Mascots and Me

Because of course there were mascots at the recent robotics tournament.  And I show no signs of growing up...

An Illiterate Dog.

Walks with Hank have frequent interruptions.  Things need to be sniffed.  Things need to be moistened.  The other day we were doing a lap near the high school and came across this Post It note laying on the ground next to, well, to a post.....

It reads "Diuresis" and maybe was from a health class or some such.  Oddly this was one of the few times Hank did not opt to lift a leg.  Even his impressive capacity has limits.  Or maybe he just can't read.

Robotics Again

Off we went to an early April robotics tournament.  It was a nice short drive down to Lacrosse.  Heading south actually, so what's the odds weather would bite us this time?  Pretty good as it happens.

One of those late season storms that barges through and makes a mess happened to arrive at just the wrong time.  As school was cancelled - I'm sure an upcoming four day weekend had nothing to do with this - students were not allowed to travel.  Even though by the early afternoon departure time conditions were just fine.  Bureaucracy at its finest.

So our team had to get up darned early the next day and show up for the event with no practice time, no time to tune up the robot or really to do much else.  And it showed.

Well, sometimes you just get snake bit.  In one match BOTH of our alliance partners tipped over, leaving us in an unenviable 1 v 3 match.  Another time a robot crashed into the protective panel hard enough to knock our control laptop clear off the ledge and disconnect us.  Flukes.  At one point we were down to number 30 out of 34.

But we came back.  Eventually we clawed our way back to 9th place and were in the late event playoff rounds.  Sometimes called Elimination rounds.  And we were.

Oh well.  We did well enough to qualify for the upcoming State Tournament.  We won a Gracious Professionalism Award for an unprecedented third year in a row.  And late in the event we were tapped to put together an event highlights video.  

We ended up having to compress about 8 hours of work into half that time, with the main video editor student yawning and shaking his head.  Hey, he had been up since 4am to get there (see above).

The video turned out well, and a pretty good time was generally had by all.

Keeping an Eye on the Robots

I've been going through the world of FIRST robotics trying out every job.  Judge, Field Reset, Referee, at the lower levels I've done a bit of MC work.  At this event I'm a Robot Inspector.  You have to ensure that the teams comply with all sorts of rules.  I try to be supportive, yet steely eyed...

Mostly fun, I've not had to admonish anyone to any degree.  But after hours of digging around inside robots....

Not sure how my team will do.  There was an unfortunate storm system that came through and closed school for the day.  As a result the team was not allowed to travel even though by noon it was quite decent outside.  This puts us at a competitive disadvantage.   No practice rounds for us on Thursday night, no field calibration either.  We'll see how things go.....

Tree Shaped Tombstones - some Jewish examples from St. Paul. And from Vulcan.

 Tree Shaped Tombstones are not evenly distributed among different faiths.  From my extensive - if unscientific - study, I'd say they are more common in Catholic cemeteries and leas common in Protestant ones.  Jewish cemeteries are scarce in the Midwest, so I don't have a big sample, but today we'll visit three of them in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Due to a mix up in directions I started out at Mount Zion cemetery, it is the burial ground for the oldest Jewish community in the state.  The Temple goes back to Territorial days, but the cemetery has only been in this location since 1888, but had only a single "tree" and not a very interesting one at that.  But a few blocks away at the adjacent Sons of Jacob and Sons of Moses cemeteries it was a different story.  Despite having examples that were mostly from the latter days of Tree Shaped Tombstones, there was a lot to see.

Some features of the tombstones I saw here were unusual.  Many have details beyond the name of the deceased.  Beloved Daughter, even in abbreviated form, is poignant.  This low "book style" with Hebrew on the left side was pretty common.

Here's another one.  Note the interesting hands on the otherwise drab tombstone behind and to the right.  That will become important shortly.

The odd little niche down below also caught my eye.  What used to be there?

The cemeteries are in part on a hillside.  Scenic, but not ideal for tall, heavy tombstones!

This last picture was obviously taken on another day.  Even in the Midwest weather does not change that fast.

Notice the hands?  Those are Cohen Hands.  They indicate that the person, it has to be male btw, buried here is a descendent of Aaron, brother of Moses.  This illustrates the hand gestures made by Jewish priests (Cohens, or Kohanim).  While this indicates a priestly lineage it does not mean the person buried here was a priest.  Or even had the surname Cohen or its variants.

In a bit of trivia that I just learned writing this, the gesture - separation between ring and middle finger - inspired Mr. Spok's classic Vulcan salute.  Leonard Nimoy was of course Jewish, and made up this bit of Vulcan culture based on what he'd seen in Temple as a young child.

FIRST Robotics 2026 - The Meg 2.0. And interviews with people and inanimate objects....

Our robot, The Meg, got a lot of things right.  That's why we started our recent event running off a 9-0 streak.  But after that it got a little tougher.  So we had some things to fix...but not - as in years recent - a full rebuild on our plate.

Let's start with a new "nameplate".  It is also our main crash bar for front impacts.  It is now both stronger and scarier looking.

Various other tweaks all happened in rapid order.  The goal is to even out power draws. In our last event there were "brown outs" that in particular impacted vision targeting.  

Fun video from our last tournament.  A mix of Meet the Robots and Asking Odd Questions:

In keeping with the short deadlines, fast turn around of FIRST we are heading to another tournament later this week.  Much more on this in a few days.

Oh, I can't resist.  Here's a quick peek at the upgrades, which include teaching the robot to actively resist being budged by defending robots - or interfering humans - once the targeting cameras have the launcher spun up and ready to go....

Tree Shaped Tombstones - Merrill Wisconsin

Merrill Wisconsin has an odd history.  It was founded very early for our part of the world..late 1840's.  But it was basically just a logging camp at the time.  It did not turn into much of a community until the 1880's.  Still, plenty old for it to have the Tree Shaped Tombstones from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Earlier this year I was up there for a hockey tournament.  And I did find a couple. Both oddball specimens.

This thing is just plain ugly.  Drab color, which the drab winter day does not help.  Minimal structural features.  The surface texture is not the ridges made to look like tree bark.  I'm not sure what they were going for here.

I think this is some kind of low grade marble.

It really just has a bunch of poorly defined leaves and vines on it.

The next example is of a form I've seen many times.  The stump with two branches.  It usually is for a married couple, but only the man's name is on this one.  It also has a metal plaque.  This is more common in the southern US from what I've seen.  Odd ball up here.

Nice copper oxide leaching out from below the metal.  A reminder that archaeology is not far off, and that my eye must be tuned to this color spectrum.