The video above is short, and very interesting. Lightning can travel at speeds of up to 134,000 miles per hour and may reach tempertures of over 54,000 farenheit. Now that’s fast and hot! Pretty cool phenomena, lightning.

This morning marked the first real test of my hybrid (2005 Honda Civic) enroute to work. As you can see from the photo to the right, the trip is nearly 40 miles one way and the mileage recorded was 49.9 miles per gallon. Whoo hooo! That’s quite an improvement. But that’s not the whole story, a normal commute at this time of the morning takes between 80-90 minutes in my prior vehicle, this morning? 45 minutes.

My commute is a tough test too. The first 1/2 consists of essentially two lane fast city streets and an ascent over the coastal range and foothills. The last 1/2 consists of Highways 92 and 101 through the peninsula and into the heart of Silicon Valley. So there is a mix of stop and go, hills, and freeway speeds. It’s really a nice mix to show the relative performance of a vehicle. Conclusions about the hybrid thus far?

Hybrid vehicle, very valuable. Less fuel, fewer emissions, and a general feeling of well being in lowering one’s footprint.

HOV stickers allowing travel in the carpool lane, priceless. Recovering 35-45 minutes each commute cycle is really incalculable value.

By the numbers, first the old:

• Old vehicle: 18.6MPG
• Fuel consumed per commute cycle: 2.13 gallons
• Fuel cost per commute cycle: $9.35
• Time per commute cycle: 85 minutes

Now the new:

• New vehicle: 49.9MPG
• Fuel consumed per commute cycle: 0.79 gallons
• Fuel cost per commute cycle: $3.47
• Time per commute cycle: 45 minutes

Hey, hybrid might not make sense for everyone, but I can see that there will be a big difference in my life and seeing actual data makes it all real for me. The synergistic benefits (beyond time and $) are even better. Over the course of a year, the reduction in CO² and NOx will also be substantial, and that’s something to feel good about too…

Well friends, it’s August and that must mean the 2008 college football season is right around the corner! What a long and dull offseason it has been (and that’s a good thing, the off field incidents have been kept to a minimum at Ohio State which wasn’t always the case.) Last year was a bit of a rebuilding year (11-2 with another trip to the national championship game) where there were a few big question marks going into the season.

This year, the Buckeyes return 20 of 22 (21 if you count that Lawrence Wilson was a starter and broke his leg in the first game of the year) starters from a team that was #1 in defense in the land and not too bad on offense as the year rolled along. This year the schedule isn’t as favorable as last year (and I don’t think we should count on 6 of the top 10 teams losing in the last week of the season for miracles this year…) with road trips to USC, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan State. Any of these games could easily end up in the loss column without the proper focus and attention to detail.

The pundits have anointed the Bucks as a top 5 team to start the year and many pick them to end up in the BCS championship for a third straight year (with groans being heard from all over the nation from non-Buckeye fans.) I don’t think anyone (myself included) expected OSU to play for all the marbles last year – in fact, before the final week of the season, I was happy to think of a trip to the Rose Bowl and watching West Virginia take on Missouri for the title, anyone remember that? Of course, that was before Pitt shutdown WVU in a very poorly officiated game (biased against Pitt) and Oklahoma dismantled Missouri in the Big 12 Championship.

Well, that’s history. This year is a new ball game as they say. Can’t wait for the season, I watched a few minutes of OSU football practice on the Big 10 Network last night and I’m totally ready for the season again. So, you can expect to see a few characters written on the upcoming season, I’m going to resurrect the Conference Strength Report as a weekly feature, and provide a preview and review of each of the Buckeyes 12 regular season games over the next 3 months. Hope you enjoy it! Meanwhile, GO BUCKS!

For your viewing pleasure, a highlight reel of Beanie Wells posted on YouTube:

And I can’t sleep, the vestiges of international travel. I’m wide awake with a full day tomorrow which includes an all hands meeting for my US team (the Asia team’s was last Wednesday.) Thus I have B.B. King’s Three O’Clock Blues running through my head – if you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and listen…

Instead of jet lag, this impact really should be called travel shock (guess this condition is reserved for bottles of wine rather than people – but I think it’s more descriptive and more accurate than jet lag.) For some reason, it’s always more acute for Asia trips for me than Europe. I wonder why that is?

Meanwhile, I’m going to try to get myself relaxed and hit the hay for a couple of more hours of zzzz’s….

My “around the world in eight days trip” finished yesterday will my arrival at SFO. For those of you who are good with math, you might notice that the trip spanned nine days, but from an elapsed time perspective it was just barely eight days in hours. After spending 30 hours in Delhi, India, I was on my way to Hong Kong for a 6 hour stopover. The flight was mostly empty (Air India) and was a “red eye” leaving Delhi at 11pm and arriving Hong Kong at 7am.

A word about Delhi airport: For international flights you’ll want to arrive between 2 and 3 hours before your departure. If you arrive with more than 3 hours to departure time, you are not allowed to check-in and then you can either wait outside in the “sultry” weather with masses of mosquitos or pay 30 rupees to wait in a lounge that resembles the Port Authority bus station. It’s quite a quandry. I paid the 30 rupees to get out of the way of mosquitos.

Once checked in, there was some time to kill at the Delhi airport which, relative to the new Bangalore airport, is both small and dated. In fact, terminal-wise, it seems to be about the size of the Dayton Airport or smaller. This is the major airport serving a city of 17 million people and the capital of the world’s largest democracy. I was a bit surprised by this never having transited this airport before.

Hong Kong is the exact opposite, thoroughly modern, huge, with every modern convenience. The Red Carpet Club there is among the best I’ve experienced in any part of the world. I’ve always enjoyed Hong Kong, even the old airport. But the new one made it very easy to pass the time while waiting for the second red eye of this segment from Hong Kong to San Francisco. I spent 15k frequent flyer miles to upgrade on this 13 hour flight and it was worth every mile.

The only complaint I had with the flight was the presence of small children in business class. Two of them screamed for 13 hours straight and managed a feat rarely seen for me – they were able to defeat my Bose Quiet Comfort noise cancellation headphones. I was stunned. However, dipping into my travel provisions I found a pair of ear plugs and those coupled with noise cancellation did the trick. Suffice to say, the parents were frazzled and there were a bunch of passengers without ear protection who were highly dissatisfied.

Home, sweet home we landed at 9:43 am on Aug 2. The first bag appeared at 10:30 and my bag didn’t appear until 11:15. During this waiting period, United repeatedly apologized for the delay citing lack of ground crew to handle the load of incoming flights. Now, I’m not an airline expert, but the last time I checked for international flights in particular, these are multi-hour flights providing huge warning time about when they will actually arrive. Isn’t it job #1 to be able to meet these planes and service them while on the ground? Baggage claim at SFO is the worst of any airport I’ve ever flown into – it’s consistently over 1 hour to reconnect with you bag if it arrives at all… Contrast it to Delhi where the bags were available in 15 minutes after deplaning.

It’s now 3am Aug 3 and I’m having my usual adjustment back to PDT. Time to signoff and think about sleeping again. It’s very nice to be home!