Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve been checking out the children’s/young adult stacks at the public library. Not the dreary teacher’s books, but the Phantom Tollbooth adventures; the ones that are good to read rather than good for you. These were the books of my youth and these were the books that instilled the love of reading that continues to enrich my life.

Recently, I’ve been checking out the books of Tamora Pierce. Now, these are not great literature. But they’re fast and fun and just the thing for a lazy read. And if someone will just return Briar’s Book, then I’ll have read them all. I could reserve it, but somehow that seems like knocking down a little kid to get to the front of the line.

Sporting events should be won on the field. It’s bad enough when a sport requires multiple judges applying subjective criteria to determine scores. But if you have hard evidence of a mistake that does not effect ensuing events, then you have to act. It may not be fair to take Paul Hamm’s Gold Medal away. But it’s certainly unfair to deny Yang Tae-young his due. He is the rightful Gold Medal winner and he deserves his place in history.

29 Aug: My Final Words on Paul Hamm.

Beaniacs should head over to Athletics Nation for Billy Beane Visits Athletics Nation Part 1 and Part 2. Genius or Idiot, Billy Beane is the point man for performance measurement in sports. And anyone who has ever felt they should be rewarded based on their contribution to the bottom line rather than their appearance, methods, or obsequiousness should be rooting for his success.

Some people feel compelled to judge the Google IPO. I think that it’s a bit premature. The purpose of the Dutch Auction was to go out at a fair valuation. If Google is trading close to $85 in two weeks time, then it was a success. And if there is a significant swing, then it was a failure.

Anyone sure that Google left money on the table should feel free to put their money where their mouth is and start buying.

Allan Karl hit a bump in the road. One of the worst things about riding a motorcycle is that there are so many things that are simply out of your control. He’s on the mend - blogging again and back on the bike soon. Here’s hoping for a full and speedy recovery.

I rely upon FastMail for:

• IMAP: Keeping your email on the server is so much better than downloading it. When a new email virus flares up, you don’t suffer through interminable downloads of trash. And email access from multiple clients just works.
• Security: I access my email via WiFi. Fastmail lets me use SSL for IMAP and https for webmail. There’s not much to see in my email. But I feel better knowing that only I know for sure.
• Subdomain Addressing: If you have the paid email account me@example.com, then anything@me.example.com is also a valid email address. And if anything happens to match a folder name, then incoming mail will automatically be stored in that folder.

FastMail is central to my email process. I get email as part of my hosting service at TextDrive. But multiple email accounts are a pain. So most of my email addresses forward to FastMail and subdomain addressing puts it in the right folder.

I don’t know why an individual investor would want to participate in the Google IPO auction. The Dutch Auction should eliminate any opening day pop. And with the prospect of a big opening day profit off the table, it seems prudent to see how the market treats the new stock before plunging in.

But I obtained a Buyer’s ID just in case. And it looks like it’s paying off – I’m also receiving notifications of prospectus changes by email. Today’s big news:

Please be advised that the prospectus for the offering of Google’s Class A common stock will be amended to change the estimated offering price range and the number of shares to be sold in the offering. The offering price is now expected to be between $85 and $95 per share. Google expects to sell 14,142,135 shares of Class A common stock in the offering as originally filed.

Google started the email arms race by giving GMail 1GB of storage. Yahoo! Mail countered with 100MB for free accounts and 2GB for paid accounts. And now FastMail antes up with increased storage and bandwidth.

If all that you care about is the cost of email storage, then FastMail isn’t right for you. But if you’re looking for an email provider that allows access via most email clients as well as the web, then FastMail is the one.

I think that most people will be happy with the member accounts - available for a one time fee of $14.95. It starts out a bit skimpy on storage, but you can purchase more for $24.95 per 100MB (also a one time fee).

I’ve enjoyed the member account for several years. But I’ve been bumping against it’s limitations of late. I was waiting to see FastMail’s response before choosing between upgrading my account or purchasing more storage. Now that I’ve seen it, I think that I’ll take advantage of the special member offer and upgrade to a full account.

I don’t know whether it is BALCO, hype, saturation, time delays or good sense; but the Olympics haven’t really made an impression on me yet. In the past, the Olympics have been a green light for guilty pleasures (curling anyone?). But this year, nothing has emerged to capture my attention.

Phelps? I admire his willingness to take on the Thorpedo. But how did he end up in the 4x100 relay final?

US basketball? Between the Pistons and Puerto Rico, maybe this will be a wake up call. But given the length of the NBA season and the physical stress that the Olympics add on top of that, I doubt it.

The old ladies of US Women’s Soccer? I’ll watch, because I’ve become a soccer fan. But they’re leaving on their own terms; they’re not being pushed out by younger players. Nothing happening to check a slide back into irrelevance.

One of the curses of the programming lifestyle is the lack of exercise. I’m fond of the stationary bike - I can read or watch TV while getting a workout. But the fan belt broke, it was a cheap bike to begin with, and we started looking for a new piece of equipment. One thing lead to another and now we’ve got a WaterRower. The good thing is that rowing exercises the whole body. The bad thing is that I’m an upper body weakling. Hopefully, this will change.

15 Nov: 3 Months with a WaterRower