BillSaysThis

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.

For the first time in the Rafa Benitez era, Liverpool opened a Premier League season with a victory. Traveling to the midlands, the Reds came away from Villa Park with a narrow victory on an own goal from Martin Laursen and a blisteringly beautiful free kick by Stevie G just moments after the Villans had equalized on a penalty taken by Gareth Barry.

The Reds’ starting lineup was a bit of a surprise to me. Despite splashing out over $100 million on new signings, Benitez included only one of them in the starting XI; of course the one was the costliest, Spain striker Fernando Torres. The other surprise to me was seeing John Arne Riise on the left side of midfield. Riise was a fixture at left fullback last season, deservedly so in my eyes, and there’s also the fact that most of the team’s purchasing went to midfielders, especially players like Ryan Babbel and Yossi Benayoun who could provide width.

Since John is my favorite on the current squad I was happy to see him have a place. With the controversial deal to bring Gabriel Heinze over from Manchester United still to be decided, I suppose the boss wanted to give my boy a chance to show his primacy in the regular rotation. Remember, Benitez is the manager who named different starting squads in each of his first 99 games in charge and then, to avoid being pigeonholed, used the same team in the 99th and 100th matches.

Anyway, on the field today the team looked potent on attack, Torres pairing well with Dirk Kuyt (and my number two Peter Crouch not even on the subs bench!), though Jermaine Pennant has yet to convince me he deserves first slot on the right wing depth chart. Pennant’s crossing lacks sufficient quality and he’s too easily agitated, almost getting booked after a hard foul by Stilian Petrov.

The other big issue was our back line. The past few years our defense has been the team’s greatest strength and Pepe Reina replacing Jerzy Dudek two years ago as well as the gradual introduction of Daniel Agger as Jamie Carragher’s partner in the center over the course of last season seemed like good upgrades, but for the last 20-25 minutes this afternoon the cement appeared to have crumbled. Carragher handling the ball in the area in the 85th minute to give Aston Villa their chance to equalize was the culmination of a steady stream of mistakes and poor positioning, the only surprise was how long the dam held.

Fortunately Petrov got whistled for a foul two minutes later and Gerrard took a brilliant free kick that curved around the defensive wall and arched into the top near side corner of the netting. Villa keeper Stuart Taylor got a few millimeters of fingertip onto the ball but it had too much velocity to be deflected and the Reds were on top to stay.

The team travel to France for a Champions League encounter at Toulouse Tuesday, first leg of their third round qualifying tie. No TV here (thanks for nothing ESPN!) but that team can’t be taken lightly after they beat six-time Ligue 1 champions Lyon in the season opener today. Then it’s back to Liverpool where we host Chelsea next Sunday–which apparently will be on Fox Soccer Channel, yay–a very tough week but three wins or two wins and a draw would make for a terrific launch.

I completely agree with Paul Graham’s latest essay, which he opens with the statement “I have too much stuff.” In the first year I lived in the Bay Area there were four places I called home, plus the very first week spent in the spare room of a co-worker’s apartment. All that moving around made me very cognizant of just how much stuff I had and how much of it was unnecessary.

Then, during the boom years of the late ’90s my Amazon addiction kicked into high gear; at least one box each of CDs and books were delivered every month. Since my household was relatively stable, 18 months in an apartment and then over six years in a townhouse, the cumulative effect was not too visible.

But when TS1 moved in in August 2002 the volume became very clear and so then, and again just before our move to this apartment, every possession was given the gimlet eye. Books were donated, given away or sold to the used book shop. CDs were scanned on our computers, backed up, and then sold to the old Tower Records store. Clothes that no longer fit went to Goodwill, and so on through other categories of stuff.

