Categories
Sports

Kickball Opening Day Spring 2014

Easily on of my favorite times of year is the opening day of SJSL Spring kickball. The weather if finally starting to get nice again (even more grateful after this past winter), I welcome back teammates and say hello to opponents whom I haven’t seen in a little while. A great time.

While we still are staying with the majority of our past Honey Badgers kickball core, we do have some changes this season. Sitting out the Spring season are both Geoff and John B. As anyone who follows kickball knows, that’s quite a lot of talent to take from a team. Geoff has easily been one of the best kickers in the entire league, and John B. perhaps one of the best overall players.

New to the team this season are Dave and Meghan. Dave has been a most pleasant addition to our dodgeball roster and should bring a bit more speed to our lineup. Meghan played volleyball with us and as a fierce competitor will surely be a great addition to the team as well.

Our opening day opponent was the Fresh Kicks of Ball Air (clever name). While many of them we recognizable from past kickball seasons, they are a new franchise and we were eager to play them.

Unfortunately just a few hours before game time I found out that longtime Badger Kevin was unable to play. After frantically working my phone, I was able to get John B. to fill in on short notice much to the delight of the team (he’s a well liked teammate of course).

We did start off with a bit of rust defensively giving up 3 runs in the first inning. However, we did answer back rather swiftly tying it up in no time. From that point the game really turned into more of a traditional Honey Badger defensive struggle.

We would pick up a run, they would tie it back up, etc. Eventually late in the game we were able to tack on some extra runs giving us a 8-5 lead. Scarily in the top of the seventh our opponent would load the bases with no outs. With a little bit of luck and some heads up plays we someone we able to escape unscathed and held on for a 8-5 victory!

It was a great team victory with everyone contributing in a big way. Everyone seemed most pleased and seemed to have a good time. I do believe we will have a very competitive team this season and look forward to continued success.

Categories
Books

The Man Who Invented the Computer

ABC ComputerDespite working in the tech field for just about 15 years now, I have to admit I really don’t know about the inventor(s) of the computer. I know a good amount about the invention of the personal computer, the Internet, and most modern software concepts. However, the computer itself not so much.

So this book turned out to be very interesting to me. A couple of the names did ring a bell once I heard them, but I learned so much of the early concepts that led to the invention of the computer.

I don’t think I can ever explain just how genius of a concept it was to base it off of the binary system. I can’t imagine how someone could have thought of going that route, when it’s a system that is rarely used in any field that I’m aware of. It’s simply genius, and I will always be amazed by it’s choice. It’s really amazing how it works and how flexible it turned out to be. Amazing.

While the book started a bit slowly for me, once World War II hit is where it really picked up. As horrible an event WWII was, the innovation that came out of the war efforts is astonishing. Not the weapons, and aircraft advances, but the need to compute for those advances that led to the computer.

Though I’ve read about it, I still have a hard to believing how those early computers were developed using the technology that was available at the time. For instance, vacuum tubes to store an on or off value? That’s insane to me, yet it worked! A very interesting read.

Categories
Books

The Stand

The StandI was a bit stumped as to what read next while stumbling through the library and figured to give the massive The Stand by Stephen King a shot. I’ve heard very good things about it.

It was pretty awesome. Despite being easily a two hander book, it was so good that I went through it quite fast. While I’ve read a lot of exciting end of the world type of books (that sounds a bit more morbid than it really is), knowing when this was written it was even more appreciated. I felt like it laid the foundation for the genre that is so popular today.

My favorite character was Kojak the dog of course. Dogs are  great and I was surprised at just how large a role he went on to serve. He reminded me of many a loyal dog I’ve had the great pleasure to know.

While I was bummed by the demise of so many great characters, all had a very interesting path. It was really fun to follow along and find myself rooting for a few of them to make it through to the end.

Like any great book I found myself reading “just one more chapter” many times. Very good stuff! Highly recommended.

 

Categories
Development Projects

Automatic Plant Watering Project

After nearly losing  a few plants at work with extended weekends with all the snow, I figured it’d be nice if there was a way for my plants to get water while no people were around. I’ve been toying with Arduino for a little bit now, and believe I’ve found a great project to use it with!

I’m going to make an automatic plant watering system!

