Category: Personal

Please join me and nearly 200,000 patriotic Americans in telling your Senators and Representative that you want them to vote to overturn the veto on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Your voice is especially important if any of your three elected representatives are Republicans since winning this battle requires quite a few GOP members to go against their President. If you prefer not to use the Democratic Party’s service which I linked, just go to their official pages and email or fax them directly–just be sure you do it!

Here’s what I wrote to Anna Eshoo, Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein (in this matter, shorter is very much better):

When this legislation is taken up I urge you to vote to overturn President Bush’s ill-considered, thoughtless veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and stand up for children who otherwise won’t have health care.

If we can spend hundreds of billions on military actions in the Mideast that have little hope of providing longterm security, surely we can ensure the welfare of our most precious resource, the children.

I recognize my tendency to frequently blame the officiating when my team’s not doing well but there are games when its justified and today’s near-disaster at Washington is one of them. The Trojans didn’t play terribly well either but the refs made far too many bad penalty calls against us. In the end the SC defense stood up and covered for mistakes by the offense and (especially) special teams for the 27-24 squeaker.

The only thing I can say is this has been a weird weekend in college football all over, with five of the Top 10 losing. Sadly that includes Rutgers, potentially stopping a run at a BCS bowl game; I didn’t see the game but the Scarlet Knights were better on paper. The losses will get Cal up to #3, their highest spot in 55 years, and give even more meaning to USC’s matchups against the Bears and Oregon, who barely lost to Cal 31-24 on the last play of the game.

An LSU move to the top spot wouldn’t shock me. The Tigers haven’t made too many statements aside from the Va Tech thrashing but they’ve never been in serious trouble either. Here’s my Top 5:

1. LSU
2. USC
3. Cal
4. Ohio State
5. Wisconsin

The Pac-10 is one tough conference this year since even with the loss to Cal Oregon could conceivably move up from #11, Arizona State should move up to at least #20, a 4-1 UCLA is knocking on the door and certainly going to a bowl (even with losses to Oregon and USC at the end of the season).

The remaining Trojan schedule is pretty tough: road games at Notre Dame (0-5 only means that beating us at home would make their whole season), Oregon, Cal and Arizona State and finishing with a ‘home’ game to UCLA. LSU’s is much easier with Florida, Kentucky, Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas and (presumably) the SEC championship game. Cal actually has the easiest of the three, if only they can beat USC.

We got us a football season!

Tuesday: Sure enough, LSU hopped to the top spot in the AP poll, though USC remained first in the USA Today/Coaches list. Slim margin of difference so with a few solid wins and perhaps a close game for the Tigers this Saturday versus Florida we’ll jump back.

An amusing book set in the same FictoVerse as American Gods, though featuring none of the same main characters, Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys tells the story of Fat Charlie and Spider the twin (sort of) sons of Anansi, the Spider God.

If you recall the trials of Shadow from the first novel, the tribulations Fat Charlie suffers here will feel similar. This boy did know his dad growing up, but if you asked he’d probably say whether this was a good thing would be an extremely close thing. Nanometer separation; certainly he was terribly embarrassed and moved across the Atlantic to get far enough away.

Then again, Anansi never explained he was a god or that Charlie had a brother (sort of). He dies, bringing Charlie back to south Florida just in time to sweat through his suit shoveling dirt to close up dad’s grave. Four aged neighbor women are the only mourners and afterwards they try to tell him who his father really was, then send him on a trippy visit to a different reality where the other animal gods, who Anansi tricked out of their powers and stories, live and wait.

The women also tell him about Spider. He calls for his brother and soon enough finds he isn’t a long last pal. In an ill-advised attempt to be rid of a guest who never learned that fish and visits both spoil after a few days, Charlie asks for help from a very wrong quarter. Spider also, in innocent incompetence, triggers Charlie’s boss’s escape plan–the man’s been skimming from clients for decades–which brings the police down on our hapless hero.

