Retirement

Frost covered morning again today. There was a great photo opportunity leaving my subdivision near our waterfall feature but we did not have time to stop, hopefully Mother Nature will give me a second chance tomorrow to grab a shot.

Supercross

As planned, I watched the supercross race last night and was blown away by the big-time bummer news that one of the veterans of the sport, #14 Kevin Windham announced he is retiring from racing after a 31 year career. I can only imagine it was a tough decision as he mentioned in his quick interview prior to the drop of the first 450 class heat race. After a bad crash last season in Houston, along with a long and painful recovery, mixed with the chaos of this season and the young guys running crazy fast on the new 450cc bikes I can't blame him for wanting to hand up his boots. Doing so now allows him to exit on his terms, with his chin up and more importantly his health.

Many of the racers have been so beat and battered during their career that they are going to feel it every day once they get older. Doing the simplest things such as getting out of bed in the morning is going to hurt by the time they hit their late 30's and mid 40's. After the years of pounding they have put their bodies through it's inevitable. That does not count the guys have have broken their backs, broken or fractured more bones than you can count on one hand and some of those bones multiple times. So yeah, I can't blame Kdub for getting out at 34 years old. At that age you are considered an "old man" in motorsports racing, especially supercross and motocross. Most of the racers retire in their late 20's if they are lucky enough to make it that long without a career ending injury.

No matter Kdub will probably do something like start a team or teach the up-and-comers. I will miss watching his awesome flowing style every race. Especially the deep rutted and muddy days, no one has as much style as he does in those conditions

TiVo Stream

I don't remember if I mentioned a week or so back that I was going to pick up a TiVo Stream to replace my pain-in-the-ass Slingbox Solo once I had the new TiVo Premiere 4 setup and running as I wanted. Well I did pick one up and I managed to hook it up last night and get it configured in less than 20 minutes. Not to mention that the only reason it took that long was because the Stream had to do a firmware update. All-around a super easy setup and it works so much more efficiently than the Slingbox Solo. The Slingbox always seemed half-assed to me since I had to use a bridge over electrical outlets for the internet connection, then into my router and out to the internet to me. This rarely worked long enough to make watching a show even slightly bearable and the picture quality was a complete joke.

Using the TiVo Stream the picture quality on my iPad looks HD, the sound is perfect and does not have the weird hissing, metal tapping sound that the Slingbox Solo produced for some unknown reason. The only down-side - if you can even call it that - is you can't stream live TV or recorded shows that are sitting at home, previously recorded on your TiVo box if you are outside of the network that the Stream is on. If you want to watch shows away from home then you have to plan ahead a little and download those shows to your iOS device before you leave - big deal (which only takes about 15 minutes or less for an hour long show).

I never really used the remote streaming with the Slingbox anyhow, it rarely worked well enough to watch a show over 3G, 4G or LTE and locations that I had a high speed connection like work, Sling was blocked. Normally I use it to relax outside on the patio during the summer and watch a show or while on the treadmill so I am not planted on the couch for 4 hours during a NASCAR race.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

So obviously it's Monday and I don't have the luxury of having the day off of work for Martin Luther King day as it's not a day that my company observes as a holiday. I knew something was up when I looked outside this morning and several of my neighbors cars were still sitting in their driveway, windows covered with frost. I have several school teachers that live on our street so we always know when it's a holiday.

I am not bitter in the least that we are not off work today, I just did what anyone that has months of vacation time built-up would do, I took this Friday off so I can have a nice long 3 day weekend while all of my neighbors are at work - suckers! I have tons of stuff I want to get done on Friday anyhow so really it will be a day of task-mastery once again which is ok by me. The more stuff I get done, the better day-to-days are when life throws those curve balls.

Bye For Now

Mellow start to the week today but from the looks of all my calendars it's going to get progressively worse as the week goes on. No biggie, it's what they pay me for right! Here's to hoping your Monday treated you well and you are well on your way to Tuesday. If you had the day off then you suck I hope you made the most of it while the rest of us kept the economy running strong.

Photo: #14 Kevin Windham "Kdub"