$98,000 for a car is steep, but this video does show a great experience. As the Tesla employee says, technology tends to enter the market on the high-end and then commoditize over time. The electric car may finally be here. 

My thoughts are a jumble today, so rather than select any specific item to share, I thought I’d make it a pupu platter.

• Fall colds suck. We’ve had one circulating our household now for about a month. When one of us seems to recover, another goes down. Ah the joys of having a little bio-terrorist freely sharing her germs! Since I know that her Grandparents read this reasonably frequently, she’s healthy – it’s her parents who seem to bear the brunt of the recovery.
• Apple’s Leopard Upgrade is really nice. I updated my laptop last night, and really like it thus far. The only gotcha I’ve seen thus far are in dashboard widgets – those not developed by Apple seem to not work and play well in the new Dashboard environment. The best thing about Leopard thus far? It’s much faster on the same hardware. I’m sure there are other features (like Spaces) I’ll come to love, but it’s worth the upgrade for speed alone.
• Is holding still a penalty? As I watched two defensive linemen being blatantly held while the Wisconsin quarterback completed a big play, I have to wonder, what are refs enforcing in terms of holding? Admittedly, if they hadn’t held, Wisconsin wouldn’t have scored and the game wouldn’t have been interesting. Also worth noting is that even with blatant holding, their quarterback was sacked 10 times during the game. Perhaps the refs decided to save the quarterback’s life by ignoring the infraction? I watched a few minutes of the Patriots vs. the Colts yesterday, different league, same problem with holding, though to a lesser extent. And what’s with the penalties on pass interference? A ticky-tack call yields over 50 yards on a single play? That ought to be reexamined by the league… Oh, and the NFL is still unwatchable.
• Interesting interview technique. Last week at a large Silicon Valley company I had an interesting conversation with an HR representative. She asked me all sorts of “fluffy” questions which individually didn’t seem very interview like but collectively probably yielded a good psychological profile. I liked it, it ended up more as a conversation and after a week of more or less cookie cutter conversations, it was a nice way to end the week.
• Shallow temperature surveys. We were scheduled to be out in the Sou Hills doing some survey work on the prospect. But, real life intruded and we’re now postponed until December at the earliest. That was a pretty disappointing development, I was looking forward to a few days of driving long, hollow metal tubes into the desert pavement and taking temperature samples. We hear that a large geothermal company hit a resource a mere 5 miles to the north-east last week and we know there is a functioning 60MW plant 5 miles to the south-west…As Andy would say, we’re in elephant country!
• A good day trip. Yesterday my daughter and I headed into San Francisco to the Ferry Building. Our objective was a boat ride since she hadn’t experienced that yet. We booked a trip on the Golden Gate Transit ferry to Sausalito back. We returned and had lunch at the Ferry Building and then proceeded home. She seemed to really this adventure and the weather was outstanding.

Well, that’s probably enough random information. Back to the grindstone….

This is going to be a short entry, but what if we’re going about this the wrong way? It’s no to suggest that renewably generated electricity is a bad thing, in fact it has many things in its favor. However, consider wind for just one moment. Wind generation has grown from just over 3 GWh in 1993 to over 28 GWh in the most recent rolling 2007 twelve month window; an increase of nearly an order of magnitude. To put this in perspective, the entire electrcity production during the 2007 rolling twelve month period is 4,085 GWh meaning wind accounts for less than 1% of net generation. (Source: DoE)

Make no mistake, renewable electricity is part of the answer. But the scale is not even close to being meaningful. In other words, what if we’re winning individual battles but losing the war?

And then there were three

Arizona State and Boston College left the ranks of the unbeaten today. The SEC took on the sisters of the weak in non-conference play (and people critize Big 10 schedules! Ha!) LSU survives again, barely. Oregon, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas impressed today. It’s nearly certain 50% of the MNC game will have at least one loss.

