Free At Last, Free At Last!

Ok, so I haven't blogged in a few weeks, many things going on with the end of busy season, but now the end is here, and holidays will soon be taken. So much has taken place in the past few weeks, where do I begin?

Well, Monday I was in the Suffolk office to meet with a client, and on my way back to Norfolk, I hear on the radio that there's been a shooting at Virginia Tech. This was around 11 or so, and they didn't have many details yet. I get back to the Norfolk office to find out that 32 people have been killed, and the gunman killed himself before police could apprehend him. I was in utter shock, as I think most people were. This massacre now surpasses the famous Texas tower sniper, Charles Whitman, who in 1966 took up post in a tower on UT-Austin's campus and killed 16 people before police finally stormed the tower and killed him.

I don't even know what to say...this appears to be a colossal clusterfuck on the part of the VT administration. This guy had a history of problems at the school, but this all seemed to get lost in the shuffle. Had the police reacted quicker, only two people might have been killed. But VT cops, or Hokie Smokies in the vernacular, are not equipped to handle such situations, apparently. They're probably better suited to handling unruly fans at sporting events, and breaking up the occasional party in the dorm. I thought 9/11 brought everyone to their senses about this sort of stuff, but apparently memories are short.

In lighter news, I have really been enjoying the past few race weekends. While watching the St. Petersburg Grand Prix on a Canadian satellite feed, I was treated to hearing Kosuke Matsuura say how "fucking disappointed" he was that he wrecked early on. Woohoo for no 7 second delay! Of course, we paid for it later on in the day when the dish crapped out and we were forced to resort to live timing and scoring on indycar.com. I wish we hadn't lost the dish, we could watch IRL, F1 and Champ Car on American cable, but now we lose all the good NHL playoff coverage! Arrrrrgh!

Speaking of F1, how about that Lewis Hamilton? Capturing the pole at Bahrain, he still ended up finishing second after Felipe Massa, who had the pole at Sepang, but ran off the track after a psyche out by Hamilton. Kimi did well and finished third, but Mr. Hamilton is on fire. I think he'll win a race before the season is out.

In ChampCar news, Sebastian Bourdais is back on top over his disappointing wipeout at Vegas, winning the Long Beach GP. ChampCar is now on ESPN and NBC, as opposed to being solely on SPEED, which is a step up. Hopefully, this will be a boost for open wheel racing vs. the N word. IRL is on both ABC and ESPN and gets higher ratings. Maybe one day those two will kiss and make up and we'll have one open wheel series again.

Now that busy season is over, I'm going on Her's Majesty Social Service for the next month. There will still be blog entries, hopefully more than in the past few weeks, for all those who have nothing better to do with their time than read.