I couldn’t believe this, watching practice. Schuey braked hard into the corner (anticipating Alonso following a few 10s of seconds behind) and did a stoppie, sliding the front-end, inch-perfect, to the barrier in a stunning display of precision driving.

He then (in my opinion, and those of the F1 stewards) deliberately stalled, waiting for Alonso.

This had the effect of slowing Alonso’s flying lap by maybe a couple of 1/10s, enough to keep Scumacher on pole.

Luckily the F1 stewards have stripped Schumacher of the pole, and sentenced him to start alongside Massa his teammate at the back of the grid.

More here from the BBC.

Wow, what a surreal experience! I was just settling down on the sofa after mowing the lawn here in Texas, and what pops up on the screen but Changing Rooms from Edderton in Ross-shire Scotland.
This is pretty neat already seeing as I used to live there, but the next thing was that the actual house, “Carloggas”, that I lived in about 1979 or so so came on screen.
That sure brought brought back some memories:
- some big parental fights.
- visits to family that lived over in Kildary.
- playing with the local kids.
- listening to John Peel for the first time 8pm – 10pm on Wed, Thu, Fri weeknights.
- walking up and down the long hill to the shop to buy Red Arrows ice lollies.
- hiding out under the stairs for hours (years before Harry Potter!!!)
Thanks Changing Rooms!!

My Imp Amp arrived today courtesy of FedEX, and I was going to wait for my Athena bookshelf speakers to arrive until I played with it, but really I wan’t going to wait, and I hooked it up to a old pair of Technics SB-CR33 speakers I had laying in my ofice.

So what does it sound like? Great so far is the answer, but with any luck, maybe even better with the Athena speakers.

I have my iPod hooked up to it (just happened have a stero jack to dual RCA lying about) and am listening to a wide variety of my favorite songs. So far I’ve noticed the following:

- various clicks and hiss on some songs (from CDs and iTunes) that I’d never noticed
- real silence, through the amp is very clean and hiss/crap free

Other than that, you plug an iPod in and it makes great room filling music. I’m kind of at a loss for what to say since I’m not an audiophile. I have an old Aiwa walkman from when Aiwa was high-end (1988) and it sounded great, but not as good as the bass-boosting Sony crap boxes. This amp is similar, but it actually is bassy enough. I can always crank the EQ on the iPod if I really need to.

It does look absolutely rocking though.

Well, somewhat earlier than we expected, Meredith saw her first hummingbird. We had a great time watching these little guys last year, especially when they would chase each other around the feeder, and in and out of the trees over the garden.

The photograph was taken with my Canon S30 point and shoot, which is why I couldn’t get zoomed in far enough to get a decent picture. Hopefully this year, with some better equipment, I should be able to get some better shots.

Here’s a great little hummingbird page, put up by Donald Berger. It has the expected dates for hummingbirds in Houston, suggested plants and flowers and feeding tips.

Had another day of yard work today. The last few weeks in Houston have been quite wet, and it’s hard to get an opportunity to do anything to the garden.

Anyway, today we managed to get some weeding in the beds, and get the lawns all mowed and nice.

Somewhat against the advice of Meredith’s mom we hit the local pawnshop and bought a little $60 gas mower. Yard crews cost upwards of $100/month, and that’s only when you can induce them to actually show up, so the mower will have paid for itself just after mowing the lawn just a couple of times. If it lasts the summer, then we’ll think about getting something better next year.

Meredith managed to start the mower, and enjoyed a brief ‘mow’ around the backyard.