Monday, July 29, 2002

From the Garden The garden in the patio room is starting to produce big time. My pepper plants especially love it there. I currently have an abundance of jalapenos, serranos, and fresno peppers. The red and yellow bells are coming. As a result, I am searching for chile pepper recipes. Out of desperation, I came up with one on my own. It's a roasted jalapeno and ahi sandwich. Grill one ahi steak, fire roast three to four jalapeno peppers (remove skin and seeds), place on a toasted sourdough roll. Add lettuce, tomato, and other condiments if necessary. Enjoy! 8:51:39 PM     Comment []

To .Mac or Not To .Mac? (29-Jul-2002; 1.8K) [TidBITS] If the results of our poll asking for your opinions of Apple's charges for .Mac are any indication, Apple will soon be serving somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 .Mac customers, down from 2,200,000 iTools users. I list myself as an undecided iTools customer. While I have an iTools account, I don't use it that much. The interesting part of this discussion is in looking at the alternatives,. With OS X, you can achieve most of iTools on your own machine. The question seems to be security and peace of mind. Is it worth spending $8.33/month to let Apple handle the details or can you cover the time and expense yourself. At present, I am leaning towards $8.33/month. 7:43:06 PM     Comment []

Putting brakes on Armstrong as great athlete Four years in a row, Texan Lance Armstrong has won the three-week Tour de France... But is this cyclist -- as many TV and radio announcers were gushing Sunday -- the world's greatest athlete? By my definition, no. Athletic greatness requires rare amounts of hand-eye coordination, body control, strength, speed and explosion (quickness or spring). Beyond these blessings, all-time greats have a transcendent ability to perform under pressure and rise above adversity. This is an unbelievably naive essay. While it is silly to state that Armstrong is the greatest athlete ever. It is equally silly to belittle his accomplishments because he was riding a bicycle and a member of a very good team. Baylis' argument is that Armstrong doesn't have great hand-eye coordination, body control or running speed, he is riding an incredibly efficient bicycle, and he is a member of a team that protects him. As a result Armstong's achievements don't match those of Jordan and Ali, or Ruth and Mays, or Montana and Elway, or Bonds and Ichiro. To Baylis, they don't even match Khalid Khannouchi's marathon world record of 2:05:38. But to follow Baylis' argument you have to question Khannouchi's greatness because he was wearing state-of-the-art running shoes. You have to question Joe Montana's greatness because he was protected by the likes of Randy Cross, Keith Fahnhorst, Fred Quillan, and Guy McIntyre. And how many home runs would Barry Bonds have hit from the eighth spot in the line up? The argument makes such little sense that you have to wonder why it was ever written. Acknowledge and marvel greatness, don't belittle it. 11:21:48 AM     Comment []