Entry for March 30, 2006

Today seems like a pretty good day so far. I feel engaged, and feel like what I'm doing is somewhat important here at work. Could be due to the fact that I just got a raise and a promotion, but I'll take whatever motivation I can get.
Looks like all the rain is past us, although we needed it. I also get to leave work a little early this afternoon to go to the Texas Iron group training. We're working on bike and bike transitions tonight, so I'm excited to be working in my favorite discipline.
I have also developed a major obsession with upgrading the handlebars, aero bars, and brake levers on the race machine. I recently got the latest Excel Sports catalog and they are all cheaper than I expected. Still more than I have but hey...
Hoping to have a good weekend. Have some serious training to do on the bike and on the run, but I hope to be able to get in an easy swim and some sun at Barton Springs. I'm registered for my first Olympic distance triathlon of the season next weekend, so need to hit the training just right. It's one of those damn events where they make you leave your pricey bike outside in transition with them overnight. Don't like the elements and leering eyes on my machine.
I'm going to watch Darlene run the Capitol 10K Sunday morning, so that should be fun. Then it's out on the bike to pound away.

Race Results and Pics

Overall: http://www.brittonbikes.com/timing/results/wet-n-wild/wet-overall.htm
Age group: http://www.brittonbikes.com/timing/results/wet-n-wild/wet-age-group.htm
Not a great race, but very informative as to where I need to focus my training going forward. Didn't have that zip on the bike and definitely was flat on the run. Looks like lots more long intervals and tempo sessions are in my future.
Three photos in the album to the right.

Tour Rosters set for some of the biggies

Some of the latest from VeloNews. What some of the major teams look like.

Discovery Channel for the Tour De France

Lance Armstrong (USA)
Jose Azevedo (P)
Manuel Beltran (Sp)
George Hincapie (USA)
Benjamin Noval (Sp)
Pavel Padrnos (Cz)
Yaroslav Popovych (Ukr)
Jose Luis Rubiera (Sp)
Paolo Savoldelli (I)

Phonak
Phonak will approach the 2005 Tour de France covering its bets with three team leaders, playing its cards behind the collective strength of Santiago Botero, Oscar Pereiro and Floyd Landis. Fabian Cancellara will also be trying to repeat his prologue win.

Euskatel-Eusakadi

Everyone in Spain is asking why Aitor González - fresh off his dramatic Tour de Suisse victory - isn't going to the Tour de France. Well, the answer is he was never planned to go. Instead, the reborn TerminAitor will reload for the Vuelta a España, just as he planned back in February.

"Our idea is to have Iban Mayo as our team leader and give everyone something to talk about, whether it's the GC or stages."

Lampre
Damiano Cunego won't be taking on Lance Armstrong in this year's Tour de France after all.
His Lampre-Caffita team confirmed Tuesday what many observers had already guessed: the Epstein Barr virus that sapped young Cunego's strength is still nagging the Italian.

Biggest surprise here is No Zabel, after 11 Tours.

T-Mobile for the Tour de France
Jan Ullrich (G), 31
Professional since 1995
Tour de France: 7 Tours - 1st in 1997, 2nd (1996, 1998, 2000, 2001,2003)
Giuseppe Guerini (I), 35
Professional since 1993
Tour de France: Nine Tours, 22nd in 1999
Stage win 1999: l'Alpe d'Huez (after getting past Erik the photographer)
Matthias Kessler (G), 26
Professional since 2000
Tour de France: Three Tours - 49th in 2003
Andreas Klöden (G), 30
Professional since 1998
Tour de France: Four Tours - 2nd in 2004
Danielle Nardello (I), 32
Professional since 1994
Tour de France: Eight Tours - 7th in 1999
Stefan Schreck (G), 26
Professional since 2000
Tour de France: Tour debut
Oscar Sevilla (Sp), 28
Professional since 1998
Tour de France: Four Tours - 7th in 2001
Tobias Steinhauser (G), 33
Professionnel since 1996
Tour de France: Three Tours - 113th in 1996
Alexandre Vinokourov (Kz), 31
Professionnel since 1998
Tour de France: 3rd in 2003

Time Trial Results

Not to sound like too much of a sore loser, but Kyle and I suspect there was some drafting taking place.  The stagger for the start is not controlled and everyone is on the honor system about drafting. 

Four riders in the top 11 (all from the same team) started within 5 seconds of one another, and one of them improved his time 90 seconds from the previous month to break the course record and finish second.  Pretty impressive improvement, especially when you look at the PRO, James Bonney, that previously held the record.  His time was consistent this time around with his last month time.

