Originally published at Montara Energy Ventures.

An interesting trend seems to be taking hold around vehicles like Toyota’s Prius, home-grown conversions from standard hybrid to plugin hybrid by adding battery power, a charger, and socket to plug the vehicle in for charging. The magazine GreenCar.com has an interesting article about this phenomena. It would seem that the public is going to drag the automakers along on this one (along with a little pressure from the likes of Google.)

What’s the attraction? 120+ MPG. Imagine getting over 1,100 miles on a single tank of gas. Watch the video below:

Originally published at Montara Energy Ventures.

A leading technology company, Sun Microsystems, has released a community-based carbon footprint tracker today called OpenEco.org. It’s clearly just a start, but it’s interesting in that the point is to have folks measure their activity, set goals for improvement, and track them on the website. The theory is, if you can see it, then you can do something about it. Since there is a community involved, best practices can be formed and shared across the community.

Sun has proved masterful at building communities throughout its 25 year history, but this is a slightly different animal. It’s encouraging to see a large company step up and sponsor this, but I have to wonder, who will participate? The price of participation is high – that being the entry of vast quantities of data into the system. Yes, the community participant can choose how much is private vs. public, but just the act of entry is a high price. And it’s not a one-time gig. If Sun and the community can find a way to ease this price, then there may be some community growth.

But, this much is true, if you can’t see it, you won’t do anything about it. We applaud the company for making the effort.

Here’s the update from this weekend’s college football action. (And yes, I do realize it’s September 24th, but for the purposes of consistency, across the season, I’m keeping the title…)

OSU Opponent Watch

• Youngstown State (3-1) – Played Lock Haven at home, won 35-3. Conclusion: Expected Win
• Akron (2-2) – Played Kent State at home, won 27-20. Conclusion: Good Win
• Washington (2-2) – Played UCLA, on the road, 31-44. Conclusion: Hangover Loss
• Northwestern (2-2) – See game recap, destroyed at Ohio State 7-58. Conclusion: Expected Loss
• Minnesota (1-3) – Played Purdue at home, lost 31-45. Conclusion: Expected Loss
• Purdue (4-0) – Played Minnesota on the road, won 45-31. Conclusion: Expected Win
• Kent State (2-2) – Played Akron on the road, lost 20-27. Conclusion: Tough Loss
• Michigan State (4-0) – Played Notre Dame on the road, won 31-14. Conclusion: Expected Win
• Penn State (3-1) – Played Michigan on the road, lost 9-14. Conclusion: Unexpected Loss
• Wisconsin (4-0) – Played Iowa at home, won 17-14. Conclusion: More difficult than expected Win.
• Illinois (3-1) – Played Indiana on the road, won 27-14. Conclusion: Good Win
• Michigan (2-2) – Played Penn State at home, won 14-9. Conclusion: Unexpected Win

Buckeye opponent’s records after the fourth week, 32-16, a respectable .667 winning percentage. With the first week in the book of Big 10 play, the conference favorites are Ohio State and Wisconsin, with Purdue as a dark horse contender. I believe the Boilermaker’s defense is suspect and will be exposed. The Badgers are living on the edge, and will fall. Anyone playing Michigan needs to spread the field. The first two weeks of the season showed that dramatically and the win over Penn State simply reinforces that power football allows Michigan to compete. Spread football confounds them. Note to coaches: Play spread against Michigan until they prove they can slow it down. Despite being 1-0 in conference play, I’m highly skeptical of this Michigan team.

Quick Hits from Around College Football

Teams that look like mythical national championship (MNC) contenders from week 4: LSU, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and USC.

The jury is out on these teams who are technically still in the running, but their play to-date leaves room for doubt: Florida, Ohio State, Rutgers, Clemson, Oregon, Boston College, Michigan State, California, and Texas.

These teams stand virtually no chance of contending for the MNC, but still looked good in week four: Cincinnati, Wisconsin, Kansas, Purdue, Arizona State, Kentucky, Missouri, Connecticut, South Florida, and Hawaii.

Game of the week, Georgia beat Alabama on the road in overtime, 26-23.

