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.  

The Private Life of Beans

When I was gifted 30 pounds of dried beans for Christmas, my expectations were modest.  "Cool beans", I obviously said.  And hoped that perhaps they'd be of some use in our hunting land feed plots.  Deer will eat dried beans, tender green shoots, etc.  

So the basic plan was to just plant some in areas we turn over with the neighbor's tractor.  But it seems I had set my expectations too low.

Catching up from previous postings, I:

- Planted about 10 of each variety.  50%-70% survived my indifferent care

- Transplanted one of each...except for one variety where two were intertwined.

And the darn things kept growing.  This is a picture from March 11th.

They were supposed to be bush style beans, but weirdly turned into vine types and proceeded to climb 3 feet up the window blinds.  Had I known this in advance I would have added some stakes.  And perhaps set them up somewhere else.

But its nice to have a bit of greenery in late winter.  Sometimes I remember to water them.  Usually its when I finish a cup of coffee and use the empty cup to fetch their ration.  Caffeine traces might have something to do with their vigorous growth.

But something else is happening.  

I know very little about the sex life of plants.  I actually don't care to know more.  But I vaguely recall that in the whole "Birds and Bees" scenario there should be, you know, bees.  Or some other way to pollinate flowers.  Oh yes, there are flowers.  All three varieties of beans, with various small yellow and blue blossoms.

And there are beans.  Yes, I am officially a bean farmer now.  

This is unexpected.  Oh, we are only talking three that have reached the stage where actual beans should be forthcoming.  Several more adorable little mini pods may or may not develop.  But this shows a degree of resilience that I had not expected.

So how did this come to pass?  Well, some plants are rather ambiguous is such matters.  Male and female parts on the same plant?  I guess.  Pinto and Navy bean hybrids?  Sure, why not.  Heck, the hops that I planted years ago on the back fence just up and changed, one section of the hop producing female plants just throwing some sort of biochemical switch and converting to male hops.  The latter btw are not productive of anything useful to a home brewer.  And, to be frank, the female plants were plenty productive before this transition.  Probably there were bees involved.  Birds can't be entirely ruled out.

So now what?

It appears that free, dried beans can turn into deer pleasing snacks with a fair degree of success.  Oh, and with potting soil and an absence of rodents, turkeys and such to nip them in the bud.  Or in the pre-bud stage.  But it encourages me to try the mass approach.  Every week blast another 10 or 20 pounds of dried beans off into patches of recently cleared land.  See what happens.  Most will get eaten right away.  Some as soon as they dare show their tender little sprouts.  But evidently beans are scrappers, they'll give it their best try.  So I hope to be looking out across waving fields of tasty to deer plants.  At which point I'll tip my bean planter's hat and say "You guys/gals just do your own thing out there.  You be you."

FIRST Robotics 2026 - Tournament Number One

Off with the team to Appleton Wisconsin for a long, tiring weekend.  It's a three hour drive. 

A successful outing that proved the merit of our design and construction, and showed off what a group of talented kids can accomplish with hard work.  We astonishingly started by winning our first nine matches.  This has never happened before, and statistically may never happen again.

By the end a bit of wear and tear was showing, so our time in the double elimination final rounds was short, but for a first event it was excellent.  We have a limited amount of time to repair, recharge and in selected cases upgrade.  We are off again in about ten days.  

As usual, some oddity photos.  I'll try to add a link to our matches when it becomes available.

This event was in a big high school gym.  It's actually nicer than some of the arena type venues we've been in.  Maybe you can feel a bit of residual energy from generations of kids excited about things going on in front of them.

Our driver actually seems a bit pleased with the damage our robot's name plate took in an intense match.  

There are as always little event freebies.  In keeping with our school mascot we had these little plastic cardinals.  Somebody arranged them in this pattern.  Various stories were concocted about what was going on here.  Some were a bit dark, court martials and such.  I suggested the vibe was "Teach us oh Eldest and Wisest".  But maybe I was projecting.