Gaiman does something very well that few other authors even consider trying. He’s found a way to mix traditional lighthearted folktales with post-modern anti-heroes. Both Fat Charlie and Shadow are living lost lives, no direction, no family warmth, beaten down enough so that the avoidance of the negative is enough to make them happy. Then they learn their true heritage and things get really bad. Wonderfully entertaining, light on its feet and fast-paced.

recommended

Well, Thursday turned out to be just a sneak peek of the nastiness that was Thursday night. Uggh. Of course TS1 got sick too, though with a different bug, and we had to nurse each other. So much for today’s plans to see Transformers in IMAX up in the City.

Then again I did get to watch plenty of football, of the English, Spanish, NCAA and NFL varieties (I’m still peeved at losing Australian Rules games when FoxSportsWorld converted to FoxSoccerChannel). ABC ought to consider renaming Saturday Night Football to The USC Football Show since the Trojans are featured if they’re playing.

Liverpool was not available but since they had another 0-0 draw to a team they ought to have demolished I’m not so upset; I did see their Champions League this past Tuesday and remain convinced that Rafa Benitez is mistaken about Jermaine Pennant’s value. Arsenal was entertaining with a 5-0 drubbing of Derby, not quite up to the 6-0 thrash Liverpool gave the bottomdwellers a couple of weeks ago. I was rooting for Fullham, or Team America as they’re also known with four American players and an American owner, but they were unable to make a 2-1 lead stand up and had to settle for a 3-3 draw with a surprising Man City.

Even better was today’s ManUtd-Chelsea clash, the first game of the post-Mourinho era. I probably should have been rooting for a draw or for the Blues since the new man is Israeli but just couldn’t get myself behind them because of their style of play; when Mikel was dismissed, Tevez got the header off a sweet Giggs cross and Saha put the penalty past Cech I was happy. Frankly, I thought Cech was the only man on his team who put out the extra effort needed to get a result in this tough situation.

I also caught the last 30 minutes of Barcelona-Sevilla. Ronaldinho wasn’t on the field but Lionel Messi made sure that the hosts took all three points with a lovely blast and a PK and I saw some of the spark and speed that has many people raving over 18 year old Mexico national teamer Giovanni Dos Santos. I also saw one of the funniest kits, the road outfits worn by Sevilla:

Trust me, they looked even sillier on TV. Though the uniforms worn by the Philadelphia Eagles today were pretty darn strange too!

USC really showed up last night. Last week at Nebraska was a good result but, mainly due to the defense not finishing the game, I wasn’t as impressed as what I read and heard in the media; if I was less subjective LSU might have gotten my vote as the top team, especially given their domination of Virginia Tech.

But I watched the LSU game yesterday as well and now my view is not divided. The Tigers seem much more dependent offensively on Pat Flynn–he was the holder who made the sweet no look toss to kicker Colt David for the gadget play TD–and when the O line couldn’t keep the rushers out on passing plays, his injury-limited mobility caused poor results. I’m not saying LSU are not deserving of the #2 ranking, not at all, just that I think USC quality is deeper at most positions. Mario Sanchez may not be the running threat Ryan Perrilloux is but he’s a much more complete QB and there’s just no comparison with the running back and receiving corps.

Notre Dame, 0-4. What can I say?

Niners never really got going against the first quality opposition of the season so far, Raiders were of course blacked out at home but across the league results were strange with many 0-2 teams getting their first W and many 2-0 teams their first L. Winning were the Giants, Jets, Raiders, the Chiefs and the aforementioned Eagles, and losing were the Niners, Broncos, Redskins, Lions and Texans. The Patriots, Colts, Steelers, Packers remained undefeated while the Bills, Dolphins, Cardinals, Rams and Falcons are winless (Saints and Cowboys have their respective zeros still on the line ;).