Now we are very conscious about bringing home new things. Books are borrowed from the library or bought at the used book shop or a deep discounter, specifically desired tracks downloaded from iTunes for 99 cents a piece rather than $12 or 15 for the whole CD (with a few exceptions, of course). Even cool tech, like my MacBook, the plasma TV or our iPhones, are replacing existing things. We haven’t bought any new furniture in years, other than a small table, though I admit to glomming a nice round IKEA table when we cleaned out the RawSugar office last Fall.

Graham also fingers corporate marketing and advertising efforts as key culprits in our consumption society. As he writes, “They make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that ‘shopping’ becomes a leisure activity.” Fortunately not for me or TS1 but how many times have you and people you know decided to go to the mall on a weekend afternoon just to see what’s there? If so, what portion of the trips ended with new bags of stuff in the car coming home?

I’m not saying that marketing and advertising are all bad since, after all, I’ve done some of both myself. Both disciplines are merely tools for disseminating information about products in a form that engages potential customers and other stakeholders. Still, when behavioral research starts turning up telling us that preschoolers think carrots and other generic foods taste better when it comes in McDonalds paper wrappers we surely have a serious problem.

This also ties in with current ecological concerns, and not just climate change. Consider that each physical product you buy not only uses whatever raw materials it’s made of and the energy to produce it but also the materials used for packaging and transporting them to the store. Buying fewer things also helps reduce impossible or impractical to replace raw resources. After all, not only do we need to leave a healthy world for our grandchildren and their children, we also need to leave them raw materials to build the things their lives will require.

What’s clogging up your home, your living space, that you can do without? Can you learn to break free of the addiction to stuff and the marketing and advertising that drives so much unnecessary spending? My bottom line is to give real thought before buying things for yourself and you family. Every logo’ed t-shirt and ball cap, extra pair of jeans and that fancy glass picture frame which will only sit in a drawer you don’t buy is that much less to take with you the next time you move, gives you that much more living space and leaves that much more in the ground for future citizens of our global society.

I’ve had this little gem for 10 days now and its sweet, even addictive. TS1 and I tried them out a week before and the pressure was on! She got a chunk of OT and we’re switching off the landline soon to make this better fit our budget plus we got 4GB models.

Typing this much on the virtual keyboard is a bit of a strain on my patience so I’ll finish up at home later with more early assessment.

Later:

Best things about it:

• Maps! Not having to carefully copy down driving instructions or kill trees to print them out is wonderful for me.
• Email everywhere. Although this is a bit addicting and perhaps dangerous at red lights.
• 4GB for music, compared to 1GB on the iPod I won from Krugle, and cuts down on listening to commercials on FM radio.
• Free time filler. Waiting on line, at the doctor’s office, wherever.

Not great things:

• Safari does not remember logins, presumably something to do with cookies
• Typing, as mentioned above, is a learning process (hopefully)
• Mail does not have bulk actions such as mark all read or delete all
• GMail, which is one of my two main email accounts, STILL does not support IMAP; this is obviously to Google and not Apple but until now hasn’t been an issue for me

Unclear items:

• Wifi connectivity strength seems to vary even if the phone is sitting on a table top
• Music app loses its place (that is, which song was played last) and one cannot pick a specific song but have shuffle mode choose tracks afterwards

Overall we’re very happy to have bought the iPhones, even if they’re a little more expensive than we’d like especially since my Apple friends cannot buy at their normal discount.

Good for a laugh: Even though I’ve gotten at least two software updates on my MacBook since the iPhone was released, the OS X system spellchecker still shows iPhone as a misspelled word. Then again, MacBooks have been out much longer and the spellchecker flags it as bad too.

This came up in an email discussion with Rob last week and seems like one of those things that everyone’s got an opinion on, like what the acronym RSS expands to.

For my money Silicon Valley is:

• no further north than Menlo Park (this is perhaps the most contentious border, leaving out Redwood City and Redwood Shores, e.g., Oracle)
• east to Milpitas
• south from Los Gatos to south San Jose
• west from Menlo Park to Los Gatos

I used Google’s My Maps feature to create this illustrative map. Why don’t you post your own?

