We spent the entire day packing and getting ready to go. Tomorrow afternoon we pick up the car Tuesday morning early we drive down to New York.

its getting to be go time. ! 

nite all, nite sam
-me

 

Day 2 of the FRC event was just as exciting as yesterday.. I hung out for a while in the afternoon watching matches and helping with a small tour. The competition this year is particularly exciting because it involves throwing  a bunch of balls at the same time. there’s are balls flying all over the place .. it’s really exciting. It reminds me of a Phish concert when folks start throwing glow sticks ! (if you go to Phish shows.. you know what I mean) 


The event was really amazing overall.. . I also think we made another good impression on kids and coaches from nearby states. 
its pretty amazing how far VT has come in just a few years..

Oh… I also need to do a shout out to Ben & Jerry’s for donating ice cream. That was awesome again this year I hear (it was before I got there) 

I didnt take as many pictures today.. but I had just as much fun

I had to head home before the ending ceremonies. It felt really good. 

We spent the rest of the late afternoon packing for our upcoming trip to Germany. There’s an awful lot of prep because we’re taking nova with us. Who knew that taking a dog on a overseas flight was such a big deal anyway we were pretty beat by the end of the day so we decided to veg and watch TV show. We’ve been watching a show called “high potential” it’s a American remake of a French police show about a woman Morgan  who works with  with very high intelligence, who is also pretty much of a loose cannon . in a good way.. We uses her intelligence to solve crimes in very unconventional ways.we lilke it.. 
Anyway, today’s episode had the cops and Borgen fighting some bad guys. They burst in on them in a big building and we instantly recognized it as 516 anderson where the colony was filmed. It was so funny watching them run around and all the same places where we had slept in eight and played all those years ago. It really was  a hoot to see !

 

 

OK… That’s it for the week. We takeoff on Tuesday so we’ve got a lot to get done before then. We’re getting pretty excited

nite all. nite sam
-me

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 !

nite all, nite sam 
-me

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.

Does that not make sense ?     yes or no ? 

nite all, nite sam
-me