For over 30 years, the Colorado Balloon Classic has been a part of the Labor Day weekend in Colorado Springs. A cool thing that they added several years ago was an evening balloon glow. They set up the balloons and light them up in the dark with the burners. Here are a few photos from last night.
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Go to ThereIFixedIt.com and click on Kludges. I dare you to look away. And I dare you to deny you’ve ever used duct tape, baling wire, a plastic tarp or safety pins to fix something in a, dare we say, unconventional way.
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The 2010 Winter Olympics kicked off this weekend. It was hard to find the time to watch everything even on the weekend. Now with the work week, it’s hard to take it all in.
Fortunately in today’s digital world, there are options besides sitting in front of TV and watching the Vancouver Winter Olympics on NBC. Besides TV, NBC has videos, articles and more on nbcolympics.com.
There’s a site that lists streaming video of the Winter Olympics. I haven’t checked it yet at a time when anything was live so I’m not sure how well it works.
Twitter is a great way to follow live events. Athletes and spectators along with those watching from home are tweeting about what is happening. There is a list of verified Olympic athletes on twitter.
With the popularity of smartphones, apps have been developed for the Winter Olympics. I have tried out 4 of them on my iPhone.
2010 Winter Sports Lite – The 2010 Winter Sports Lite is the best one that I’ve tried. It also costs the most but is still only $1.99. There’s also a Premium Edition that is $4.99 for a limited time with a regular price of $9.99.
The home screen shows the top 3 news stories, photo highlights and the medal count. There are separate tabs for News, Schedule and Medals. A More tab gives access to the Photo Gallery, Winter Olympics History, Venue and app settings. The history section has a nice summary of each of the past Winter Olympics. The premium version adds videos, live results, push notifications and a hall of fame.
Cowbell2010 – The Cowbell2010 iPhone and iPod Touch app gets it’s name from having a cowbell to cheer on the athletes whether there spectating or watching from a distance. The cowbell rings when you shake the iPhone or iPod Touch. It’s cool but sounds tinny like the bear bell app. You can choose which flag is shown on the cowbell and the labels on the tabs changes to that country’s language.
Cowbell2010 uses social media for it’s news. It has a twitter feed of Olympic athletes and media. It also has a Live Wall that lets fans with the app post their thoughts on the Games and you can choose to also have it post to twitter and Facebook. With the twitter feed and Live Wall, the Cowbell2010 app is cool but I really wish it had a news feed of articles.
Cowbell2010 also has a real time medal count and a schedule that adjusts to your timezone.
I’m sure there are other good sites and mobile apps for keeping up with the Winter Olympics. What is the best site or app that you’ve found?
– UltraRob
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In my journeys around the web, I found a blog by Patrick Curl called There’s a Blog in my Soup. The interesting thing about Patrick is he plans to go on a road trip this summer and interview a blogger from all 50 states and do it in 50 days. Patrick has created an American Blogger Directory that he is going to use to pick which bloggers he visits.
It would actually be more interesting if he was going to do it by bike. Alaska would be a long ride and Hawaii would be a bit of a problem. Maybe I should do it next summer. It would probably be hard though to do it in 50 days by bike.
To get more visits to his site and raise awareness of his road trip, Patrick is doing a group blogging experiment. He asked people to submit what they thought were their best post and then he picked his favorites. My post 7 Mountain Biking Confidence Killers was one of the ones selected.
Here are the other posts to see what’s going on outside of cycling
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A few times this year I’ve posted about my job stressing me out and also a Dilbert cartoon describing the situation at work. Although my job wasn’t the only thing that kept me busy and mostly off the bike this year, it really sucked the energy from me. An anonymous poster commented the following on the Dilbert cartoon post.
I can so identify with crappy working conditions. I’ll say some prayers that I read of a new job for you rather than see you in the news because you’ve strung up your boss by his toenails and are now forcing him/her to watch the Wiggles, Blue’s Clues and Thomas the Tank in an endless loop.
The prayers have been answered and my boss wasn’t forced to watch the Wiggles, Blue’s Clues or Thomas the Tank.
Tomorrow is my last day at my current job and I’ll start my new job next Monday. I’m excited about my new job. It’s at a small company which is something I like. My new manager used to work with one of my good friends at HP. One of my co-workers has finished the Leadville 100 8 times, 6 of them on a single speed. He’s currently training for the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo. I won’t have to get up from my desk to see outside and I’ll have a view of Pikes Peak out the window. I’m sure there will be some things I don’t like but there’s plenty of things to like about it.
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Every time I ride to Elbert, I notice a big house on top of one of the bluffs. It was built just a few years ago. It’s noticeable for both it’s size and design. It must have a great view of the mountains. It also must get some brutal winds especially in the winter.
