Watt's Up Musings of an original geek

I spent the better part of the day volunteering at the local Robofest 2008 competition at the Hill Country Middle School. I was the scorekeeper as I had last year. Again it was great to see the students competing. I am always impressed with their creativity.

I have finished re-kitting all the old Lego kits. Yup all the kits that I’m going to re-kit have been checked and double checked. Here is what I did (I’m probably repeating myself from an earlier post). I sorted the kit’s parts from the mass of miscellaneous parts. I printed out each kit’s instruction and inventories from Peeron.com, and put each in a separate binder. I ordered any missing parts from BrickLink.com. I built each kits following the instructions to check if I had everything. After assembly I broke the kit down, again inventoried it and ordered any missing parts. When the parts arrived I put them in the correct kit which I put in a box with its binder with the other kits.

Here are a few pictures of the last few kits:

8820 Mountain Rambler

8054 Universal Building Set

7720 Battery Train Set

This all started because of this last kit and a few others which I remembered we had purchased over twenty years ago. Then as I sorted and inventoried the parts I kept finding other unique parts which caused me to re-kit even more kits. The Train was the inspiration and it was also the last kit I re-kitted. Finally a month or so ago I stopped searching the mass of parts to figure out what kits to re-kit. I thought it was fitting that the Train was the last kit that I re-kitted and the last kit I verified by building it. Best wishes ol’ Legos and especially best wishes ol’ Train. I don’t know what I’ll be doing with you, but whatever happens to you now you are all organized in plastic bags. Ready anytime for someone to again have the enjoyment of putting you together and making you move and go.

I wrote a program to help at the local 2008 Robofest Game “RoboSavers” which is a Randomizer program to setup the play area. You can ask it to randomize for either the junior division (balls stay on the line) or senior division (balls up to 6″ from the line). I plan on volunteering in about a month as the scorekeeper.

I am being spammed by my daughter because I haven’t updated this blog in forever, but she doesn’t realize that my focus for the past two months has been preparing and running the AT&T Austin Marathon last weekend which I’ve blogged about constantly at Watt’s Running

Here is my summary of my blogging over the past year. Two themes that happen day-to-day without any specific posts are my work and my running.

• January – Quiet house so I need to find things to do. Hmmm, what to do, what to do…
• February – Repaired hot-water heater and house fence w/ Matthew, and completed my 5th marathon.
• March – Had colonoscopy and volunteered at Robofest tournament.
• April – Got PS3 and monitor at work which was a nice improvement.
• May – Found that PS3 game Resistance: The Fall of Man was a bore for me. Hmmm, am I too old for this?
• June – My father’s birthday party in Buffalo with my family staying at a great Bed and Breakfast in East Aurora was wonderful. A true highlight.
• July – nothing much to report, stopped blogging for a while.
• August – ditto
• September – Started sorting Lego blocks back into kits, also starting building life-size rubberband car for Austin Maker Faire. Started running class for February 2008 marathon.
• October – Showed rubberband car at Austin Maker Faire w/ Annelle and Mike. Another true highlight.
• November – Continued sorting Lego blocks back into kits.
• December – On a month long vacation, helped Matthew clean, paint, and improve his new home, finished sorting Lego blocks back into kits, volunteered at First Lego League (FLL) tournament, had Christmas fun with family and friends. My final true highlight.

Bottom line is that I feel that I’m a person who does very little over an entire year’s timeframe – or I just don’t post about it. I think the latter is more true.

So far Stephanie and Justin have flown away. Beth and Matthew have driven home. Marylib flew out today. All we have left is Katie who flies out next Saturday. Then it will be back down to the two of us – the nuclear couple. The house is getting quieter and quieter.

from Justinsomnia: Happy Holidays from Austin

Back: MaryLib (Kathy’s mother), Stephanie (Justin’s girlfriend), Justin, Katie, and Matthew; Front: Brian, and Kathy

Update: Four previous years of Christmas photos (all courtesy of Justinsomnia).
2006

2005

2004

2003

Nearly done… nearly done. I’ve been saying that over the past few weeks, but somehow I keep finding another kit to extract from the rubble of Lego blocks, plates, tiles, and other parts. Here is what happens. One or two parts in the rubble catch my attention so I look up what kits they are in and I realize that I’ve got yet other parts that are from that same kit. So TADA I sort that kit, and register the missing parts to be ordered. So another ten kits have been done this way.

Yesterday I received the remaining parts for the 6971 Intergalactic Command Base that I had purchased. That night Katie and I built it while watching some of our favorite TV programs. This morning I took it all apart and re-bagged it. Another one hits the dust.

Here are all the kits that I’ve sorted (ordered by release date and part count) from the mass of parts I had. For each one I printed the assembly instructions and inventory list and put both of them in a binder. I still have about ten kits that are missing some parts and they are waiting for me to order the parts when I get the money (probably after the holidays).

So for now I’m done. I’ve boxed up the remaining parts, and stored them all in the garage.

I spent the day as a FIRST Lego League (FLL) volunteer. It was an all day event from 7:15 AM to 5:30 PM. This was a Lego robotics competition called Power Puzzle. There were about 60 teams comprised of 3-10 elementary and middle school children and two adult coaches. I was a judging room monitor. I wasn’t a judge. I just helped make the judges better. There were two judges, and two monitors for each room. One monitor worked the door lining up the teams, and the other one did the timing. I was a timer. This allowed me to watch the teams work. As a timer I started the stop watch when the team entered, called out five, two and one minutes to go, and stop when it was all over. I helped in the technical room in the morning where the teams were judged about their robot’s design and implementation. Then I helped in the teamwork room in the afternoon where the the teams had to build a non-robotic figure on the spot with movable arms and legs while being judged for their cooperation. There were lots of other things going on, much like a geeky sporting event, including head-to-head non-destructive robot competitions and research presentations/skits. It wasn’t hard, but it was fun especially watching the young people being so creative