So here at the end of summer, sure it is a beautiful day today, but you know that is only masking the deep corruption all around us. Winter is coming, time to buckle up.

* “Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church”:amazon by Jason Berry. I’m not a Catholic but love the idea of peeking inside this institution. Corruption, internal schisms, pedophiles, coverups, and more seem to abound within the church – the lack of transparency and the lack of justice within church procedures is notable. But I gave up on the book. A) the author clearly has an axe to grind and there is no balance, I am sure there are great people within the church who do a lot of good, and who fight the corruption, but you wouldn’t know it by this book. B) the narrative wanders and stumbles and ultimately bores, the author loses track of the point he is trying to make. Amazon says 4.5 stars, “Goodreads says 3”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10000761-render-unto-rome, I am 2 stars at most. Maybe if I was Catholic I would find this more fascinating.

* “White Coat, Black Hat”:amazon by Carl Elliott. A very well written anecdotal examination of the money swirling through the healthcare system, largely coming from big pharma. MDs, researchers, research institutions, oversight boards, test subjects, media companies, PR/advertising firms, even bioethicists – they all have all four feet and their snout in the trough of big pharma, no one is unbiased. Depressing. Trust no one. Amazon says 4.5 stars, “Goodreads says 3.6”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8355649-white-coat-black-hat, this is a very good book, 4.5 stars from me. Nothing prescriptive in the book, just a book to get you pissed off. * Not pissed off enough? Try “Griftopia”:amazon by Mat Taibbi. A vicious look at the mortgage/financial meltdown of the last several years, and just how the major financial firms manipulated society and government to screw all of us. Not a balanced work at all, the author is in full attack mode. This sometimes detracts from the tale – calling Greenspan names, page after page, is wearing and a little sophomoric – but there is enough meat here to get you really pissed off. I’m putting all our money in chests and burying it, that is the only way to keep it away from the greedy crooks out there. “Goodreads says 4.25 stars”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7897556-griftopia, Amazon says 4.5, this is super entertaining, I’d give it a 4.5. * “How Judges Think”:amazon by Richard A. Posner. Only part way through and may give up. I foolishly thought that this book would tell me how judges think. And thus would be a lot of interview-driven, anecdotal stories. However it is a very theoretical discussion of models of how judges behave, and a discussion of what might cause these motivations, written by a judge. All I really get out of this is how one federal judge, the author, thinks. And he seems to be good at splitting fine hairs (not surprising), and that judges are a bit self-important. So I leave modestly frustrated, not really enlightened, and only modestly more cynical about judges. Amazon gives 4.5 stars, “Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2836459-how-judges-think 3.64, I’d have to say a 3.

Some interesting commentary on “Google’s business model by Gruber”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/08/23/swartz-google-evil – a total Apple fan, doesn’t view ads as inherently evil, but says you need to be very respectful of your users. And referring to “an original article by Aaron Swartz”:http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googevil who says you can’t make things worse for users just to make money.

I don’t know what evil is when applied to technology business models. I do know that I feel very comfortable with my Apple transactions – they ask me for a lot of money, in return they give me a product that is mine to own completely. They give me the option of signing up for services for more money, services where they keep data about me, but it is up to me. It feels like a transparent and respectful model. Similarly, I feel good about my Microsoft transactions – they ask me for money, in return I get a software or hardware product that is mine to do what I want with (excluding Bing which I rarely use, and excluding some of their new online service offerings).

I feel somewhat less good about my Google relationship. I do like and use their products. But the fact that they are “free” is bothering, I know that Google is making money off me somehow, but there is very little transparency around it. Who is looking at my data, what are they paying for it, are there certain things I do that are very high value, are there people using info about me that I would rather not, ?

I don’t know any of this and it makes me kind of queasy. Enough to abandon products that are actually useful? Well not yet – and for search,it is not like there are alternatives that are more respectful of me. But I can’t imagine ever having the kind of respect for and attachment to Google products that I have to products from companies with more straightforward business models.

I am glad that the NFL has allowed Terrelle to pursue his career and wish him the best of luck. But man did the NFL and NCAA step in it big time as “CBS blogger Mike Freeman notes”:http://mike-freeman.blogs.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/6264363/31396933. By enforcing these arbitrary NCAA rules, the NFL has made it clear that it is fully cooperating with the NCAA to establish and control the labor market for football players. These two organizations have always claimed in the past that they are separate, it is hard to maintain that fiction. There is clear collaboration to limit the opportunities for 18-21 year olds, and no representation of these players in the system at all.

