Saturday, 27th of June, 2009
It was a hot day for playing at the Fire and Ice festival in Town and Country, but getting to play with the band was pretty fun.
Friday, 26th of June, 2009
Green Dam: In Communist China, the internet surfs you!
Thursday, 25th of June, 2009
Can IIF be used in Crystal Reports the same way If...Then...Else is used? The behaviour is not exactly the same - from the help file on the function: "Every argument of the IIF function is evaluated before the result is returned. Thus, you should watch out for undesirable side effects when using IIF. For example, if falsePart results in division by zero, an error will occur, even if expression is True and so truePart is returned."
This is different from the If Then Else control structure. This is also significant if you are using IIF to capture a null situation using the IsNull function - if you're trying to account for a null situation, chances are your FalsePart is not going to evaluate.
Friday, 19th of June, 2009
Of all the people in downtown DC, I managed to randomly hail and share a cab with someone who was headed back to St. Louis on the very same flight that I headed back on. And then I ended up sitting next to someone whom I played cello with in the Wash U Symphony.
Thursday, 18th of June, 2009
Picture - Upon the advice of one of my students I checked out Pentagon City in Virginia tonight - walked across the Francis Scott Key bridge to Rosslyn, which has the third longest continuous span escalator in the world. Rode the Metro down to Pentagon City, which is a pretty typical mall and shopping area.
Wednesday, 17th of June, 2009
Tried to walk around downtown tonight instead of deserted getaway destinations, but found it to get kind of deserted too when everyone goes home after work. DC Coast wasn't any better a restaurant than Sea Catch, but was twice as expensive.
Tuesday, 16th of June, 2009
Picture - Tonight's adventure took me to National Harbor, Maryland. It's an interesting getaway from DC.
Picture - The Gaylord hotel there isn't anything like Opryland, but the style is very familiar. Nothing really to see here - other than to say I've been to Maryland.
Monday, 15th of June, 2009
World Bank almost has the best corporate cafeteria I have ever seen. The only reason it's not as good as Google's is because Google's is free. For dinner, Sea Catch is conveniently near the hotel, and has a good deal on Oysters for happy hour.
Sunday, 14th of June, 2009
Picture - Arrived in DC this evening to teach a series of Business Objects classes at World Bank. Didn't feel like eating dinner quite yet after checking in to Georgetown Suites so I rode the 31 bus in to town to take a walk around all the memorials. Seems like every school group in town was also there since all the museums close at 5.
Picture - I have been to all the memorials before but it was with a tour group where the bus stopped at every memorial. I have decided that walking around the Tidal Basin is a superior experience (especially since we didn't stop long enough at the FDR memorial last time) and it also offers the best view of the Washington Monument.
Picture - Views like this of the Jefferson Memorial are not accessible by car - though some cars tried to drive into the areas where only tour buses can go. Tried - an officer on a pedal bike pull over 3 cars at once for trying to get better access.
Picture - By the time I walked all the way around and got to the Bureau of Engraving, I was ready for dinner. I hopped on the Metro at the Smithsonian Station and headed back to Georgetown, dropping by Washington Harbor for a bite to eat. It ended up being a bit more action than I was looking for - the restaurants there pretty much turn into nightclubs, even on a Sunday night.
Wednesday, 10th of June, 2009
The white Subaru also came home today with a new hood, because it has been freshened up with the turbo motor from the red Subaru, among other parts. It now needs an alignment, and I now have a boost gauge to hook up to it, because there may be more fun later down the road.
It now runs an Exedy lightweight flywheel. We couldn't use the Fidanza because it was thoroughly smoked, and since it was a two-piece aluminum unit, getting it resurfaced would have been very difficult. As a lightweight flywheel the Exedy behaves just as good as the Fidanza anyway, even though it is 12.7 lbs vs. 9.5. I suspect that has to do with the location of the weight on the flywheel itself - the Exedy unit has a bunch of holes on the outside edge of the flywheel, greatly reducing the rotational mass where it is important. Furthermore, it is one piece of steel material so it can be resurfaced in the future.
Monday, 8th of June, 2009
Buying a computer a Best Buy soon? You may want to wait until June 26th. That is when they may start including free upgrades to Windows 7 when it launches October 22nd-ish.
Saturday, 6th of June, 2009
Only 3 times in my life has the auto-stop on a gas pump failed and gas starts overflowing all over the place. All 3 times I happened to inside the service station doing something else. Fortunately this time I had just made it back to the car in time to see the mess being made. And like all other times, the gas station attendants could care less - does Oklahoma even do fuel pump inspections?
Friday, 5th of June, 2009
I got to see pre-production camo cars for the first time in person on the way back from Port Aransas. They were going the other way on the highway and I definitely could not even guess what those cars were - looked like some sort of 4-door hatchback with a steeply sloped roof line, kind of like an X6, but surely they aren't developing a new one of those already. The angular camo made it look like some sort of weird Asian car but now I am grasping at straws. I think it was too big to be the next generation R-class.
Thursday, 4th of June, 2009
We discovered Monday that the Harbor Bridge's pedestrian access was not for the faint of heart. I figured there were bikers up there, so surely it can't be that bad for the pedestrians - we learned that those were some hard-core bikers. So on today's trip to Corpus Christi we enjoyed the harbor from a less elevated position, under the north side of the bridge, after a low-key visit to the Science and History museum.
Wednesday, 3rd of June, 2009
The weather was dry enough to do the King Ranch tour this time, way too dry for the ranchers, actually. It's an excellent tour - this is one of the winning attractions that is completely worth doing over and over.
Also discovered a great Mexican restaurant in Kingsville - El Tapatio. Very satisfying lunch and enough left over for dinner too.
Tuesday, 2nd of June, 2009
The deep sea gulf fishing didn't happen this year because of some problem with the injectors on the Wharf Cat, and no one else did a 5-hour gulf trip on the weekdays, and we didn't want to do an 8-hour trip. Instead, we found something we could wake up even earlier for - the release of Ridly sea turtles at Padre Island. It didn't end up being as dramatic as usual though - the turtles were very asleep!
Going out to St. Joe's island was also a new experience for us - someone suggested we might see interesting things in the tidal pools. All we saw were a bunch of small fish and snails, and there were enough jellyfish out there that I didn't feel like getting in the water for a long time - maybe next time bring a wet suit?