Not as many mascots as in earlier days.  Those suits are hot and awkward, so when you do see them it is towards the end of the event.  I of course had to ham it up with a couple of birds.  It's me doing my best bird imitation.  It's not very convincing.

More to come.  

Link to video of our matches  https://www.thebluealliance.com/team/5826/2026

 

Robotics 2026 - Off we go!

A final afternoon of tune up, tweaking and then packing the trailer.  It's great to be packing in shirt sleeve weather!

Not like last year.....

This was a silly photo I took prior to our departure to a tournament at about the same time in 2025.  And boy, howdy, that shovel was a handy thing to have around.

But this time, while the drive will be longer the weather looks great.

I'll be banking some extra sleep hours.

Team is competing in the Appleton District event.  If interested you can follow the results and  watch our matches at: 

https://www.thebluealliance.com/event/2026wiapp

We'll see how it goes......

Baseball with The Chicago Ladies

Well, here the Chicago Ladies are in 1908.  You'll notice a few Chicago dudes there as well.  We'll get to that in a bit.

This is an example of what became known as a Bloomer Girl team.  In the years before they had A League of Their Own, these barnstorming teams traveled about playing exhibition games.  Specific to Chippewa Falls and Athletic Park, the Chicago Ladies came to town in August of 1909.

A bit of explanation is in order here.

First of all, this was far from the "only" recognized professional ladies team.  There were an assortment of such teams touring about, with the Boston Stars seeming to be the most famous.

And, its a stretch to call the members of this squad Ladies.  I mean, there's no reason to doubt the virtue of the female players, but it was common practice for such teams to have several men on them.  Usually in the higher skilled positions like catcher and pitcher.  Sometimes these would be players that traveled with the team, sometimes locally recruited lads.  As they would be expected to wear wigs - and I'm assuming skirts! - these were sometimes referred to as "toppers".

For the record - and of course this was a decade before another Chicago team got into trouble with betting - there was a bit of money wagered on this game with the odds supposedly being near even up.  Guess the smart money got it right, because the Chippewa Falls team prevailed by a modest 8-6 margin.  

Interestingly it was mentioned that a certain Dorais would be pitching for the Colts.  It has to be THIS GUY, who not only went on to an impressive pro career in sports, but also has the current high school football field named after him!

Their stop in Chippewa Falls would seem to be fairly typical for the Chicago Ladies.  Actual details of the team's history are hard to piece together.  The manager was a Birdie Carleton, who was said to have been involved in women's baseball teams since 1902/03.  In 1908 she was described as being "about 30", so I'm going with born early 1870's.  

There's a book's worth of interesting material on Miss Birdie Carleton.  I sincerely hope somebody has already written it, otherwise...well, the last time I came across something like this I had to write it (POW Baseball in World War Two).  Maybe I can get away with just tossing out some bread crumbs and somebody else will take up the task!

There's much that is speculation.  But I think Birdie - probably not her given name - got her start in Bloomer Girl Baseball around 1902.  In 1906 Smokey Joe Wood, one of the "toppers" who later made it big in the Majors, seems to have played for her on the Kansas City Bloomer Girls.  

There were quite a few Bloomer Girl teams in the first couple decades of the 20th century.  It does not sound like a stable business model.  Games were arranged on short notice.  The gate receipts were divided up; in the case of Birdie's teams often with skimpy results.  One time, out in Montana in the summer of 1909....

I'm not quite sure what "making a rough house" would have been in 1909 out on what could almost be regarded as a frontier community.  But displaying themselves in an "unladylike manner" makes it seem they were showing a little too much of something.  Their ankles perhaps.  

There tended to be strong efforts to maintain an aura of propriety on these teams of traveling young ladies.  Teas and other social events usually followed the games.

In any case the Trouble in Bozeman soon was left behind.  The sheriff released the team's equipment which had been held pending resolution of the matter, new girls were recruited from somewhere, and the road show went on..

