Playoff baseball has not disappointed in the last forty-eight hours, and that is a good thing.  It's been a pleasant distraction from focusing on the managerial search in minute detail.  I feel as though the interview process for us as fans, is pretty useless.  As Footer stated in a link I have below, "it is impossible for me to size up the candidates during a 10-minute media briefing and tell who was the most impressive during his 2 1/2 hour interview session with the club's decision-makers."  For that reason alone, I've tried my best to remain aloof from it, but I haven't forsaken the process completely.  Hopefully by mid-week I'll have my next contribution to better informing us about the candidates.

But on with the reason your reading this: links to stuff you can read while you watch a little pig skin (or obsessively watch your fantasy football tracker...).

• I'll start with Footer's link because I liked her insight the best and she always has pictures.  Plus I quoted her above.  Alyson throws out whom she feels has a leg up in the race.
• Richard Justice gives us Drayton McLane's mailing address and urges us to hire Garner (probably the most useful thing Justice will ever do for us).  I feel like we can do a lot more productive things with this information...like mail him a giant petition urging him to sell the team, and bring in a new, fresh group willing to spend money and trust smart people to make smart decisions with it.  But if you want to endorse Garner via snail mail, go for it.  There's a lot about the article I'd like to pick apart, but I'll leave the fun and excitement for you.
• I'll be honest, there are a lot of these managerial candidates who I don't know from Adam's house cat.  So when I came across this synopsis of Mackanin, I have to admit, I perked up a little bit:

Mackanin, the bench coach for the Philadelphia Phillies, is in his 41st season of professional baseball. He is searching for his first non-interim managerial position in the major leagues... He has run the gamut in baseball from scouting, to the minor leagues, to managing in Latin America to being a part of four major league coaching staffs since 1997.

Pretty much everything. Impressive. Final word about the managerial search.  
• The Chronicle hosted a poll asking which of the ten candidates should be the next manager, the results shocked the [expletive deleted] of me. 
(Ok, we're done with managerial talk.)
• A cool retrospective of Lance Berkman's career from Astros.com.  There's a crazy photo of Lance in his early twenties as Rice Owl.
• Zach Levine remains above the managerial search fray and lets us know just exactly where all the Astros who are playing winter ball will be playing it.
• JC Bradbury takes a look at an attempt to rebunk wins.  I used to read Bradbury all the time and then stopped for a year or so.  I'm glad I got back on board, though.
• BtB's Daily Box Score asks, and attempts to answer, "What do the playoffs tell us?"
• Finally, a pretty incredible glossary and guide to understanding Japanese baseball (research provided by SABR).