I was in a funk all day today, no idea why.  Such a funk is self-sustaining; you snap at the people around you, they snap back, and that reinforces the funk.  Even a nice 25-mile ride with my friend Mark didn't fully dissipate the funk.  It took a wonderful dinner with friends - and some awesome Summerland Pinot - and now it is fully gone.  I sure hope I don't wake up with it again.  Life's too short for funks.

Gerard Vanderluen notes The UN: Getting their priorities straight.  "The United Nations will send nearly a quarter of a million condoms into cyclone-hit Myanmar to help needy survivors with no access to contraceptives, a UN official says."  Once again, truth is stranger than the Onion.  Unbelievable. 

The definition of a fair-weather pro basketball fan: you wait until your team has made it into the division finals, and won the first game on a miracle comeback, and then you notice.  Go Lakers!  (No, I am not paying any attention to the Dodgers right now, I am strictly a serial sports fan.) 

So, have you been following the Giro?  It has been an exciting week and a half so far, featuring many crashes and wild sprints, and horrible weather. Daniele Bennati won today's stage 12, in a photo finish (at right).  The Dolomites are yet to come, so the true sorting has not begun.  Right now it looks like Alberto Contador might be the favorite, he's sitting in third, at 6:50, but with those big climbs ahead he will probably rise to the top.  Andreas Kloden is in fifth, at 7:54, also a threat, Paolo Savoldelli is seventh, at 8:09, and Denis Menchov is 11th, at 8:57.  One of those four will win, I think...  

This is just the most amazing thing: Microsoft publishes Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista.  I think "misunderstood" is a misunderstanding, these features are despised, disliked, hated, loathed, scorned, and spurned.  Download this PDF for some amusing phraseology, for example the document begins: "No one would expect a new OS adoption to be easy, and certainly adopting Windows Vista across a desktop infrastructure can some with a few challenges".  Sorry, but most people do expect an upgrade to be easy, where easy = just works.  Microsoft has fully jumped the shark. 

BTW, several people at Aperio have applied XP SP3 to their laptops, and have had problems.  One colleague has had a nice series of blue screens, and is in the "reload your disk" spin cycle.  Thank you Microsoft.  Perhaps XP SP3 is a plot to destabilize XP so people won't feel so bad when they downgrade to Vista :)