Oy vey, for sure. Yesterday I wasn’t feeling great though I went to Lunch 2.0 at RockYou anyway–hopefully I didn’t infect anyone else–and by the time I finally got home just before 4 I was done. Collapsed on the couch, watched the recording of Manchester United’s narrow Champions League win at Sporting Clube de Portugal and later most of the Gary Cooper/Patricia O’Neil version of The Fountainhead.

TS1, as always, was a great and attentive nurse.

This morning the symptoms were out in force, runny nose, sneezing, coughing, sore throat. Of course I was supposed to give the PSR team pitch at ProMatch but fortunately one of my mates stepped in. Why I’m still sitting at the computer can only be attributed to a serious electronics addiction but after this the TV goes on.

Everyone hates feeling sick, including me. Your empathy is appreciated.

With this novel Ken Macleod turns his authorial eye to our own days for the first time but there’s no let up in quality. While his previous books have been set hundreds or more years in the future this takes place sometime in the next decade; with it he hopes to “kick-start … the hitherto non-existent genre of New Cosy Catastrophe.”

The Execution Channel has a tagline of “The War on Terror is over. Terror won.” You won’t be surprised, of course, that a socialist from way back such as Macleod turns that sentiment on its head from what an American reader might expect and the characters whose behavior is most despicable are employees of the UK and American governments. The story starts, literally, with a big bang: some pro-peace activists monitoring an American air base in Scotland photograph the mysterious arrival of a plane, the strange large thing it unloads in an out of the way hanger and the immediate detonation of same.

Initially thought to be an atomic bomb smuggled in by Al Qaeada, with the government avoiding, even clamping down, on any mention of that strange large device and spreading various disinformation memes, the powers that be are not happy those activists smuggled out photos. Fortunately between the many public cameras and satellite coverage the counter-terrorism staff identify almost all the packages posted and the shutterbugs.

Which also puts them on the trail of James, one of the activist’s dads, an IT consultant and French spy, who happens to possibly be responsible for one or both of two additional infrastructure attacks. His son, ironically, is serving in the British army in the never ending Middle East conflict, which he actively blogs about.

The titular channel transmits exactly what the name says: 24 hours a day video of people dying. No one (whose talking) knows just who controls it or how some of the footage makes it online but Macleod’s future includes a post-crash, ultra-religious America and a China fighting to control its western territory (John Robb’s 4GW seems an influence). The climax is set off when a key character dies at the hands of his, er, interrogators, distributed globally on the Execution Channel.

Macleod’s future is scarily possible and not just the horrific level of military action, which I’ve barely touched on here. I also like the way he includes blogs. Besides Travis fil, another major character (who otherwise has no explicit interaction with any other character) writes a popular government conspiracy blog and another set who contract to the US Department of Homeland Security to write fake blogs and undertake other astroturfing activity.

What really happened and why was not easy for me to see until Macleod did the big reveal. I really enjoy books that do this.

recommended

For years I’ve been looking for Consider Phlebas, the first science fiction novel by Iain M. Banks, and was happy to find a copy at the used book stores on Castro Street a few weeks ago. Of course, as soon as I finished reading it I found it on the Big Guy’s bookshelf, grrr! After all, since my copy was used Banks didn’t get any dosh either way but what can you do?

Consider Phlebas (1987) is also the first of Banks’ Culture novels. In an excellent twist, though, the story is told through the eyes of an outsider, a shapeshifter called Bora Horza Gobuchel. Horza is an agent of the Idirans and the Idirans are locked in a galaxy-spanning war with the Culture; the latter have realized that the formers’ religious beliefs in combination with their military technology mean war is an unfortunate necessity.

Horza works for the very large lizard-like aliens not because he agrees with the religion but because he believes the Culture is an evolutionary dead end strong enough to ultimately starve out all competition. As the novel begins he’s captive and nearly dead after being caught out impersonating a government minister on a backwards planet, exposed by Perosteck Balveda, an operative of the Culture’s Special Circumstances group.

