Greg Pilling

Nicky Hayden’s rough year continues – I am amazed that he keeps smiling. Where can I get some happy pills like that?

Superbike Planet had this clip of Nicky crashing in Germany and tackling/bowling over fellow Ducati rider Niccolo Canepa from the Pramac team. Ouch..

KIDS – Don’t try this at home!

This morning I took my son to the doctor for a checkup regarding his surgery from 6 months ago. The checkup proved that everything was fine, he had healed nicely and the surgery had been a success. The doctor examined him, then a medical intern had a look.

After that was done, the doctor asked what I thought about Canadian health care since he figured the USA would have a system like that soon (I am Canadian). I told him thatI personally did not know any friends or relatives in Canada that would trade their medical system for the US system, and that I think the Canadian system is cheaper (after counting extra taxes, co-pays, hidden medical costs, etc).

I then mentioned the scare tactic that has been in the media – that the government would be rationing care, unlike the GENEROUS insurance companies now that will authorize anything the doctor wants. The good doctor responded by spontaneously combusting bursting out loud in laughter at the absurdity that he got free reign over his patient’s care.

He assured me that almost every procedure was a fight with the insurance company. Profit seeking companies would never put the bottom line ahead of patient health, would they?

Every day I try to get up a little earlier that everyone else in the house so that I can get a little work done in peace and quiet. P&Q is hard to come by for me (and all parents, I am sure) because during the day I am at work with management responsibilities and the phone ringing fairly often. After work my children want attention – play video games, going for a swim – then there is dinner, a little TV and conversation with my lovely wife and then to bed. The only time for the P&Q is early in the morning between 4 am and 6am.

For Father’s Day this year, my gift was P&Q. I went for a motorcycle ride by myself, had breakfast by myself and thoroughly enjoyed my time alone. I must be a little weird.

This morning was one of those nice quiet mornings. A little coffee, the laptop turns on and I start checking emails and news. Then a little voice says “Hey Dad, let’s do something fun”. Troy has decided that he likes my quiet time and has got himself out of bed to come join me. Grrrr! How can I say no? This is not fair I think, then I recall my mother’s words “Payback is a bitch” or something like that because she actually doesn’t swear.

Troy wants to watch videos of car crashes, or play video games with car crashes, or draw pictures of car crashed. Is there a theme here? What happened to our deal that he would stay in bed until 6 am? How come a 5 year old gets to wriggle out of a verbal contract like that ?

He sure is cute though. Car crashes on You Tube, here we come…

So I was randomly surfing around, and I ran across this little video which states that there are 400 Million broadband connections worldwide and my little brain went pop because that is a lot of connections.

Which was from http://www.plugcomputer.org/ and talked about a little tiny PC that plugs into a wall socket.  And that linked to this product Pogo which will let you plug in a portable hard drive to your wall outlet and network cable and then you have a NAS device. Crazy.

Now if I could just figure out some super awesome bit of tech to plug into wall sockets worldwide I could be RICH <evil laugh here>

And the article that started this random surf was on the NYTimes site.

Valentino, Colin, Jorge and James all go to work at Yamaha US headquarters

At Yamaha’s site here