My plan is to hook a moisture sensor up to my Arduino controller, then write up a little script to check the moisture sensor levels. The moisture sensor just gets inserted in the soil and is only a few dollars. So knowing when the soil is dry enough to need water, shouldn’t be too difficult to get working.

I’m still a bit puzzled on how I’m going to deliver the water, but I think attaching an electronic valve to the Arduino board would work out in this case. The plan to to hook up an IV bag or something similar, fill it up and let gravity and the electronic valve work their magic when the soil gets dry.

Also thinking of rigging up a solar power source, but will concentrate on those first two problem first.

Very excited to get started and will post updates and photos as I progress on this project.

Categories
Development Sports

QR Codes on Honey Badger Awards

QR codeA few years back at work QR codes were really becoming quite the fad. Every industry article seemed to herald them as the next big thing. They were supposed to be on everything by now.

Sadly we had a difficult time not only finding great success using qr codes, but also finding examples of others finding great success with them too.

Well, at the end of every SJSL season I hand out awards to my teammates. It’s a lot of fun to come up with nicknames, haikus, stats, etc. and share them with everyone at the end of the season.

This year one of our dodgeball opponents whom we played twice happened to of recorded our games. He was kind enough to post on Facebook, and I downloaded them all and began to sort and edit all those minutes into personal highlights for everyone on the team.

The really cool part was that I was able to upload a nice little clip to YouTube and then I created QR codes for each clip that were then included on their award. So simple, but also turned out to be a perfect use of the technology.

They can hand their award up with pride on their refrigerators and friends and take out their smartphone and get to view their personal dodgeball highlights right on their smartphones.

This turned out to be such a very simple and effective use of QR codes! I will have to do this again for future seasons.

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Winter 2014 Season

Sadly the Winter season of dodgeball concluded last night. Tuesday night dodgeball is something that I truly enjoy and look forward too all week long. Though frankly, my body will be glad to get a break. The season renders me imbalanced and I’m kinda like a crab with one big claw (right side) and a little claw (left side) from all the throwing I do each week.

This season was very interesting. The majority of the players had returned from our Fall season, with the loss of Jared due to injury and Ed starting up his own team. While we were gifted with a very favorable schedule for the regular season, I didn’t feel that we played up to our potential overall. Though we really did step it up when we faced former teammate Ed’s squad. Those were some great games and our only regular season wins.

I was very pleased with how I played this season, it was probably my best overall season. I’m still amazed at how I’ve been able to throw a year removed from elbow reconstructive surgery. Not only was I able to throw, but I was able to throw very hard and accurately this season! I was only caught once in the 9 games played! Though my reaction time is not what it used to be due to I suspect age and found myself getting pegged when  a few years ago I’d of gotten out of the way and or made a catch. Damn you age!

Though our regular season was a disappointment to me, we really picked the best time to step it up and play great as a team in the playoffs last night. Our opponent the Banzai Executioners had beaten us twice during the regular season, so we knew it was going to be a tight contest.

We heavily went over strategy before the game, and I was extremely pleased to see how well we were able to follow the plan and execute. However, a huge nod has to go out to the opponents for having an excellent plan and executing theirs as well. This was not only a slugfest, but a chess match as well for both sides.

Banzai got up 4-2, but we were able to answer back and tie it up at 4-4. Each and every match was so close and really came down to who didn’t make an errant throw or came up with a big catch. It was really exciting.

Eventually we were able to get the game up to 8-6, and they forced it to a 8-7 with some gutsy play by their girls. Our guys did not want this to go to overtime and really played a great match game. It’s was intense. Got some pegs early on, then used to clock a bit. They answered back with a massive peg with time running down, only for us to make a huge catch and get the numbers back in our favor.

Victory was ours! An amazing game and a true classic. The SJSL and dodgeball were to the true winners after that contest.

As great as our playoff victory was, we now had to immediately play the 5-time defending champs and rested Ghostbusters.

While we would eventually fall to them 9-1, I was really proud of just how hard everyone played that game. We were clearly spent, and sore from the early battle but kept those matches a lot closer than the final score will say.

It was a really great night to be a Honey Badger, and an fantastic end to our season. Thanks so much to all for such a great time!