Holy comeback, Batman!

What an absolutely astounding comeback by Floyd Landis in Stage 17 of the Tour de France today! I perched on the edge of the couch, stunned as Landis mounted a gutsy attack over four mountains to win the stage and come within 30 seconds of the overall leader Oscar Pereiro. (I haven’t cheered so much, since reading Seabiscuit!)

Way to break out the can of Mennonite whoop-ass, Floyd, and put the fear of the Almighty back into the rank and file! Thanks to your remarkable ride, 2006 will not be remembered as the Tour ruined by doping. It’ll be the Tour with the most amazing comeback ever seen in the age of modern cycling.

If you want to congratulate Landis on today’s victory, go to his blog and leave a comment.

When off-shoring doesn’t work

A little Friday silliness while I’m playing with a site redesign. The following is a recent recording of a Microsoft tech leaving a phone message regarding the problems a customer was having with their computer. Funny thing is...I’m pretty sure I’ve talked to this guy before regarding my pet emu. His diagnosis didn’t make any sense then either.

On a related note, I found a picture of Microsoft’s founding staff (minus two). I love this picture because it shows the beginning of a business revolution - one in which tremendous business success is no longer entirely the province of staid, conservatively-dressed, mature adult males with expensive business school educations. You can bet that in 1978, not many people would have predicted that this small group of casually-dressed, long-haired youngsters was creating a corporation that would, three decades later, reach an estimated market value of $279 billion, themselves becoming millionaires (and a few even billionaires) in the process.

Front row L to R: Bill Gates, Andrea Lewis, Marla Wood, Paul Allen
Middle row L to R: Bob O’Rear, Bob Greenberg, Marc McDonald, Gordon Letwin
Back row L to R: Steve Wood, Bob Wallace, Jim Lane

To suitably immortalize the Albuquerque years, Bob Greenberg cut a deal with a photo studio for a group portrait on December 7. Pearl Harbor Day in Albuquerque featured a snowstorm, but only Miriam Lubow, who was stranded at home with her kids, and Ric Weiland [Microsoft’s second employee], out of town on business, failed to make the sitting. All eleven of the employees in the Albuquerque picture, along with Weiland, were about to make the trip to Seattle. Only Miriam Lubow would stay behind — reluctantly. Gates offered to pay for her and her family’s move to Seattle, but Miriam’s husband demurred: “He said, ‘Why are we going to follow this kid to Seattle? It always rains in Seattle.’” On a Concorde flight to Europe, Gates wrote her a thank-you note for her service to Microsoft. As it turned out, she was merely postponing the inevitable. Three years later Miriam would move to the Seattle area and work again for Microsoft, this time focusing more narrowly on a skill she had developed in Albuquerque: getting customers to pay up.

And her cocktail supremacy continues

Me: “I invented a new cocktail tonight!”

Him: “Really? What’s in it?”

“A bunch of rum, some lime juice, a bit of chambord, a pile of mint and a spoonful of bar sugar to sweeten the pot.”

”Wow! Sounds delicious!”

“It is…I think I’ll call it a Bastille Bomber. [bites lip] Chambord is French, right?”

“Yeah, it’s French. How do you reconcile the overwhelming Jamaican influence?”

“Oh…I don’t know. Does it matter? I’m still the queen of cocktail inventions.”

Bastille Bomber

2 oz light rum
½ oz chambord or other raspberry liqueur
½ oz lime juice
5 mint leaves
1 tsp bar sugar

Place ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and serve in a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a raspberry.

Life is good … even at 30

Kelsey and Lee relax at Kelsey’s 30th birthday celebration on Sunday.

Hosta in bloom