resistance to persistence

Watch this video (4 minutes) while it’s still available. Starts out slow, but by 3:20 left on the clock you’ll see the action start.

This is why I love the UFC. It’s so crazy how good Anderson Silva is. I thought Forrest was going to give him some challenge with his bang-it-out brawling style. Anderson taunted him a bit, got him fired up so that he’d just come in swinging rather than being tactical – game plan out the window. Anderson is so fast and sharp that he can wander around unprotected with his hands down and pick his pinpoint shots. As Forrest himself said, “this guy makes good dudes look bad”. Add another one to the list. I still really like Forrest and was hoping he’d get the upset, but it’s hard to compare the two fighting skills.

What a day. Sometimes fun things can happen without even planning them. What normally would have been a quiet Sunday turned into an adrenaline filled day.

The morning started with swim class for my daughter. At 8 months it’s fun to take her swimming and the fearful neck clasping hugs she gives are so sweet. Special times.

After that I rushed home to head out on the next adventure. My buddy Kevin was in my driveway waiting to go see a Chuck Liddell MMA training session. $150 to take part in instruction, $30 to watch. We chose the watching obviously. I got a ton of photos which I’ll be posting soon. It was interesting to watch him go through some of his favorite moves (the overhand right, etc) and even some ground game. After 2 hours of that there was an hour of Q&A. Lots of expected questions -Randy vs Lesner, EliteXC Kimbo fiasco and was highly critical of EliteXC for buying up the smaller leagues and benching them. This came after taking questions from Mauro, one of the announcers on EliteXC. But overall it was positive and informative. We didn’t stick around for the autograph signing session.

Chuck Liddell and Showdown Joe

I then got a call around 5:30. My friend John was in the neighbourhood and he was going to stop in for a minute to show me something. He showed up on my doorstep with a Porsche Carrera 4S. Drool. A coworker lent it to him for the week while he was out of town. He took me for some hot laps around the city busting it open on some back industrial roads but there’s never a road long enough to try out the full speed of a driving machine like that. A good taste of adrenaline to end the day.

I’ve officially got olympic fever and the only cure is lots of tv. Unfortunately with a new baby, tv isn’t something I get to watch much of the time. I caught some swimming the other night and it’s always exciting. Track and field is good to watch as well. And this is the first year to watch them in high def and it makes such a difference.

This morning I was so pleasantly surprised on my walk to work through the office towers that tvs have been set up in the lobbies to watch the games (it would be interesting to see the productivity decreases during these two weeks and everyone staying up late to watch). One area in the photo even went as far as setting up bleachers for people to sit and watch. Very nice to see. I wish the olympics were every year.

After the recent tsunami tragedy, there’s actually groups of surfers that are looking to surf a tsunami. Reading on this, I came across this big-wave surfing video. I can’t believe the swell of this wave and how huge it gets. Starting out, it looks almost flat. My heart was pounding just watching it grow – I thought it might be a camera trick. I think this is probably Laird Hamilton doing the surfing – he’s a big wave tow-in hero.

Video & image from big-boys.com

I tried to install Redhat 9 about 9 times this evening. It installs fine, but like my video card or monitor. I’m not sure. The screen just blacks out once it boots up. It’s fine booting to the console, but I can’t get X running. Anyone who knows linux and has suggestions would be a great help. So, most of the night is done and I’m looking for something to finish working on, but now it’s too late…watch a movie? too late. Go to bed…too early? So I figure I’ll waste time surfing for a bit, looking over my shoulder checking out Hard Rain (terrible movie) until it is late enough to go to sleep. I should get some decent sleep tonight. Tomorrow is the playoffs for ultimate.