When I did my century ride on Sunday, I saw that it was for sale. There was a box of flyers and I stopped because I was curious. Just the garage is almost as big as my house including the basement! It’s described as a 10+ car garage. The garage is 2132 square feet and the house is 6225 square feet. It will only set you back $4.9 million.
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The Gazette has posted some good pictures sent in by readers of the blizzard (photos no longer on site). The picture above is one of them and I’m not sure what part of town it was taken in. I’d guess it had to be in the north or northeast. The Westside near Manitou where my parents live barely even got snow.
Related Link
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Friday afternoon we finally finished the court case that I was on the jury for. A day of sitting in court was more exhausting than a day on the bike when I’m fit. The weather has been great with highs in the 70’s some days and I’ve been stuck inside. Because the case was so long, we were only given 50 minutes for lunch most days and often only a 10 minute break morning and afternoon.
Last Monday was a court holiday so I was out but that was the day that the temperature hung around 40 degrees and it was drizzling most of the day. I went in to work and my coworker had the courage to tell me how great it had been riding in the Air Force Academy. There’s a lot of good riding at the AFA but after 9/11 the AFA was closed to visitors except the short distance from the north gate to the Visitor Center. According to an article in The Gazette, the number of visitors had dropped from 1.4 million a year to 250,000. This had hurt the athletic programs because much of their funding comes from sales of souvenirs at the Visitor Center. They were also worried about recruitment because a lot of their recruits report visiting the AFA and then wanting to go there. In any case having it open again is great news for cyclists and hikers.
So what did I have to listen to for 2 weeks in court? A couple had a house built for them in 2003. The house had a basement dug into the sandstone and claystone that was only 2 feet below the surface. As soon as they moved in, they started finishing the basement. While they were finishing the basement, they noticed a lot of condensation on the windows but never called the home builder. In February of 2004 which as a little over 2 months after they moved in, they pulled back insulation up by the rim joist to drill a hole for an air conditioning line and found mold.
The home builder came in and was concerned there was a ground water problem because of the amount of moisture. They brought in a several experts to look at what was going on. The basement was sealed off and the mold removed. Once the mold was gone, they used dehumidifiers to dry out the basement. There was a perimeter drain around the foundation and also another drain 6 feet down connected to a sump pit with a pump. The home builder had a company come in and run a camera through the drains to check for clogs and nothing was found. There was nothing really to indicate that there was too much water around the house. The basement stayed fine during the summer but some moisture reappeared after it got cold in the fall. None of the experts could really identify why the basement was damp so the home builder offered to install a whole basement humidifier. This was unacceptable to the home owners because they had gotten it in their heads that there was ground water around the house.
In my opinion the home owners were unreasonable from the beginning and had attorneys and their own experts involved. The home builder went to great lengths to fix things. Based on one experts findings, some changes were made to the ducting to increase air circulation in the house and a trench was dug about 20 feet behind the house and another drain was put in to catch water running off the hill behind the house. It turned out that the humidity was running around 45 – 60% which seems a bit high for here but not terrible.
We listened to hydrolygists with PhDs, geohydrolygists, geotechnical engineers, environmental hygenists, medical doctors, and other experts. They talked a lot of theory but never proved why the basement was getting damp. One of the claims was that the people’s kids had been really sick because of the mold but none of us were convinced that it wasn’t other allergies. The people had their kids tested for mold allergies but not for any other allergies. It appeared they wanted to blame mold instead of figuring out what else could be causing the allergy systems. On 2 occasions after the basement was dried out, the air in the house has tested for mold and it had less than outside.
So what did the jury decide? For the most part, we were all young because they seemed to want people on the jury that had kids. We actually were inclined to give them nothing but a couple older people on the jury felt they deserved something. The home owners had brought in an expert that claimed it would cost $282,000 to put in additional drains under the basement slab and do other unnecessary things to the house. They also claimed another $103,000 in medical expenses, loss of use, reduced value of the house, etc. So that comes to $385,000 of real damages and their lawyer also suggested that they be awarded a similar amount for all of the mental anguish and inconvenience. We felt that they caused most of their own mental anguish.
We ended up awarding them $46,625 based on what we thought was reasonable for additional deep drainage, some stucco damage that seems unrelated and the fact they will have to disclose the mold when they sale the house and may have to reduce the house price. I think even that was a bit high but we spent over 5 hours deliberating and that’s the least some were willing to go. We did make them 10% responsible since they didn’t report the moisture in the basement before mold grew. That means that 10% will be deducted from the $46,625. They want to get out of house as soon as possible because they have bad memories in it.
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