Special Circumstances is the iron fist within the Culture’s velvet glove, intelligence agency and, when need be, military force. While battling the Idirans from system to system as their weapon manufactories spin up, they work intrigues to win in other ways. Yet the opposition doesn’t always lose; in one battle a Mind (an ultra-advanced artificial intelligence) fashions an escape from the warship body it normally wears and hides in the tunnels of a Planet of the Dead, a world protected by a sentient race evolved far beyond either of our combatants.

Horza escapes when his masters storm the castle in which he’s imprisoned, capturing Balveda in the process, only to have the Idiran ship detected and destroyed by her allies. Horza takes an escape capsule getaway, stranded in space and rescued by a mercenary company more interested in his high tech spacesuit than him, though he cons the captain out of jettisoning him.

Eventually Horza turns the tables, taking command of the mercenaries to complete the mission assigned to him and his Idiran commander, to retrieve or at least destroy that stranded Mind. Balveda and a small Culture machine intelligence are along for the ride, as it got launched a bit precipitously. To say the least. Doing the deed, if he can, is an even more massive.

Though the Idiran War is a seminal event through most of the Culture novels and stories he wrote afterwards, Banks does something few other authors would and essentially puts it in the background of Phlebas. He’s such a masterful storyteller that this works. I think anyone reading this who aspires to write fiction, science or otherwise, owes it to themselves to not only read this novel but to study it for character development, scene coloration and ways to twist reader expectations.

absolutely recommended

I have been reading, I just haven’t had the inspiration to put down my thoughts on them. Not because they haven’t entertained me, most have, but, well, whatever, you don’t want to read my excuses.

The Engines of God came highly recommended from the Big Guy. It’s the first in the Academy sequence, or the Priscilla “Hutch” Hutchins Novels as author Jack McDevitt sometimes calls them, though I didn’t realize there were five more with the last a couple of months away. To some extent I was surprised to see McDevitt refer to them as the Hutchins novels since she’s a major character in Engines but hardly more than the one who shows up in each of the three main segments.

Hutchins is a freelance interstellar pilot and in each of the voyages in this volume she drives the bus for a mission sponsored by the World Academy For Science And Technology. 190 years from now a somewhat faster than light star drive (much slower than, say, those used in Star Trek or Star Wars) has allowed humanity to explore a few dozen nearby star systems but the ROI is such that mass travel hasn’t developed. Only one other sentient race has been found still living, though several other planets clearly held intelligent beings until relatively recently.

What explorers have found are monuments, one per system, wherever such life has existed, different in size and what’s depicted but clearly all left by the same unknown starfarers. In our own solar system on a moon of Saturn is a three meter tall female, which we read about in the prologue, a brief trip for which Hutch pilots renown archaeologist Richard Wald. Those who left their creations are called the Monument Makers.

Several years later Hutch and Wald fly to Quraqua, a world whose intelligent inhabitants died off (to the last Quraquan) just a few centuries ago. An Academy team has been studying the planet for nearly three decades but their mission is almost over–global warming has continued and severely damaged Earth and a private company is days away from unleashing a terraforming Armageddon with the hopes of creating a new home for us in just 50 years. Wald’s trip is motivated by the discovery of that system’s monument, a huge, seamless Potemkin city on Quraqua’s moon.

The mission ends in tragedy and the survivors retreat to Earth, scattering to new posts in academia and government, but work continues on the mystery of the monuments. A breakthrough inspires the last voyage, to Beta Pacifica III, where Hutch and a small team find further mystery and more questions despite learning the answers they thought were the point. And more trouble too, of course.