Richard Freer, the overall winner is the real deal.  He's a local pro and finished top 50 in the last ITU long-course WORLD Championships.

Main page: http://run-far.com/Depts/RFBikeTT.htm

2005 June results: http://www.doitsports.com/results/page.tcl?id=61442

Look out Jack Alexander

I am starting to feel strong again and really enjoyed hurting myself on the bike. He's in deep shit at the next Heart of Texas!

Cap Tex Tri pictures

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/share/view?i=EegMmrJi4buHIw&open=1&x=1&sm=1&sl=1

These are the pics from the Cap Tex Tri Memorial Day weekend. Nipped for second place by just five seconds.

Hincapie wins final stage of Dauphine Libere

I raced with George Hincapie at the Tour of the Future in 1990...

Another co-racer hits big

Chris Wherry won the USPRO Cycling Championship last weekend in Philadelphia. I raced with Chris at Tour of the Future in 1992...

Ah, Hincapie, I knew him when...

Armstrong fifth in Dauphine Libere prologue

By JEROME PUGMIRE, AP Sports Writer

June 5, 2005

AIX-LES-BAINS, France (AP) -- Lance Armstrong finished fifth Sunday in the prologue of the Dauphine Libere, a tuneup race leading to his bid next month for a seventh straight Tour de France title.

George Hincapie, a U.S. cyclist who rides for Armstrong's Discovery Channel team, won the stage in 9 minutes, 55 seconds. Americans took four of the top five spots in the 4.9-mile sprint, with Levi Leipheimer second, followed by Andrey Kashechkin of Kazakhstan, Floyd Landis and Armstrong.

``I'm not really specialized in prologue any more,'' said Armstrong, who is planning to retire from cycling after the Tour de France. ``Today I was conservative in the climb, and then there was a lot of headwind in the finish. But that's OK.''

Hincapie was a second ahead of Leipheimer and three ahead of Kashechkin. Landis was timed in 10 minutes and Armstrong in 10:01.

``That's the first time I've beaten Lance in a time trial,'' Hincapie said. ``It's very special for me.''

Armstrong might have had a faster time but his foot slipped from the pedal straps during a 1.2-mile climb. The 33-year-old Texan, second in last year's prologue at the Tour de France, feels he can no longer match quicker riders over limited distances.

``It's a short explosive effort and when you get old, you know what happens,'' he said. ``In the last few years I didn't do good prologues. The prologue of the last Tour was an exception. I had a super day that day.''

He praised Hincapie as a versatile rider.

``It was a good course for him with a hard climb, tricky downhill,'' Armstrong said. ``He's very good in the bike, very fast on the downhill.''

Two riders -- Isidro Nozal of the Liberty Seguros and Michele Scotto d'Abusco of Lampre-Caffita -- were banned from the race after failing blood tests. Nozal finished in seventh place at the Spanish Vuelta last September and 73rd at the Tour de France.

Monday's first stage is a mostly flat 139-mile route from Aix-les-Bains to Givors. Later in the week, there will be testing mountain ascents, including the revered Mont Ventoux on Thursday.

Climbing is traditionally one of Armstrong's strong points. His rivals most likely will have a good indication of his form after Mont Ventoux.

``I have a lot of respect and fear for that mountain,'' Armstrong said. ``I better keep it like that.''

Updated on Sunday, Jun 5, 2005 2:21 pm EDT

Austin's a poster-child for bad traffic...

American Traffic Gridlock
Has Worsened, Study Finds
Associated Press
May 9, 2005 10:48 a.m.

If getting stuck in traffic makes you want to roll down your car window and scream, look no further than the latest study to find the bad news: Gridlock is getting worse.

Congestion delayed travelers 79 million more hours and wasted 69 million more gallons of fuel in 2003 than in 2002, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's 2005 Urban Mobility Report.

Overall in 2003, there were 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel at a total cost of more than $63 billion.

"Urban areas are not adding enough capacity, improving operations or managing demand well enough to keep congestion from growing," the report concluded.

Honolulu became the 51st city where the average motorist lost at least 20 hours a year because of rush-hour traffic delays. The Hawaiian capital joins such congested areas as Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago -- and Virginia Beach, Va., Omaha, Neb., and Colorado Springs, Colo.

The report was released Monday, the same day the Senate resumes debate on a bill that would authorize $284 billion in spending on highways over the next six years.

