An Aussie geek stuck in Texas

[tag]Vonage[/tag][tag]VOIP[/tag]Vonage, you really aren’t helping my pissy mood today, a service that you can sign up online for really should allow you to cancel the same service online as well but Vonage in their infinite wisdom force you to call them in order to cancel, how annoying! Now I remember why I haven’t cancelled it in the past as I keep putting off calling and having to deal with customer service drivel

I am now both licensed and registered to ride in the first race of the Spring season of the TMBRA on the Daniel Boone Cycles MTB Team, go me!

Wish me luck this Sunday!

[tag]MTB[/tag]Well I just had my first fall of the season, both bike and rider are fine though just the pride is a little dented, it was more of a comedic type affair than anything and the first time I can remember actually going A over T on the bike.

I was being a little reckless in the dark along side the golf course (with lights of course) and dropped off what I thought was a tiny drop off but of course it was a large ditch filled with water and covered with leaves so my front wheel sank faster than the Titanic throwing me hurtling forward over the handlebars. Luckily I landed fairly softly and didn’t break or hurt anything significantly plus the bike suffered no damage so it is all good.

[tag]spam[/tag]Is anyone else getting sick of all the emails that are sent from an unattended address that you can’t reply to? That is right up there with the emails sent letting you know that a new comment has been made on a post at a forum that you commented in that only gives you a link to the thread and not even a snippet of what the comment made was!

First I tried Napster, it was okay but their client sucked especially when syncing to my Treo as it would always hang up, then I tried Yahoo Music, the interface for their store was pathetic, unless you knew exactly what you were looking for then you were SOL and finally I tried Real Rhapsody.

I was happy with Rhapsody up until this morning as it offered the most iTunes like experience but this morning I went to listen to the songs I had synced to my Treo only to be told that no valid license could be located and I would need to sync again to update the licenses, WTF? I was listening to the songs fine yesterday so all I can guess is that after I synced with my Powerbook last night it invalidated all the licenses for some reason.

All in all the experience offered by the iTunes + iPod competitors is nowhere near up to par and I aI may just ahve to give up my dream of having (legal) music on my Treo and instead jerry rig something onto my iTunes to get my purchased songs over to my Treo. Why do I want to use my Treo? Well I’m being nice and letting the girlfriend use my iPod and the Treo works especially well for when I am doing my training rides as incoming calls will interrupt my music so I don’t miss any calls.

This weekend brings the first serious training ride for the MS150 on my new road bike so it is going to be interesting as I have only done very limited on it so far and this ride will be 38 miles!

If anyone else out there is riding the MS150 and are looking for a team then you should look at joining Team Chevron, as a reader of my blog you qualify as a friend and hence qualify to join the team through me, I think the team fee is $20 and with that you get a jersey plus all the team support stuff so it is well worth it.

Now that is going to be one hell of a good fight!

If only I wasn’t investing so much in cycling right now, I’d be camping out on Ticketmaster to get tickets. Oh well I will just have to settle with watching the PPV live at my local watering hole!

Who to barrack for though?

Another thing that happened while I was at Daniel Boone Cycles this afternoon was that I somehow managed to join the Boone MTB Team for the upcoming 2006 season! I am finally going to race! I am so excited about that as back in Sydney I was easily at a competitive level and was about to start racing but other life changing events happened that prevented that but now I have another chance!

Now the team isn’t that formal as they don’t have a major sponsor this year as it is the first year they are racing so it is pretty easy going so I didn’t have to qualify to join the team but hey they are my local bike shop so I want to do them proud and I wouldn’t be too surprised to see at least one first place trophy for the beginner’s class on my mantle before season’s end! Yes that is right I’ve set the goal and I am going to do everything it takes to meet that goal!

This afternoon I set out on a search for my very first road bike with a limit of $1500 with tax and of course what happened to that limit? Well that would be the Specialized Bicycle Roubaix Elite Triple, isn’t that a sweet looking bike.

I have to wait until Tuesday though for it to be built and then fitted for me but damn everything that can be carbon on it is all except for the cranks, which is no big deal as it adds only a tiny bit of weight and saves a lot of money, the bike is seriously light as a feather. I’m happy I went above my set limit though as I ended up with a much nicer bike than what I would have otherwise and it wasn’t that much more anyway.

It is 27 speed or 9 speed as they say in the biz apparently and has a Shimano 105/Ultegra componentry so it is sweet all around, even the seat post is carbon for crying out loud!

I bought the bike from my local bike shop and by local bike shop I literally mean local, this bike shop is in the back of a house just two blocks away from my apartment and until a co-worker told me about it last week I had no idea it was there! But damn was it a good find, it is one of the best bike stores I have been in, they have everything there! Sure the range of bikes they have in stock isn’t huge but they still have plenty and you can’t beat the kind of service you get there, they know bikes so tell them roughly what you are after and then they just point out the perfect bike for you, they don’t beat around the bush at all.

The store is Daniel Boone Cycles and I highly recommend the store if you are in the market for anything bicycle related in Houston!