One total winner in this group, and the others are reasonable as well.

* “The Family Trade”:amazon by Charles Stross. A fine alternate worlds tale from Stross, nice to see the obvious use of world tripping explored – crime. Amazon gives 3.5 stars, and the series doesn’t seem to improve from there, but I found it engaging. Even so-so Stross is better than 9/10s of the dreck in the science fiction section * “Classic British Literature: Works of G.K. Chesterton”:amazon by G.K. Chesterton. The Father Brown stories are very engaging mysteries with a nice central character. Yes this is all very dated material but enjoyable. * “The Tourist”:amazon by Olen Steinhauer. Excellent tale of a CIA agent dealing with betrayal at many levels and his own secrets. Much more intriguing than your typical espionage tale, tho not so obscure as LeCarre. Emotionally crushing ending. Amazon says 4 stars, I might go 4.5

* “It is my bet you will see a physically dominant performance by Jeff Byers and his crew, and they will lead USC to a lopsided USC win.” via WeAreSC.com - Hogue Report: SJSU edition * “Song Girl Monday”:http://www.trojanwire.com/football/song-girl-monday-9709.php. Why would you think to throw your cheerleaders in water to get their pictures? There is just no morality in Southern California. OSU has to win just to protect the moral fiber of America. * “SC line back at full strength?”:http://www.ocregister.com/articles/practice-state-dowd-2555273-play-carroll. Maybe.

Oh boy. Here is your reading list – know your enemy!

* “LA Times”:http://www.latimes.com/sports/college/usc/. * “OC Register”:http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/sections/sports/usc/ and “its USC blog”:http://usc.freedomblogging.com/ * “TrojanWire”:http://www.trojanwire.com/. Another usc blog * “Reggie Bush’s Twitter Feed”:http://twitter.com/reggie_bush. Just to annoy you. * “Pete’s website”:http://www.petecarroll.com/ to further annoy you * “Pete’s Twitter Feed”:http://twitter.com/petecarroll.

• I used Shazam to discover Hooked On A Feeling by Blue Swede #shazam #
• Wondering if possible to see all 120 FBS teams play this fall (on TV). #
• 711am, iPhone 3gs at 93% battery after 15 mins of use. At this rate will have to recharge 4+ times before bed. #
• Where to hike in Central Ohio? Mohican? Salt Fork? Perry? Blue Rock? #
• RT @idiotsonsports: If it’s college football, it be hatin’ time. http://is.gd/2PRgJ #
• Please save your hate for where it belongs – college football. http://bit.ly/rLWrq #
• @brucery “LSU fans…very drunk”…that is their normal state in reply to brucery #
• RT @elevenwarriors: ROLLE IS EVERYWHERE. D seems to be learning. #
• Pryor is the threat we hoped for. RT @elevenwarriors: Early verdict: Pryor knows how to throw the ball. #
• RT @schadjoe: No truth to Matt Barkley working on triple option in a hotel ballroom right now #
• @jberwin pro-Cal, anti-USC? Man your Saturdays have sucked forever. in reply to jberwin #
• Not always beautiful but Big10 goes 10-1 on the weekend #
• @jberwin if cal would ever get to a rose bowl you’d know the big 10 teams. in reply to jberwin #

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* GM Chairman Scares Execs with Actual Expectations. * Wondermark on trip planning. Guilty. * Charting the Dow. Not sure this is supposed to be funny. How is this different than reading tea leaves or palmistry?

My picks this week (straight up):

* South Carolina vs. NC State (Thursday). SC. I’m tempted towards NC State as SC always lets me down. * Oregon vs. Boise State (Thursday). Oregon. Hoping for a good game. * Navy vs. Ohio State. OSU. I expect Navy to cover the spread tho, Tressel won’t show all his cards in this game. * Oklahoma vs. BYU. Oklahoma. Oklahoma just has too much. * Virginia Tech vs. Alabama. Bama. Tho I will be pulling for VT, I’m not a Saban lover. * Georgia vs. Oklahoma State. Georgia. I refuse to support T Boone Pickens’ attempt to establish Okie State as the common meaning of OSU. We must crush any attempt of this program to rise out of the murk of mediocrity. * Minnesota vs. Syracuse. Syracuse. This is a brutal game to pick. Going with the home team but these are two programs with all kinds of frothy expectations amongst their fan bases, and yet we all know they are going to crash hard. * Mizzou vs. Illinois. Missouri. Why does everyone love Juice? By the end of the Big10 season, he will be like the 5th best QB in the big 10. * Stanford vs. Washington State. Stanford. All the smart writers think Stanford is really stepping up, but not sure I can buy that. However they should have no problem with a pitiful WSU. * Maryland vs California. Cal. I don’t know that I have ever picked a Cal game right tho, they continually disappoint. * San Jose State vs. USC. USC. But SJSU covers the spread as the USC team starts to learn about itself. * Mississippi vs. Memphis (Sunday). Ole Miss. Tho I am not on the crazy Ole Miss bandwagon. * Colorado State vs. Colorado (Sunday). Col State. Another tough one to pick, Colorado has so often disappointed. * Miami FL vs Florida State (Monday). FSU. Sad but true, I don’t care about either of these programs any more. I can’t even get up the energy to hate them. Oregon State, Minnesota, Rutgers all seem more relevant, and wow that is sad. * Cincinnati vs. Rutgers (Monday). Rutgers. No idea so go with home team.

Will you see all 120 teams play in 2009? : Fanblogs College Football Blog. I’ve been wondering about this as a goal as well – just seeing a quarter of play from each team. Over 14 weeks of regular season, this is just seeing 4+ games a weekend IF you can magically pick all the games that cover all the teams. Going to need to pay careful attention to the Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday night games to pick up all the lesser programs.