Knowing now that there are five more novels to the story I’m a bit less put off by the climax which, after all, doesn’t really solve anything. Heck, it leaves not just the astronauts in jeopardy but humanity’s entire existence. I was, still, a bit miffed at the lack of closure and payoff after a very well-written book. The questions McDevitt raises are intriguing and he has decent skills, and drew me in to these characters and their troubles. Will I read the rest? Not sure.

recommended, just

I gave a one hour brown bag tutorial at ProMatch this afternoon on using a blog to assist one’s job search. Having promised to post the slide deck online, I decide to try out SlideShare. This is a startup run by Jon Boutelle and Rashmi Sinha, partners in life and business and friends of mine, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use the service since they told me about it.

Don’t expect a fantasmagoric, wunderbar preso 😉 Just a few high-level introductory slides that I used before diving into the demo, which was the real meat of the hour.

TS1 and I shut off our landline last week. The last real use which required it was TiVo (we had a Series 1) and that went away at the beginning of the year when the HDTV arrived, so we reached out to as many service providers and contacts as we remembered, and friends and family of course, and made sure each had the appropriate cell number, waited a week or so just in case and called ATT to disconnect.

Since we have ATT Wireless, and are new customers to that branch, I didn’t get any push back or even difficult questions after giving this reason in response to why. Maybe the trend is so prevalent there wouldn’t have been a hard sell to try and retain us no matter the wireless carrier we use. When we switched from Verizon after getting his and hers iPhones that company made a few attempts to retain our business but, of course, there was no chance of that happening.

After having a home phone number for as long as I remember. From when I was born until I was about eight or so our number was 201.992.4583, then that number was transferred to my mom’s women’s clothing boutique and our number was 201.992.7323 until I moved out of my folks’ house permanently after grad school.

My parents got a second line at the house for my sister and me when we were teenagers but oddly I can’t remember its number, despite it being the first that was “mine.” Then between school and moving houses and states and such I had a bunch that passed too quickly to get lodged permanently in my mind, including the couple I had in California before moving to Mountain View a bit more than 10 years ago. Since then, though, I only had the one home number that just got turned off and my cell, which stayed the same through two or three carrier changes and is what I have now.

Unlike Mr. Scoble, putting that number on this blog is probably not the right choice for me. In case you were wondering.

You might laugh but it feels weird, like leaving my backpack at a hotel and saying forget about it rather than going back. As if something’s missing from my jeans pocket that I can’t quite put a finger on. Still, better to have the $32/month in my bank account, eh?

I called Apple Support this morning. The guy I spoke with was very considerate and friendly, nonetheless we still went 0 for 3 and I didn’t even mention the fourth item. For each one the support rep said he simply had no answer but put support incidents into the system to create a record and get me an answer down the line if new information comes out:

1. After listening to music for a few hours the phone simply shut off. On first try even the holding down the combination of the power and sleep/wake buttons had no effect. After 10 minutes I tried it again and the phone powered up.
2. Events created on the phone’s calendar app are not pushed back to iCal on my MacBook.
3. For a POP3 email account–the server doesn’t have IMAP–I want to create a new folder on the phone for archives. Currently this does not seem to be possible.
4. After any one of a number of events, the music player loses its place in a playlist and further, there is no way I can see to choose the first song for shuffle mode play even though iTunes on OS X has this capability. (This is the one I didn’t mention to the rep.)

Lazy/Intarweb, can you help?

Well, you can grab the first single off the upcoming Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band release Magic from iTunes as a freebie for the next week. The song, Radio Nowhere, is an uptempo rocker that (perhaps not surprisingly) reminds me of his 57 Channels with a bit more buzzy guitar.

The band’s tour was also announced today. There are 32 dates from October 2, the day the CD comes out, through the end of November and the stops are most of the major American cities and then over to Western Europe. The only Northern California concert will be October 26 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland and while I loves me my Bruce I doubt we’ll be going. Friday after-work rush hour from here to Oakland is literally insane.

What other conclusion are we to draw from Carra’s attire at today’s Champions League delousing of Toulouse at Anfield? There he was, sitting in the stands with fellow injured listee Steven Gerrard wearing a proper suit and tie while Stevie had on a simple collared shirt under a sweater watching the 4-0 drubbing his teammates gave the third place French side to advance to the group stage.