So our first trip ever to Denver for 3 days of shopping and household set up. A whirlwind trip.

I’m struggling to synthesize Denver. It is different than I expected, feels much more like the midwest or Texas than the West Coast – I guess not surprising when you look at a map. What is the soul of Denver, the essence of Denver? Searching for either of these on Google is unrewarding. What is Denver if you strip away all the chain stores, the national brands, the generic architecture? Not that Denver has any more of these than any other city, I just want to understand what is unique about Denver. Everyone I’ve ever met from Denver loves it, what is it they love?

I’m left with two impressions. One, the extensive brick architecture against the unending blue sky. You don’t get either one of these in Seattle, you don’t get the brickwork really anywhere on the west coast. Obviously Denver is not quake country. And Seattle’s skies are famously gray, and so often obstructed by trees, by hills, by architecture. Denver’s sky is big and blue and overpowering at times.

Two, the great little neighborhood taverns in every neighborhood. We ate at great places in Edgewater and other near western neighborhoods, we saw dozens of other great places. It felt like there were more of these, and more small neighborhood commercial centers, than we have in Seattle. Maybe they are just more reachable – the flat open layout of Denver makes it easy to zip around, in contrast to the water/bridge constrained layout of Seattle.

Nice time. I’d like to see more and I am sure I will over the next couple years.

OK so I am out of the business of doing a huge Halloween setup. For probably 10 years we did a monster setup with 4-5 fog systems including a yard-wide water-based system, 5-6 sound systems, many many tombstones, pneumatic props, mechanical props, voice modification boxes, 5-6 thunder and lightning set ups, a bunch of skeletons, and on and on. We had as many as 400 visitors on a night, just super amounts of fun. We would tone down the displays early in the evening so that the little ones would approach the house – but we still had a number who just would not come up the driveway. We also gave out a lot of candy because, well, if you made it to our door, you earned it. Great times but we’ve moved on, for now anyway. (Well I do have two storage pods full of gear that I need to resolve. If you’d like to buy one full of Halloween crap sight unseen, let me know).

So no big display this year. But may do something small. If I do just one thing, it might be “Hallowindow”:http://www.hallowindow.com/. The videos are awesome and we have some large windows. I admit I do get sucked into sites like “Monster Guts”:http://monsterguts.com/index.php – a great selection of prop supplies. But I will resist. Oh and I love these awesome light fixtures from “Schoolhouse Electric”:http://design-milk.com/schoolhouse-electric-table-lamps/ – A steampunk, mad scientist vibe.

See this is the problem, I say I am going to do a limited thing, and before I know it I have planned out a whole scene and purchased another storage pod full of stuff. Slippery slope.

With “conference realignment furor in full swing again”:http://www.alongtheolentangy.com/2011/8/11/2358636/texas-a-m-to-sec-roaring-expansion-tidal-wave-imminent, I have to wonder why no one has harnessed the fan and media interest for good effect. If I was running a large conference – I wouldn’t have static divisions, but I’d rebalance every year in the middle of the offseason. Yes it could be a scheduling pain in the ass but we have software to manage that. The key point is to create a positive planned offseason media event that fans could look forward to and that would create some valuable media content – a full week of BTN or other network shows could be built around the realignment announcement and discussion. Realignment across conferences would be even more fun but is politically contentious.

It is dumb to not tap into the fan interest around alignment, the schools are leaving money on the table. And to be a little manipulative – better to have the press focusing on positive topics like realignment during the offseason, rather than digging around for scandals.

* “Soluto”:http://www.soluto.com. Soluto seems right up my alley – focused on simple common frustrations that we all have, promises to save me time. Install is a breeze and I really like the super sparse interface – such a difference from the overcomplicated software from Norton, etc. The software feels very light and the interface reinforces the promise of simplicity. And it does seem to make tuning up boot time simple, it pretty accurately understood all my boot processes and gave me reasonable suggestions. It’s browser diagnosis was less helpful, it found very little in Chrome to improve, and it didn’t look at my firefox install at all. Not sure why. Anyway, worth a trial and I will be interested to see how they go. A challenge they will have is getting users to pay – solving my boot speed issues is nice, but I only need to do that once and I have no enduring reason to keep on running the software – and thus am not going to pay much for it. They need to figure out a way to deliver me value every day. The only guys in the utility space that have done this are the virus/malware protection guys, who have latched onto consumer fear (and probably stoke that fear).

