Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Inconsistent Behaviour

I was helping to troubleshoot a problem with HttpWebRequest where a cookie came from the server but wasn't going back to the server.

The server (say www.foo.com) sends the cookie in the header of the response with attribute domain=www.foo.com. The .Net cookie class interprets this according to RFC 2965 and adds a period (dot) in front of the domain. So when we try to get the cookies for www.foo.com this cookie is not included. Specifying something like

myCookieContainer.GetCookies(new Uri("http://a.www.foo.com")

works though.

The way I understand the RFC is that the domain should be foo.com instead of www.foo.com. However both IE and Firefox accepts this and sends the cookie back so no web server developer or tester would ever pick this up because the major browser works.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

White Rock Road Race

I volunteered as a driver for the White Rock road race. I got to drive an SUV carrying about 20 wheels in case somebody has a flat. I got assigned the men's race which was longer and tactically more sophisticated then the women's as it turns out.

At the starting line we were trapped behind the women's group which was supposed to start 5 minutes after the men. Of course there was a bit of a delay so after they started I have to push the car hard to overtake the women and chase back to the men's group. Due to logistics I did not get hold of the car until the morning of so trying to drive hard a new car is quite stressful.

The course has 2 sections, the loop up Columbia/Victoria and the Magdalene Ave switch-back. The Magadalene section is tricky because of all the lefts and rights. Driving the course the first time in a unfamiliar car is definitely not the way to do it in the first lap of the race. Anyways after a error or two we caught the group on the downhill after Magdalene section so things were turning normal after that.

In terms of work we have 2 flats. The 2nd flat was in a very awkward spot where the road is used 2-way. Once my car stops, cyclists behind me have very little room to pass me. Luckily there were no crashes nor much oncoming traffic from the women's peloton. Here is a view of the 2nd flat taken from the women's lead car:

The view from car is great. I got a race radio and can listen and communicate to the commissaires which were covering the race in front and at the back. I can see the whole pack riding and can listen to the progress of the breakaway group. It is like having the legs to follow these cat one or cat two riders and watching the whole race develop in front of my eyes.

The race itself is exciting as well. There was a breakaway of 4 riders for a few laps. The gap was at one point almost 3 minutes before Symmetrics and Jittery Joe decided to pull them back. At the last long lap Chris Horner decided to attack at the Magdalene switchback, the whole peloton then got shattered. Then when they do the short laps the tempo keeps going up and more and more people got dropped. At the end Chris dropped everybody else and claimed victory.

It was a fun thing to do and gives a lowlife racer like me a chance to contribute in Superweek. I would definitely do this again.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

3 good weeks followed by...

All good things have to come to an end. :-(

Firstly it was some work related stuff that delayed my departure to make it to the Thursday night crit. That wasn't all bad as I took the opportunity to do some intervals and it was by far the hardest I have done all year.
That however leads into Friday: the schedule says do some time-trial pace intervals. My legs were dead. I have a day off and decided to sleep in instead.

So the delay pushed the time-trial pace intervals to Saturday before the club ride. It was raining lightly off and on and there were wet patches on the road. To save time I did the Chicks TT route. I was not doing too well. I was not pushing too hard when I hit the downhill portion of 16th towards Imperial Ave. I was thinking that I had a good line turning right when the rear wheel slipped. Immediately the bike was traveling sideways. I did a baseball slide at about 35kph on Asphalt. When I got up there was a car right behind me. The driver kindly offered to take me home and pointed out my right thigh/bum area is badly injured. I then realized that my shorts are ripped and I was bleeding. I decided to ride home slowly as my bike was fine as it probably will be better for me to keep the muscles moving.

When I got home I assessed the damage: right shifter was bent in - easy fix. Scrapes to right pedal and shifter. Most cuts to handlebar wrap. A couple of some bumps and bruises and one big skin abrasion about 4 inches by 4 inches. I was not bleeding a lot. I have been leaking fluid out of the wound for 2-3 days and it is finally coming to and end. Hopefully I can start training again in a day or two when the motion of thigh moving up and down does not cause a lot of pain and the skin has healed up enough.

The odd thing I still cannot explain is why the rear wheel slipped. I was well into the turn when it slipped. I was on my hoods implying more weight was on the rear wheel. So wetness should not be the explanation. More likely I hit a slippery patch or sand.
 
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