Woodchuck Mania!

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You can't see him very well, but there's a woodchuck under my car.

Woodchuck Hide-and-Seek
K and I got closer to knowing "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck" today. We were walking back to the car in a parking lot, and he noticed there was an animal under the car. We tried to shoo it away and make noise, but it just kept moving towards the middle. I told K he should crawl under the car and grab it by the feet, but he didn't want to.

Nothing we did could get him to move, including honking the horn and starting the car. Finally, I backed the car out extremely slowly, with K watching to make sure I didn't squash the little guy. Eventually, he came out and we were able to leave without a major wildlife incident.

Is that the most exciting thing happening at the moment? Yeah, pretty much.

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This is what it looks like under a shower.

New Shower
You may have read about some of the problems we had with the shower remodel we did several years ago. We've never been happy with it, and it's leaked on and off the entire time. As much as it pained us to do it, we had all the work torn out and replaced with new tile and glass.

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Links
I love these furnishings and clocks made from aircraft parts and panels.

This is a great workbench.

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Post #323

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Yes, this is post #323 of The DEB Log. If you thought the past 322 posts were great, then you probably haven't explored the internet much.


Are you missing some wasps? They were living in the outlet vent for the bathroom fan. I hope you weren't too personally attached to them, since they're all quite dead now.

Getting rid of the wasps wasn't too difficult, I've done this kind of thing before. The difference with this nest is that I had to go on the roof to get near enough to it to see what they were up to. Fortunately for me, they were pretty slow movers because of the colder weather. So what could have ended with welts and me running around on the roof to avoid wasps turned into me knocking them off the vent cover with a screwdriver and then stepping on them. May all your wasps be half dead.

This did require my going into the attic space to remove the ductwork I sprayed the wasp killer into, so, while it could have been worse from a "getting stung" point of view, it was a pain to replace the duct and put everything back together in the tiny space in the attic.


The Michigan State University Marching Band at UM's stadium for the MSU vs. UM game.
J and I went to the MSU vs. UM game a few weeks ago. The MSU band was there, as you can see. It was a nice night for football, although a bit chilly.

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I still run for exercise, and today I ran 6.1 miles, which is the farthest I've ever run at one time when a dog wasn't chasing me.

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Fun Links

Click on the arrows at the bottom of the screen to see a 365-degree view of a XB-70A's cockpit.

This is an interesting desk project - it doesn't look too tough.

Every writer has his own voice.

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Science Olympiad and Muddy Pipes

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Finally!
First, what you've all been waiting for: the boys playing their recital pieces. They had their recital a few weeks ago, so they dusted off their pieces and made a special recording.


Clementi's "Sonatina" Op. 36 No. 6, played by M


Schumann's "Winter-time (II)" by K

Drainage Update
I know you're itching to hear the update on the French drain that runs between our yard and our neighbor's. It's been backed up for a while, and we hired someone to put a camera in the tube and see what was in the way. They identified an area where silt and roots had pretty much blocked off the pipe, so we opened it up and cleaned it out. I just cut the tube in one place, pulled the ends up one by one and cleaned them up as far down as I could reach (yes, it was gross.) That was a few weeks ago. I have been waiting for a break in my schedule to finally put in a clean-out PVC "T" in the problem area. Here are a few pictures of today's muddy adventure.


The french drain before the repair. It was cut open a few weeks ago to clear out a blockage.


This is after the first of two cuts. Mud Pies for all.


The full repair. The drainage tile is connected to the PVC with a rubber connector and hose clamps, and PVC part is a "T" shape with a screw-in top, so I can dig it up a little bit next time it gets clogged and clean it out from there.

Science Olympiad
This year's Science Olympiad had a new schedule: 3 hours each for grades 2-5. This gave us a 12-hour tournament day, with a few hours surrounding that schedule, so many of us were there for a solid fourteen or fifteen hours. Add on the 6 hours for setup the evening before, and that was a lot of standing and walking. I enjoyed a lot of sitting the following day.

The tournament went very well. We had a completely revamped schedule, a brand new computer programming event, and over 2000 Washtenaw County students participating. Things went so smoothly, in fact, it would be easy to forget we're an all-volunteer organization, from top to bottom.