This weekend alone I will aspire to see parts of

* South Carolina/NC State * Utah/Utah State * Oregon/Boise State * Minnesota/Syracuse * Ohio State/Navy * Georgia/Ok State * SJSU/USC * Missouri/Illinois * Oklahoma/BYU * Alabama/VT * Maryland/Cal * LSU/UW * Colorado State/UC * Cincy/Rutgers * Miami FL/FSU

OK I probably won’t get all but that would be 30 teams right there. Of course the only somewhat obscure programs would be Utah State, SJSU, and Colorado State.

Perhaps my goal should be to just see the BCS teams – that is 66 teams, a very doable goal. And probably less painful than having to watch lower-division Sunbelt conference teams.

* Touchable holography. Uses tracking cameras and directed ultrasound to create interaction and physical sensation. Cool demo. * Algortihmatic - online library of algorithms and IDE. Cool tho limited. * The LED’s dark secret. Droop in LED performance to be overcome for broader use. * Plasmobots – “their previous research has already proved the ability of the mould to have computational abilities”. * Ford Mike Rowe video. I didn’t realize they automatically tracked every single assembly operations through the tools. Fascinating. * Brad Feld’s open office hours. An intriguing idea. Commendable.

I’m having problems getting a clean Comcast signal to one room in my house. Used to work fine but at about the time of the digital transition, the signal started to fail. Comcast can see and query the cablecard but we can’t get any channel signals through. All the coax and cat5 cabling in our house goes back to a central wiring closet; the ethernet network in the room in question works fine at 1 gigabit but for some reason the coax/cable network fails.

Why does the protocol/modulation scheme for cable fail? Why can the device be addressed and queried but we can’t see channels? Why do they need to put a signal amplifier on the line – i never need to do this for ethernet? Is comcast still using some analog scheme to send the signals across? This just seems odd and ridiculously archaic. And the crazy pairing nonsense for cablecards with all kinds of identifiers needed to be traded back and forth – it makes DHCP and mac addresses look positively simple.

I know I could go read about 64QAM and 256QAM and Cablelabs and all kinds of other stuff to get all smartened up about this but I am frankly tired of dealing with it. I’ve been ignoring the verizon fios offering in our neighborhood but if it would let me junk the coax and move to all cat5/ip i might consider….

* Fold out shelving system. Wow this is just awesome looking. * Kurt’s key list of propbuilding tools. * Rich and Bob’s Tripod reco – Gitzo1541T and the Really Right Stuff BH-40LR. I actually need this. * Hangman light. Awesome tho I think the rest of the family might object.

Finally here. Here’s your reading for the day:

* Navy Football – know your enemy. Navy Sports, The BirdDog. * OSU Depth chart out and other goodies in the weekly PDF. * Because I can’t help it, a little USC preview – how to attack Barkley.

Navy opens at a 21.5 point underdog. I don’t think OSU beats the spread, Tressel will keep the plan conservative. OSU 28, Navy 14.

Some airplane reads:

* “Maelstrom”:amazon by Peter Watts. World at risk as cyber/nano/bio advancements spin out of control, helped by misguided human conspirators. The unique part of this tale is the abuse backstory of the protagonist and how that affects her actions. Amazon says 4 stars, might be a bit rich, but a solid effort. * “Third Degree”:amazon by Greg Iles. OK suspense tale, a control freak rips apart family when events happen out of his control. I am not sure why I bought, Amazon says 3 stars, that is probably about right. * “T is for Trespass”:amazon by Sue Grafton. First I’ve read in this series, perhaps that was a mistake. When do authors really hit their stride in a detective series? I’d imagine it is probably in the 4th or 5th book, not the 20th. The characters and cases are mundane, the detective misses massive issues to keep the story going, the plot really flags through the middle 50% of the book, this just doesn’t feel like a lot of effort went into it. I was really bored halfway through. Amazon says 4 stars, I’d say 2. Perhaps if I had read others in the series and was familiar with and invested in the characters, I would feel differently.

These labels are awesome. Hat tip to Kurt

• I used Shazam to discover Blinding by Florence And The Machine #shazam #
• Worried…LA is growing on me #
• RT @MartinGTobias: Thanks @troyd for the family computer support flowchart http://bit.ly/wojUQ I wish more people used it! #
• RT @edsbs: A year old, but timeless in its utility: http://bit.ly/TDg1W #
• RT @BlockONation: “Take the Field Tribute” – Ohio State vs. Navy – Please help spread the word! – http://bit.ly/HcPTM #
• RT @StatSheet: I often revisit this quote to keep my work ethic in perspective: “Don’t confuse activity with achievement.” -John Wooden #
• RT @smartfootball: …USC starting a freshman in Barkley is not a good thing…bodes poorly #
• RT @BlockONation: Looking Back—Michigan Football 2008 From a Buckeye’s Perspective – http://bit.ly/2dYBzX #
• RT @schadjoe: #USC WR Ronald Johnson (broken clavicle) 6 to 8 weeks. Big loss for #Trojans. #

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* WPTouch plugin for wordpress is awesome. check out theludwigs.com from your iphone. * Messing around with Slingbox finally. Works well tho I had to massively reconfig home network to get rid of routers – configuring to get through one router was reasonable; getting through two was nearly impossible; getting through the three I had in place would have required several PhDs. * Download Manager Tweak. Probably prefer download statusbar * Vacuum your firefox db. No idea if this actually did anything. Didn’t seem to make Firefox explode so I guess that is a plus. * Polymath. Lots of great links to math formatting services for the web. * Gliffy plugin for wordpress. Seems like it could be useful as well.