But that's not enough money to solve traffic problems, according to highway and transit advocates. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials estimated it would take as much as $400 billion in federal spending over the next six years to solve traffic problems, based on a 2002 study.

Roads aren't being built fast enough to carry all the people who now drive on them, according to the Transportation Development Foundation, a group that advocates transportation construction.

The number of vehicle miles traveled has increased 74% since 1982, but road lane mileage has only increased 6%, the foundation said.

Tim Lomax, a co-author of the Urban Mobility Report, said the soft economy and slow job growth in 2003 meant that congestion didn't worsen as quickly as it would have during better times. "The upside of a slowdown in the economy is the congestion didn't get worse very quickly," Mr. Lomax said.

In seven of the 13 major cities -- Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, New York, Houston and Philadelphia -- the annual delay per rush-hour traveler actually fell slightly. Mr. Lomax said that didn't mean congestion improved throughout each area. It probably just spread out to the suburbs. "In most of those places, delay actually went up, it just didn't go up as fast as the number of people moving in went up," Mr. Lomax said.

Only job loss or major commitments to expand capacity will decrease congestion dramatically, he said. Refusing to build more roads and transit systems won't discourage population growth, Mr. Lomax said.

Consider fast-growing Austin, Texas. In 1982, the average peak-hour traveler was delayed by 11 hours a year. That delay increased to 51 hours in 2003, the report said. "Austin didn't add transportation capacity in the '80s or '90s," Mr. Lomax said. "The 'If you don't build it, they won't come' philosophy didn't work."

Congestion can also be reduced by managing traffic better. The report said techniques such as coordinating traffic signals, smoothing traffic flow on major roads and creating teams to respond quickly to accidents reduced delay by 336 million hours in 2003. Robert Dunphy, senior resident fellow for transportation at the Urban Land Institute, said half of all traffic delays are caused by car crashes.

Commuters also adapt, said Alan Pisarski, author of "Commuting in America" and a transportation consultant. "People give up and go somewhere else," he said. "Or else they're leaving home at 6 a.m. or 9 a.m."

Copyright © 2005 Associated Press

Latest race results

Age group without splits: http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/client/54781_62994_2005.html

Overall with splits: http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/client/54781_62993_2005.html

Look at my run time! Didn’t know I had it in me… Especially since I haven’t run since the Ironman. Maybe I’m onto something. Looks like this might salvage at least a sprint season for me.

If you really wanna see fast, look at Jamie Cleveland’s (winner’s) run time…

Watch out for this one

Tricks of the Trade
April 1, 2005

What hope do we have against the evil phishers if the programs designed to protect us don't work?

Phishing, the art of duping users into giving up passwords, PINs and bank-account details via ingenious e-mails, is the fastest growing scam on the Internet. In the first week of October 2004, the Anti-Phishing Working Group, one of several industry bodies formed to address the issue, reported catching a whopping 161 different phishing scams. In the last week of January this year, the group identified more than 950. I could find seven references in the main print media to phishing in 2002; the next year there were 406. In 2004 there were 10 times that number. That's a lot of scams, and a big jump in column inches (many of which were contributed by yours truly). So, surely, we're finally winning against these guys? Surely we know all their tricks, and can avoid them?

Sadly not. Between $100 million and $1.2 billion has been lost globally to phishing attacks in the past year or so, depending on whom you believe. That's a lot of cash. Especially if it's yours. There are bad people out there and they are smarter than most of the people holding your money. And, perhaps more important, smarter than most of the people promising to protect you.

Here's an example of why. Last month, I received an e-mail purporting to be from the U.S.-based Charter One Bank, now owned by Citizens Financial Group Inc. I have accounts at neither, but apart from that I could find little in the e-mail to indicate that it was fraudulent. The link I was being asked to click on -- usually the suspicious part of the e-mail -- went to Charter One's real Web site, and, although the address was long, it didn't raise any serious question marks. As a result, clicking on the link in the e-mail message took me to a Web site that was clearly legit. Nothing about the site looked dodgy, although the form, requesting my banking details, passwords and PIN numbers didn't quite jell with what I knew about banking security. Banks don't usually ask us to input all that stuff online, after all. But this was the bank's own Web site, for goodness sake.

Without Warning

This is scary enough: If I'm looking hard at a Web site and I can't tell whether it's legitimate or not, what hope does my Auntie Ethel have? But that isn't the scariest bit. To be certain, I fired up some toolbars -- pieces of software that latch onto my Internet browser and warn me if something is amiss with a Web site. These toolbars look at the site you're trying to visit and will peer closely inside the link to see whether it's what it says it is. Four of the toolbars reported back that I was indeed at Charter One's Web site. But, and here's the rub: I wasn't OK. I was looking at a scam Web site within a legitimate site, fooling the toolbars, and nearly fooling me.