Rafa threw out a pretty makeshift side with Pepe Reina, Dirk Kuyt, Daniel Agger and John Arne Riise the only regulars starting. Arbeloa made another decent showing, this time at right back, and Sami Hyypia was recalled to take Carragher’s spot, with Agger getting the last bit off after Steve Finnan came on for him. The midfield was all new look, with Yossi Benayoun, Javier Mascherano, Momo Sissoko and Sebastian Leto from right to left; Leto and Sissoko were subbed off in the second half by Ryan Babel and Leiva Lucas. Crouchie got a start up top with Kuyt.

Goals came from:

1. Crouch, who toe-poked in a cross from Kuyt to the near-side in the 19th
2. Hyypia, heading in Benayoun’s corner minutes into the second half
3. Kuyt, from a give and go with Babel, and,
4. Kuyt again, just before the end of regulation getting a foot to the ball milliseconds before the keeper could claim it off a very nice Benayoun pass

So 5-0 on the aggregate with the Reds showing early in the season the summer additions have given us options and depth to handle the very full schedule. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a seasoned central defender purchased before Friday’s deadline, but then again perhaps not after seeing Riise shift into the middle after Agger was substituted. John Arne is clearly a versatile player but does he have the stay at home defensive quality required of a center back?

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer

Though I’m not any sort of a Man United fan, I’ve been an Ole fan ever since his wonder goal capped the Red Devils comeback to win the 1999 Champions League final. That and his boyish face and always positive play. The last few years had to have been miserable for him with multiple longterm injuries reducing him to spot play and late substitute minutes, and the hurts took their toll as Solskjaer announced his retirement today at 34.

In 11 years with the team, the Norway man scored 126 goals in 366 appearances for the club. That’s a pretty amazing rate when you consider that he had to take what was left over behind Ruud van Nistlerooy, Wayne Rooney, Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs and the rest of the stellar cast at Old Trafford. He had 11 goals last season, several of which were crucial in helping ManU to the league title and FA Cup runner-up spot.

Anyway, the striker is staying with the team as a coach and ambassador, and one would expect him to study for his managerial license as well. Good luck, Ole!

[Ed. note: too quick.]

We had a wonderful visit last night from a dear friend who moved East three years ago. Nancy looked great too, life in NC being good and having shed much unnecessary weight.

I’m looking for people who’ve developed Facebook apps or used the Group or Marketplace apps and want to share the experience with me.

Mountain View’s city government is just nuts over traffic lights. At least once a month I run into a new one and the last one I thought was justified was… so long ago I can’t recall.

ProMatch is great but most of us have a 40th birthday barely visible in the rearview mirror.

USA looked decent against Sweden yesterday, with the lone goal coming just after a questionable non-call of a pushoff foul by the player who made Sweden’s score. Playing Donovan and Clint Dempsey as the strike force was an extremely, er, surprisingly choice even given the late Ching medical issue. Brazil will be an intense challenge on 9 September.

Yeah, it was a draw at Anfield today in the Primary Colors derby but the visitor score came from a farcical decision by referee Rob “I love my pretty color cards” Styles and from my couch Liverpool were ‘rob’ed on an afternoon when the Reds debuted a hard-edged playing style to the home fans.

Styles awarded the Blues a penalty in the 62nd minute after Jamie Carragher (in his eyes) abusively blocked Florent Malouda as the winger ran across the top of the 18 yard box chasing the ball. Even without replays the decision was questionable as Malouda had no chance to catch up to the ball ahead of other players but video shows that there was no contact between him and Carra.

Rafa Benitez was about as strong in his post-match comments on the horrible PK decision as allowable considering the potential repercussions: “It’s difficult to explain such a decision – maybe the referee was under a bit of pressure,” said Benitez. “I think he will watch the video of the match and admit that his penalty decision was a mistake.”

