Monthly Archives: July 2010

Auto Racing

The Keselowski and Hot Carl Show!

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With the Sprint Cup series taking the weekend off, the Nationwide race came off as a phenomenal substitute for weekend entertainment!

Y'all know I'm no fan of Hot Carl, but I fully commend him for putting Brad in his place and taking the win he deserved. Their antics made for the best finish in a Nationwide race so far this year.

Make no mistake… I like Brad Keselowski, and I like his take-no-prisoners racing style. NASCAR racing rewards a lot of different driving styles and he's certainly been rewarded for his. He's almost certainly going to win the Nationwide championship. If he chooses to be the aggressor all the time though, he has to expect people aren't just going to move aside and let him have his way.

If there's one person involved that's lost my respect in the whole ordeal, it's his dad. I understand he must have been hot as hell with emotion when giving his interview, but there's just no way he can justify Brad hitting Hot Carl out of his way as just good hard racing and then have a beef with Hot Carl for the retaliation.

It would be one thing if it was all about their ongoing feud, but Brad hit Carl on THE SAME LAP.

I couldn't help but think of the interview with Jimmie Johnson after he did the same thing to Kurt Busch just a couple weeks back. The only difference between the two incidents was that Kurt didn't go into the wall, but Jimmie was very open afterwards that he wasn't just trying to move him out of the way. He was trying to wreck him. It just so happened that he managed to win the race in the process.

One hugely positive sentiment came out of this as well. The fact that Brad walked away without a scratch gives further confidence in NASCAR's efforts at vastly improving the safety for all involved. I love that we can watch a race end the way this one did and only be mildly fearful for the driver's safety. Considering that this wasn't even the newer, even safer car, the future seems very bright for hard-nosed wheel-to-wheel racing without the drivers having to put their careers and even their lives on the line for it. It's about the skill rather than the insanity, and this is a great thing for the sport!

TV Shows

Persons Unknown: NBC are Dicks

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Well, apparently I'm the only one watching this show, and NBC finds that very annoying.

I don't think they were happy that I managed to watch the last episodes after they changed the time slot, so they've gone and changed the dates entirely.

I really like this show… but I can't imagine how they could expect anyone to watch something if they keep shifting it around and never tell anyone what they're doing!

So screw you NBC. You've been showing ads all the way through telling us that we would see this through to its conclusion this summer. If you take it off the air and expect people to buy DVD's to see the end, then I hope you fail miserably not just on this show, but on anything else you try as well.

You can be sure that the next time NBC has a new show that I think looks interesting, I'll think twice and three times before committing to watching it!

TV Shows

Persons Unknown: Still Good

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Wife is starting to lose interest, but I'm still into it. Now that they've actually killed someone, I'm even more curious as to what the heck's going on!!

Oh… did I give something away?

I also keep looking forward to that idiot/rapist guy getting beat up in new and interesting ways. That's a pretty good subplot in itself!

On an unrelated note… the Dutch just missed what looked like a sure goal! Ouch!!

General

Microsoft Outlook 2007 Fail

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I know I'm REALLY late to the game on this one, but I just today found out about Microsoft taking a huge step backward with their HTML rendering engine for Outlook 2007 and felt the InterTubes deserved to have my little bit of rage added to the universal panning that seems to be the world's opinion of it.

I just wrote a little application that sends an html formatted email. The app will only send to one person, so it didn't need to be too extensively tested for email client compatability. I tested it with Windows Live Mail, Hotmail, and Thunderbird. All was well.

I then sent the link to someone else to have a look at, and was told it basically looked like garbage. She re-checked it using Yahoo's online email. Everything was peachy.

I had her forward me the email from Outlook 2007 and looked at the source and found this:

<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)">

Now where did that come from? Well I went Googling, and that's when I found out that Microsoft replaced their Internet Explorer based rendering engine with Microsoft Word 2007 for Outlook 2007 and essentially crippled the ability to properly display html formatted emails.

I checked the original email in Outlook 2003, and while not all the formatting was in place, it was a heck of a lot better than what Outlook 2007 produced.

So thanks a lot, Microsoft, for taking a big backwards step and making life difficult for web developers all over the world.

Here's a Microsoft page telling developers how they can try to accomodate their crappy product. I particularly enjoyed the long list of comments at the end of it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201(v=office.12).aspx

General

How About Them Dutch!

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I really can't believe the Dutch took Brazil out of the World Cup.

That has to be the final nail in the coffin that was my entry to the office pool here. That aside though, it's certainly a blessing to the whole "Europe vs. South America" bout I've got going with my wife. After tomorrow, when Germany eliminates Agentina, that should be a lock! I just don't see Uruguay making a miracle run for the cup, no matter how strange this tournament has been!