I have six Honorable Mention medals lined up and ready to present. Those went to two different teams with three team members each. If you don't split them up like this, they're easy to get tangled. I'm not wearing my glasses in this picture because it was the end of the day, and we had been loading the truck in the rain, and I took off my glasses so they wouldn't get all rainy.


Here's me giving some students Honorable Mention medals at the third grade awards ceremony. The colorful, tie-dye shirt is our uniform of sorts - it makes it easy for people to find us if they need something.

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Happy Chinese New Year!

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I don't really celebrate Chinese New Year, but so many people do, it just seems right to wish everyone a happy one. I also wish you a conventional new year, and when the various Indian New Years roll around, why not have a happy one of those too? In general, I hope you're happy and it lasts a year.

Now that the polar vertices have gone back to Santa Claus where they belong, we’re trying to get back to normal where we can go outside for more than a minute without the inside of our noses freezing.



A few years ago, we had a leak in the space above our garage where the bathroom is – the person who updated our shower forgot to put everything back together correctly. We had another leak a few weeks ago. This time it was the toilet leaking. It happened right after the first big freeze, and I was worried it was a burst pipe, but it wasn’t. I need to fix the drywall, but for now the insulation-stuffed-into-a-hole-in-the-ceiling-held-in-place-by-a-piece-of-wood approach is sufficient.



M got his braces off right about the time we were wrapping up our payments to the orthodontist. An amazing coincidence.

In the picture above, you can see M without his braces. I spent a few minutes trying to convince him to pose like the monkey in the picture behind him (he didn’t know the picture was there) but knows me too well, and wouldn’t do it. I finally showed him the picture, and he felt very smug that he hadn’t fallen for my ruse.

K has been selected as one of the ten Mathcounts contestants from his school, and is the only 6th-grader. The competition is in February and he gets to skip a day of school to go. Good luck, K!


K and his friends are playing football in the front yard during one of the cold weather waves. He’s the one dressed like Peyton Manning.

Several of us at the company are teaching a Python programming class to 7-9th grade offspring of our co-workers. Our first class was earlier this week, and it went really well, with 12 students in attendance. There are six more classes to go. I taught the first class, and there will be three other instructors over the course of the class. We’re hoping this whole “computer programming” thing will catch on with the younger crowd.


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Science Olympiad Wrap-Up! And So Much More!

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Science Olympiad 2013

A real scientist and his dad

We spent our usual April Saturday at Pioneer High School competing and volunteering at the largest elementary school Science Olympiad in the country. This year, there were 26 elementary schools for a total of 1700 students (more or less). All the Ann Arbor public elementary schools were represented this year, as well as some private schools, and even a group of home-schoolers. The teams ranged from 100 students to some with only a few.

K did outstanding this year as always. He took second place medals in:
* Science Jeopardy, where they play a game with buzzers, answering with questions, and Final Jeopardy,
* To Infinity and Beyond, an event covering astronomy, complete with a planetarium dome test (there's a planetarium inside Pioneer!), and
* On Target, in which the students create small missiles from drinking straws, paper, and clay, and then launch them with a small forced-air plunger. Their goal is to land their missiles as close to a set target as possible.

This year, I was one of the head coaches at Lawton (there are four of us), and while we all put in long hours with it, it was rewarding and fun. Any difficulties and frustrations we might have felt with all the administration and organization usually fade into distant memory when we watch the students taking medals and thanking their coaches for their hard work. We are fortunate to have so many great parents to coach the events. Many of them are learning the subject matter for the first time themselves, and most of them already have full-time jobs and other lives outside of Science Olympiad. The school is lucky to have them, and as many families move on to middle school, we can already see the next waves of parents ready to take their places.

M and I volunteered at the academic check-in and events area, where I have volunteered and helped coordinate for the last four years. I did the coordination myself for two years, and the organization provided another coordinator, Karen, last year (is there such a word as co-coordinator?). This year, Karen returned to co-coordinate again, and we added another outstanding "key" volunteer, Jennifer, so we could cover all the ground without breaking a sweat. I guess that makes Jennifer the co-co-coordinator. Karen and Jennifer will run the show, perhaps with someone else's help, next year, as this is my last year with a student in elementary school.

It's bittersweet - I did enjoy a lot of the aspects of Science Olympiad, and the amazing work of its Board, but there are also plenty of new opportunities to be found in middle and high school in the coming years.

