Wired Cola

This is a pro-quality race face. That's from this year's Belgian National Championships. Baguet (left) ends up winning a very close photo-finish.

So, The Lovely One and I were discussing the used New Beetle we will soon be acquiring, and we agreed on the perfect name for the new car: The Good Thing.

This is, of course, a very silly joke, and the usual prize (box of Timbits, to be delivered at my convenience within Greater Vancouver) will be awarded to the first respondent who can identify the reference.

You get two hints: I'm pretty sure Google will not help, and it's not a Martha Stewart reference.

Answers to the usual place.

Wednesday evening I saw a lady about a car, and some hours later, have tentatively contracted to buy it on The Lovely One's behalf.

So, the next time you see me, it should be rolling in The Lovely One's pretty black 1998 Volkswagen New Beetle. That's what VW calls them, leading to oxymoronic statements like "I just bought a used New Beetle."

Gloriously, a completely non-political posting! It's partly personal, partly cycling-related, all the good things. There's even some car ads, just for a change.

On the weekend, I did two races, because I like extra pain.

The Brockton Criterium in Stanley Park was my Saturday ride: I expected it to hurt, and it hurt. A Cat 3/4 crit on a technical course, in the rain. Me no like. I managed to hang in for about 30 minutes of a 40 minute race, then pulled up after getting dropped and experiencing a minor mechanical. Suck Level 5, because there were Cat 3s involved.

Yes, I know. No matter how much I tell you that the Spring Classics are beautiful, no matter how much I tell you that the Giro D'Italia and Vuelta Espana are very important races, no matter how much I suggest that the ProTour really has changed pro cycling, you still really just want to hear about Lance and the Tour de France.

Personally, I pray for a better nickname. pMacs? IMacs? Er, that's taken...IntelliMacs?

Looks like it's going to be MacIntel.

For those of you don't understand my inside jokes, an explanation: yesterday Apple dropped the (widely-predicted) bombshell that starting sometime in 2006, new Macs will ship with Intel CPUs inside instead of PowerPC chips.

Robert Cringely, in his latest column, proposes an idea for countering phishing, the type of fraud that sends those fake PayPal, eBay, credit card, and bank requests to "update" your account data so the bad guys can steal it.

His proposal? Poison the incoming data. If everyone responds, but responds with fake data, the few respondents who gullibly enter real data will be lost in a sea of crap.