Axodys

Cam’s story about a boyscout building a breeder reactor reminded me of this story about the annual University of Chicago scavenger hunt from a couple years back that was originally featured on Slashdot:
“When the judges found out that there was a group that actually built one, they really flipped out… So we’re sitting there making the reactor by my bed and a judge calls and says they’re going to check this out and bring a nuclear physicist to verify it. I don’t think he [the nuclear physicist] understood that we were serious until we started walking him through it and talking about decay change — his eyes just bugged out. He was really speechless,” Kasper said. “He endorsed it for the judges. It was funny because the judges were there taking notes just in case they needed to be able to judge another reactor.”

Those crazy college kids, apparently they were inspired by the very same boyscout story that had originally appeared in Harpers just prior to the scavenger hunt.

Object Binding in REALbasic

Also here’s a page from the same site with some interesting looking custom classes.

REALbasic University: Column 016 Two Sample In-House Programs

I should really fiddle around with some of the REALbasic projects I haven’t looked at recently. Maybe this weekend.

According to this mornings paper there’s a crazy standoff situation developing up near Sandpoint, Idaho between police and six kids: “The children, believed to be armed, retreated into a house in rural Bonner County after turning a pack of vicious dogs loose on deputies, Sheriff Phil Jarvis said.”

I think the Sherriff did the smart thing by calling off his deputies last night. Dealing with six scared and potentially armed kids (not to mention a pack of 27 wild dogs) requires prudence and careful planning so it’s nice to see the authorities using a little restraint for a change. Hopefully they’ll get the situation safely resolved by the end of today.

My summer league basketball team ended up losing their first game by around 6 or 7. We got down by five or six in the third quarter after leading by three or four in the first half. We were able to pull within two at one point, but couldn’t quite get over the hump.

It’s not easy coaching twelve players you’ve never worked with before in a situation where you’re trying to play them all as much as possible while still winning. I enjoyed myself a lot despite the losing effort. At least I have a week to figure out a better substitution pattern for the next game.

Ha! The jokes on me. The two things I mentioned wanting to do today (well, yesterday since I just missed posting this earlier) didn’t happen. I watched the Mariners beat up on Kansas City and then I turned off the television and completely forgot about my intention to watch the Philadelphia Milwaukee playoff game. Instead I ended up installing Star Craft: Brood Wars and playing that for several hours.

On a more productive note, my friend Steve called, so I got to catch up with him after several months of being out of touch. That was pretty cool.

Tomorrow I make my summer league coaching debut.

It’s already after eleven this morning, but it was nice to sleep in. I’m looking forward to finishing up my Axodys redesign and watching the NBA playoffs today. That and cleaning up my desk a bit perhaps. Yikes!

Looks like the United States has its first men’s distance running sensation in quite some time. 18 year old high school senior Alan Webb finished fifth in the Prefontaine classic with a U.S. scholastic record shattering mile time of 3 minutes, 53.43 seconds. The previous record of 3:55.3 was established by Jim Ryun back in 1965.

Here’s how I voted for this year’s MLB Allstar Game:

I spent most of the afternoon and evening attending my cousin’s wedding and the reception that followed. It was a nice ceremony and I got to practice my video camera skills as well, although the balcony I was filming from was quite warm.
I’m really looking forward to relaxing the rest of the weekend.

Oh, and this morning I actually made significant progress on the Axodys redesign. I expect to have it in place very soon.

It sures seems like a lot of people I read on a regular basis are taking breaks lately. Clearly I need to start finding some new and different weblogs to read on a regular basis. Suggestions?

Tidbits has a two part article on the state of relational databases under MacOS X. [Part I,Part II]

I’m finally starting the process of exploring MySQL after intending to for quite some time.

My sister Kristen, who will soon be graduating from Joel E. Ferris High School here in Spokane, was picked to write an essay about the Ferris Class of 2001 for the local newspaper. Since I don’t subscribe to the newspaper these days I almost missed it; luckily I went to a family barbecue last night and a friend mentioned it so I was able to pick up a copy last night.