An interesting thread over at SportsFilter got me to put down something I’ve been thinking about for awhile now regarding the future of US printed newspapers. The SpoFi thread, inspired by Matthew Yglesias’s blog post at The Atlantic, was specifically about the local sports page but I think the broader question is more useful to consider. This is a slightly edited version of my comment in that thread. Remember, I’m not just a web guy; I also have a BA in journalism (for what that’s worth).

One development I expect to see in the US–and probably Canada too, though I’m not familiar enough with European newspaper ownership to know if this will be true there–is the big national ownership groups, e.g., MediaNews, Gannett and Tribune, will consolidate writing staffs. Between the falling (death spiraling?) revenues and increasing newsroom pink slips (the San Jose Mercury News, for instance, has half the staff writers now as were there a year ago) I think there’s no other solution and I’m surprised not to have read this yet from any media pundits.

What I mean by consolidation is that instead of each paper having their own staff TV, book, music and sports writers, each chain will pick the smallest number needed for a particular beat and use them across all its papers. So probably one or two TV, book, music and media writers nationally plus perhaps one to cover explicitly local material. Business and tech can be handled similarly, except in markets like Silicon Valley and New York that can justify local hiring from area-specific revenue.

Sports is different. Plenty of people buy newspapers for sports alone. That doesn’t mean one cannot realize efficiencies by having, chain-wide, just enough sportswriters to have one on hand at any given event, rather than one or more local staff dedicated per team, plus a small number of columnists (though not necessarily local). So each local market would have proprietary written stories on their own teams, albeit not necessarily by the same writer all season long. More important, this would open budget for writers to be assigned to local sports, high school, college and so on, which are IMO generally under-covered now but would attract substantial readership.

The Long Run

Printed papers will be around for perhaps 10-15 more years tops even if they make major changes such as what I’ve suggested; the iPhone is a harbinger of what’s to come tech-wise that leads to this. For now the screen, nice as it is, is too small and the devices are a tad too expensive to replace printed papers for most people. Virtual displays, though, are almost at the mass market price point of under $200, perhaps 24-30 months away from it, and then the ocean wave will begin to swell; prices for highly usable, always-connected devices will follow the normal price v. time on market curve ever downward.

But my prediction is only for the printed version of the paper. The big chains–and here we have to add in the likes of the New York Times Company and Dow Jones/News Corp–still have the chance to make their dosh on creating journalistic content, if their execs can make the leap in understanding and build defensible web properties out of the (sorry) substandard hash that is today’s standard newspaper website.

Of course in this time frame, we’re also no longer talking about newspapers competing against just other newspapers (if we ever were) but other companies that deliver similar information in other formats. That is, magazines delivering topical content and radio/television as well; perhaps not radio so much as, other than NPR, those companies no longer deliver much in the way of original reporting.

No doubt these companies are in for a long, strange trip. Technology is the creative destructor par excellance which, as Wikipedia says, destroys the value of established companies despite their having enjoyed some degree of monopoly power.

The Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley asked me to be on the organizing committee for a new speaker’s series, due to our burgeoning relationship over the Jewish High Tech Community, and, flattered, I agreed. The new Federation leadership (which I’m seeing in dealings with Jyl Jurman and Arielle Hendler) are showing real smarts IMO, especially compared with the previous team who, after all, took over JHTC and let it die on the vine.

Bagels + Business will have a wider focus than JHTC, bringing in speakers from across the spectrum of industries we have here in the South Bay like real estate, biotech/pharmaceutical, finance and investing, media and sometimes stretching the boundary a bit into politics and education. I signed up to help arrange the April guest which, given the timing, will focus on business in Israel as our homeland reaches its 60th birthday.

Details are still being worked out but this is planned to be held five times a year, preferrably the second Thursday of every other month beginning in October, at the beautiful new Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center in Los Gatos, with a small admission to cover the cost of breakfast. We’re hoping to have a real blockbuster speaker for the first event but I should probably hold my tongue until arrangements are final 😉

As you’d expect, these events will be open to the community at large, Jewish or not. And I’m easily flattered.

