrades and repairs primarily on XP Systems.  Why XP?  Installed base.  There’s hardly any software out there that won’t run under XP Pro x86 SP 3 except for stuff deliberately designed for other operating systems.

What other operating systems?  Well you may think I’m talking about Mac/Linux issues, but Microsoft offers other operating systems.  You’ve heard about Vista and 7 and there are infinite flavors of them to confuse you, but there are also ‘Business’ oriented variants starting with NT and “progressing” to “improvements” like XP-64 and Server 2008.

The primary characteristic of all these pieces of crap is that your old programs don’t work any more and your user interface changes and you have to learn a new one.

Are you doing something different with your computer than you were a year ago, or would you just like it to be faster?

Unfortunately Microsoft stopped supporting XP about a year ago and it is kind of vulnerable to crankiness like resource hog ‘anti-virus’ programs that behave more like viruses themselves.

Some of these things can be fixed, especially if you can boot from a utility drive (and everyone should know how to build one), others not so much.  The utility environment can do pretty much anything you need to do on the computer, you customize it at your own peril because it’s intended to be reloaded on a blank drive any time you don’t trust the 2 or 3 you have on hand for just such emergencies.

And that may sound like throwing hardware at the problem, but a 16 Gb Thumbdrive can be yours for a mere $30 if you don’t have stacks of old hard drives like I do in which case you will want one of these $25 parts.  The point is to get a utility drive you can boot from to take control of the computer and USB is a good and portable way to handle most modern desktops and laptops.

Next week- Installing XP Pro x86 SP 3, Part 1

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Well, everyone is talking tough–

Schleck– “There’s only one way and that is the climb of the Tourmalet… I always said the guy who has yellow tomorrow will have the yellow in Paris… Tomorrow is definitely the queen stage.”

“What gives me a lot of confidence is that I just feel I haven’t given everything yet, I still haven’t spoken my last word on this Tour.”

Contador– “(This stage will be) very, very hard…  We can have very big gaps in (this) stage, probably more than in the time trial.”

Johan Bruyneel (manager of Armstrong’s Radio Shack team)- “It’s not yet finished… We’re going to try again.”

You have my analysis from yesterday.  The only thing that’s changed is the weather.  It rained hard last night and as we have seen slippery conditions lead to crashes and unexpected results.

Flaming hunks of twisted metal!  Hurray!

I agree that Armstrong put on quite a show, though whether it was really more significant than the equally symbolic 6th French Stage Victory is certainly arguable.

I also agree with Justin Davis that Schleck really didn’t challenge Contador Tuesday, though most of the attention was on what was probably Lance’s last hurrah.  In news I am not covering are the increasingly strident doping accusations of Greg LeMond (I think there’s more than a touch of jealousy in them) and the factoid that the disgraced Floyd Landis was dropped from the Bahati Team in Oregon’s Cascade Classic and is racing solo in an unmarked jersey.

If you’re looking for examples of ‘sportsmanship’ maybe this piece will warm the cockles of your heart, though to me it reads more like- ‘I planned to wait for the last minute all along’.

We’ll see.

I’m going to have to find something else to write about, this is too damn depressing.

No Keith.  No Jon.  No Stephen.

Rene Russo is the only good thing about Outbreak.  Nats @ Reds.  ID4 was ok the first 15 times, now not so much.  You know there’s something wrong when you’re out acted by Olivia Newton John Vinnie.  Mr. & Mrs. was never good.

There’s a new episode of Chasing Mummies which I’m hoping is better than the first.  This one is about the Grand Gallery.  12 Angry Men kicks off jury night on Turner Classics.  I still haven’t quite figured out what Buster’s Cut is all about unless they’re recycling their web out takes.  Came up with a great myth to test the other day- does recoil depend on the orientation of the gun or is it always in opposition to gravity?

Or more likely Man v. Food.

Later-

Murder Most Foul, I’m a great big sucker for Marple mysteries which I know less well than Poirot.  Careers in Science really starts the story of Rusty’s relationship with Jonas.  Virus is no better than Outbreak, just another biowar propoganda piece.

Dave has Bill Murray who might be worth watching.  As far as I’m concerned the best piece he ever did was the monologue about picking up a Subway in his first season on SNL, but even his lesser efforts are often worth the attention.  Also, Alejandro Escovedo.

Alton has Oysters.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Looming storm may threaten battle to plug Gulf well

by Alex Ogle, AFP

22 mins ago

No Keith.  No Jon.  No Stephen.

Good night for a book.

Ghost Ship.  Didn’t like it the first two times and I see no reason it can expect a better opinion from me.  Fallen is not any better because it has Denzel and John in it.  Last week’s Futurama which I’ve somehow missed.  New Chopped at 10.

Last week’s and this week’s Warehouse 13 then WWE which is just one of many puzzling SciFi programming decisions.  Turner Classic scores a rare 0 for with Canyon Passage, Forbidden Passage, and Suez which even Yahoo TV calls ‘slow’.

Man v. Food.

Later-

Dave has Steve Carell, Selena Gomez, and Sheryl Crow.  Alton covers dried fruit.  The Venture Brothers are evidently running in order from yesterday’s pilot.  Tonight- Dia de los Dangerous!

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP floats new bid to seal well with cement

AFP

Tue Jul 20, 11:49 am ET