We spent the Memorial Day weekend at the Davis World Cup with the Palo Alto AYSO spring U12 girls team, the Blue Bandits. There were over 120 teams, and each team in the tournament gets the flag of a FIFA World Cup country. This is fun, but can make it difficult to figure out who you’re playing, as the schedules are all published under the names of the countries, not the actual names of the teams. We were “Bermuda”, although I spent the first day thinking we were “Bahamas.” 

The girls had a lot of fun. The highlight of the series was a rematch with the Concord Chaos (Tanzania),  who we tied 2-2 at last week’s Concord Cup. This weekend we placed 3rd in Bracket A, while the Concord Chaos placed 2nd in Bracket B, which put us in an elimination match to get to the next round.

The match was tied 1-1 at the end of the 2nd half, so the result was decided with a penalty shootout that ended the game in our favor 3-2.

We got knocked out of the tournament at the quarterfinals by Paso Robles (Uraguay) on Sunday afternoon, so no matches on Monday. Five games in two days was probably enough for most of the girls. They also went out to the movies together to see Narnia - Prince Caspian, visited the Davis Farmer’s Market, and probably had too much pizza and Jamba Juice.

A fine depiction of field positions in a typical youth soccer match, from Rhymes With Orange.

This morning the IBM service tech came to replace the failed fan assembly in my Thiinkpad T42p. The Thinkpad has been fairly indestructable, having gone around the world several times without any problems. So I was surprised when I started getting “Fan Error” messages just after the BIOS splash screen while setting up on Sunday evening. Fortunately, I also got the 24-hour onsite support contract back when I got the system. It ended up taking more like 36 hours to get someone out here, but I did call in the middle of the night.

That reddish assembly at the middle left is the heatsink and fan. The system board runs a test to make sure the fan will spin up before proceeding with the system boot process; the original fan will spin manually, but the motor seems to have failed. I’m glad to have the technician replace the fan instead of doing it myself. Getting the heatsink off the graphics chip required some significant prodding with a sharp knife to unbond the heat compound sticking them together.

The past day and a half I’ve been using other computers around the office, which has been kind of strange. Even though they’re all part of my normal setup, nothing is in the right place, since I keep reaching or looking in a different direction than usual. It’s been like working in someone else’s office. This evening I’ve gotten everything synced back up, but probably need to start thinking about migrating off the Thinkpad at some point as it continues to age.

Another entry from the same DMOZ list, the Kensington Review, also returns the DMOZ meta text, this time in place of the <META> text in the actual page. DMOZ says “An e-magazine of political and social commentary. When the left says the glass is half full and the right says it is half empty, Kensington suggests that it might be too big.” Kensington’s own META says “An electronic journal of political, financial and social commentary”.  DMOZ is a more interesting description, but again does not originate from the content itself. 

So it appears that DMOZ editors have greater influence over certain Google search descriptions than the actual sites themselves, which is not necessarily bad, but was certainly unexpected (to me). Overall I’d prefer that Google limit its editorial function to ranking and presenting the search results, and perhaps make the editorial opinions known, but not presented as definitive. 

I’m not particularly familiar with the Jamestown Foundation, which is why I was searching in the first place. The DMOZ editor is clearly skeptical but I’d rather form my own opinion. 

• Bitdrip - RSI Gadget 
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  Random walk data can generate recognizable chart patterns. One difference with real markets is that humans placing trades based on those patterns can render them non-random.
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• Inspectd.com - Training Tools for Traders 
  A game using historical stock data in which you choose to buy, sell, or hold using only the chart of price and volume bars.
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• Greenbox: Flash Creators Tackle Energy in the Home « Earth2Tech 
  On various work in progress towards home energy consumption monitoring and recommendations for change.
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• Morgan Stanley’s March Internet Trends Report: Social Applications Dominating 
  Slide deck with lots of current data on changing use patterns, growth rates, big shift towards social applications. Also see emerging markets growth.
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  Six suggestions from Karl Rove (!) for Barack Obama, which seem fairly sensible.
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• Review: Smart Strip Saves $1.60 to $5.70 of Electricity per Month 
  Slide deck with lots of current data on changing use patterns, growth rates, big shift towards social applications. Also see emerging markets growth.
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• All of Inflation’s Little Parts - The New York Times 
  Slide deck with lots of current data on changing use patterns, growth rates, big shift towards social applications. Also see emerging markets growth.
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• Gooruze - My experience investing in Nik Cubrilovic and Omnidrive 
  A cautionary anecdote on angel investing
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• All of Inflation’s Little Parts - The New York Times 
  Slide deck with lots of current data on changing use patterns, growth rates, big shift towards social applications. Also see emerging markets growth.
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• McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Word Problems for Future Hedge-Fund Managers. 
  1. Dick has $1 million. Jane has $1 million. If Dick and Jane both give their $1 million to T. Boone, how many millions will he claim he can turn it into?
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The absence of rice at Costco and Sam’s Clubs in the US has gotten a lot of press coverage in the past few days, but there’s no substitute for first-hand observation. Here’s what it looks like at the Mountain View Costco at the shelf where the rice would normally go. Fortunately, that wasn’t one of the items I was looking for.

See also: Rice shortage reaches Mountain View Costco

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

“Where’s the rice?” an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. “You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.”

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99.

I’ll have to take a look next time I’m over there. Fortunately we’re still pretty well stocked up with big sacks of rice from the Korean grocery store.

Update 4/24/2008 18:00 PDT - Some pictures of empty pallets and a sign at Costco

The Russian Soyuz carrying Korea’s first astronaut, Yi So-yeon returned safely over the weekend, albeit 260 miles from the intended landing zone in what Interfax (Russian news agency) describes as a rough landing, exceeding 10g’s. Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

…because I have a job for him. It looks like our washer needs a new drain pump, because yesterday afternoon it started trying to spin with a full tub of wet clothes and water, accompanied by unusual noises. There’s lots of good information online for do-it-yourself repair, including how to disassemble the washing machine and various diagnostic procedures. The hacker/engineer side of me wants to start taking it apart just because we can. But the weather is great outside today and I’d rather spend my limited time on fun stuff outdoors and leave the pump replacement to trained professionals. If I could find one. There are no Maytag repairmen anymore, only authorized service providers, who are apparently quite busy. It might end up being easier to just buy a new washer, I can get one delivered today.

Yi So-yeon, the first Korean astronaut, went to the International Space Station today on a Russian Soyuz. She is a bioengineer by training, and will be conducting various experiments during the next nine days.

In addition, there has apparently been a lot of work making Korean food ready for space travel:

The Korea Food Research Institute and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute have spent years turning traditional South Korean delicacies into a form that can be stored and eaten in zero gravity, including steamed rice, red pepper paste, doenjang fermented bean soup, green tea, red ginseng tea, instant noodles, sujeonggwa cinnamon punch and, above all, kimchi – the pungent pickled blend of cabbage, chilli and garlic that is the national dish.

Anyway, it’s pretty exciting for Koreans, although this picture from the CNN article make her look slightly wacky, vaguely reminding me of visits to my aunt’s house when I was a kid.