* “Splunk Python interface”:http://pypi.python.org/pypi/splunk-sdk/0.1.0. Really curious to play with this (disclosure, Ignition is an investor in splunk). I hadn’t installed splunk in a while, installs super simply on Mac and Win. and wow what a firehose of info you get from Splunk about your system. Next up, tie to python and try to write some simple scripts. A lot to play with here.

* “Calculize”:http://calculize.com/. Kind of like Matlab, in the browser. Might be useful. at times.

* “Keymando”:http://keymando.com/. Love the idea of hotkey utilities but I always seem to drift away from them. Because I can never keep them in sync across all my machines. And so I will probably never install this. But noted here in case I try.

* “timely.is”:http://timely.is/#/. Rand likes it which is a good sign. If I cared about readership and impact of my tweets I think I would certainly give this a whirl.

* “Onswipe”:http://onswipe.com/. This seemed really cool, but I thought it was basically a wordpress theme. It isn’t tho, it grabs your wordpress data and puts it behidn a new url. and it seems to be dependent on categories which I don’t use. so I will wait.

UPDATE: nice simple tip from the Keymando guys – use Git or Dropbox to keep Keymando settings in sync across multiple machines. This is a simple obvious brilliant thing I should do in general for my work and home Macs.

A bag of stuff I’ve read recently that was compelling:

* “Coffee as economic health indicator”:http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/05/coffee_as_city.html. Yay Seattle! Contrast with… * “World Class Orchestras”:http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/24/how-to-save-cleveland * “McKean’s Inversion”:http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/08/11/mckeans-inversion/. Whatever you publicly espouse to be – you probably aren’t. * “Wicked Problems”:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/wicked-1.html. * “A one page explanation of the Higgs boson”:http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2011/07/26/the-higgs-boson-a-one-page-explanation/ * On the lighter side, “Bacon Ipsum”:http://design-milk.com/bacon-ipsum/.

Kirk Cousins, the returning MSU QB, got all kinds of kudos over the last week for his nice speech about what a privilege it is to play college football, but I am underwhelmed. As others point out – “Kirk Cousins and Privilege”:http://www.elevenwarriors.com/2011/08/kirk-cousins-privledge – Kirk is letting himself be used by the monied powers in the system to protect their interests. The schools, the NCAA, the media companies are making billions of dollars off of college sports, and throwing peanuts to the players. And the players don’t even have a voice in the system – maybe the players would vote to spend all the proceeds from their sports on non-revenue sports, on university facilities, on salaries for university staffers, etc – but shouldn’t they at least have a say? Kirk, being part of a football team at a good college is a great experience, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are being used.

Frank Deford says it well – “Frank Deford on amateurism”:http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138919312/ncaa-still-stalled-by-amateur-hour-thinking. The time has come to abandon the amateurism requirement for college athletes in the revenue sports. A family friend made this same argument to me today in an email, I am all for it.

Other college football reading today – “Bodog season win total odds”:http://sports.bodog.eu/sports-betting/college-football-team-props.jsp (hattip @darrenrovell). OSU and Wisconsin both at 9. I’d take the over on both.

* “Robopocalypse”:amazon by Daniel Wilson. Zombie robots rise up and attack humanity. Ok but many better zombie apocalypse books out there. * “Wild Cards I”:amazon, Ed. George R. R. Martin. Noir-ish x-men, with the significant inclusion of all the unfortunate people with less-than-useful mutations – uncontrollable sliming, terrible disfigurements, lethal mutations. Obbviously a lot like it, since a jillion more books have followed. Just ok. * “Leviathan Wakes”:amazon by James S. A. Corey. Solar-system-spanning conspiracies and war, fun stuff. No terribly new frontiers but quality space opera.

Oh and here is “NPR’s list”:http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139248590/top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books of the top 100 SF/Fantasy books or series. Can’t agree with it all but a not unreasonable reading list.

Thank goodness that tickets arrived in the mail today! We can get back to playing football and enjoying the games, and quit focusing on all the activity off the field.

Despite all the offseason turmoil, or maybe because of it, I am actually looking forward to this season quite a bit. There is an uncertainty about OSU this season that has been lacking in recent years. Key positions are major question marks. A new coaching philosophy will be in play. That School Up North has a new staff and some new life. The entry of Nebraska into the league is great news, I would love to get to the OSU/Nebraska game this year. The divisional lineup of the Big10 is a new element. It all adds up to an exciting season.

