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.

Kristen and I headed to the National Western Stockshow on Saturday. Her dad was competing in several mule related competitions. We got there in time to watch him and Jordan compete in the timed hay-stacking/hauling competition. They posted a 1:42 time, which got them second place in their heat, and possibly a spot in the finals.



We wandered around for a few hours afterwards taking in the sights and smells of the stockshow. I kept my eyes open for any signs of mad cow disease, but everything checked out OK.

Kristen studied and did homework for most of Sunday. I spent most of the day in the garage trying to get new motors into one of the robots I'll be competing with in February.

The garage was pretty chilly. Sunday in general was pretty nasty with a few inches of snow falling and frigid temperatures. It's the fifth consecutive week we've had snowfall. Luckily the cats and Kristen managed to stay warm.

No sleeping in this weekend! Saturday I headed off to Winter Park for some snowboarding. Boulder was supposed to have a high of 8 degrees, but it was supposed to hit 20 in the mountains. Thankfully the forecast was correct, and the weather was great, as was the snow. I finally got to try out the new snowboard, and I like it a lot so far. I wore my GPS watch during the boarding, and recorded a bunch of interesting statistics (at least to me).

We descended around 18,000 vertical feet during the 5 hours we snowboarded.

I hit 38 miles an hour trying to cross a really flat spot on the mountain.

We boarded down 16.25 miles, but rode up 11.5 miles of chairlifts.

It was truly an epic day of snowboarding.




Sunday we got up early so that I could start the heater up in the garage. My teammate Ted headed over around 9 and we started working on his 30 pound robot for the February competition in Philly. I'm not sure if it'll be done in time, there's still a lot of work to do.



Kristen and I did a bit of cooking Sunday evening, and re-watched season one of The Office. While I enjoy the American version, I'd forgotten how great the British version is.

Kristen and I celebrated a quiet New Years Eve and day last weekend. I cooked a big batch of Chicken Makhani, we exchcanged gifts, and stayed up until at least 10 o'clock. Zack and Ada finally got to open their gifts from the Coverts & Browns, so they had a festive night as well.

I had a busy week at work, we moved our production systems over to some fancy new hardware. It went very smoothly, but there were still a few late nights involved. I also got some work done on the software that we'll be running in a new bot that we're debuting in February in Philadelphia. I suspect most of my evenings will switch over to bot work in preparation for the big competition.

Saturday Kristen and I laid low and got a few things done around the house. I was supposed to head up to Winter Park for snowboarding on Sunday, but an avalanche closed Berthoud pass. It's not supposed to be open until tomorrow, that'll probably kill the snowboarding trip. My friend Morrissey crossed the pass about 20 minutes ahead of the avalanche.

Happy Holidays!

It's been a good 11 days since my last entry, and it's been a busy 11 days. On Tuesday the 19th, I came down with some kind of flu thing. A lot more was coming out of my body than was going in. I remember thinking, in a fever induced delirium, "At least I'm slimming down for the holidays." Luckily for everyone involved, I decided not to document that part of the week for the blog.

Tuesday night it started snowing like mad, and snowed through Wednesday and Thursday. We got about 20" of snow in our part of town. The cars were completely covered with snow, looking like large white bumps in the parking area. Kristen's work closed, and mine went down to a skeleton crew.



The Denver airport was utter chaos with thousands of flights canceled, and many thousands of people stranded. I was due to fly out on Saturday, right when things were supposed to be getting back to normal. By Saturday the airport officials were suggesting showing up 4 hours before your flight in order to not miss it. Kristen had plans on Saturday, and things worked out to where she dropped me off 6 hours before my flight.

After waiting through the longest security line I've ever seen and getting to my gate, they eventually delayed my flight two and a half hours. That resulted in my getting to Atlanta at 3 in the morning, after spending well over eight hours in the airport. I was glad the flu symptoms had passed.



I expected to see a very tired Becky at the airport to pick me up, but nearly the whole crew showed up, Ma, Pa, Becky, and Jason. Milly decided to stay home and hold down the fort.

Becky and Jason were great hosts over Christmas. Becky cooked some amazing meals, and Jason was a great tour guide through the city. There was a lot of cookie decorating, eating, playing with the dog, flying toy helicopters, touring various Atlanta neighborhoods, and general merriment. Ma cooked Christmas dinner, which was excellent, and we visited with a few of the Brown's friends in Atlanta. We packed a lot into the three days.




The trip back was fairly uneventful, I lucked out again and made it in right before the next big blizzard hit. We supposedly got 14" of snow in Boulder, but from what I've seen it appears to be closer to 10". I snowshoed in to work today with a co-worker, it took about 2 hours to do, and was a lot more work than I was expecting.




I hope everyone else had a great holiday, and that you're not experiencing the crazy weather we are. Happy Holidays!

We celebrated Kristen's birthday this weekend up at Winter Park. We headed out of town Friday night, ate dinner in Idaho Springs, and ended up at the condo around 8:30. Katie and Jordan met us up there, they'd arrived a bit earlier.

The next afternoon we headed out to the local tubing hill for some sledding. It's been a long time since I've rode a tube down a hill. It was a lot of fun, and the hill was steep enough to really give you some speed by the bottom. Katie lost a shoe a few times, but other than that we escaped unscathed. Here's some video of one of the runs.





After making it back to Boulder on Sunday, I decided to take advantage of a sale at the local board shop and picked up a new snowboard. My snowboarding buddies have been catching up to me skill wise the last few years. I'm hoping a healthy dose of technology will help stay ahead of the curve a bit. We'll see.

It was a much warmer week last week, with temperatures climbing into the low sixties at times. The cats have come out from hiding, and things are returning to normal.

I succeeded in getting some snowboarding in on Tuesday. A few of us met up at Winter Park and got a good full day in. The snow wasn't bad, we hit a few patches that had 12 inches of powder. The body seemed to remember how to snowboard, and I wasn't too sore afterwards.




The weekend was pretty slow. For me, Saturday consisted of sleeping, working in the garage, and a bit of online game playing. Kristen spent all day Saturday at the new job, continuing to learn the ropes. Sunday involved some Christmas shopping, and a big sushi dinner out with a few friends. It's starting to feel fairly festive around here!