Archive for the ‘leisure’ Category

Trusty's at Cedar Point

With my brother’s family in town, we decided to brave the lines at Cedar Point.  The picture above demonstrates how advanced our communications have become.  I stood under the Cork Screw and waited for my wife to call me from the loading platform.  Somehow our crew managed to get the first ten seats and I photographed them as they went by.  Those two empty seats aren’t empty.  If you look closely, you can see some “little kid” hair.

On the Skyhawk we had eight seats together.  My wife snapped the picture below when we were 125 feet above where she was standing.  We don’t know those two people on the far left, but everyone else was in our group.

The Skyhawk

And then there’s my mom on the Wildcat.

Grandma on the Wildcat

You can see the whole set here.

One cool technology addition to the Raptor was the “ride cam.”  Behind each pair of seats is a camera that records you during the entire ride.  When you exit the ride, you can purchase a DVD of you riding the Raptor.  There are actually two cameras that cover four seats.  When you sit down in the ride, check between the seats in front of you.

We didn’t see cameras on the other coasters, but it’s only a matter of time.

Thanks to my brother for the tickets to a dinner with James Laurinaitis, linebacker from the Buckeyes.  Laurinaitis is the son of a professional wrestler (The Animal).  You’ve probably seen pictures of the Road Warriors, the Animal’s famous tag team.

James was an All-Star in high school and was asked to speak at the North Central Ohio All-Star banquet.  At Ohio State, James has been an All-American twice.

Check out my pics at Flickr.  After the dinner he signed some autographs.  Check out the football he signed for me.  Nice guy.

When I was a kid, once summer arrived we were outside everyday from dawn until dark.  On the occasional rainy day, one of our favorite things to do was play with Lego’s.  We didn’t have all these fancy gears, custom curvy pieces and twenty kinds of rubber tires.  We had squares and rectangles and a couple of big green flat pieces.  Over the years all the blocks were mixed into a small suitcase and we built a lot of stuff.

We had two basic contests: build the tallest tower or span the widest gap with a bridge. The only rule was that every brick in the suitcase had to be used.

At some point, we acquired some Lock Blocks.  These were not “file compatible” with Lego’s.  They had the same footprint, but the studs were taller.  You couldn’t usefully mix them with the Lego’s.  I think we had an over night case for the Lock Blocks.  It seems my youngest brother always got stuck with those any time there was a contest.

Now there are Mega Bloks.  These are the exact same size as Lego’s and can be used interchangeably.  But Mega Bloks aren’t as nice as Lego’s.  They aren’t as shiny.  They don’t seem to fit as tight and they bend more–important properties when you are building a bridge.  On the other hand, Mega Bloks are a lot cheaper so you can build a taller tower for less money.

Today we had our first rainy-day-bridge-contest of the summer.  The goal was to span a two foot gap and hold as much weight as possible.  The contest was won by a third grader using Mega Bloks that bent, but stayed together.  The stiffer Lego’s did come apart under heavy weight.

I created the picture above using Lego Digital Designer.  It’s a free download.  Using the software you can use any piece that is made by Lego (763 different bricks) to create anything you can dream up.  If you really like what you’ve made, Lego will put all the pieces in a package and send them to you.  They charge by the brick.  My Golden Gate replica would cost $146.08 if I were to order it.

Aside from those black flat pieces, I used only square and rectangle pieces.  I’m still “old school” when it comes to Lego’s.

Today is retirement day for Bill Gates.  Now his focus will shift from Microsoft to giving away more than 99% of his money.  In case you are wondering, 1% of 50 billion dollars will still leave 500 million dollars.  Most people could scrape an existence out of that for a few thousand years.

Here is the video from CES earlier this year.  I imagine it will get a lot of air time today.

Here is the (slightly more serious) video tribute from Microsoft’s site.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/videos/