Another aspect of the instability of this venture was the frequent changes.  In general Birdie was listed as the owner and manager of the club.  Why the photo up top lists someone named White is not clear. 

As we've seen, the Chicago Ladies may not have always been, well, Ladies.  And the connection with Chicago seems tenuous.  It was helpful to have a big city associated with your team, but the players were recruited wherever they could be found, and the team did not seem to have any "home games".

By 1912 Birdie - by the way both Carleton and Carlton appear as last names - was the manager of the Boston Bloomer Girls, at that time probably the best known and most successful team of their sort.  In 1916 there is mention of a name change to "Birdie Carleton's Athletic Girls".  The last trace of Birdie that I have - so far - located is an article from 1920.  She's in Long Beach California, playing with her team.  It is again the Boston Bloomer Girls.  They were to play a game on the  high school team field against a nine from local Elks club.  One of the players, a Miss Treglia, was slated to catch a ball dropped from an airplane!  The line up for the "girls" team lists feminine first names for all but four of their players.  These presumably were the guys, the "toppers".  In a delightful "oh so close" moment I noticed that one of these players was named Ott.  Did Birdie give a start to Mel Ott, future Hall of Famer?

Alas, no.  Mel Ott was 7 years old in 1916.  But she probably did have one Hall of Famer to her credit. Smokey Joe' career was great, but cut short by injury.  He never got the call from Cooperstown*.  But Rogers Hornsby did.  And he got his start in ball at age 16 when he answered an ad in the newspaper and played a few games with the Boston Bloomer Girls in Texas in 1912.

So what happened to Birdie Carleton?  The novelty of Bloomer Girl Baseball waned, and the Great Depression finished it off.  I have to date not learned much about her.  She was a member of a couple of women's organizations, Eastern Star and Rebeccas.  She continues to be referred to as "Miss" to an age where marriage in that era was low probability.  But finding an obituary or a gravestone somewhere has so far eluded me.  Was her name actually Roberta, or Alberta, or something less common?  

Oh I hope somebody will see this and let me know.  I don't want to write another book.

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*Although to be fair the last one I wrote did mean that I got the Call from Cooperstown.  I was asked, and of course accepted, to give a talk there during a special Memorial Day recognition of Major Leaguers who had served in World War Two.  Fun, and a neat anecdote to tell people.  I rode in an elevator with Hall of Famer Bob Feller.  The hand that threw the then fastest ball in baseball history not only shook my hand but tousled the hair of one of my boys!

Robotics Update - Competition Ahead!

Robot is coming along.  I've had a busy stretch lately and so have not been on hand as often as usual.  It's an odd ten days when you've been a hockey grandpa, a pallbearer and a robotics judge... I should have another update later in the week, and a tournament report before too long, but for now you'll have to be content with the robot's name:

This is a bit of homage to a former team member.  It's also the title of a really bad Shark Movie.  But Megan, the person, is actually more formidable than any shark!

I've been working with the new video crew.  Time to break in some 9th graders.  Here in order are:

The robot at STEM night, amusing some campfire girls:

And a shop tour of the 5826 build space:

And finally, robot meets robot dog.  With a supporting actor role for Hank, my loveable if dimwitted side kick.

Robot dogs meeting real dogs seems to be a common Youtube thing, but comparing the relative skill level of the two in retrieving yellow balls....guess we have that all to ourselves!

A More Reasonable Deer Stand Upgrade

Because the box stands on our hunting land were designed for an 8 foot tall guy who never sat down, the sight lines were difficult.  Last year despite sitting on a fairly tall bar stool, a buck snuck up right underneath me.  That annoyed me a bit.  So in early spring it's time for the first trip back.

Hauling in some cargo by sled

Setting up my new platform.  Notice the red brackets.  Surplus robot parts.

Enjoying the view.