OSU’s home schedule is interesting, tho not great. Nebraska and Michigan are away which is too bad. But Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State at home are great games.

No idea which games we are going to get to. Our schedule is very complex this late summer and fall. But hope to see some of you there…

I’ve got thousands of feet of spare cables. Cat 5, 5e, 6. Coax. Digital audio – copper and optical. Video with all flavors of DVI, HDMI, and older connectors. S-video. Component. HDMI. USB. FireWire. Audio. Speaker wire. Microphone cables. DMX512. AC power cables of all sorts – grounded, ungrounded, extension cords. DC power supplies and cables in many varieties.

And bags of converters of all types. Audio. Video. Male-to-female. Female-female. Splitters. Joiners. You name it.

With all these cables and converters, I needed storage solutions just for them. Bins, racks, etc. And I had to keep it all ordered so I could find stuff.

I am throwing it all out. Moving to a JIT system for cables – I’ll buy what i need on the fly. Because having a massive inventory of spares has never saved me a trip to Fry’s or a Newegg rush order. I always need the one connector I don’t have.

I love the fact that my Beats earbuds never tangle in my pocket due to their ribbon cable design. Ok they tangle a little but like one millionth the tangle frustration of typical buds.

But dammit, the in-ear gel plugs pop off constantly and get lost.

Speculation: the tangling of the cord actually protects and secures the removable gel plugs. Mathematicians, get on this one. (Or alternatively - the gel plugs actually attract the cable and encourage tangling, this seems less likely.)

And if so, then earbuds actually conform to a universal law. The sum of tangle frustration and lost plug frustration is constant. The greater the tangling, the less likely you are to lose the plugs. The more plugs you lose, the less tangling you get.

* “How to unhide your Library in Lion”:http://tidbits.com/article/12306?rss – chflags nohidden ~/Library. Yay. * “Making desktop web apps with Automator”:http://ihnatko.com/2011/07/22/making-desktop-webapps-in-lion/. All kinds of goodness in here. * “BBEdit 10 is out”:http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit10.html. Purchased. * “Marked”:http://markedapp.com/ seems like a super useful companion to BBEdit. * “Billguard is now free-er”:http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/07/billguard.html.

* “Worth Dying For”:amazon by Lee Childs. Latest Reacher tale, he is in fine form cleaning up a Nebraska county. Like most Reacher fans, I am unenthused with “Cruise as Reacher”:http://screenrant.com/tom-cruise-jack-reacher-one-shot-sandy-123854/ but glad that the books are getting to the screen. 4 stars on Amazon. “3.93 on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8357992-worth-dying-for, this is a good Reacher tale. * “The Boy at the End of the World”:amazon by Greg Van Eekhout. Good tale of a lone boy in a post-apocalyptic world. A very quick read, a young-adult title. 4.5 stars on Amazon, “4.35 on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9580832-the-boy-at-the-end-of-the-world, those are some high marks. I might not go quite that far but it is a solid book. * “Deadline”:amazon by Mira Grant. Not quite the emotional kick of the first in the series about post-zombie-apocalypse America, but still quite good as the conspiracy deepens. Looking forward very much to the final book. “4.36 stars on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8429687-deadline, 4.5 on Amazon, this is quite a good series. * “Buried Prey”:amazon by John Sandford. Nth in a series about a Minneapolis detective. Nicely done, the relationships between police and press are distinctive. I’d read more in the series. 4.5 stars on Amazon, “4.08 on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9440448-buried-prey, clearly a good series. * “A Dance With Dragons”:amazon by George R R Martin. This book has generated lots of complaining about its perceived failure to advance main plot lines, and expansion of character set. I prefer to embrace the messiness and incompleteness of the author’s world. This series is not going to be tied up neatly with a bow, there is no happy reunion party in the Shire awaiting us. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and await the next with great anticipation. And looking forward to season 2 on HBO! “4.18 stars on Goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2782553-a-dance-with-dragons, just 3 on Amazon, I am a 4-star. * “7th Sigma”:amazon by Steven Gould. A retelling of Kim in a near future American Southwest ravaged by rogue nanotechnology. Fun tho characterization is pretty thin. “3.36 on goodreads”:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10136180-7th-sigma, 4.5 stars on Amazon (tho very thinly reviewed).