Friday started as an ordinary day… our friends Donald and Daisy (stop it) were heading off to Northwest for a scheduled C-Section, and I was waiting Donald’s call to take their older daughter Dani with Laura to sushi that night, and bring some to the hospital afterwards. When I got up, MK was thinking something might be up, but wasn’t sure, so she sent me off to work.

I got an IM to come home about 1:30… looks like our kid didn’t want to wait for a few weeks if Dani’s little sister was coming out today! So I wrapped up things in the meeting I was in and headed back. I arrived at home about 2:30, and proceeded to take Laura up to our friends’ Greg and EBeth for the night. We did a quick pack, and headed out about 4:00. Montlake was of course packed, and we had to cross 520 to get to Swedish First Hill, so we headed up 45th, down Roosevelt, and then up Broadway to Swedish. We made it there at 4:35, according to the valet slip, and MK was screaming every minute or so down Broadway, freaking out the locals.

They brought us a wheelchair at the door, and we wheeled her up to the room. We met a number of people who immediately saw what was going on, and pointed us to the right direction. We hopped into triage, and pop! MK’s water broke. A nice nurse named Allison was right there to calm her down, as it was quite traumatic, and we immediately headed into a delivery room. Much better than the hour wait we had last time with Laura.

We wheeled MK into the delivery room, managed to get the pants & underwear off, and… say, is that crowning? Eek! GET HER ON THE BED! OK, she’s on the bed, someone get the doctor, PUSH! squirt! “Mary Kaye, we have a son!” It was 4:45. Yup, 10 minutes from when we pulled up… now that’s cutting it close!

Allison, the nice nurse, got credit for the delivery. Our OB, Dr. Lowdermilk, arrived a few minutes later to handle the afterbirth and stitch up some tears. I was over with our son, John Henry, named after my great uncle who passed away some years ago.

Mom and baby are doing very well, and we’re all happy and home now. Our daughter Laura is loving being a big sister, and just loves holding John. So.. not sure how much time I’ll have to blog, as I’ll be out for a few weeks taking care of MK, Laura, & John.

But here’s a cute baby pic to tide you over!

As I mentioned, my 10-15 year old Tilapia Big Guy passed away today. I inherited Big Guy from Carl Ebeling back in 1997 who has just gotten him from Soha Hassoun, one of his students who recently graduated. Carl was nervous about keeping Big Guy, as back in the day Big Guy was rather aggressive and would go after hands in the tank. and considering his mouth was bigger than a quarter in diameter, this was a bit intimidating.

Anyway, after nearly ten years with MK and I, Big Guy finally went to fishy heaven. Here are some pictures from 2002, showing him in his prime:

So, while today was a beautiful sunny day in Seattle, turns out it was a bit of a suck day. On my ride with Union Bay Cycling, I managed to slide out on the hairpin turns heading down Lake Washington Blvd. Two new holes in my ancient Pearl Izumi tights is no biggie, but shredded a bit of the back of my Pastry Powered jersey. Well, at least Lauren has some extra XLs, so I’ll claim one of those. I also have a huge bruise on my left hip, and some smaller ones on my left knee and upper forearm right below my elbow. Not sure why I slid out besides not having the right center of gravity. Oops. Luckily, the cool guys from UBC helped repair the flat and even donated a spare tube, as the one in my bag apparently also had a hole in it somewhere. D’oh!

Post-ride, I noticed something weird in the bottom fish talk… and yes, sadly, Big Guy was no more after a long (2+ years) fight with hole-in-the-head and lateral line erosion. Considering he was 10-15, he lived a good, long life. More in the next post.

Then, while sitting on the couch to rest my sore left side, I watched my Steelers lose to the Falcons in OT, when they probably could have won it on the last play were it not for a lame penalty. At this point, they’re going to need a lot of helkp to make the playoffs.

Bah.

It’s late at night, you should go to bed. Then, as you’re flipping through channels, you catch a movie, and end up watching it…. knowing that you’ve seen it, you know who does it, and how it ends.

Turns out for me, it’s Robocop (I, II, or, sadly, III) and Scream.

Any others?