No, I mean really enjoying it.

Deer Stand Over Preparedness

Seen when driving past a place that makes big cement things.

The sign says it is an "Almost Indestructible Hunting Blind"  Here's what it is made of:

I'd call it solid concrete but I'm pretty sure it also has reinforcing Rebar in it.  It also rests on solid blocks of concrete.  I mean, you won't get this up onto the wooden poles that most blinds use.   

I suppose if you have a great hunting spot, and nothing is ever going to change, then this might be for you.  Sure would be low maintenance.  Which does not mean put it up and do no more work.  On our land we've noticed that logged over areas turn into solid walls of trees that you can't see or shoot through, just by leaving them alone for a few years.

Nature.  It's all about adaptation to better succeed in whatever the environment may be.  Perhaps if we see this sort of deer stand catch on we'll soon have this AI generated scenario become real!

(closest I could get Skynet to give me a white tail deer with a grenade launcher)

Robot Update

Lots going on.  Apologies for tardy robot updates.  I'm actually going to "kick the can down the road" a bit more with regards to what my team has been up to.  And show some things from my recent volunteer gig at the Duluth tournament(s).

I had actually volunteered as a Judge at the Lake Superior event.  Judging is great, you get to interact with amazing young people.  It is the sort of experience that just makes you optimistic about the future, and I do recommend it.  Now that stuff is all done under privacy rules and such, so there's not much I can show you.  But once the active phase of that is done you can wander about a bit.  Judges have blue shirts and badges that let you go anywhere, so I enjoyed being up close to the matches.  It's the second best seat in the house.

I also had a chance to renew old acquaintances.  With other robot people.  And in this case with a mascot.  I have my picture taken with the Husky every year.  This year for some reason we mugged for the camera with mock snarls

Shortly after that my day got even more interesting.  At Duluth there are two tournaments going on simultaneously.  Just a big curtain separating the two playing fields in what is under usual circumstances a giant hockey venue.  The event on the other side is called Northern Lights.  And they asked if anyone was available to help with field reset.

I've done field reset in prior years, it is a lot of fun.  You have specific tasks to accomplish.  You work in small teams, and after a bit develop smooth work patterns.  And, you get the absolute BEST seat in the house.  For me this was a big plus, as our team is competing in just under two weeks.  Until you see the game actually played it is very difficult to make predictions on strategy, what autonomous programs are worth having, what's gonna break, that sort of thing.  So I said, sure, why not and switched out the blue judge shirt for a standard Volunteer one.

The picture above shows the playing field at the end of a match.  Those yellow balls have been launched all over the place.  Most stay in the field.  And they all need to be lined up neatly for the next match.  Most of the herding is done with big rakes.  See the guy at top of frame.

From a certain perspective that sea of yellow is a bit disturbing....  It looks like a mass grave of Minions!

I guess this makes me the Grim Reaper of Minions.  Not a entry I thought I'd be adding to my resume.

Baseball....and a lot more, at Athletic Park

My recent post on the Baseball Riot of 1903 gave me a nudge to finish up a bit of research that had previously only been a vague set of questions.  And, the history of Athletic Park in Chippewa Falls did not disappoint.  So lets talk about it's rise, heyday, decline, fall and revival, shall we?

I suppose there is no way to know just when baseball - and other things - were first played here.  In the 19th century, heck on into our times, kids got a pickup game going on any open space.  But it is safe to assume that there was nothing organized before the Great Floods of 1880/84.  And a birdseye view from 1885 shows nothing but an empty field.

But in 1894 a couple of local businessmen got their act together and built something more substantial.  Nice leveled off field, grandstand bleachers.  Interestingly the accounts of the day suggest that there were some previous bleachers but that they were not that great.  So I'd theorize that the site was in use for playing ball starting at some point between 1885 and 1894.  Here's the best view of Athletic Park, from a birdseye view created in 1906.