OSU Opponent Watch

• Youngstown State (6-4) – Played Indiana State away, won 40-7. Conclusion: Expected Win.
• Akron (3-6) – Played Bowling Green away, lost 20-44. Conclusion: Expected Loss.
• Washington (3-6) – Played Stanford away, won 27-9. Conclusion: Unexpected Win.
• Northwestern (5-5) – Played Iowa at home, lost 17-28. Conclusion: Unexpected Loss.
• Minnesota (1-9) – Played Illinois at home, lost 17-44. Conclusion: Expected Loss
• Purdue (7-3) – Played Penn State away, lost 19-26. Conclusion: Expected Loss
• Kent State (3-6) – Bye week.
• Michigan State (5-5) – Played Michigan at home, lost 24-28. Conclusion: Expected Loss
• Penn State (7-3) – Played Purdue at home, won 26-19. Conclusion: Expected Win
• Wisconsin (7-3) – Played Ohio State away, lost 38-17. Conclusion: Expected Loss
• Illinois (7-3) – Played Minnesota away, won 44-17. Conclusion: Expected Win
• Michigan (8-2) – Played Michigan State away, won 28-24. Conclusion: Expected Win

Buckeye opponent’s records after the 9th week, 62-55. After 7 weeks of conference play, Ohio State and Michigan have no losses and are in contention for the Big 10 championship. Congratulations to Indiana who will likely have a chance to “play 13” as Coach Hep inspired them to do, today they became bowl eligible. With a win today, Iowa is now a win away from bowl eligibility, a very unlikely event given the team’s start. Northwestern and Michigan State still need a win a piece to place themselves in a bowl situation. It is possible that 10 of the 11 Big 10 teams will be bowl eligible at the end of the season.

Quick Hits from Around College Football

These are the undefeated survivors; give them credit for standing tall when others are losing games they should win: Ohio State, Kansas, and Hawaii. The Warriors didn’t play, the Jayhawks destroyed the Huskers, and the Buckeyes thumped the Badgers today. Utah State and Florida International maintained their perfect records with zero wins between them this year.

Projected BCS Top 5: Ohio State, LSU, Oklahoma, Oregon, and West Virginia.

Game of the week? Michigan beat Michigan State 28-24, scoring 14 points in the last 6 minutes of the game. Runner-up: Navy beat Notre Dame in 3OTs to end a 43 year losing streak.

Mismatch of the week? Kansas de-pantsed Nebraska 76-39.

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

1. Ohio State – Defeated Wisconsin.
2. Kansas – Humiliated Nebraska.
3. Oregon – Knocked out Arizona State.
4. West Virginia – Bye week.
5. Oklahoma – Thrashed Texas A&M.
6. Missouri – Thumped Colorado.
7. Connecticut – Beat Rutgers.
8. LSU – Slipped past Alabama.
9. Michigan – Rallied to beat Michigan State.
10. Arizona State – Lost to Oregon.
11. Boston College – Lost to Florida State.
12. Hawaii – Bye week.

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

1. Notre Dame – 1-8 this season. Lost to Navy.
2. Florida International – 0-9 this season. Lost to Arkansas State.
3. Utah State – 0-9 this season. Lost to Fresno State.
4. Colorado State – 1-8 this season. Lost to Brigham Young.
5. Minnesota – 1-9 this season. Lost to Illinois.

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

If you saw a box score that showed that Wisconsin was held to 13 net rushing yards, forced two fumbles, and sacked the quarterback 10 times, you would expect complete domination in a game. Yet, that’s not quite what transpired. The Buckeyes trailed 17-10 mid-third quarter and you could sense that the momentum had changed after halftime. The Badgers had 3 scoring opportunities and the Buckeyes had some adversity. The last 1.5 quarters, the Buckeyes asserted their will on both sides of the ball and surged to a 21 point win. I predicted a 31-13 win, so it wasn’t so far off from reality….

The Good

• 10 sacks. 2 forced fumbles. The defensive line played well.
• 13 net yards rushing. Wisconsin came into the contest averaging 205 yards per game.
• 169 yards and 3 touchdowns for Beanie Wells.
• The win. When momentum changed and the team trailed in the third quarter, you could see the determination and the results on the scoreboard.

The Bad

• Penalties. 7 for 80 yards.
• 269 yards passing and 2 touchdowns. Donovan is a competitor.
• Missed tackles led to 4 big plays and 200 yards of offense.
• Blocked field goal. Third one of the season.
• Flat play by the offense in the first 3 quarters.

The Ugly

• Officiating. The defense would have had 20 sacks if they weren’t tackled so frequently by Wisconsin offensive line. The line didn’t suddenly get “great” after halftime, they just started tackling the Buckeye defensive line leading to 14 points.
• Bose commercials. The volume increases at least 50% over the base sound level of the broadcast.

A very solid win that demonstrated what might be the heart of a champion. Glad to see the team overcome some adversity and win convincingly. Go Bucks!