From the MOM forums, Mainland Mart – a great source of underwater lighting and pumps.

* Adrian on PC video. The whole codec mess is astoundlingly bad. * Martin on Seattle Biodiesel. I think this is a brilliant move by Martin. * Phil on googlemaps. This kind of move seems like the way Google will really establish stickiness on the web - a bunch of sites are going to popup that just won’t work without Google. * And lots of Jobster news – John Connors joins board, Jobster acquires workzoo. The jobster team continues to impress. * John zagula on persuasive arguing

Just finished “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”:amazon. Good yarn, pretty classic mythology at play in the story. Certainly leaves you hungry for the next book as some huge issues are left dangling.

Per the pros, the Buckeyes have 7-1 odds of being the national champs, behind only USC.

OK I love the Buckeyes, but their line play was not all that strong last season, and per at least one ranking, they are not as strong as several of the other contenders in the Big10 this year. On either side of the line.

I have a hard time believing that the relative lack of line strength will result in the top finish in the Big 10, let alone the BCS.

* “Once An Eagle by Anton Myrer”:amazon. Had this on the shelf since reading Absolutely American. Purportedly one of the most popular novels at west point. A rousing tale following an infantryman from WW1 thru vietnam. Tends to glamorize military life and demonize all other careers, also denigrates spouses who don’t support the life fully. How do I feel about our armed forces after reading? A lot about honor in here but too much demonization of all other roles in society, and a little too much glorification of the warrior. * “Natural History by Justina Robson”:amazon. The old “encounter with alien artifact/culture which exposes the true nature of the universe” tale, but future potential variations of the human form and their attendant character implications are explored nicely. * “The Mill on the Floss”:amazon by Eliot. What great, fallible, deeply human characters. No supermen here, just people bumbling through life.

So had to relearn a bunch of cabin life skills from my youth over the last two weeks:

* Power and heat. where is the propane turn on for the cabin? for the stove? for the grill? How do I check propane supply? Who do we get propane from? * What is that munching sound in the wall? What do we do about it? * Securing a boat. Installing an engine lock, storing the gas can and gas line separately during our absence, hiding the kill switch. Not a deterrent to a determined thief but the casual thief will be frustrated. * Saltwater, 4-cycle engine maintenance. New to me, I grew up with 2-cycle Evinrudes. Flushing with fresh water, checking oil, spraying the engine to keep salt from getting a foothold. * Garbage disposal. The joys of hauling your own trash to the dump. As someone on the island said, the dump is the great equalizer, sooner or later everyone has to go there.

Back from two weeks of radio silence up on lopez island. Minor IT disasters on return – 3 power strips blown at home (can’t be a coincidence), one machine that forgot its hard disk config and was trying to boot off its 7200rpm data drive instead of the 10krpm raid0 array of system drives, and of course my web server had gone toes up for some reason (nothing in the logs??). All is well again.

I just installed Homenet Manager, a competitor to Network Magic (Ignition is an investor in). Man I feel great about Network Magic after this experience. Homenet Manager has lots of UI bugs, doesn’t let me know what is new on my network, and doesn’t seem to correctly share folders when I ask it to.

* A lot of Ignition faces at Gnomedex. Thanks to Clearsight, Intelligent Results, Cloudmark for nice swag and samples. And huge kudos to mfoundry for their efforts to get all the attendees using the mfoundry gnomedex app. * Not everyone could be there – notably the mpire guys were launching down at ebay live * Phil was there and he keeps improving berry411 – he showed me the ups tracking plugin. awesome. * Also phil found this cool jobs map, and jason at jobster had a good talk with john connors about the ceo playbook * Phil also points towards Bus Monster – wow, google is really becoming the platform for truly interesting apps. * Rich found this fascinating site that tracks our aircraft carriers. * Martin found a good blog on energy investing * John has posted one of his presentations on the marketing playbook as an mp3 or show. * And last, but definitely not least, check out adrian’s latest project – vacuum forming. I have to borrow this for halloween prop creation.

I’ve been intrigued forever by a couple of phrases that have entered the vocabulary and so I finally read:

* She by H. Rider Haggard. I’ve always wondered about the origin of “She-who-must-be-obeyed.” A classic adventure yarn with moments of brilliance. And who can pass on a book with a jacket blurb by Freud: “a strange book…full of hidden meaning.” * “Catch-22 by Joseph Heller”:amazon. I knew the reputation of this book, but I didn’t realize it was such extreme farce. A little offputting at first, but I got sucked in. And the last couple chapters really slam the book home for me, as some of the farcical elements are left behind and you are forced to confront the realities of war. A timely read.

Oh and some book pointers over on marginal revolution, always looking for more suggestions.

We have a WFR in the house now. Congrats. Totally cool program.

How can Dancing With The Stars be the #1 show on TV??? I can’t even identify the stars. I clearly am out of step with most of the country.

Interesting article in Sunday’s NY Times re Steve Case and areas of interest for healthcare investing:

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* Online reviews and rankings of doctors and hospitals. * Information and breaking news about medical ailments and treatments. * Software and tools that let people manage their medical records online. * Health “concierges” or “coaches” who help patients navigate the medical system. * Walk-in medical clinics where, say, in 15 minutes and for $39, you can discover whether your child has an ear infection.

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Near and dear to my heart.

Scott’s latest list of essential software – always some great gems in here.

Hit Tiger Mountain this morning for a hike. It is a nice area and incredibly convenient – maybe too convenient as it was quite crowded particularly at lower elevations, and the trails are pretty beat. But a gorgeous morning so I can’t complain.

Here’s my good morning video (3Meg), about 500 feet up from the trail head. And a little later on, on the backside of Tiger Mountain, walking and thinking about doughnuts (7Meg), the logical conclusion of any hike.