Chippewa River behind the grandstands.  Canal street off a ways beyond the outfield fence.  Not too much else right at hand, although as I mentioned previously somewhere nearby was the Rosseau House, pioneer boozery of our fair community.  It survived the floods and was moved to someplace very close to the ball field.  I'm not sure which building.  And to put a sort of end point on the story, here's a plat map from 1938...it shows the site vacant.  But not forgotten!  Construction of the city ball field on the spot must have come later.  Post WWII I figure.

So, on to what happened on the grounds of Old Athletic Park.

The history begins, naturally for baseball, in the spring.  Of 1894 specifically.  The May 15th edition of the local paper announces that a five acre lot "on the South Side" had been purchased and that work was about to start.  The primary purpose was baseball but there was mention of also putting in a bicycle track.  An ice skating rink came later.

By the end of May games were already being played.  It was mentioned that ladies got free admission, and that there were provisions for 40 - 50 carriages....you could watch the ball game from the comfort of your 19th century horse n' buggy!

By June construction had begun on a grand stand that could hold 700-800 fans.  Brief mention that it was much sturdier than an earlier structure could mean there had been previous play on the site....or maybe they just tossed out some simple bleachers in May.

It's not easy recounting the ball games, and other things, that happened at Athletic Park.  It is clearly a story too long for a casual posting - and too short for a book.  So here's a sampling.  Bear in mind that this was a privately run, for profit enterprise, and so the level of hype and hoopla is significant.

There were of course amateur teams representing most of the area communities.  Eau Claire, Mondovi, Rice Lake.  And further afield, from places like Minneapolis and Saint Paul.  

Of somewhat greater interest were the specialty teams.  Married Men vrs. the Less Fortunate.  Chippewa Falls and Eau Claire Post Office employees squaring off.  There was a game between railroad union members from Chippewa Falls and from the adjacent suburb of Irvine, aka Wallerville.   

Businessmen took on Bankers, the two high schools in town played each other (usually in football), enigmatic local teams such as The Crescents and Moonshiners played for a $20 "stake".

Some of the games thus undertaken are a bit, well, jarring to modern sensibilities.  In 1910 a team called Baby Bliss' Fat Men came to town.  The aforementioned Baby Bliss was a 640 pound catcher, with the rest of the team of like proportions.  They came out of Waterloo Iowa, courtesy of the Fat Men's Amusement Company.*

In 1901 a team of Native Americans came up from Nebraska.  The Nebraska Redskins took on the Chippewa Whites.  

On at least two occasions local Gun Clubs held competitive pigeon shoots.  Not clay pigeons, real ones.  In 1896 one such 3 hour exhibition had the Chippewa Falls squad beating the Eau Claire group by a tally of 48 - 47 dead birds.

Of the most interesting game played I'll have more to say on another occasion.  But this was an era of "Bloomer Baseball".  No, not teams from the neighboring community of Bloomer, but "girls" teams that barnstormed playing men's teams.  In August of 1909 The Chicago Ladies came to town.  As was generally the case, there were a couple of guys on the team, usually playing higher skilled positions such as pitcher and catcher.  They were expected to wear wigs.  I'm not sure if they had to wear skirts, or later the weird short pants called "bloomers" after the Suffragette, Amelia Jenks Bloomer!

As the years went by things started changing at Athletic Park.  There were more football games.  And the facility must have gone down hill a bit.  By 1911 it was referred to as Old Athletic Park, and by 1919 it was just called the Southside Ball park.  By then the newspaper was openly saying a new field was necessary, and indeed one was built at the current fairgrounds around that time.  The last game I can find referenced was in June of 1919, and it was noted that the field was in poor shape with lots of tall grass growing up.**

We've certainly seen in modern times that sports facilities are built, age, decline.  Communities build newer, better ones.  At this point in history the South Side really was a seedy part of town.  And perhaps the disruption of World War I and the subsequent influenza pandemic contributed to the grass growing tall on a once busy sports complex.

