This weekend we’re back to normal summer weather in the Bay Area: beautiful sunny days, cool nights. Last weekend we were in the middle of the worst heat wave to hit California. In 14 summers in the Bay Area, this was the first time I ever felt the need for an air conditioner. Our house didn’t even have a fan, and all of the stores sold out! The days were hot, but it was the nights that really got to me. I half-seriously thought about going to work to sleep. I never looked so forward to going to work as I did on Monday.

I have a really hard time believing that Floyd Landis doped up. And here’s why:

• An Accusation of Duplicity, a Reputation for Honesty • New York Times • July 30, 2006

Woohoo! Another American wins le Tour! In my last posting, I assumed everyone knew what Floyd Landis accomplished last week, but I’ll spell it out here.

• Tuesday: Landis is in the overall lead for the tour.
• Wednesday: Landis “cracks” and can barely push himself to finish. He falls from 1st to 11th, more than 8 minutes back. It would take a miracle to climb back into contention. Most people write him off.
• Thursday: Landis comes roaring back, attacking with 125 km from the finish, wins the stage and erases most of his time deficit, from 8:08 to 30 seconds.
• Saturday: After an uneventful stage on Friday, Landis gains enough time in the time trial to regain the overall lead. It’s enough to win the whole race.

Another inspiring example of never giving up, while you still have a chance.

Not only that, Landis has a condition called avascular necrosis in his hip (we’re talking bone-on-bone) and will have hip replacement surgery within a few months. Most people with his condition can barely walk.

I’ve been watching the Tour de France all month. (Its timing works perfectly with my schedule: wake up, watch the last 30 mins while eating breakfast, then go to work.) Can you believe Floyd Landis? From washed up yesterday to a stunning comeback today. I’m really pulling for him to win — it would propel his achievement from an extraordinary single-day race to a legendary tour win.

I’m finally done uploading all of my photos to Flickr. And I’ve fixed all of the photos in this blog to point to those photos. Whew, I’m beat!

If you want to look through them, you could start at the beginning and browse through all 1,565 photos (and counting), but I suggest looking through my sets and tags. I especially recommend filtering my photos through people — friends from:

• Berkeley (and friends of those friends)
• Caltech
• Cupertino
• Connecticut
• IBM Almaden
• IBM Watson
• the HCI community
• family
• family friends