Kiss your sister day here where both the Reds and Earthquakes played down to their competition when both messed good chances to sock away three points. Early season or late, points left on the table are undoubtedly points missed in the final accounting.

Tim O’Brien updates the Warren Buffett picture pretty well in For Buffett, the One That Got Away, covering the two big issues confronting Berkshire Hathaway these days. Those are the potential legal scandal and general underperformance of General Re, one of the company’s big insurance holdings, what to do with the humongus and growing cash pile that’ll produce meaningful returns, and the bigger longterm question of who can possibly fill Buffett’s chair when the 75 year old no longer sits in it.

Still hard to see the light at tunnel’s end

Sun Microsystems today elevated Stuart Wells to head Sales based on the “success” he’s had “taking back Wall Street” over the last couple of years; all I can say is that Wells did little to impress me when he was running the iPlanet Products group. BusinessWeek is reporting a rumor that Scott McNealey, Mr. 189th on Forbes’ Executive Efficiency list, is working with an LBO firm to take Sun private and I suppose that he’s figuring that if no one else wants to capitalize on the company’s pile of cash he will. Sun stock was down a dime on the day. Non-plussed?

Later: McNealey says the rumors are a shortseller’s fantasy and the market mostly agreed with SUNW closing up only 18 cents. Someone on the Sun Alumni mailing list suggested this is the desired result if the hedge fund, when the market fully discounts the rumor, sold short at the open this morning and covers when the price bottoms out in a few days or weeks. And then turns around to use these profits to fund the not-so-false buyout. Contrast that with the inside view from Vault’s Sun Employee Surveys, which seem uniformly negative and pessimistic. Most of the people I know still working there are doing so only because of the big paycheck, low pressure to deliver–low in the sense of consequences for poor performance–and the difficulty finding comparable packages elsewhere.

GENtle: ” is bioinformatics software for everyday molecular biology tasks.” This will be really handy because I have a biomolecular workbench in the kitchen, next to the toaster oven–don’t you?

Multimedia Day

If you haven’t seen it yet, the Serenity trailer (warning: link is directly to the large format QuickTime movie) is online and man does it look good. I’ll be there Sep. 30, not much doubt in my mind. I was a fan of Firefly as a TV series–yet another cool Fox show that the network cut down before it was barely started–and the trailer shows the same creativity and mystery plus a visual sharpness that one rarely sees in computer generated films. Very appealing. But then Joss Whedon has a track record for that.

Today also saw the release of Springsteen’s Devils and Dust, I picked up a copy but I might until the weekend so I can savor it. Then again, might not be able to resist the temptation. The VH1 Storytellers was nice but the editing and interruptions, the odd way so many of his comments were layered on top of the performance, just didn’t sit right with me and so didn’t sate my yearning.

And in a third medium, this year’s novel from Harlan Coben arrived today as well. The Innocent stays in the tense thriller genre of his last few books but does include a new Myron Bolitar short story in the American editions. In his newsletter Harlan wrote “I don’t want to say too much, but I will say, letting those two characters out for air has felt great–and I don’t know that I’ll be able to put them back in storage any time soon.” After five years and five novels, all good, not complaining, I’m sure ready for another tale featuring my old buddy and his friends.

The Smoking Gun have come up with more titilating items in the past but I am amused by the excerpts of Springsteen 2002 concert rider the guys posted that came to my attention today. Nothing that extraordinary compared to other acts’ demands but just seeing the level of detail is pretty impressive and the language, which is about as lawerly as you’d imagine.

Joe went and updated from the classic jennet.radio to the sleek and modern jenett., nothin’ like dropping a few letters to make yourself look young and smart.

Liverpool (crap) – 1 Crystal Palace

If you’re left to two shots in injury time by a center back as the best scoring chances of the day, and both of those go untouched up to the stands, then losing 0-1 at home should not be a surprising result. Losing at home to a team in the relegation zone without scoring a goal or even seriously challenging the goalie but once is a shocking result. Not picking up even a point when the team you need to catch for the last and only attainable Champions League spot are down 1-0 themselves until an injury time equalizer is horrendous.