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* Here's the sad story of Baby Bliss.  The team was short lived but amazingly there are some surviving photos and jerseys out there....

** Another factor may have been the death of Maurice Poznanski, one of the businessmen who launched this venture.  He passed in 1917.  Odd that his name is still on the property map two decades later.  Especially since the Poznanski had by the time of his death, moved to Minneapolis and changed his name to Pond.

Hockey Grandpa

OK, now that's a role I did not see coming.  But where the grandkids lead, we follow.

I spent last weekend at the State Tournament.  That sounds impressive, but actually youth hockey has lots of state tournaments.  There are Divisions, so large communities and small don't go head to head.  That's fair, some of those Milwaukee suburbs have buckets of money to spend on ice time and so forth.  There's age groups.  These have various names such as Pee Wee, Squirt, Microbe etc.  We are in the 10 and under cohort.  Gotta say, put these kids on skates and add various protective kit and some of them look like they oughta be shaving already.  (Disclaimer, a couple of the larger players with flowing Fabio style hair dos did turn out to be girls.*  So shaving unlikely).  And there are A and B classes.  This seems a bit flexible, and the politics of how kids are put here or there are byzantine.

But it is high quality play, and contrary to popular misconceptions all the Hockey People we've encountered are civilized.  Intense at times, but civilized.  A few random images and thoughts....

One thing I had not encountered before are the Big Heads.  Also referred to as Fatheads after a company that pioneered the concept...and may I say, the name choice was audacious.  Now you can have them made locally, and pretty much every player has one.  They provide much potential for creative photography.

On the ice action is impossible to show with a still photo, its all about the sudden turns of the player, the bounce of the puck, the reaching just that last inch to poke away a shot that would turn the tide of the game.  But to prove I was there...

I'm learning many new traditions of this little subculture.  Vehicles going to State need to be decorated.  Usually with a name and jersey number but sometimes with a broader theme:

Even at this level there are injuries during a game, or more likely collisions where a player is shaken up.  The refs immediately whistle to halt time and both teams get down on a knee where ever they were.

A coach comes out, and after a moment - likely a long moment for that player's family, he or she is helped off the ice.  Both teams then stand and rattle their sticks on the ice in a salute.  

The weekend had entries in both the W and L column, but the grandson's team finished with a hard fought win in which both teams played well.  End of hockey season.  On to baseball.  Oh, and soccer concurrently.  And fishing.

_____________

* My observation is that the girls while few in number did seem to draw penalties out of proportion to said numbers.  Make of that what you will.

On the March

Many people know that the months of the year have a rather distinctive Roman flair.  Thanks, Julio-Claudian calendar!  March is a particularly interesting month.  Meteorologically, sure.  Also Etymologically.  

The oldest words out there are from the oldest human experiences.  Which sadly include war.

The name comes from the Latin Martius meaning Month of Mars.  Mars of course was the God of War, no doubt getting the name from the blood red color of Mars, the planet this time, in the night sky.  Various other words spin off.  Martial, as in military or fighting generally such as martial arts.  But neither Martini the drink nor Martini the rifle trace back to Mars.  Those stories are...complicated.

But what about Marching?  Surely the most martial of activities?

Well, not exactly.  It seems to come from the French word marche, meaning boundary.  Prior to that it goes back to Frankish times, when French and Germans were kindred peoples and languages.  The sense of a boundary is preserved to some extent.  For instance the ill defined area where England adjoins those pesky Welch is referred to as The Welch Marches.

That of course is exactly the sort of place your army would have to visit regularly and sometimes in haste.  So by the early 15th century the French had another word marcher, meaning to "stride, march, to trample underfoot".  It's probably derived from marche, but neither Mars nor his Red Planet have anything to do with it.

Although in keeping in the spirit of things, the official symbol of Wales is a Red Dragon, with the color likely influenced by the long, bloody wars along the Welch Marches.