Last night, TS1 and I were in the bleachers to see the American women thrash Japan; the game was closer than the 4-1 score. Shannon Boxx had a sweet header from a Stephanie Lopez cross for the first goal in the 17th minute and the second (41st) was an own goal by center back Yukari Kinga, who misdirected a Lindsay Tarpley glancing header off Chrissie Rampone’s cross from deep in the Japanese end.

I took some shot with my phone’s camera and made a small Flickr set of the (relatively speaking) best ones, here’s a sample with USA on the attack right in front of us in the second half:

The second half started with five minutes of domination by the visitors, the only really threatening patch they had until just before the end, but USA weathered the storm and took back the initiative. They got a third goal in the 55th when Santa Clara University grad Leslie Osborne crossed from the right to Lori Chalupny in the box and Chalupny tapped it to captain Kristine Lilly, who one touched it past Miho Fukumoto for her 124th national team goal and closed out their account in the 74nd when Abby Wambach went net from the penalty spot after Kinga, having a terrible game, handled the ball in the box. The Japanese finally got on the scoring list in the 79th on an unassisted shot by Yuki Nagasato.

Abby’s goal, her 75th, tied her for fifth on the all time USA list with Cindy Parlow; Lilly remains 35 behind Mia Hamm for the top spot but extended her lead atop the caps list to 329 with Rampone the nearest active player to her at only at 166.

We had pretty good seats, first row at the edge of the East 18 yard box, but the setting sun was blinding us until half time and made it very difficult to see the action on the far side, which was the offensive zone for USA. I understand now why the Earthquakes (old and new) wanted another place to play: the pitch is allegedly 68 yards wide, narrow enough compared to the European norm of 80, but the reality seems to be several yards less, and the space between the sidelines and the wall is less than two yards for most of the length, meaning very little room to avoid injury.

Writing a spoiler-free post about the latest, and last, book in JK Rowling’s series about the teen super-wizard is difficult but necessary, so I’ll try. First, this is a very well-written tale, Rowling wordsmithing has definitely matured over the seven volumes. Second, the characters themselves continued to mature in reasonable harmony with events and their supposed age. Third, the ending satisfied me in the way the major questions were answered.

Which is not to say there were no problems. The biggest one, for me, is a sort of deus ex machina conversation just before the end between two key characters that goes way over the show, don’t tell line; that is, one character simply tells the other a number of important points, by far taking the authorial easy way out rather than figuring out how to work the information into the organic story line. On the other hand, while Deathly Hallows is no slender volume, Rowling does use it to answer a number of questions without giving us another thousand page opus.

Some readers, especially younger ones, may feel the middle segment (chronologically covering most of the school term) is overlong and under-exciting though I don’t. For me, by requiring the events to last over so many months and not snapping magical fingers to complete them in a few weeks, Rowling made a choice showing her growth as well as grounding the plot closely to reality.

Under the given circumstances, Harry, Ron and Hermione had to move cautiously and could not, without creating bigger problems, get help from those who would ordinarily jump to do so. The ‘good guys’, and especially Harry, must use their minds at least as much, if not more, than magic.

One thought that occurred to me, not sure if it’s a good or bad thing, is that a number of aspects of the book and, looking back, the entire sequence strongly resonate with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. Being specific would give away things I prefer not to tell, but see if you agree.

recommended

Very cool book, good ending and a review will be here shortly.

There will be a break in the bill:routine this weekend as a copy of Deathly Hallows has found its way here. Normally I don’t purchase hardbacks, the cost is too high compared to the free library or other loan source or paperback, but the exception was made for Ms. Rowling’s latest because:

1. TS1 and I both enjoyed the previous six so much and will both be reading this volume, a wonderful though rare occurrence;
2. The probability of avoiding significant spoilers before I could get it from the library or in paperback approaches the null set;
3. Cost was substantially reduced by purchasing it at a heavy discount;
4. The book itself was produced with extremely environment-aware resources; and,
5. We will also have the pleasure, after my lovely wife finishes her read, of donating it to an appropriate children’s charity.

