Hey, I'm as geeky as anyone, but this is just too much. I know the end is near.

"Muggles" took over Memorial Glade Thursday as onlookers, athletes and fans of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series gathered to try out for the UC Berkeley Quidditch league.

Quidditch, originally a fictional game where players fly on broomsticks, has slowly captured the attention of college students nationwide. To date, there are more than 200 Quidditch collegiate teams in the U.S. alone, according to the the Intercollegiate Quidditch Association Web site.

UC Berkeley is the third UC campus to develop a Quidditch league. Campus rival Stanford University also has a team.

A total of 36 students braved the cold weather and fog to try out for the inaugural squad, composed of the four positions of Seeker, Keeper, Chaser and Beater.

Team co-founder Charlie Strauss, a junior at UC Berkeley, said he decided to start a team after witnessing a Quidditch match on the East Coast.

"I knew people here were dorky enough to join," he said.

Someone pointed me to a letter from State Superintendent Jack O'Connell to school districts regarding problems with the CalPADS data system. CalPADS is the system that has been in progress since 2002. The state has spent millions of dollars on the project. They just rolled it out this year. Now, they're admitting that things aren't working quite as smoothly as they'd hoped. The State Superintendent wrote:

Due to unacceptable system performance issues that occurred during the rollout of CALPADS, I have directed IBM and CDE staff to focus all resources over the next two months on stabilizing the system.

The first step was to halt any additional changes to CALPADS while the system is thoroughly reviewed, top to bottom, to correct deficiencies and ensure that the system performs efficiently. Between now and late March, the CALPADS project team is performing a comprehensive system review and testing process on all CALPADS functions and components. This process will culminate in the release of a properly functioning system targeted for release on March 29, 2010. In the meantime, all previously scheduled CALPADS submittals from local educational agencies (LEAs) have been put on hold. Obviously, that will change our data collection processes in the near term.

The deadline for submitting Fall 1 data (including enrollment counts, graduate counts, and dropout counts) has been extended indefinitely and the Fall 1 information will be the only data required to be submitted to CALPADS in the 2009–10 school year. Other data submissions (Fall 2, Spring 1, and End-of-Year) will be accomplished through traditional means, the specifics of which will be communicated to your staff in a separate letter.

I thought this story from FoxNews was kind of humorous.

Authorities say a San Diego middle school was evacuated when a student's science project was mistaken for a bomb.

A Fire-Rescue spokesman says a concerned vice principal prompted the evacuation of Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School yesterday afternoon.

He says an arson team took photos and X-rays of the empty plastic bottle with wires and determined it was harmless.

He says the 11-year-old was trying to build a motion detector with instructions he found on the Internet and parts he bought online. His parents helped him buy the parts. They say they didn't realize the experiment looked threatening.

This is a kid who needs some attention. Any kid who is trying to build a motion detector at 11 could be the next Thomas Edison. I hope that this experience doesn't discourage him from continuing his experiments. If he gets the education that he deserves, we could be reading about his inventions on the web in another 10 years. Read the rest of this post!

I'm not particularly troubled by my occasional cell phone use. I know some people are really concerned that the electromagnetic radiation of cell phones are doing damage to their body, but I'm not one of them. I felt pretty comfortable with my cell phone use until I read this FoxNews.com story.

A man has died after his cell phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck, according to reports.

The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in Guangzhou, southern China, died after he put a new battery in his phone. It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.

According to the local Chinese daily Shin Min Daily News, the accident happened on Jan. 30 at 7:30 p.m. local time.

An employee at the shop told Chinese media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his mobile phone.

Chinese authorities have yet to determine the make and model of the phone and its battery.

Please tell me it wasn't an iPhone. Actually, even if it was, I'll take my chances. Read the rest of this post!

I'm not a huge football fan by any measure, but I watch a game occasionally if it is on while I'm in a room. As a geek, one of the things that's really fascinated me about football coverage these days is that yellow line they place on the screen showing where the 1st down line is located. In watching it, it looks like it is actually on the field, but of course I know it is generated via computer. It is really impressive when you consider that it looks like it is on the field and that the players seem to move over the top of it.

One of the geek web sites had a link to this video which includes a technical explanation of how they produce the yellow line.

It is an interesting video. Check it out.