Today was the first day of our second FIRST (2nd 1st ?!) Robotics Championship (FRC) regional qualifier . Last year was the first FRC event ever in the state of Vermont. This was our second pass and it was just as huge a success as before. This year we had 13 Vermont teams competing with is more than double the number of teams we had last year and way more than the state has ever had . All thanks for this event are to my colleagues on the First in VT board.. most of all to ourState Coordinater Joe Chase and our fearless board president Mark Drapa.
we hd a full house today.. with 34 teams (including our VT teams) from all over the region.. the bleachers were full the entire time.. and the ‘puts’ (where the robots are worked on) were buzzing the whoel time.
the event was kicked off by Joe Chae, our State Coordinator who doi most of the heavy liftign in organizing this.. , Dr Marlene tromp, the president of UVM, Prof Mandar Dewoolkar, the Dean of CEMS (computer science engineering and mathematical sciences) . It was also kicked off by BETA’s own Tyler Seeholzer and Kayla Chenier who both did an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING job at getting the teams and spectators excited abotu the competition.. We also had representitives from our sponsors, the Argosy Foundation, Global FOundaries, Analog Devices ,
it was such an amazing day !!!
Thanks to everyone who made day 1 of the event such a success.. >> More about day 2 tomorrow !
town politics can be pretty funny.. today I had to vote early for an austrailian ballot election that’s going to happen while we’re in germany…
the vote relates to an ordinance change approved by our tow select board back in January. The ordinance change is to allow a set of stop signs to be installed on cochran road near the round church. This will change that pretty dangerous intersection into a hopefully safer 4 way stop.
Not everyone in town agrees that that is a good idea … the argument there is that no one has had an accident there up till now. . so someone proposed an amendment that would disapprove of the already passed ammendments to the ordinance..
so the vote today was essentially a Yes vote means I don’t want stop signs, and a No vote means I do want stop signs.
Today is my wonderful wife, partner, friend, loves , mother of our kids.. birthday .. She is wise, and beutiful and kind.. and i’m so happy to be her partner in life And I’m so happy to be able to spend this daywith her. We woke up to a lovely full dishwasher from last night yoga/birthday party.
We decided to hike the catamount Trail/Honey Hollow Loop. It’s one of our favorite hikes. It’s about 6 miles. A steep uphill, followed by a steep downhill, but really beautiful and really familiar. A nice thing about it this time of year is that all the ground is kind of mushy and this keeps us off of any sensitive trails. Today was the first day we’ve been out hiking in a while it didn’t have snow. But there was plenty of piles of it sitting around. A wonderful hike… We ran into some other dogs, my mom called to wish Diane happy birthday and we got ourselves some exercise.
This afternoon we met up with Tim and Jen and Deb and went to an early dinner at one of our favorite places, single pebble. It was really lovely… We went because we had tickets for the Chris Thiele show tonight at the Flynn.
It was such a fantastic show. It was just Chris and his mandolin a chair and a glass of water. He was amazing. He played Bluegrass (he was the founder of nickel Creek) some amazing Bach… I had never known how accomplished a classical musician he was but if you read up on him, he’s considered one of the worlds classical virtuosos on mandolin . He told lots of fun stories and there was a whole lot of great music and a whole lot of heart.…
it was a great way to celebrate Diane’s birthday !
We got pictures today from Ben, gizzo and rebar… They’ve been working on this project called the golden shower… It ppokes fun at the golden dome project that you know who is trying to get funded for $4 trillion. The basic idea is its Mr T stating in a kitty pool holding a golden dome that float holes as missiles come in and squirt water on getting him all wet. Ben has a permit to have this piece of art in front of the White House for three days. Gizzo and rebar been working on it furiously for the last couple of weeks and it really came out well.… There was a lot of news coverage about this. It’s a serious story saying that spending that much money on a solution that really won’t make the world safer when we could be spending some of that money for education, healthcare, and all the other things this country needs.
Tonight we had normal Tuesday night yoga and we also used it as a small pre-celebration for Diane’s birthday, which is tomorrow. We had a full house and we ate cake and ice cream and saying happy birthday to our favorite girl.… Do I know it does so much for everybody… It’s nice to see how much she is by everyone.… Even though she doesn’t like to be in the spotlight.
shes a wonderful person 1 I love you my girl !
as I always say.. Nothing says love like a full dishwasher !