Mismatch of the week, Hawaii beat down Charlston Southern at home, 66-10. At least the Charleston players got to go to Hawaii!

My Special Top 12 rankings: (Why Top 12? That’s where you need to be to get into BCS contention.)

1. LSU – A quality win over South Carolina, when will they face a tough offense? In a story no one is talking about, the SEC is down this year. More on this at a later date…
2. USC – Continues to roll, looks pretty strong throughout the phases.
3. Oklahoma – The class of an extremely weak Big 12, the Miami win looks a little better this week.
4. West Virginia – A complete win over an opponent that has given them fits in the past.
5. Florida – The Gators were lucky to escape the Grove with a W over a bad Mississippi team.
6. California – Beat up on Arizona, gave up 27 points to Arizona, defense is suspect.
7. Ohio State – The class of an average Big 10, need to see the offense produce against a good defense.
8. Oregon – Love the offense, but to give up 31 points to Stanford (junior college?)
9. Texas – Just what the ‘Horns ordered, a get well game vs. Rice.
10. Boston College – Seems to be the class of a very weak ACC this year.
11. Clemson – Replaces Wisconsin.
12. Rutgers – Speaking of cupcakes…wake me when they play someone.

My Special Bottom 5 rankings: (Why bottom 5? If you finish there you should be relegated to I-AA)

1. Notre Dame – Our long national tragedy is over, ND scored not one offensive touchdown, but two! Too bad the defense gave up four and a field goal…
2. Rice – Has the lowest rating of any 1A football program according to Sagarin.
3. Marshall – Stays here until they win a game.
4. Temple – The move to the MAC hasn’t helped.
5. Utah State – Awful, just awful.

In the coming week I’ll post an Minnesota/OSU preview, a game review of Minnesota/OSU, and a Weekend Update Sports edition.

I don’t often write much about things that just happen to me, this blog isn’t usually a personal diary sort of thing. Generally, I write about things that I find interesting and think others might find interesting too – regardless of agreement or not with the item in question. This entry has no point, other than just a general update on random things and events.

Over the weekend, my spouse and I had our first night away from our daughter together. We left her (and our dog) with a trusted caregiver and attended the wedding of a former colleague in Santa Cruz at the Chaminade resort (very nice,) stayed over at the Comfort Inn (not so nice,) and had a leisurely breakfast at Hoffman’s Bakery (great food) before heading home. It was a great wedding, the couple looked very happy. We spent time with friends who also attended. The groom made a speech where I was very unexpectedly mentioned – there’s a lesson in that, you never know when/how you might touch someone’s life – you may not even know it. I didn’t know it. I’m grateful to know that now.

The reality of the Montara Energy Ventures project is now sinking in. With the best will in the world, it’s going to take 5 years to develop. That’s a long time and I’m going to have to make a living in the meantime. And while it would be nice if this were the case, blogging is not the answer. So, I’m looking to pick up some extra work which could take on the form of contract assignment or full-time with some flexibility. Leads are appreciated.

Having taken the weekend off, I’ve fallen behind on some of my regular publishing activities. You can expect to see that we’ll be caught up today sometime (weekend update on sports for instance.) Now, back to our usual blogging activity, things that I find interesting that others might too…

This is going to be a short recap since I have a commitment that will cause me to leave before the game is complete. But, the score is 45-0 at halftime (I predicted 44-0 for the game.) The OSU offense has put up 257 yards and 38 points. The defense has held NU to 17 yards, 0 points, forced 2 turnovers and scored 7 on a fumble return.

The Good

In short, everything. But particularly a fast start with the team showing intensity throughout the first half. Tressel called the dogs off or the score could be even more lopsided.

The Bad

It’s hard to be too picky, but penalties are still troublesome, there was a mis-snap on an extra point (which was made,) Boeckman through an interception, ball security (fumbles,) Boeckman is under-throwing targets on deep throws, kickoff coverage, and one sack was allowed.

The Ugly

It’s bad to be a Northwestern fan. But those fans should take heart, it’s a young team and staff and there are flashes of potential. This team will grow throughout the season.

I reserve the right to update this upon my return tomorrow and the weekend update post will likely be delayed tomorrow as well.