One of the holdovers from my time in Alaska is an appreciation of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. I covered it last year and will have another go when it starts this coming Saturday, March 1^st.

Coverage on the ‘Net is provided by the official site, the Anchorage Daily News site, and Iditablog. I’ve added an Iditarod header, which will come up randomly.

This year also marks the Centennial of the All Alaska Sweepstakes which is a $100,000 winner take all race from Nome to Candle and back, the first of the sled dog races. In Alaskan fashion the entry fee is $2000 + an ounce of gold.

Last year’s winner, Lance Mackey is back, having just won the Yukon Quest race for the fourth time, but he may ease up looking to prepare for the Sweepstakes, and not repeat the Yukon Quest/Iditarod double win of last year.

Also back is Rachael Scdoris, the legally blind musher from Bend, Oregon.

Two who won’t be back are Tim Osmar, who severely broke an ankle fighting a fire this past summer, and Doug Swingley, who decided to retire after multiple broken bones in last year’s race.

The trail has had to be moved again because of climate change, but conditions are described as good with snow on the course of this year’s race.

Via MSNBC, the Associated Press reports: Microsoft Hotmail still down for some

SEATTLE – An undisclosed technical glitch blocked users from logging on to Microsoft Corp.’s free Web-based e-mail service and other sites Tuesday.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)

After several hours, the software maker was able to reduce but not completely fix the problem that left Web surfers around the world unable to access Hotmail and other services that require a Microsoft login. Those include the Xbox Live video game community site and the Windows Live Messenger instant messaging program.

This is the problem of relying on a single vendor for all of your IT services, if they have a problem you are dead in the water. MS has been promoting their “passport” service, where everything flows through their servers to give you access to everything else. If you have a web-based business you could end up paying people to sit around all day because of a broken pipe in a server building. This is how “free” services become very expensive.

From the Miami Herald: Alvarez: No ‘criminal activity’ in power failure

Power outages cascaded through much of South Florida and many other parts of Florida Tuesday, causing major disruptions for millions of people around the region and the state.
…

Both nuclear reactors at FPL’s Turkey Point’s tripped off unexpectedly Tuesday — taking a plant that supplies power to more than 450,000 homes almost instantly off-line — though it wasn’t immediately clear what triggered the automatic shutdowns.

“We have reports that the nuclear unit scrammed [experienced unexpected shut downs], but we do not why at this point,” said Ken Clark, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s regional office in Atlanta.

[Read more →]

Some people would have used this picture, but that would be tacky, offensive, and Republican, so I didn’t, even though it was dropped in my lap by I Can Has Cheezburger?.

The main reason is that I am no longer part of the kindergarten campaign season that skippy, Frederick, and Dave are talking about. With McCain’s campaign finance problems and the schoolyard garbage on the other side, this will probably be one of the lowest turn out elections ever. The scary part is we may end up with President Ralph.