Swap Blog

From what I can see and from all I am hearing, Hillary will cleaned today in West Virgina. She will be in it until June 3rd I think honestly, but the die is already set and she has lost. She really should get out sooner, but she won’t. This is one time that I don’t think the Clintons can even pull one out of the dust bin.

It is obvious that Obama considers it over as he is already talking about the huge differences between himself and McCain. Though there may be a FEW (and I do mean a FEW) differences in their personal views and goals, in office there will be even fewer as Obama’s most liberal ideas will never get through the House and Senate - even if they are heavy Democrat - and McCain has always been a compromiser on his conservative stances.

In the end I think either guy that wins this is a one term President. In 2012 my money will be on Bill Richardson or Jeb Bush, though I would love to see a real run from Herman Cain but I think Mr Cain is out of the political office game due both his health and his personal desire to enjoy life a bit more.

Regardless of the 2008 winner, the US has in for a rough go until we take a two prong approach to our energy problems / issues - at least in my mind. In my plan the first prong would be to begin a program similar to the one in the 60’s where we went from non being able to orbit a man in space to landing on the moon within a decade where our best minds and large amounts of funding goes toward the goal of a 50% increase in fuel economy in new cars. Though it may take 5 to 10 more years for 80 to 90% of drivers to be in those cars it is a glide path. Heck, there are still people driving 1965 Ford Falcons and 1975 AMC Pacers, i.e. it will never be 100%. The second prong I see needed is a expansion of both domestic drilling - the Gulf, the Dakota’s, ANWAR - and refining capacity. As I understand it that would take about 6 to 8 years to see real results, so if we start NOW we should be ready for both a increase in population and the average MPG in cars by 2016.

Unfortunately, I don’t think either Obama or McCain will pursue either of the prongs I suggest due to their concern with being labeled, criticized, or branded the press and due to their personal views and commitments to special interests.

Well Bennati won today and Pellizotti keeps the lead. Vande Velde kept second, not bad for team Slipstream Chipotle The crash of Mr. Handlebar Mustache 2008 - i.e. David Zabriskie - on Sunday was disappointing as he would have done well in the TT. The upside is that by the Tour David Z may have Bob Roll muttenchops. He is bringing back 1978 one facial feature at a time.

Back to Team Slipstream / Chipotle (P.S. Mc Donald’s BUILD ME A CHIPOLTTI’S IN KNOXVEGAS) I like the argyle line and team’s overall strength / attitude, but honestly Jonathan Vaughters seems to be a jerk at times from what I can tell. I do hope they do well though. Team High Road has some nice points too, but honestly I would love to see Eric Zabel do well in the end. I think this Giro is up in the air due to the hard course and high quality competition. Astana being in the race is a nice bonus too, real big bonus in my view. I would be great if ASA got their mind right in about 2 1/2 weeks and had Astana come to France in July.

I am not paying Versus $29.95 for web coverage so I will be trying to keep up with the Giro online.

We at Team Swap are aware that the comment feature on the blog is not working. Our hosting company controls our access to the database (which seems to be the problem), and they tell us they are working on it. The solution is suppose to be found and implemented within 48 hours, but based on their past track records we are hoping for next Monday. We will keep you updated, and thanks for your patience.

Well this season of Survivor ended last night. Overall I would say that it was one of the most interesting / exciting seasons so far due to all the twists and turns. They medicals and the resignations made it interesting too. Even though I disagreed with the overall winner it was fun too watch.

Bottom line, for me, Amanda should have won. She out played, out witted, out lasted, and out survived them all, but Parvitti won one the backs of girl power. Amanda’s success is even more impressive when you think that she (and James) did back to back Survivors.

Pavaritti;s win really surprised me as I never really saw Parv’s game as being much more then cheat and double deal all you can. I figuired that would bite her in the end. I guess that is really what the jury respected though. Cerei was a weak player overall, shocked she got to final three. Erik said the most by saying that he went as far as he could without betraying himself. Natalie…well that is just one crazy crazy chic.

I think the outcome would have been a different game without Penner’s and Jame’s medicals. Penner would have broken up girl power mid game and James would have won at least one more immunity. If and but’s though in the end, and stuff like that makes Survivor survivor.

It will be interesting to see how Gabon goes. I hope Amanda and Ozzy are happy too.

I told my wife that Circuit City may get bought by Blockbuster (story here) and she said “What are they going to call it Circuit Buster or Block City” I really love this woman.

Milton Stanley is pondering, thinking and teaching on the habits ofNehemiah, specifically his prayer life which was CONSTANT. Part of Milton’s pondering is brought on by a piece by Jeff Weddle ), which Milton followe with some personal audio about. Milton’s Post / Audio Here. Give both posts a read and Milton’s audio a listen.

First of all…THANK YOU TDOT FOR FINALLY GETTING AROUND TO FIXING DOWNTOWN KNOXVILLE, even if it does affect my drive to church for the next 14 months. I am leaving 10 minutes earlier Sunday, regardless of what the wife thinks…LOL.., and all should be well. Fourteen months of inconvince is worth the rest of my life driving on three FULL lanes of Interstate through downtown.

Yes, I know this should have been done in the 70’s, but hey back then half of Knoxville fought it and the other half moved to Farragut and started working in Oak Ridge so there you go. Regardless of the timing it is time and I appreciate it. Bottomline thanks, good luck, and do good work ASAP… (13 1/2 months would be even nicer wouldn’t it?)

Now for my next point. Mr. Nicely start the Knoxville Beltway in 14 months. You got B&B here, you got the machinces, you got the workers here, you got the gas taxes, you got EPA warnings that could drop with less congestion, so get to paving and building and such. If you can do the downtown thing in 14 months with all the traffic and roads around it, I think you can do the Orange route in 3 years since there fewer roads and less traffic to contend with. So, 2012 or early 2013 I would love to see a finished beltway around Ktown. Worst case give me Lenoir City to the Oak Ridge Hwy area by 2012.

Then Knoxville, and it’s visitors, can get on with our bizness.

Life Hacker is running a great poll - top 5 or best text editor - my vote Notepad++ or Vim

First of all, I am not a big Dell fan. Their higher end stuff (XPS, servers, etc) is good, but their lower end stuff is just terrible in my experiance. Honestly, they make fine computers if you buy a new box every few years, but if you want to upgrade and expand well their non standard motherboards and all on one board systems have always bothered me. Bottomline, in high volume big business where there is a consistent and regular migration pattern then Dell works, but in small to medium non tech businesses they create problems with the less then stellar quality and properitary products.

With that all behind us I heartly say CONGRATS and WELL DONE to Dell (HP and Leveno too) for coming up with creative and LEGAL ways to continue to provide XP after the CURRENT (as I think the Redmond gang will move it) June 30, 2008 end of product life date for XP. Vista is just bad. Every person I know now is trying to stay with XP. All my IT friends are working hard to keep Vista out of their offices and off their users desktops when possible. Windows 7 better get here soon or OS X and Linux will continue to get traction (and growth) in the marketplace. At this point Microsoft needs to understand that people are trying to stay on XP and are only going to Vista when they have too. That sort of situation causes people to look around at alternatives ALOT more. Personally I would love to see a working Windows 7 by Jan 1, 2009, but honestly I don’t think Microsoft could hit a any reasonible deadline at this point.

Stories here, here and here.