Goodbyes, Bug Fixes & Lance fever
Authored By Brian
Me? I went back to bed.
At 7:15 this morning I dragged myself out of bed to help my brother and father carry their bags downstairs and pack into a shuttle to Aeroperto Fiumcino. Today was their last day in Europe and now they’re headed back to their respective homes. Me? I went back to bed.
When I rose for the second time, a quick breakfast and I was off to the Internet café. I introduced a few bugs into a Pukka release before I left and hadn’t had the chance to fully address them. I narrowed it down to people trying to register when they already had an existing account. The sign up process was missing the pre-existing account check leading to a big “Oops!” error being displayed to the user at the final step. I fixed it and emailed the few people it affected to let them know everything was back to normal.
My biggest fear about these first few weeks was that something would go horribly wrong with Pukka and I wouldn’t even find out about it for a week, let alone fix it. 
Most Internet cafés are fairly stingy about letting me plug in a laptop and I can’t connect to my server without SSH and a VPN. Security is a bitch.
Having pushed the fixes live, I picked up my bags at the hotel and caught a taxi to my cousin’s office to pick up his keys. Graciously, he has offered to let me crash at his apartment on Via Rasella for a few nights before I leave for Madrid. Patrick is a good guy – very sociable, fun and laughs a lot. It’s Friday night so I suspect that we’ll go out and have a couple of drinks and watch the tourist melee.
I decided to take a break today, stay in and watch a little TV. The Tour de France is on something like three channels simultaneously. I have watched an incredible amount of live coverage over the past week and certainly more than I’ve ever paid attention to in the States simply because it actually happens during the day here. Lance and the USPS team are clearly at the top of their game. It’s like watching Schumacher and Ferrari dominate Formula 1 or Michael Jordan and the Bulls or insert any other legendary dynasty here. What I see is not just a bunch of great riders working together but an organization that gets the pre-race, race and post-race strategy and preparation at a totally different level. They research and review every turn of every stage and the rest of the peloton follows their pace and lead. It’s hard to lose when you’ve cornered the market on strategy. Go Lance!
