We’re usually advised to avoid burning our bridges, to keep our options open, to retain the possibility of return. Years back, I met a guy who was once ranked the 134th mens tennis player in the world. He kept his options open. He left professional tennis to become a lawyer.

We’re not advised that once we have burnt our bridges; then we are truly committed, that the only way out is to see the task through. If you mean to be the best of the best, then you may need to burn some bridges.

Floyd Landis burnt his bridges early in Stage 17. He sent his team to the front to drive the pace. And when his team was spent, he drove the pace himself. He knew that he cracked the day before. But he made the commitment to either pull himself back into the Tour or completely blow up trying.

Like everyone else, I thought that Floyd Landis has lost the Tour when Landis cracked in stage 16. He was eight minutes behind the yellow jersey and the Alps had seemingly exposed Landis and Phonak as pretenders in this years Tour. I was waiting for the fat lady to sing.

But Landis proved me wrong with a once in a lifetime ride in stage 17. He’s back in the thick of things - third place and 30 seconds behind the yellow jersey.

Between Lance’s retirement, the World Cup, and the ranks of the Tour contenders being shredded by doping allegations; this year’s Tour had fallen under my radar. But yesterday’s ride by Landis has lured me in and I’m following the Tour to the end.

Congratulations to the Azzurri, the 4 time World Champions in a shootout. They opened the door for Les Bleus when Zidane converted a penalty kick in the 7th minute, but tied it up on a header by Materazzi off a corner in the 19th minute. And the score was still tied after 120 minutes.

I was rooting for Les Bleus right up to the Zidane headbutt, when the match suddenly deflated for me. After that, I was just rooting for a score to keep it from going to penalty kicks.

It was a bit more work than it should have been, but I have successfully claimed my feed at Bloglines. The Bloglines claim process requires that you add an html comment to your page template and to your feed [via a post]. Modifying the page template was easy, but adding the comment to my feed was a little bit harder.

Simply adding a comment to a post created an html encoded comment in my feed. And Bloglines wasn’t accepting the encoded comment. It was easy enough to edit my static Radio Userland feed to include the un-encoded comment, but my dynamic Textpattern feed was a bit harder. I decided that the easiest solution was to temporarily create a static feed with the required comment.

Which means that I can now welcome readers of my old feed at Bloglines to my new Textpattern driven blog.

I didn’t think that the old men had it left in them. There was some magic left in Zidane’s feet, the Brazilian attack disappeared at the worst possible time, and Les Bleus win in a 1-0 upset over Brazil.

I was hoping for something better after enduring Portugal’s 0-0 penalty shoot-out victory over England. And France-Brazil delivered.

Michael Mahemoff drops a line to asks how my html sanitization code handles input like:

1
2

<a href="javascript:evilfunc();">
<a href="http://google.com" onmouseover="evilfunc()">

I think that the routine acquits itself pretty well. First, these exploits depend upon the existence of an evilfunc in the containing page. So you would need to either manually include the evilfunc in the page or explicitly allow the script tag in the sanitize_html options.

In addition, sanitize_html allows you to specify both the allowed tags and the allowed tag attributes. So you would have to allow the onmouseover attribute for the second exploit to survive the sanitization process.

The Cap Giveth and the Cap Taketh Away

So just when does the cap start giving. Last year the Avs let Forsberg go. And now the Avs trade Alex Tanguay to Calgary.

I understand that the NHL needs to have the cap. But I’m just waiting for cap to start hurting the competition as badly as it hurts the Avalanche.

One point and two goals - pretty clear evidence that US Soccer was out of its league at the 2006 World Cup. There are plenty of excuses: We were in a tough group with Italy, Czech Republic and Ghana. And we had the bad luck to play the Czechs first; before fatigue, injury and cards cut them down to size. But when you looked at the play on the pitch, there was no question that US Soccer was outclassed.

Now, it’s back to the drawing board. It’s four long years before we can prove that we deserve to be on the World Cup pitch.

A big game for US Soccer against Ghana tomorrow. The opening round 3-0 loss put the US in a big hole, but they can still pull through with a big win against Ghana. I don’t think that there is any chance of scoring enough goals to control their own destiny, but I think Italy will beat the Czechs to make that concern moot.

It’s time to put up or shut up, and I think that US Soccer isn’t done talking yet.

I thought that the Stanley Cup Finals were done when the Oilers dominated the start of game 1, only to lose both the game and their goaltender. The Hurricanes going up 3-1 with a chance to take the Cup at home only reinforced that thought.

But the Oilers proved me wrong. After a tough win on the road and a dominating win at home, they forced game 7 in North Carolina. If the Oilers power play can extend the success of game 6 into game 7, then I like their chances.