The match was filled with questionable decisions and yellow cards throughout but this was beyond a simple mistake, and combined with previous gaffes like last week’s red card to Dave Kitson 45 seconds after the Reading man came on as a sub is enough that the FA should review Styles’ continued participation as top official for Premiership games.

Still, coming away from this week’s three matches with two wins and a draw, combined with Manchester United’s terrible start (one goal in two draws and a loss), is a great start. There are several breaks for international play over the next six weeks and a very favorable schedule (at Sunderland, home leg of the Champions League tie with Toulouse, home to Derby, away to Portsmouth, home to Birmingham and away at Wigan) so the Reds could be sitting very pretty on October 1, whereas last season the league title was already out of reach.

Sir Alex Ferguson all of a sudden is facing a real mountain to win a tenth EPL title, by the way, with Wayne Rooney out until October or November and the $100 million-plus in Summer signings have so far been of minimal help. Seven points is a lot to make up though it helps that deficit is only five points to Chelsea and neither Liverpool nor Arsenal drove home the advantage of a game in hand.

Update, a day later: Guess I’m not such a sore loser. Styles will be sitting out the next game day as punishment for his terrible performance. Referees’ chief Keith Hackett told BBC Radio: “It is just like with players, if they miss an open goal they are likely to be dropped.”

Beckham’s MLS Debut

I was surprised to learn that Landon Donovan had turned over the captain’s armband to Mr. 23 and didn’t see substantial evidence of his leadership on the field, making me wonder if this was yet another PR move. That’s not to say he didn’t have a big impact on the game, he very much did with three assists on the four Galaxy goals and went the full 90 despite showing real signs of wear after 60 or 65 minutes.

But the score line shows how badly LA needed their new captain the whole way. After starting two transplanted midfielders to prop up a depleted defense their right back was lost to injury in the 17th minute and coach Frank Yallop’s experimental move of MF Kevin Harmes to the backline left the visitors far too exposed. Further, after a very strong start, Beckham flopped on his second half free kicks, slamming four in a row straight into the wall.

A very bright note for the USA National Team was Jozy Altidore’s two goals in the match. The 17 year old, who grew up in my hometown of Livingston, NJ, will hopefully get some serious consideration from coach Bob Bradley for the September 9 match against Brazil and the two October ties in Europe.

There was much talk last month Altidore moving to a European club but he isn’t eligible to move until after his birthday in November; if he scores a few more goals in MLS (seven so far this season) and, hopefully, a few quality minutes coming on as a sub against Catalonia and/or Switzerland, Jozy could command a record transfer price in January to a team in, say, Spain or The Netherlands who need just a little bit extra for the second half run.

The last few weeks have been really hectic, let me tell you. I’ve rejoined ProMatch to sharpen my career management skills and taken several classes at the Connect Center, including Ace the Interview, Resume Facts and PSR 1.

If you’re having trouble relating your work accomplishments in a compelling style in interviews, on your resume or during networking events I highly recommend that you study the PSR method. It’s a TLA that expands to Problem – Solution – Resolution and means that rather than using simple bullets for past responsibilities you give them in a PSR. Except on resumes, where the problem is left off, the word I is implied and conveyed with the mimium number of words.

A resume example: Managed a three tier support delivery team becomes Implemented training and process improvements that reduced average case time to close from 5.5 to 3.5 days.

Same bullet given during an interview: I was promoted to manage the NetDynamics support delivery team because our customer base and caseload were growing faster than the team could handle. I instituted a much more structured case allocation process as well as several training and mentoring programs which enabled more effective analysis and resolution of customer issues and reduced the average case time to close from 5.5 to 3.5 days.

The problem statement is the first sentence, the solution is the first half of the second sentence and the result the rest of the second sentence (split that parts at the word which). Depending on the circumstance, particularly the relevance of this achievement to the context, I might expand this with more detail on the problem statement and then, without going past 90 seconds in all, more on the solution.