Enough; time to start Chapter Two, In Memorium.

News leaked out today that the San Jose Earthquakes will be reborn for the 2008 MLS season. No, the Dynamo have not made a u-turn on Houston, this is a new franchise that will be given the old name and results (a la the Cleveland Browns a few years back). Fortunately we won’t be getting AEG back as owners either, but instead Lew Wolff, owner of the Oakland and soon to be Fremont A’s, will operate an expansion squad.

This isn’t a shock since Wolff has been negotiating with the city of San Jose and San Jose State over a stadium for some months though given the lack of progress on the facility the timing is a bit surprising. San Jose State wouldn’t agree to the deal Wolff wanted and Plan B is generating controversy due to a grant of favorable zoning on a separate parcel.

I know myself well enough to say that this team will join Liverpool as my top favorites ASAP. I wonder who will join the squad, if Wolff will bring in a big name international to kickstart the engine. Maybe Fabio Capello, ex-Real Madrid and Italy trophy-winning coach who publicly said in the last week he’s interested in coming to MLS, will be holding the reins? We can only hope to get some quality.

The Samba Boys were a 90 minute steamroller today and gave Dunga the trophy in his first competition as coach. Argentina were picked by nearly all the experts (and my SportsFilter cohort) after dominating every match played in Venezuela but just couldn’t keep up with their traditional rivals, losing 3-0. Robinho and Julio Baptista, two Brazilians that haven’t impressed me in club play with Real Madrid and Arsenal, were major factors over the course of the tournament and warrant re-evaluation over the coming season.

Copa America was a disappointment to most American fans but I have to say that both Brazil and Argentina made for enjoyable watching. The young USA team Bob Bradley brought were no match for any of their opponents and Kasey Keller didn’t seem to be the veteran leadership promised; given Mexico’s third place finish our first choice squad probably have done better than one draw from three matches.

None of the youngsters who joined the squad for this tourney (that is, excluding Bennie Feilhaber and Ricardo Clark) were terribly impressive or showed the quality justifying a regular place as the 2010 Qualifiers get started. Also on right now is the U-20 World Cup and while the US got dumped by supposedly weaker Austria, Freddie Adu, Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley showed themselves ready for regular inclusion on the senior side.

In deal news, Damarcus Beasley has moved to Rangers in Scotland and talk has Adu joining Old Firm rivals Celtic, Eddie Johnson wanted by multiple Premiership clubs and Altidore a hot property after he turns 18 in the near future.

Overall not a bad summer tournament season for us: the Gold Cup championship (and the 2009 Confederations Cup slot that goes with it), a run out for some candidates at the Copa America and reaching the quarters in the U-20 World Cup.

Having been involved with Blogger since before they had Pro accounts (I paid the $40 even though I was offered a freebie to support Ev and Co.), which was long before Google bought the company, and having co-authored of one of the earliest PHP libraries for the original Blogger API, I was very pleased to see today’s announcement by Google of first class support for PHP in the GData Developer’s Guide.

Python, .Net and Java have been part of the DevGuide since it was opened (AFAIR) and I always wondered why PHP got left, since Zend has long had the necessary open source code available via the Zend Framework. The Googlers are institutionally tight-lipped so an answer on that is unlikely to come out. Anyway, the support is out now, which is great.

The GData API is Google’s ATOM-based interface for programmatically connecting to Blogger as well as many other web services offered by the web giant, including Calendar, Code Search, Picasa and Spreadsheets. I use it on BillSaysThis mainly to supply content for the Book Reviews page, which is fairly simplistic, but other people have written full-blown interactive blogging clients with it.

Big thumbs up to the Blogger team for today’s release.