What a great triathlon this was! This was the third time at this event for Ahu and I. My brother Randy Sieg competed for the first time. This was also his first triathlon. We did the Sprint distance consisting of a 1⁄2 mile swim, 17 mile bike ride, and 5K run. Ahu and I both set personal records. I improved my swim by almost 3 minutes over last year and improved by bike time by almost 10 minutes, finishing the bike phase in less than an hour for the first time.

Along the lines of The Eight, this novel is a highly intellectual fictional rendering. All of the author’s books start off in Castilian Spanish and are translated to English by Sonia Soto. The author was formerly a Spanish journalist and has a rich knowledge of European history, music, literature, as well as geography and eccelesiastical facts. The Club Dumas is about rare books and 19th century serial fiction. There is an occult touch also which lends a slightly horrific turn to the story.

I found this movie to be very disturbing but an excellent movie nonetheless. It was disturbing in a different way than The House of Sand and Fog was. This time the bad feelings came from the treatment of the Polish Jews by the German soldiers. Its truly unsettling to see fellow humans treated like animals. It was a tragic time and the story is about a famous pianist who manages to survive the war.

This is book 10 in the Prey series. I enjoyed this one immensely. There are two “villains” in this novel, both of whom are women. You find out who they are right at the beginning and then the rest of the novel goes back and forth between the villain narrative and the Lucas Davenport narrative. Both are worthy adversaries. One of the women is truly an imaginative piece of work.

This was pretty good. Another book about a disease which almost wipes out the world. After you read enough of these, they get kind of old - virtually the same plot across the board. This one is slightly different in that it really delves into the vectors through which the pathogen is transmitted.

Another excellent Elvis Cole novel. This one has Elvis making a trip to New Orleans. Lots of interesting characters and very good humor.

I read a happy, yet aggravating, news item in the MIT Technology Review today. A drug company in China is putting a SARS vaccine into human trials this month. That’s right, they’ve already got a vaccine for SARS. Of course, it might not work, but considering SARS has only been around for maybe TWO years max, I think that’s pretty good. In fact, I bet the AIDS patients around the world who have HIV and have been waiting for a vaccine for TWENTY years are kind of ticked off.

Just an interesting aside… I had lunch today at Chipotle, which is quite normal. So did this other guy in front of me in the line. The guy is a rail, I mean, literally 130 lbs. at most and taller than me. He gets a Bol with rice and chicken and not a lot of rice. It was the wimpiest little Chipotle I’ve ever seen. Not even any no calorie flavor add-ins like onions, green peppers, and lettuce.

Tonight was the most incredible night of any Olympic Games I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen every Olympics since I was old enough to watch television. The Olympic Games were always on at my house. At every games I knew all the best athletes and tuned in for every special event. Tonight, I was not disappointed. The All-Round Men’s Gymnastics competition was amazing, truly amazing. All of the athletes were great and all of them had great moments.

Well, finally, after months and months of waiting, Doom 3 has finally been released. I received my copy from Amazon.com two days after the release date. I’ve played all of the previous incarnations of Doom, from the first release of Doom through Ultimate Doom, Doom 2, etc. I think I’ve played all of them through to the last level but no longer remember what’s what. This Doom is very, very much like the others, the first Doom, in particular.