Rafa Benitez must have said to himself that his second level players need to prove they deserve roster slots and a game against the Londoners ahead of Wednesday’s CL match at Chelsea is the time to let them sink or swim. Xabi Alonso, just back from injury, was rested with John Welsh instead partnering Steven Gerrard in central midfield, Steve Finnan and Djimi Traore were on the wings instead of Luis Garcia and John Arne Riise, and Anthony Le Tallec was a third striker in a 3-4-3 formation Benitez had never previously shown. If the changes were fish we’d be flushing the loo about now.

Three EPL games left now, nine possible points: home to Middlesborough, at Arsenal and home to Aston Villa. Boro won 4-0 today against West Brom but otherwise their recent form hasn’t been good, a draw to Fullham and before that losses to Arsenal, Southampton and 0-1 to this same Palace squad; if there’s not too much hangover, whatever the midweek result, three points are reasonable to look for. Away to a team fighting ManU for the second spot and therefore automatic CL qualification is another matter and though we did beat Arsenal on our turf in November a draw is the best prediction even if scoring maestro Thierry Henry is still out injured. Villa is possibly the key match, a mid-table team we ought to beat at home and yet haven’t regularly this season.

Bolton moved into a fifth place tie with their draw today but have Everton, Portsmouth and Chelsea remaining and seem unlikely to push us down to sixth. Sam Allardyce has managed some surprises so can’t rule them out entirely but fifth or six place are equal for next season’s European play.

Everton have four to play and a four point lead: Fullham, Newcastle, Bolton and Arsenal (not yet scheduled but must make up the game postponed last weekend because the FA Cup semifinal). Six points seems attainable, either a win and three draws or two wins, and that means no chance for the Reds to pass their crosstown rivals.

Away and home to the league leaders for a spot in the CL final–the opponent on May 25 in Istanbul is likely to be AC Milan, though I’d be thrilled to see Damarcus Beasley’s PSV Eindhoven pull off the upset–thus becomes massively important. Roman’s boys have all but technically won the league running away, today’s 3-1 trashing of Fullham exposing their prime weakness as disinterest with no question of skill or creativity, and have topped Liverpool 1-0 in the league and 2-3 in the Carling Cup. Winning Europe, however, is now the only way back and anything less means UEFA Cup.

“a winner is you!”

Rogers Cadenhead, one of my SportsFilter buddies was smart enough to register a few of the likely pope name domains before the recent election and his bet paid off, he owns benedictxvi.com, and the media coverage the last two days is immense, the link is to the clip of him being interviewed on this morning’s Today Show. I was amazed at how together he was, and funny! Before you get twisted on how this nice guy is going to exploit religion, he’s already announced the domain is the Vatican’s for the asking and in the meanwhile he’s donating this week’s ad revenues from all his sites to Modest Needs. A real mensch, my grandmother would have said.

After hours trading is not an especially good indicator of the next day’s activity but when a stock as big as GOOG is up 10 9.53% you still need to take notice.

Mr. Pumping Irony, glad you found some useful information. Here’s more: searching your site on a term that is not found results in WP coughing up a not found template-ish error. No problem if the search is successful. Do I know you?

From The Big Guy, get your real contact information at Find-A-Human, IVR phone system shortcuts that will let you break out of voicemail menu jails at many hard to reach American companies. Put together by self-confessed phone geek Paul English. Extremely useful!

I’m working on some WordPress implementation issues and Cake. Both are not easily resolving. 24 was good but seems to be pulling out the old formula list. Uncommon Knowledge showed that Intelligent Design ‘theorists’ are more interested in using their intelligence to justify personal belief than in developing science.

Today’s movie: Shaolin Soccer

This was a total hoot. Cross super kung fu fanatics with a soccer competition against a team lead by an evil megalomaniac and over the top acrobatics. That’s what you get in Shaolin Soccer (Siu lam juk kau). Stephen Chow does a Woody Allen, he’s the writer, director and star, and now I’m really looking forward to his Kung Fu Hustle that opens Friday. Very strange and hard to describe, nothing like anything we get from Hollywood, just totally worth your time.

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