Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

One of my old jobs required me to go through SEC filings fairly frequently, and I admit I enjoyed digging through details of company operations, results and discussions of their business.

So, couple that interest with Google filing their initial IPO prospectus today, I”m in web-geek/SEC-filing-geek heaven. Google”s by far the most intriguing web company out there today, and the S-1 filing gives a fascinating glimpse into their operations.

Wired has done a great job highlighting elements of Google”s typically unconventional filing, so I won”t try to compete with that. But after wading through 161 pages of the filing, I”m at least going to throw out a few observations:

- Larry and Sergey (Google founders) will become billionaires when the stock price hits about $25 a share.

- Google is pacing to do about $1.2 billion in revenue this year. The year of its IPO, Yahoo! generated $19 million in revenue.

- With just under 2,000 employees, Google is generating about $600,000 in revenue per employee (that”s high)

- Google is probably the only company whose SEC filing will include the section heading “Don”t Be Evil”

Got a few hours to kill? Read the Google S-1

I think LSU Reveille “sex columnist” Jessica Pivik must have been called on the carpet by the paper”s faculty advisor or something, because this week she attempted to write a meaningful and serious piece about being gay at LSU. She failed, of course.

She talked with both a gay man and a lesbian to gain important insight into what it really means to be gay. And we all benefit by learning things such as:

- Lesbians can both like the Indigo Girls and be former cheerleaders.

- The gay man she talked to thinks Tom Cruise, Lance Bass and Ricky Martin are, in fact, gay

So this week”s column doesn”t really fit the mold (except for being completely pointless and boring), but let”s plug it into the new roundup forumula anyway

This week”s topic: Being gay at LSU

“Shocking” sexual reference: “”Coming out” isn”t as easy as Paris Hilton.”

Sex and the City ripoff line: “Although Scales and Landry are both attractive and successful, I didn”t have to travel far before I realized that for me “there”s no place like home.”"

Expert “quoted” in column: “UCSF Researchers” (about gay suicide)

Googled source of expert “quotes”: UCSF press release

Actual piece of semi-useful information inserted by editors: “If you are queer and are afraid to come out, you can call Mental Health Services at 578-8774 for information and support.”

- Bore yourself with “On Top”

When the wife told me about a year and a half ago that she thought the Hyundai Santa Fe might be the right SUV for her, I was - to say the least - skeptical. I”d seen enough rusted-out, smoke-spewing Hyundai Excels over the years to have a very clear and lasting impression of that particular automotive brand.

But over the course of a few months, it became clear that the Santa Fe was our best choice. The wife loved the “dune buggy” styling, it was the right size (bigger than a Rav 4, smaller than an Explorer), its interior matched the quality of a good mid-level Japanese ride and it was an absolute steal (fully loaded with leather, 6-disc CD changer, moonroof, etc. was $23K). And when I saw that their 60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty was no joke (it”s dealer serviced with no deductible), I felt pretty comfortable making the plunge into Korean autos.

And, as it turns out, our faith in the new Hyundai was warranted. The company has been climbing the quality charts steadily over the past five years, and we”ve had not a single problem with the Santa Fe in 15 months of ownership.

Then today JD Power and Associates released its 2004 Initial Quality Study and right there at the top is Hyundai.

Among manufacturers (which considers all brands within a company in one rating), Hyundai matched Honda for the second-best quality rating, just one point behind Toyota (including Lexus).

And in the brand-by-brand ratings, Hyundai passed Toyota, which has always been regarded as a standard-bearer for automotive quality. The only brands rated higher than Hyundai are Lexus, Cadillac, Jaguar, Honda, Buick and Mercury.

Those ranking behind Hyundai in initial quality include Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Infiniti, Audi, Volvo and Acura.

So now the auto-buying public will start rushing out to buy Hyundais. Just remember that the Cap”n and his wife were ahead of the curve on this one.

Never let it be said that the Louisiana Legislature isn”t on the cutting edge of social responsibility.

A bill was approved in the state House of Representatives today that would outlaw “hog-dog” events in the state. For those of you not fortunate enough to have spent significant time in north Louisiana, “hog-dog” refers to a “sport” akin to cock fighting; the twist being that it”s dogs v. pig, not chicken v. chicken.

In sponsoring the anti-hog-dog bill, Rep. Warren Tiche described the activity as “violent cruel, inhumane, barbaric and damn well sadistic” and argued that allowing such things to happen in the state contributes to Louisiana”s poor national image.

Now, I know what you”re thinking: “If hog dogging is made illegal, Cap”n Ken, what”ll happen to Uncle Earl”s Hog Dog Trials?”

Fear not, you hog-dog fan. The Uncle Earl event, since the dogs there only corner the pig, not kill them (think dog as rodeo cowboy, pig as rodeo calf), will still be legal.

But for the sake of Louisiana”s reputation, they must end the “bad” hog-dogging immediately!

And then they”ll turn their attention to cock fighting. Oh, did I forget to mention that Louisiana is one of just two states (New Mexico) where cockfighting is still legal?

[editor"s note: if you"re not a fan of college football, please move along.]