So, I went for another meet the team ride with Union Bay Cycling, In the pouring rain… fun. Invariably, while talking with the riders, the topic came up as to what I do for a living. I mentioned I work for Microsoft’s search group — in particular, the new Search Labs group. One of the other riders asked if this was just a matter of marketing our product better… to which I replied that no, we actually have to make a better product. He then asked if the new stuff would be off MSN or something else… I mentioned it was Live.com. He hasn’t heard of it yet.

What’s the point? Well, a number of people out there believe that Microsoft will win because we’ll link in search throughout the operating system (Vista) and IE, and as people adopt Vista / IE7+ over the next 1-5 years, people will accept live.com as the new default.

Except that it won’t happen that way.

Sure, there will be some people who use live.com because it’s the default, just as some people use msn.com now, or people use Google because it’s the default on Firefox. But Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are all busy trying to change the defaults and hook into the APIs of IE and Vista. And with 1-3 year ship cycles for IE / Windows, there will be ample time to change the defaults. Best of all, OEMs like Dell and HP are going to charge Google / Yahoo to change the defaults — which of course means that Google and Yahoo will pony up the dough to do that.

But fundamentally, “winning by default” isn’t a way to win. In fact, it’s a great way to lose — you need to have a winning product in a marketplace, you need to have something that brings people to it. Hoping people will use your product if there’s a superior one out there just because you’re the “default” is just delusional. And people will use a superior product — just look at the rise of market share of Firefox over IE, the “default.”

No, this is going to be a long, drawn-out competition. It took Google about 3-4 years, from 1998 to about 2001/2, to dethrone AltaVista. And in truth, what really helped was the ton of people that came online and picked Google — AltaVista didn’t so much lose people to Google as a lot more people picked Google than AltaVista when they came online. So, you can imagine how long it’ll take us to get Live to that level. Plus, it has to be better, so it’s a stand-up fight. Our smart people vs Google’s smart people. Live.com is just a start, and has tons of stuff coming out… so keep watch.

And it starts with one rider at a time.

Part of thinking / dreaming about racing is the idea of riding a Nice Bike™. The Nice Bike™ is that ultimate bike… stiff, light, fast, pretty.

For example, we start off with the Bianchi 928 Carbon SL Record Double. Campy Record component group, a 928 Carbon frame, made in Italy. What’s not to love? Even comes in a size 61, so it should fit me!

Staying in Italy, we have a couple other fun bikes. For example, the Gios Carbon Lite. Pretty. But, sadly, small… appears to just go to a size 58… so not sure if that’ll work. Alas.

Then there’s Colnago’s Extreme Power… looks like you have to build it up though with your own Campy parts, but that’s OK.

Let’s see… moving over to modern American products, there’s the ever popular Serotta MeiVici. And you can even get your initials engraved on the lugs…. cool.

And finally… the Trek Madone SSL 6.9. Their ProjectOne site is awesome… you can create your own custom bike with colors and components. Want that Campy Record Triple? They can do it… totally awesome. Here’s a link to the $9500 Pastry Powered racing special…. someday, perhaps.

So many fun bikes… drool. And I know that right now, I’m not even pushing what my Bianchi Veloce can do. But it’s amazing what a few short months can do… and while I’m not yet at the point where I could make use of a $3000 or $5000 bike, let alone a $10K bike… I can dream, and more importantly, I can work towards that…

Just keep pedaling… just keep pedaling…

So today, I went on a Meet the Team ride with some folks from Union Bay Cycling, aka Wines of Washington team. We did just under 40 miles from 25th and Blakely down around the southern tip of Lake Washington and then back again via I-90. The fun bit was we did this going at about an 18 MPG clip, including a few faster sprints. Pace lines and groups are fun!

Ruben and I represented the Pastry Powered T(o)uring Machines at the final ride of the cycling season (according to Cascade , at any rate) — the Kitsap Color Classic . We did the Poulsbo loop and Hanville loop, for a total of about 55 miles (GPS forthcoming). The route was surprisingly hilly, especially the Hanville portion. Here are some pics we took along the way:

Ruben and Erik at Port Gamble

Ruben finishing a climb. Notice the bay in the background of the road? We came up from that…. huff!

Now, just how many bikes can you fit on the back of a Washington State ferry?

Erik’s Bell helmet gives him a lovely ‘do after a ride… just imagine how much he’d have to pay for that!