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. 

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.

The Wachovia Bank (formerly World Savings) branch over at the Stanford Shopping Center was robbed last Thursday. This is already a little unusual, but what caught my attention was that they were robbed by an elderly man in an electric wheelchair. And he got away! He apparently stopped by The Sharper Image and asked for a shopping bag on his way over to the bank.

Mike’s comment about Comcast and chickens wandering in Keith’s yard reminded me about my former neighbors. When we first moved into our current home, we soon discovered that the neighbors bordering our back yard owned several chickens. During the summer when we left the windows open overnight, we would hear their rooster crowing first thing in the morning. Their chickens never made it into our yard, although their cats came through regularly. They were an interesting couple, living kind of like they were homesteaders on a mountain farm, with a rickety greenhouse, garden, and a yard full of debris, on an oversized lot in the middle of Old Palo Alto. They sold a few years ago, at the moment there’s a brand new house going up, the chickens are long gone but we have had random construction work going on for a while.

We also have Comcast here.  I still use PacBell (now AT&T) DSL for the office network, but the house network uses the cable modem service. The download speeds are higher, but it does go offline sometimes, making me reluctant to run my office on Comcast’s internet service. This is a great fit for the rest of our family which mostly surfs the web, watching online video, web pages, or chatting. The DSL service is relatively clunky (I have one of the first lines rolled out in Palo Alto) and slow, but the continuous uptime is similar to my Linux servers in the back of the closet, running for years with uninterrupted service.

Looking at this heatmap, Palo Alto and Stanford are apparently a little blue oasis of solvency in the map of real estate foreclosures, surrounded by a sea of red.

Every time we stay in Waikiki, I look forward to picking up Korean food to go from Choi’s Kitchen, one of the many interesting options at the food court hidden at the back of the International Marketplace. The first couple of years on vacation in Waikiki we mostly ended up either eating at a restaurant or at the snack bar. This can be both expensive and not so good for maintaining a healthy diet. For around the price of eating at McDonalds or Burger King, you can have a combination of teriyaki chicken, Korean BBQ beef, and a selection of Korean banchan (side dishes) including kimchee, sukju namul, seaweed salad, and many other choices, plus a generous serving of steamed rice. We usually get a couple of the chicken + beef, with 4 side dishes, and carry it back across the street to eat on the beach. There is also seating area at the International Marketplace, if you don’t want to go with take out. Many locals come through for lunch, while there are more tourists in the evening, some of whom come to see the live entertainment in the courtyard. Personally, I think the food is great, and the entertainment not so much. I’d rather be on the beach.

The whole International Marketplace complex is planned to be demolished and renovated at some point, but those plans are on hold for now. If you’re in Honolulu, maybe stranded by Aloha and ATA Airlines going out of business, or just in Waikiki looking for something to eat, give Choi’s Kitchen a try.

 Choi’s Kitchen, 2330 Kalakaua Avenue, Honolulu HI 96815, 808-923-5614 

“FINAL NOTIFICATION OF RECEIVING YOUR HERITANCE FUND IN ATM MASTER CARD”

“CONTACT YOUR ATM MASETR CARD”

“CONTACT EMS IMMEDIATLY ON +234 8022856155″

“CONTACT FedEX EXPRESS COURIER COMPANY LIMITED FOR YOUR CONSIGNMENT IMMEDIATLY”

“CONTACT REV DR.KENNETH OKOM DIRECTOR OF ATM CARD BANK”

“CONTACT MR FRED IKEM FOR YOUR $950,000.00″

The general theme in this sort of spam is “We’re waiting for you to confirm your bank information and send a small processing fee so we can send you a lot of money.” This campaign mostly mentions a program from the Republic of Benin to give away money through funded ATM/Mastercard accounts for various reasons ranging from inheritance to payment for previous services. Some of these have an interesting wrinkle though:

THIS IS TO OFFICIALLY INFORM YOU THAT WE HAVE VERIFIED YOUR CONTRACT /INHERITANCE FILE AND FOUND OUT THAT WHY YOU HAVE NOT RECEIVED YOUR PAYMENT IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT FULFILLED THE OBLIGATIONS GIVEN TO YOU IN RESPECT OF YOUR CONTRACT / INHERITANCE PAYMENT. SECONDLY WE HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT YOU ARE STILL DEALING WITH THE NONE OFFICIALS IN THE BANK ALL YOUR ATTEMPT TO SECURE THE RELEASE OF THE FUND TO YOU. WE WISH TO ADVICE YOU THAT SUCH AN ILLEGAL ACT LIKE THIS HAVE TO STOP IF YOU WISHES TO RECEIVE YOUR PAYMENT SINCE WE HAVE DECIDED TO BRING A SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM.

Maybe this would sound plausible to someone who had already responded to a previous scam email? “The reason you haven’t been paid yet is because you have been illegally dealing with the wrong officials, so please send us the money instead?” Perhaps this reflects a finely tuned understanding of the likely responders to this campaign…

Links: 419 Scan: Advance Fee Fraud and Fake Lotteries, Nigerian Fraud E-mail Gallery, Michigan CyberSecurity - Example of Email Fraud 

From a quick check on Google, it looks like keymachine.de is a regular offender

Returned to Palo Alto last night, which was the original plan, but also a little surprising. When we left home, I had been thinking we might end up stranded on vacation for an extra day or two. We booked our travel plans late, and weren’t able to get seats on a return flight from Hawaii to the Bay Area on Saturday, Sunday, or even Monday by the time we left. I’ve discovered that the flight booking sites don’t update availability regularly. So even though there were fares listed on various sites (United, American, Expedia, Orbitz), if you tried to book them, various warnings and errors appeared, encouraging you to call an agent, who told you there weren’t really any seats. I decided we’d just head out on vacation and sort it out after we got there.

Airline news while we were on vacation wasn’t encouraging; American Airlines cancelled a few hundred flights due to equipment problems, then Hawaii’s Aloha Airlines went bankrupt again last week, and has shut down all flight operations effective today. I had looked at flights on Aloha, but they fly to Oakland which is less convenient from here, and there weren’t any seats available anyway. It would have been a good story to be stuck in Hawaii for a while, but we ended up finding a few open seats on a non-stop flight to SFO. Oh well.

Update 04-03-2008: ATA Airlines also declared bankruptcy today and has shut down flight operations. I had also been looking at some ATA flights connecting through Las Vegas as a fall back route to get home, but they were sold out over last weekend also. Looks like it could be harder to find a cheap flight to Hawaii for a while.

This weekend’s news that JP Morgan will take over Bear Stearns for around $2/share is astonishing. Last Friday BSC closed at around 30. A week ago it was around 60. A year ago it was around $150/share. So in a year the shares are down by 99%, and even the bargain shoppers who got in on Friday are down by something like 85%, based on today’s close.

On the occasion of the Academy Awards, an interesting video montage featuring faces of famous actresses. via Instapundit 

I’ve noticed that over the past several years, I basically don’t see movies in theaters, except for kids movies. Everything else is either on airplanes, cable, DVD, or online.