Kristen and I headed to Cody this last weekend to help Ma get a new (to her, anyway) computer set up. The drive up was uneventful, other than a bizarre rum flavored "vanilla" shake I got in Shoshoni.

We were surprised to find Aunt Jeanie sitting with Ma & Pa outside when we arrived. She's newly retired, and is taking a month long trip to various places, starting with Cody. Aunt Jeanie, the following picture is revenge for threatening to streak my freshman dormitory. Now you're streaking the entire Internet. :-)



Most of the weekend was spent working on getting Ma's computer set up, it took longer than I expected. We did manage to make it to the Saint Patrick's day parade, and spent some time at the Irma afterwards.



We left relatively early on Sunday, and had another uneventful drive back home. The condo hadn't burnt down, and the cats were still alive, so that was good. I made it to the garden meeting, hopefully on Wednesday we can start planting.

Spring was in the air this last week. Things have really warmed up, we approached 70 degrees several times during the week.

On Saturday Kristen and I headed up to Nederland for "Frozen Dead Guy Days". One of Nederland's claims to fame involves a cryogenicly frozen Norwegian that was stored in a Tuff Shed there for several years. You can read more about it here.


While a large number of events were planned, we stuck around only for the parade. The weather was quite a bit colder then we expected, and it eventually started snowing pretty hard. So we missed out on the coffin races, the polar plunge, the grandpa look-a-like contest, etc. The parade was a lot of fun, a lot of the locals ("ned-heads") were involved, which made it a good people watching opportunity.

The highlight of the parade involved a large number of hearses driving up the two blocks of the parade route. Some had machine guns mounted to them, caskets were abundant, and just about each one had the token skeleton riding along.

The final hearse had large bat wings welded to the top, which created a sort of parapet for the mohawked wielder of the mounted flame thrower. Unfortunately the flame thrower went out right as they entered the main stretch of the parade route. This agitated the mohawked one, who struggled to re-ignite the device. Right after he succeeded, the hearse overheated with steam boiling out from under the hood. The goth women languishing on the hood jumped off quickly while the trouble was sorted out.


It was quite a scene, and definitely was worth the drive up to watch. The crowd loved it, glitches and all.

The rest of Saturday involved hanging out with Ted and Derek, my two bot building friends. We're in the planning stages of a big trip to San Francisco in June. We're hoping to bring a 220 pound robot with us which should be quite an adventure.

Sunday morning I got up early and got a hold of my buddy Mike who I used to fly RC planes with a few years ago. The weather was looking good, so we got an hour of flying in. We were both a bit rusty, but luckily there were no crashes.


Kristen and I took it easy the rest of Sunday. We ate a big lunch, took a look at the garden plot, and started planning out what we want to grow. Less cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. More lettuce, radishes, peppers, and hopefully peas.

Kristen and I had a pretty slow weekend. It felt great to not have a lot of plans, and just kind of lay around the house. The cats enjoyed it as well.

Kristen finished up a pair of Alpaca socks she's been working on, and did a bit of studying.


I did a bit of bot work, mostly determining how many pieces I have to remake. I also updated the bot web site with a bunch of videos and pictures.



I also managed to get the tree house blog up to date. It really got me thinking about the next stage or two of building the tree house. I need to start planning the trip or trips back there this year, along with the Canada trip. The plan so far is to make it back to the Farm in the spring for a long weekend to finish up the platform. Kristen and I are hoping to head to Canada the 2nd and 3rd week of August. Then another week or longer trip to the Farm in the fall to put a roof and walls on the tree house.

I'm back home after a crazy week and a half. Ted and I did well in Pennsylvania two weekends ago, bringing back 2 first place finishes and a third place finish. Even though the weather was a bit sketchy, the trip went very smoothly. We had a lot of fun hanging out with people we've competed with for 5 years.


I made it back to Boulder on Monday, and then took off for Winter Park on Tuesday morning. The snow was great, and the trip was a blast overall. I tried to remind myself several times how lucky I am. Six solid days of snowboarding behind me, I'm ready for some time back at work.


I'm pretty sore, but escaped unscathed otherwise. A few people who were up with us weren't so lucky, there are at least a few pulled muscles, many bruises, and one incident that required stitches. We did see a pair of moose that hung around our condo for a few days.




It's good to be back home with Kristen and the cats. I'm looking forward to getting back into a normal routine. Kristen and I signed up for a spring running class. The weather has been a bit springlike as of late, so we're in a running mood.

We had a slow weekend. Friday we went out with some friends to dinner and bowling. It turned into a surprisingly late night with a few too many beers at the bowling alley.

Saturday and Sunday were laid back. I worked a bit on the bots for the upcoming weekend's competition in Philadelphia. Kristen did a bunch of homework, and the cats used up the rest of the spare time getting pet. Here's a picture of the smaller 12 pound bot that I'll be fielding being worked on:



This week at work is going to be rough. I have a lot of stuff to take care of before I leave for Philly, both at home and at work.

I may not post for a bit, after I get back from the bot trip I'm heading to the mountains for all of next week. I'm looking forward to it!

I had another weekend of Bots and Boarding. Saturday morning Kristen and I got up really early (5 am) to head down to Denver to catch the Ski Train to Winter Park. Her new company was having a company outing, and we decided to take advantage of the cheap fares and lift tickets.

The ride up was beautiful. It was pretty cool heading up into the mountains on the train and taking in the scenery. We went through 27 tunnels, the longest being Moffat tunnel being 6.2 miles long.




Once we got up to the slopes we discovered it was a less than ideal day. The wind was really howling, and the temperature was in the teens. We struggled through it for the most part, but gave up in the afternoon.



Sunday I headed back down to Ted's for some more bot building. We put the finishing touches on the 30 pound robot, and tested it out on an old computer case. It's nice being done a few weeks before the event.



Today the weather finally started to warm up, and a lot of the snow is starting to melt. We still have drifts and piles near our place that are 10 feet tall. Hopefully a few days of 50's and 60's will remove a lot of this snow that's been around for 6 weeks.

This is the best time of year for me. I'm always torn between snowboarding and working on robot projects, two of my favorite things. This weekend I managed to get a fair amount of both in. Kristen had a much more studious weekend as she has midterms on Monday. She spent most of the weekend studying, but did manage to make it out to dinner on Sunday with some friends.

Saturday Mike, Tracy, and I headed up to the mountains for some snowboarding. It was snowing hard in town (again), but once we made it through the I-70 traffic up to Berthoud Pass, it was nice and sun-shiny. Unfortunately that meant no new snow on the slopes. The slopes were actually in pretty bad shape, since there'd been a fair amount of warm weather lately. The three of us have rented a condo up in the mountains for the week of February 19th, so we really hope they get a lot of snow soon.



Even though the snow quality was questionable, we managed to get a good full day in, and had a lot of fun. We then headed to the Southern Sun for a few good micro-brews and a bite of food. It's a fun place to people watch, it attracts a very "Boulder" crowd.

Sunday I headed down to Ted's place to work on our 30 pound robot. Ted had finished all the machining on the robot, and we hoped to hook up my electronics and see the thing really work for the first time. We had more setbacks than expected, but by the end of the day we had it pretty much working. Another night or two of effort and we should be done.

This project breaks new ground for us, it's our first robot that will actually attack the opponent automatically. No more relying on our aging reflexes to try to land blows. It's an implementation of an idea we first came up with almost seven years ago. So far the bot has not become sentient and turned on its masters.