This, for those of you interested, is called script injection. What the scammer has done is to exploit a hole elsewhere on the Charter One site, which allows him or her to inject a small window, or frame, into the Charter One page. That frame contains the form requesting all my details. While the form isn't technically on the Charter One Web site, as far as I'm concerned it looks like an honest banking Web page. And, scarily, that is also the conclusion of four out of the five anti-phishing toolbars I relied on. Only one, from United Kingdom-based Internet security company Netcraft Ltd. (www.netcraft.co.uk), threw up a warning message. The rest would have allowed me to breezily fill in my account details.

So what does this tell us? First off, phishers are smart and we are dumb. This weakness in the code that programmers use to build Web sites isn't new, and banks have known about it for a while. Netcraft's Internet services developer, Paul Mutton, tells me that he had notified Charter One about this hole a week earlier but the bank apparently didn't take any action. (Charter One didn't respond to my e-mail requests for comment, although the hole was removed shortly after I notified the bank about it.) Banks have got to be smarter about this, and realize that they must constantly monitor their own Web sites to see whether they are vulnerable.

Simple Safeguards

This is just the beginning: Institutions will eventually have to figure out more secure methods of protecting the assets of their customers, and of communicating with them. It's no good telling customers that they'll never be asked to give away personal details online because phishing scams are ingenious enough to bypass that with a plausible explanation: In the Charter One case, by connecting the request for a record update with last year's purchase of the company by Citizens Financial Group.

Lastly, don't trust software to keep you safe. Anti-phishing toolbars might be a good idea as an initial line of defense. But, as my tale illustrates, they aren't foolproof. This script injection was just one breach in what will be an increasingly sophisticated online war. Phishers will get smarter, leaving us confused and anxious.

My advice: Educate yourself, if you can, about what is happening. Download the Netcraft toolbar. If that all seems a tad overwhelming, follow some simple rules: Don't respond to any e-mail, click on any link or open any attachment until you've picked up the phone and called the institution involved.

And, finally, always bear in mind that only a fool will offer you foolproof protection from scammers.

Triathlon start training

http://cmac.smugmug.com/gallery/739/1/23569

This triathlon start video is so on point it's scary.

Texas State Tri results

Turns out I ended up 3rd in my age group, not the 5th I'd previously thought. Despite the results, actually a fairly poor showing. I've been training for flat endurance and this race was hilly and explosive. Good swim, horrible first transition, decent bike but the hills killed me, decent T2, and miserable run.

The knees are killing me but the good news is that I dropped consistently to my goal pace for the upcoming marathon. Maybe after I get the knee injected again I'll be able to make it through the run.

Overall age group results: http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/client/87791_105495_2005.html

With the splits: http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/top-athletes-gruplus.tcl

All the cycling pictures are up; the pool room is DONE!

Not really much to look at online, but the room looks good.

Pics from the King of Jester Hill Climb TT and 5k

Neither member of the North team provided a spectacular performance in the King of Jester bike TT or 5K. Jake led off with a 5th place in his age group and 39th overall in the half-mile slog up the 21% grade, then Darlene followed up with a scorching 39-minute 5K that took the runners over the same hill and another that was supposedly even worse.

There's always the next race...

Darlene & Amy 

Robby & Amy 

Darlene and Robby 

We're stars!

In addition to the Westward Look stuff, we're all over Philip Ramackers' site.  http://www.zweddingzphoto.com/zweddingV1_content.html.  This should take you to an intro you can skip.  Then select "Z Images" from the left nav menu.  You will see four boxes in the foreground: "Bride & Groom," "Bride / Groom," "Details," and "Moments." 

The Bride & Groom section has the picture of Darlene leaned back, and the Moments section has four pics from the wedding: Darlene and her dad from the back, Darlene getting ready, the bridesmaids holding me up, and me going after the garter.

As Candy found, we the Bride & Groom pic was in the Westward Look ad in the paper.  Darlene called the WWL and it turns out we are on the cover of all the brochures they recently mailed out, so she asked to get copies of those as well.  They are going to check with the ad agency to see if we can get a digital copy of the ad from them.

Guess the clock is ticking on our fifteen minutes...

Regards,

Jake North
Dell | Services
Service Technology Program Management
Jake_North@Dell.com
desk: (512) 723-0411
mobile: (512) 826-8779