Note that even though this was a team effort the words ‘group’, ‘we’ and ‘our’ do not appear because the objective is to promote my value to the interviewer/resume reader; in a normal conversation I would of course not present this in such a self-centered way. However, it is important to practice your telling of them so you come across as conversational and not having memorized a script.

In all three classes the question of how many PSRs should one have came up since, to the novice they seem difficult to devise. The standard answer is 7-10 but I would recommend a minimum of four for each position you’re targeting; a PSR might be relevant for more than one position, with a slight difference in emphasis and detail.

To start working on your own read over your resume and try to see how those old responsibilities included (a phrase that should not appear on it, by the way) can be repositioned in this new form. While being able to mention a quantity in your result is a very good thing don’t fret too much if you can’t see how to get that concrete.

Once you have a few ready find someone, a friend or another participant in a job group or network, who will listen to you present them and offer feedback. I doubt the best version will be the first one you put down, so don’t worry about getting it perfect.

And you are in a job group or network, right? If you live in the Bay Area I highly recommend checking out CSIX and in the South Bay ProMatch, both are free of charge and full of people who will share their local knowledge and lend emotional support when frustration gets you down.

Bruce is bringing back the E Street gang for a new high energy rock record coming on Oct. 2. Titled Magic, it will have 11 tracks and feature everyone, including Soozie Tyrell on violin and backing vocals, for his trademark tidal wave of sound.

For laughs, while you’re waiting, check out this fictionalized take on an old school Springsteen pre-song story by Timmy Waldron and an entertaining video clip of an interview with guitarist Steve Van Zandt.

Well the last of the games just ended and in what has to be one of the best scoreless matches I’ve ever seen Reading held defending champs Manchester United to a 0-0 draw at Old Trafford through an unbelievable defensive effort. Even after losing their lone striker, Dave Kitson, to a red card just 45 seconds after he was subbed in, American goalkeeper Marcus Hanneman and the back line were rock solid for the remaining 22 minutes.

The game was also one of several that contributed to this post’s title. Maybe some weird bug got into the bottled water supplied to the teams across the country but Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United all started players on one of the wings who’ve usually figured at full back in the past, respectively John Arne Riise, Emmanuel Eboue and Patrice Evra. Reinforcing this trend, Man U (John O’Shea) and Reading (Andre Bikey) both subbed in defensive players up front towards the end, though O’Shea has seen a good portion of playing time the past 18 months in midfield.

Eboue was an interesting choice for Arsene Wenger on the right side considering he had heralded youngster Theo Walcott available. There was some question about Walcott’s fitness but he looked fine after coming on as a second half sub for the nominal right back. Eboue has the pace and power to be a winger but his crossing and creativity did not impress me.

And though they won 2-1 at the death despite an awesome effort by last minute sub keeper Tony Warner, the Gunners showed the same preference to pass rather than shoot that haunted them the last couple of years. Wenger will surely be happy to get Emmanuel Adebayore and new signing Eduardo da Silva fit to play since Robin van Persie is not at his best as the lone striker.

Evra was a bit more impressive than Eboue on the attacking end, taking the bombastic style shared by teammates Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney as role models. He was more assertive by far, driving into the 18 yard box on every chance.

O’Shea’s placement was required due to injury. Rooney suffered a hairline fracture on his left foot after getting accidentally stamped by Michael Duberry just before half time; no word yet but the England star will surely miss out the national team friendly versus Germany in 10 days and probably both Euro 2008 qualifiers in early September. On the silver lining side, this is not the foot he broke in 2004 and again last Spring. Carlos Tevez will likely need to get in gear for the Red Devils a bit sooner than expected since Louis Saha and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer are also unwell and one wonders if Sir Alex regrets selling Alan Smith last week.

If this trend keeps up it doesn’t say much for the summer signings since Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester all went in for big money on midfield additions, out of all of which only Nani got on the field and him due to Rooney’s broken foot.