Container Garden

Since we don't have enough room in our back yard to have a garden we decided to plant some squash and tomatoes in containers and see how they would do. I think I like container gardening, and will do it on a larger scale next year. We are supporting the tomatoes with 6' bamboo sticks, it is hard to see in the photo but the 2nd one from the right an early goliath tomato is now taller than the stick. The one on the right a sugar plum tomato is almost as tall. The one on the left is a beefmaster and is starting to take off with the warmer weather we had. The second from the left is a bush early girl. Then we have 2 yellow squash and 2 zucchini plants. I am surprised that they are doing so well with all of the cold weather we have been having. We have only had a couple of days in the 80's.


This is a close up of the tomatoes on the early goliath. The biggest is almost tennis ball size. Now if they would only turn red!

Black Powder and Carbide Cannon Fun!!

This is a 8" Black powder cannon I found at work. I thought it would be fun to buy some powder and try it out. So we bought some pyrodex powder (black powder substitute) and headed out to Sid's house.
This is our fourth attempt, the first couple were pretty sad. We started with 10 grains of powder and worked our way up to this shot with 30 grains. Please forgive the poor quality videos, they were taken with our cell phones because we left our cameras home.



This is our fifth shot with a 40 grain charge. It is really loud, and lots of fun. We decided to stop at 40 grains before we overcharged and had an accident.




This is Sid's Carbide cannon. After shooting a bunch of times he started putting a potato slug in the barrel and shooting it. It was pretty cool, and a lot safer than the Black powder cannon.

National Guard

I am getting ready to go to a parade to welcome home our National Guard. Some of the troops are still in Kuwait because of the recent eruption of the volcano in Iceland so hopefully they will feel the love from our area.

I know so many people who think we shouldn't be at war, I agree lets just pack up all the bad guys in the world and put them somewhere where they can't hurt any of the non warring people and let them blow each other away........in a perfect world huh. War is bad and I hate it, I hate that it seems to be a necessity.

On the other hand I am so thankful for the men and women that are willing to put there LIVES on the line for thousands and thousand of people who think we Americans are just sticking our noses where they don't belong......I am thankful that they are willing to do this day in and day out and that their FAMILIES are willing to live without them for long stretches of time so that they can HELP others. I feel justified in my feelings because my Nephew put his LIFE on the line, my Brother put his LIFE on the line and my Brother-in-law put his LIFE on the line for others.

I like this quote.....and someday in a perfect world maybe this could happen :)

The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you.

John E. Southard

Dirty word

Over my lifetime I have found one word that strikes fear in me to my very core. CANCER! I hate that word. I hate what it means and what it does to people and families.

Today my Dad is going to have his prostate removed. I just want to cry. I know he will be ok and that it is a very curable cancer but I hate it just the same. Today will be filled with praying and distractions.

Silver lining: I have seen amazing miracles where cancer is involved. My amazing sister who is one of the strongest people I know has beaten cancer and I am so thankful she did, life wouldn't be the same without her or any of my family. I am so very thankful for family.

It was an honor

I have heard these word from Movie stars and pop artists and have thought they didn't really mean it. Well the Nerd Herd was nominated for the think award yesterday at state, and I think it was an honor just being nominated. Getting third before the finals was an amazing accomplishment.

It was also an honor to watch our team get out there and battle and work hard and not get discouraged and just keep trying. It got a little brutal in the finals, we were smashed and bashed quite a bit and me as a Mom was a little perturbed but if the tide had changed I would have been all for our bot doing more pushing so that being said I am very glad we got this opportunity.

Things we need to remember. Human nature is to win no matter what.....even if we think it isn't nice. So be tough. Don't give up and give it your all. Be gracious in the winning and the losing, something the Nerd Herd does very well. The number one thing though would be to Have Fun!

Thank you Sid and Chan Hei, Dan and all the parents for all the hours and hours of service to our kids. Thank you for teaching them that learning is fun and that they can do it. Can't wait to see what next year brings!

OSU

(Mars rover running over part of the Nerd Herd)
The university has inspired my son....Love it!! Hopefully if that is where he wants to go he will work hard and make it there.



FTC was yesterday, with a few changes our bot didn't seem to have as many problems as last week. So we went we battled, we were in 6th place and ended up getting alliances with some teams that we weren't sure about. In elimination round we won one and lost two so we had to wait to see if we were going to get a trophy. We were nominated for four different trophies: Innovate award (think outside the box), PTC Design award (Robot design), Think award (excellent journaling), Inspire award (Truly embodied the challenge). We received the PTC Design award so we will be headed to State later this month! All their hard work paid off.



Highlights of the day:



1)When our bot shot 6 balls into the net on autonomous mode

2)Watching our team work with an alliance to stop the clapper(it had hands and would clap when it got points), a robot with a very simple design but always got mega points because no one thought to dump all the balls out of the tubes so it couldn't get any balls. Way to go Tayler and Aaron, Sydney, Kiley,Kyrie, Annika.

3)Watching Tayler and most of the team get ran over by a big robot that the university had. Prototype mars rover, that the university is working on.

4) Looking at Sid when our team was nominated for many awards, and seeing his thumbs up and smile when they got an award :)

5) Seeing the smile on the kids faces when they won!



Way to go Nerd Herd!





(this is us teamed up with the Clapper. Both robots were malfunctioning; we couldn't shoot....the clapper couldn't dump balls from the tubes, so we worked together to get it done.)

Nerd Herd formerly known as Banks Bots

We are no longer the banks bots..... just call us the Nerd Herd! The team has graduated from FLL (first lego league) to FTC (first tech challenge). What a great group of kids. In the first few pictures here, our robot was on autonomous mode....all programed no help from the kids. For 30 seconds all the bots could do as much as they could before the time was up. Our bot was programmed to shoot the balls in the net. I think it got in 5 one time and if the Kracken hadn't stuck it was supposed to do 8.

After the 30 seconds of hands free then the kids got to manually control the bot for two minutes, using xbox controllers. Tayler and Aaron were the driver and the shooter and ball loader (one control for moving, one for the other functions). They work really well together. For the last 30 seconds there were some bins outside of the ring that they could shoot the balls into.

The point system goes like this. Balls in base below net- 1 point. Balls in net- 5 points. Balls in bins- 10 points. During autonomous mode all points made double, and if you release the balls from the towers (four of them at corners of ring) that is worth 5 points. For every round you win you get two points, tie one point, lose 0 points. Each team got 5 runs, them and their team (four bots per run, two to a team) shared points and then if they got more points than the opposing team and won they got the other teams points also. Whew are you still with me.

So all the points added up put you in a place at the end. We were 5th out of 24. We were one of twelve that went to elimination rounds. THEN after all that, the teams got to pick alliances for the elimination rounds, it ended up being 4 teams total with three teams making the alliance. On elimination round, they run 3 times. Sadly we didn't win either one of ours so we will be going to Corvallis next weekend to try again for the chance to go to state.

After the autonomous mode our bot had a glitch and couldn't pick up anymore balls or shoot them soooo it got to play defense, get in the other bots way so they can't score. Below we are trying to stop the one with the red flag from scoring in the bins.

Short video showing our bot making one shot into the net before it had a glitch.