Raise a glass to Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad. Cheers!


A whole buncha scientists, at the afternoon awards ceremony.

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When M isn't practicing for his own Science Olympiad competition for middle school, he's either helping me run students up and down stairs at Pioneer, or playing flag football. His team had mixed success this year, and didn't make it through the playoffs to the final game. At the brief recognition ceremony the coach conducted, he said M had consistently the best hands of anyone on the team. He had numerous tackles, catches, and other great plays this season. It was a season that was overshadowed a few times by other big events, but he enjoyed it.

And, just as with the elementary Science Olympiad, this will likely be M's last year with flag football. On to bigger things!


M is in the back row, far right

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What else? It's been a long time since I've posted anything, partly because I've been so busy with Science Olympiad. I've read a few books, travelled to Pittsburgh with the family to see J's grandmother on her 99th birthday, and watched some of M's volleyball games (did I mention M is playing volleyball for his middle school team?).

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Last, but not least, J and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary on April 3, which just so happens to be her grandmother's birthday. We had a joint celebration in Pittsburgh, and are going to plan a romantic getaway for two sometime in the summer when we actually have some time to do so.

20 years? Wow. It's been a great 20 years, with two great kids, and a wonderful home that, quite honestly, she has a lot more to do with maintaining than I (even though I was the one who got the bird out of the bathroom fan vent this morning.)

I'd post a picture of her, but she'd appreciate it if I don't. It didn't take me 20 years to learn that.

I love you, J.

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Summer!

Basil on the right, tummaters on the left.

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Summer is here (and pretty hot so far)
It's been a warmer than usual summer, although it's not uncommon to hit the 90-degree mark in Michigan a lot. After the warm winter we had, I was hoping we wouldn't then take the higher-than-average temperatures into summertime. But that's how it goes.

We've been busy here doing some fun things - swimming lessons, playing tennis, getting outside for some fresh (and sometimes heavy) air. The kids have a list of chores they're supposed to do each day, including watering flowers and veggies, keeping the gardens weed-free, and keeping the mess in their rooms below DEFCON 5 levels.


Either we're having work done on our kitchen, or we've been hit by a marauding band of cabinet thieves. I should probably ask J about this.


Fun Links
Restoring a Triumph 4-cylinder engine

Robot night lights. Yay, robots!

Be careful you're not too close to the sink when you use this toothbrush/water fountain. You'll get your face wet.

Everything you need in one place.

Disappearances

The Great Disappearing Blue Spruce

This tree recently disappeared

M was partly responsible for the disappearance of the tree

A lonely stump, which was removed later in the day. There wasn't much to the roots.

A tree tipped over last fall, as previously reported here, and it has been staked up ever since. We knew the time was coming when we would have to take it down, especially since we figured it had the same poor root structure as the other one that came down.

This morning, M and I finally cut it down and sliced and diced it. There are still some branches needing to be cut smaller, but the trunk and the roots are already taken care of.

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Baseball Disappearances
We all had a first last night - we went to a U of M baseball game. The Wolverines were playing Nebraska, and we took over a chunk of the stands with our neighbors. The neighbors across the street one way are U of M fans, and some neighbors the other way are Nebraska fans. So we had a colorful group. In the fourth inning, a Nebraska player made a ball disappear over the left-field wall, but the Maize and Blue got the win, 6-4.

A little later, Justin Verlander's bid for a no-hitter disappeared with one out in the ninth. That's OK, though - he'll have plenty of opportunities to get his no-hitter.

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Late birthday present?

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To everyone in my family who is traveling, or soon to be, please travel safely!

Flag Football Wrap-Up, and What Really Happened to the Garage Door Opener

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Today marked the end of M's flag football season. The semi-final playoff game was at 2:30, followed by the championship game at 3:15. M's team won the first game, 9-6, and he had three tackles (a personal best), and three receptions: one was for a first down, and one was for an extra point.

They didn't fare as well in the championship game, losing 26-6 after being down 20-0 early in the game. The other team had an outstanding runner who was able to beat everyone, and he scored three touchdowns in the first half by himself. M had another solid game, with three tackles (to tie his personal best), one reception, and he broke up a pass play on defense.

He's worked very hard at flag football, and plays a lot of football with his friends in the neighborhood, and I can tell all that practice is paying off.

