Perry’s weblog

The F1 race today in Indianapolis, the US Grand Prix, was a complete failure - on many levels.

Michelin failed to make a tire that is capabale of racing more than 10 laps without putting the driver in danger.

The FIA failed to figure out some sort of resolution to the problem.

The teams failed to push Michelin to give them another option.

The fans failed to be good fans. Boo, curse, and make all that rude gestures you want. But do not throw debris on to the track that endangers the lives of the drivers that did race and the lives of the track workers that have to clean up your mess.

FIA press releases / memo releases indicate that they knew about the problem late Saturday or early Sunday morning. Michelin could have gone to extraordinary measures to get safe tires for their cars. Rules could have been broken and drivers penalized - but there would have been a race!

Some of the teams have raised with us the possibility of running a tyre which was not used in qualifying. We have told them this would be a breach of the rules to be considered by the stewards. We believe the penalty would not be exclusion but would have to be heavy enough to ensure that no team was tempted to use qualifying tyres in the future.

The show must go on!

Give Bridgestone and Ferrari all of the points because they deserve it. They’ve done a better job this weekend, but once they give them all of the points, let’s go and put on a show. It doesn’t have to be an absolute wheel-to-wheel battle because WWF survives quite well out here with an element of show business involved. But what you have here is a joke.

What happened today was a damn joke. It just pisses me off. Nevermind who is really at fault. The 150,000 people that paid to see a race will not come back next year. That is going to be bad for Indianapolis, bad for Indiana, and bad for F1 racing in the US, and bad for F1 racing around the world. I hope the FIA comes down hard on those jokers somehow. They’ve embarassed the entire sport today, caused damage that is not going to be soon forgotten, and basically made a mockery of the entire sport.

Back from the Indy 500. What a race. Too many lead changes to count!

Reggie Miller was the starter of the race. He climbed up the flag stand about 45 minutes before the start of the race and the crowd just loved him! “REGGIE REGGIE REGGIE REGGIE”. I heard them in the background during the ABC pre-race stuff during the rebroadcast of the race.

Danica Patrick put on quite the show as well. 23 year old rookie. She actually led for something like 20 laps the crowd just loved that. We were all on our feet for the last 25 laps or so watching her in the lead. She unfortunately finished 4th.

Dan Wheldon managed to take the win under a yellow / checker finish. He was my Uncle’s pick and his pit was right across from our seats at the start / finish line, so it was fun to watch him move through the field.

After the miserable time we had last year, I wasn’t really looking forward to this year’s race, but now I can’t wait for next year. It was a blast!

Didn’t take the camera this year.. it just doesn’t do well taking pictures of cars going 225 MPH. Or maybe it’s me. Or both.

Here are some pictures of the ducklings that are behind mom’s house this year. The mama duck was one that I saw 2 years ago.. Or at least there was another female duckling 2 years ago with a small white stripe on the back of her neck. We also saw her last year. And this year she has 11 little ducklings to keep track of! Pretty neat to see her grow up like that

I caught part of his most recent show on Comedy Central on Saturday night and thought he was pretty darn funny. Went to his website, he wanted $25 for the DVD. Went to Best Buy and got it for $10.

Absolutely hilarious! I guess he was in that Blue Collar Comedy Tour movie last year.. His comedy is really redneck-ish like Jeff Foxworthy, but he goes a litle further with it all. Much funnier, IMHO. Maybe they’ll reshow it on Comedy Central, but for $10 at Best Buy it really is worth having it on DVD!

Drove to PA on Monday for a job interview… On I-70, just west of Dayton, OH, I drove through an incredible amount of bugs for a short period. I must have had 40 of em hit my windshield within a 1.5 mile stretch.

In the future, I’m going to make sure I carry some window cleaner and microfiber towels along for my journeys. I tried cleaning the bugs with my wipers, but that just smeared them so I had to stop at a gas station and use the squeegee. Didn’t do a good job, but at least I was able to see again.

When I got home, I looked the car over and the entire front bumper is covered in bugs. Looks similar to the winter time after I’ve driven through snow and salt covered streets, but worse. Nasty. I was about to to go the quarter wash, but I knew I was going back out on the interstate (not that same stretch, but still open interstate) the next morning so I figured it would just get dirty again.

I hosed down the bugs and let it sit for a minute or two. I thought it would be hard to cover the entire bumper and front half of the hood with wet towels to let the bugs soak… I then used about twice as much soap in my bucket as I should have and my chenille wash pad. That got just about all of em off without scrubbing. One or two spots required a dab of B&T remover and a MF towel.

Declare Yourself, register to vote!

Here are some pictures of Heidi’s, my Uncle’s miniature schnauzer, visit this year. He and my aunt went to Florida for a week or so and left her with my mom. I think one week a year is enough of a dog fix for mom…

I watched about 4 hours of coverage of Ronald Reagan’s funeral tonight. From when they took him off the 747 (VC-25) to just after the diplomats showed their respects at the Rotunda.

It was interesting seeing all the pomp and circumstance that the US Armed Forces can produce when they pull out all the stops.. The artillery pieces on the tarmack at Andrews, Sgt York prancing around down Constitution Avenue, the flyover by 21 F-15’s, the entire procession by some 2000 members of the Armed Forces. Everything seemed perfect, like they had practiced dozens of times. It was nothing short of amazing.

No matter what you think of his politics, no matter what party you support, it is a sad day when a President of the United States dies. As I heard mentioned during the services, Ronald Reagan is being honored by the United States.

I wish I could find some high resolution pictures to save.. all the ones on Yahoo are so small :/

My cousin and I got to my Uncle’s camping area about 9am and hung around for a bit, hoping it wasn’t going to rain, but not wanting to sit in our seats for several hours during a rain delay. Then it started raining. My Uncle cooked us some breakfast in his little camper dealio on the back of his truck. Around noon we decided to head in to the track because we had heard that they’d be starting the race around 1.

Got there and our seats were amazing. Every other time I’ve been, probably 13 races, we’ve been just off of turn 4. This time we’re RIGHT by the start/finish line, the yard of bricks. We can see all the action in the pits, the cars coming off the fourth turn, all the way down the front straight, and in to the first turn. The seats were also under cover, so if it started raining, we’d stay dry.

Around lap 23 they brought out the caution flag, and then red flagged the race at lap 27 due to the rain. Bah. 2+ hr rain delay and things got going again. Couple wrecks and such, nothing too bad. Worst was a three car wreck that ended up with the cars sliding down pit road and a safety worker getting hurt. Lap 175 it starts to rain again with Buddy Rice in the lead. Race is called at lap 180, and he takes the yellow / checkered flag. Bah. It was around 6:30 at that time, and we really wanted to see the race go the distance. Oh well.

As we were leaving the track, it really started raining. Got to my Uncle’s camping spot and it started raining even harder! Instead of waiting for the rain to pass, my cousin and I decided to just go on to his Jeep. Got freakin soaked.. thunder, lightning, tornado sirens going off. Then it seemed like the storm just followed us all the way home, making for a miserable drive.

All of my pictures.

Slashdot had a story a couple years ago about MIT students counting cards at Las Vegas blackjack tables. On Sunday, May 9th at 9PM ET/PT, The History Channel will air a show called Breaking Vegas about the students. The show will feature an interview with the author of the book Bringing Down the House, which the Wired article, in the Slashdot story, was based on.

Hope I remember to watch it!

Happy New Year!