WERBLOG

The Scobleizer Weblog – wish I had grabbed one of these in the lobby of 42 the other day…

Don’t have time to read now but this looks fascinating – Federal Reserve paper on ATM and Debit Card industry. Thanks Scott for pointer.

Tasting Menu

Been reading thru a bunch of guidebooks on France. The Lonely Planet series seems to resonate the most with me – good detail, very evocative, seems to talk about the things I want to hear about – a good mix of typical touristy stuff plus some outdoors activities. The Michelin guides are certainly detailed but I don’t know, everything starts to blur together, not evocative at all. They might be the guides to carry around tho.

I’ve been doing the math in my head this weekend and here is some confirmation – ESPN.com - NCF - Road to the BCS – if OSU can pass LSU in the polls, it is likely OSU can leapfrop USC in the BCS standings. Since USC has a weak schedule going forward, and LSU has a tough schedule, this seems like OSU’s best shot at the championship game. Of course there is the detail of OSU winning out against Purdue and Michigan.

Source for quiet pcs and parts.

ABCSports.com - BCS Rankings Week 4 – OSU is #3, 1.5 points back of USC. Going to be tough to make up. USC has a weak schedule going forward – if SC doesn’t lose, OSU needs a) LSU to lose so that OSU can move up in the polls and get a point back, b) WSU to lose – maybe in the Apple Cup? – thus eliminating the quality win bonus for USC, and c) an improvement in its own strength of sched versus USC, some of which will happen. Going to be close. Assuming of course OSU wins out.

Having fun over on fanblogs arguing with a real dedicated Louisiana fan – Latest BCS Rankings. Amazing how much data the census department provides – the school spending data is amazing – look at the spread across the country in figure 4 – an over 2x difference between the big spending states (NY) and the bottom (UT). Now some of this is just cost of living probably but a dramatic difference nevertheless.

And to the point – Ohio outspends Louisiana per student by a wide margin.

ICUBE - Innovation Information Interaction – thanks to michael for the pointer.

Just finished The Da Vinci Code. It’s a fine airplane or beach read – but what is all the excitement about? The puzzles are lame, the action is easily beat by about 50 other authors in the action category, it is not impressively deep in terms of literary or historical references, the characters are not amazing. It’s a fine overall package but not worth all the fuss. Do people really think the theme (a deep dark conspiracy within the church) is that amazing? Seemed like an old story to me.

I’ve been wretling with a Dell portable this month that has had intermittent network access problems. I finally hit on a solution kind of randomly and the Dell support forums suggest that maybe it is the fault of the Internet Connection Wizard – Re: Inspiron 8500 – disabling Network Bridge - Inspiron - Network - Dell Community Forum – hard to believe but something clearly did establish a bridge on this machine and it has made networking unreliable. Why would I ever want to bridge networks on my laptop – sure I supposed there is a geek reason to do it, but why would a “wizard” ever leave me in this config?

Tong Family Blog: DVD Playback on your PC – rich found winDVD and PowerDVD to be the winners some months ago, a quick survey of the web doesn’t indicate much has changed. I am having trouble with stutter on a Celeron 2ghz, intel Xtreme Graphics oem chipset, 1.25Gig of ram machine. When using PowerDVD, watching Sopranos season 1. I’m wondering if this is a problem with PowerDVD and if windvd is a better performance product, or if I need to upgrade to a faster processer or gpu.

Bought a PC yesterday at PC Club - Where Computer Professionals Go-- a mini-ITX form factor box. Right across the street from a CompUSA which I also shopped at. Wow the experience between the two was so different.

At PC Club, the store is a little cr@phole of a store in a strip mall. Spartan interior with gear just laying around everywhere. Handwritten signs everywhere. The staff ignored me until I cornered one. And then they knew exactly what I was talking about and had me out the door in 10 minutes with my purchase.

The CompUSA was the standard glossy CompUSA. Tons of inventory. The staff descended on me. One guy claimed me as his and helped me find the monitor I needed. (I had been in earlier in the day and had asked for mini-ITX systems and gotten a blank look. In fact tho they had two different ones in stock). The guy pushed me hard to get an extended warranty, cutting prices on some minor items I bought, and in fact booking some of my purchase as an extended warranty on speakers – he was trying to win some in-store contest. And checkout took FOREVER because he drug me over to the business center checkout, away from the regular retail checkout, again to win some stupid instore contest. A painful experience.

Great guy. Very insightful views on the next challenges for OSes. I wonder what he is working on these days – hmm – New Longhorn Graphics Tool Called “Flashkiller”