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I told you recently that we had our master bath shower remodeled, and that we also had an unfortunate failure of the garage door opener. It turns out, those two things were related. The people who installed the shower door didn't attach the shower head arm back to the supply line correctly, and water was leaking down behind the wall whenever we took a shower. We didn't notice it right away, so it wasn't apparent that the water was responsible for ruining the door opener. On Monday of last week, I left for work, opened the door to the garage (with the new opener) and saw water dripping down from about ten different spots in the ceiling. That would explain the sudden failure of the door opener pretty well, and the mysterious puddle of water J had seen the day before.

I called the contractors, who know me by name very well at this point, and they sent someone out who was able to successfully turn a threaded pipe so that it attached correctly to a threaded opening, and now we don't have a leak any more. They are going to reimburse us for the door opener, but even with their prompt attention to the problems they had with our project, we won't be calling them again. That is, unless we find some other problem, which I hope we don't.

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After seeing a project at the Science Fair that used an Arduino, I am seriously considering buying a starter kit. I was at the school when a fifth-grade girl brought in a project that used it to demonstrate how a remote garage door opener works (yes, I've had a lot of contact with garage door opener-related things lately.) She told me her dad had worked on the project with her, and after I got all the information I could out of her, I kept a lookout for her dad during the Fair's operating hours. He was there, and I asked him every question I could think of. It looks to be a great way to start getting programmed behavior into an electronics project, which is one of those things I've had on my list of things to learn.

There are many different versions of the Arduino, small ones and large ones, and add-ons called "shields" that help perform tasks such as writing to a memory card, communicating over ethernet, or powering electric motors.

When I would find the time to do this is an entirely different question that needs to be answered first. I've also considered taking an introductory electronics/circuit analysis class at Washtenaw Community College or Jackson Community College, but getting a weeknight free is not that easy, especially in the spring with Science Olympiad and soccer.

By the way, get ready to hear a lot about Science Olympiad and soccer. I'm organizing the yearly Science Olympiad demonstration night at the school, and I'm again going to be assistant to the assistant coach for M's team.

And I still have a job I have to fit in somewhere.

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Science, Football, Showers, and Garage Doors

The Science Fair was Thursday. I spent seven hours at school on Wednesday, and was there most of the day between 8:15 am and 9:00 pm on Thursday. We had about 110 projects made by about 150 students, which was a great turnout, although less than last time. I know a few reasons why there were fewer entries this year, so I think there is a reasonable explanation for the drop-off.

For K's project, he measured the voltages produced by various fruits and vegetables. He also created a cell battery out of coins and paper towels. He used a multimeter to read the voltages from each item and recorded it. At the Science Fair, he created a three-lemon battery that powered a watch-sized digital clock.

Lemon battery

For his project, M soldered a burglar alarm from a kit. There are two parts: a transmitter, which uses an infrared LED, and a receiver, which checks for the transmitter's IR signal. When the IR signal is broken, the receiver switches on a circuit connected to whatever you want (audio alarm, flashing light, etc.). M hooked up a "danger light" to the receiver, which would flash when the alarm is tripped.

M soldering the receiver circuit board.


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M has had two flag football games since the last update. He's caught some passes, made a few tackles, and generally performed well for his team. After two wins to start the season, the team has lost two. Next week is the playoff game, and if they win, they'll play in the championship game.

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Our big home improvement this year is refinishing the master bath shower, which has needed attention for some time. We hired a company to cover the old tile walls with acrylic, and we got a new sliding door and glass wall. It didn't go very smoothly; there were a lot of starts and stops, but we're hoping the shower is finally finished. And it looks great.

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Yesterday, we paid a local company to install a new garage door opener for us. I wish I could say that home improvement was planned, but it wasn't. Garage doors are in the category of Machines That Stop Working With No Warning.

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A few months ago, I bought a cheap subscription to Esquire magazine for a fund-raiser at J's school. Each month they have a feature "Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman", in which a beautiful woman tells a joke, accompanied by her picture and short biography. (Oddly enough, she's always very attractive and not dressed for cold weather.) This month's joke cracked up M and K so much, I thought I better pass it on.

From Esquire:

A guy is walking past an insane asylum when he hears the residents inside chanting "Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!" Curious, he finds a hole in the wall and looks in. Immediately he's poked in the eye, then everyone inside starts chanting "Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!"

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