ikeepitreal

We went up to Bellingham this weekend with a bunch of friends and family for the Ski to Sea race. Our team was 1/2 the same as last year, with 3 of the members new parents. I don't want to speak for the other 2 (hi Scott and Cindy), but I am amazed at just how out of shape 3 months of comfort food, staying in at night, and no excersise can get me. That is the excuse for my poor time. Well, that and the FREAKING HUGE MOUNTAIN I HAD TO CLIMB UP.

We had a lot of fun with the race. The roster:

Racer	Leg	Previous Greatest Accomplishment
Mike Foster	Downhill	3rd Place Show. 1988 Pinewood Derby
Cindy Palmer	XC	Apple Bobbing Champion. 1993 Harvest Festival
Kristin Larson	Run	Anacortes Crab Festival Queen. 1993
Scott Huebner	Bike	Most Improved Player. 1987 Wildcats Soccer
Amanda Rierson	Canoe #1	Best Hair. 1993 Senior Class, Sault Sainte Marie HS
Laura Certain	Canoe #2	Most Accomplished Reader. Lafayette Kindergarden Prep, 1982
Justin Stoddard	Mt. Bike	Outstanding Canine Revival Technique. Buffalo Veterinary School, 1991
Mark Griffith	Kayak	Backstage Pass Holder. The Cure "The Faith" tour, 1980

Our team ended up with a inflated (as in faster than it should have been) time, as our anchor Mark rolled his kayak, lost his glasses, and caught a ride in -- but rang the bell anyway .

See the rest of the pics by clicking on the one below. The "garbage" sign is a nice touch.

Posted by Mike at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week, Google unveiled its portal. The thing is, they claim it's not one. Um, yeah -- I'm not a 5'5" pasty white dude either. Calling it a "personalized homepage" isn't fooling anyone. Anyhoo, before I launch directly into my gripes, I should mention a few of the things I like:

* Drag and drop of portlets. The way they did it is perfect. In true GOOG style, it is simple, clean, and sexy.

* Gmail integration off the bat. my.yahoo.com took *forever* to get mail integration, and Google's is way better. The extra milliseconds to load the Yahoo! mail portlet made it seem clunky, and this one is snappy.

* Decent content choices. My guess is they probably tried to do some other obvious things like sports scores and configurable news, but were unable to for the first cut. What they did get was ok. News/Mail/Weather/Stocks seem like good first choices.

Now for the frustrating things:

* The name. Why they are even waffling and refusing to name it "my.google.com" is beyond me. The pissing contest where they refuse to be equated with Yahoo! has gone too far. Weak sauce. Listen guys -- everyone is standardizing on "my" for their personalized content. Amazon, Yahoo!, MSN. Just go with the flow.

* I can't remove the search bar. Doesn't everyone have a google toolbar or browser/search integration by now? Well, probably not -- but those of us who do would like to remove the search bar from our "portal" if we are going to look at it 30-40 times a day.

* No RSS support. I don't really like the way Yahoo! has done this, so I keep waiting for something good here from Google. It's likely this just didn't make the first cut, but frustrating nonetheless. Especially considering RSS is on Google's radar, but only to push ads thru.

* No thumbnails. I think Google News does a good job incorporating thumbnails with news stories. Seems like it would have been easy to bring into the portal. There is only so much text one man can take.

* Some portlets aren't configurable enough. This is nitpicky, but why should I only be able to see 3 movies? What if -- say for instance -- I'm a junkie who only cares about sports news?