The Lords of the BCS are meeting this week to talk about how to “fix” the system that allowed USC to be incorrectly called national champions by some after last season.

I suggest a simple solution: Print the rules of the BCS in bigger type next year to help the Associated Press writers and Pac 10 fans notice them before the season.

But I suspect simply getting people to understand that the BCS system was created because human polls are so flawed (USC was not an objectively better team than LSU or Oklahoma - they were only No. 1 in the human polls because they had been No. 2 and the No. 1 team lost), won”t suffice.

So the BCS will likely add more weight to the human polls in their formula, factor back in things like margin of victory and - in a move intended to shut up the pretend contenders of the MAC and other non-factor conferences - add a fifth bowl game to the BCS mix.

Word on the street is that Atlanta”s Peach Bowl is a front-runner for the fifth BCS spot, and I”d be all for that. It was nice to watch LSU tear Georgia up in the SEC Championship game two miles from my house, and it would be nice to see us win a future national championship there, too.

But ABC is also pitching an idea called “Five Plus One” in which there would actually be six BCS bowl games. Under that model, the top 10 BCS teams would play in five bowls, and the top 2 teams among the five winners would play in the sixth and final BCS game for an “undisputed” national championship.

(God help the BCS if USC ends up winning one of those five bowl games, finishes as the No. 3 team and doesn”t get to play in the championship game.)

Such a format would be a real financial win for ABC and the NCAA. Instead of only one BCS game having much significance, they”d have five bowls being played to determine the top 2 teams, and then a blockbuster BCS showdown a week or so later.

It wouldn”t, however, resolve any of this “controversy”.

The problem is that you”d end up with five winners of the earlier BCS games, and the “system” would still have to determine which two will play in the BCS championship game.

The Five Plus One plan as currently outlined would have the five earlier bowls host teams according to traditional conference alignments. The Sugar, for example, has historically been the home to the SEC champion.

There”s also a move afoot - call it the Oklahoma rule - to eliminate any team from BCS consideration if they don”t win their conference championship. Of course, that rule won”t apply to Notre Dame, which doesn”t play in a conference, and would favor Pac 10 teams, which don”t play a championship game.

So let”s say the system ends up like this: The conference champions of the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, Pac 10, MAC, WAC and Conference USA get automatic BCS bids. Notre Dame gets in if they are in the top 10, otherwise there”s an at-large bid for the highest-ranked team that didn”t get a conference-champ bid (of course, that would mean non-conference champs could be eligible).

The five early bowls would be aligned by conference. Based on historical alignments, I suspect the Sugar would be SEC/Big 12; the Orange would be ACC/Big East; the Rose would be Pac 10/Big 10, the Fiesta might be WAC/MAC and the new bowl might be C-USA/At large team. Already you have problems because the Fiesta and the new bowl would always have the weakest teams.

But say there is balance among all these conferences. In a year like 2003, the system would have worked perfectly. LSU would have beaten Oklahoma in the Sugar, USC would have beaten Michigan (BCS No. 4) in the Rose, and the final game would have been a clear 1/2 matchup. But what about a year in which Miami (in the ACC) is No. 1 going in and they beat a weak Big East champion in the Orange? If LSU were No. 2 and beat a so-so Big 12 champion in the Sugar and USC were No. 3 and beat a strong Big 10 champion in the Rose, who goes to the championship?

That kind of scenario would produce the same kind of debate as the 2003 season did. Miami would still be No. 1 in the human polls (you can”t drop when you win, you know), but USC would likely rank higher in objective ratings. If you lean toward human polls, USC gets screwed; if you lean toward objective rankings, Miami loses out despite their No. 1 ranking.

Without a real playoff system, college football will always have someone or something determining off the field which teams are No. 1 and No. 2. And so there will always be somebody (see USC, 2003) crying about getting left out.

That said, I”m not a fan of playoffs in college football. I liked the good old days when the SEC champion always went to the Sugar Bowl. It made New Year”s in New Orleans a guaranteed good time.

It wasn”t a great system for determing a national champion, but I could live with the inexact science of human polls in the pre-BCS days. And I think the BCS is a good blend of the inexact science of college football and the satisfaction that comes from a 1/2 national championship game.

So, BCS Lords, tweak the formula (again) if you must. Double the influence of the human polls if it makes you better. Add a fifth bowl to the mix to keep the second-rate conferences happy. But don”t try to make the NCAA the NFL.

There”s a lot of beauty in imperfection.

I guess I shouldn”t feel as guilty as I do when I refer to our DishNetwork DVRs as “TiVos.”

From Wired: TiVo faces off with clones.

So I”m not the only one who thinks it”s much easier to talk about “something I have on the TiVo” rather than “something I have on the DVR.” And, as the article stresses, that”s not a good thing for TiVo. The service is on its way to becoming the Band-Aid of consumer electronics.

Interestingly, the Wired piece is yet another example of a DVR story that fails to mention DishNetwork. From what I can tell, Dish was the first satellite/cable provider to offer their own brand of DVR (and they push them pretty heavily now), but nobody seems to know they have them.