Ellipses...

Missing my dad pretty badly today on Father's Day.  Well, really pretty much still every day...  The NBA Finals this year are like a heavyweight prizefight: hay-maker after hay-maker...  Finally got to the Doctor Who on the DVR.  I never would have thought I would say it, but I might be done with Doctor Who...  Today I finally hung one of the cabinets I bought over a year ago for the garage.  One down, one to go...  Getting the summer projects going...  Looks like probably no Dinosaur workshop or Automation workshop this summer...  Is it cheating on the Penguins if I keep watching the NHL even though they're out?  I think it should be ok...  I think I am going to have to start looking for some friendly Ultimate games...  If I had to decide, I don't think I would call Snowden a hero or a traitor...  Kind of neat to see former students and classmates on TV.  If you aren't watching Tait Stages you should be...  The new Tweetdeck lets you shrink the window down to two columns.  I had been waiting for that...  Does the world really need two fish tank fabrication TV shows?  Do I need to watch two fish tank fabrication shows?  Maybe I will just pick one or the other...  Trying to make a change to the Technical Direction Shop Biographies project.  Be nice to have a standing wiki...  Fairly certain I don't want the NSA recording the nature of all of my phone calls, I'm really certain they don't need my browser history...  Now that Google bought Waze does that mean it isn't cool anymore?  I don't want to have to find a new nav app...  Mrs. TANBI is instituting a fairly rigorous schedule of entertaining.  She's good at entertaining...  I had the burger at Eleven.  I must confess I didn't like the burger at Eleven...  I'm supposed to be thinking about my next professional step should be.  Not really sure I'm getting someplace...  Sure would be nice to see some summer pictures on the Tumblr...  There's something knocking in the back seat of my truck.  It's driving me nuts.  I may be too easily driven nuts... 

RAPID

Today I went down to the convention center to the RAPID Additive Manufacturing show.

After passing a long line of people waiting for the Megabus, I took this picture under the convention center:

I got into the show for free with my school ID - woohoo!  The show floor was pretty cool.  About half the vendors were scanning companies and half people that do fabrication or sell fabrication tools.  There was one company with a 6' tall dino skeleton.  I showed them a picture of me 14' project, which they thought was cool, but not as cool as theirs since theirs was made of 1" plate aluminum.

There were a bunch of 3D printers.


But i didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at them since we have already purchased one.

There was this one company: Mcor Technologies.  They had a 3D printer that was pretty different.  Instead of using resin theirs uses paper.  Not only that, but they've combined it with an inkjet printer so that you can print in full color.


That will definitely be worth checking out for the future.  Someone should tell them to come to USITT.

Mexico, June 2013

How about some pictures from Mexico?

Mrs. TANBI and I got some time away and actually left the U. S. of A.  We spent a couple of days on the Mayan Riviera.

Here's the view from the lobby...

The resort is actually pretty far from the beach.  It's there, just at the edge of your view.  The bulk of the rooms are actually cottages spread out around this lagoon.  To the far left in the image you can see the hotel proper and a hint of the first of five pools (there was almost never anyone at that pool).  To the left of the small bridge is "the island" which is home to most of the pools and one of the restaurants.  You could even take a boat ride around the lagoon although we passed.

There was a fair amount of nature around.  Lots of different kinds of birds in all the trees and turtles and fish in the lagoon.  Here's a small iguana...

and here's a bigger one...

There was also a kitten that seemed to live on the patio of one of the restaurants, and we also ran into a raccoon one night on one of the bridges.  Also we saw something that we decided in the end was a lemur one day while we were out walking.

Here's the beach...

We went to the beach one day.  It was nice enough, but neither of us remembered to bring our reef shoes and under that beautiful surf are intermittent (and pretty much invisible) stretches of fairly sharp rocks.  Were there no alternatives it would have been ok, but there were a bunch of really nice pools, so most of the time we did that instead.

Here's a water level view of the main pool...

We spent most of our pool time off of one of those little niches on the right...

Lounge chairs, sun umbrellas, many, many towels, and cocktail service.  Very nice.  Mrs. TANBI's feet on the left, my goofy toes on the right.

Here's the bottom of Mrs. TANBI's feet...

Actually, the nicest pool was at the spa, but I didn't bring my camera there and pretty much never brought my phone anywhere.  We pretty fairly had the spa pool to ourselves on two afternoons.

The trip had an unfortunate amount of rain in the second half and that really reigned in any plans to go exploring away from the resort, but we managed to have a great time anyway.

Here's my best sunset photo from the trip...

Maybe next time we'll get better weather.

Ellipses...

I wonder if PRISM keeps track of my blog and if I have any fans at the NSA.  Probably not... We're back from Mexico.  It rained a lot, but we still had a good time...  I am desperately trying to spend a huge amount of money by the end of the month.  I am pessimistic that I will be able to make it happen...  There was a moment in the Tony opening last night when NPH traveled about 80 feet out of view of the audience in less than 15 seconds.  Pretty impressive...  The folks that aren't upset about the NSA surveillance, I don't think they really understand what's possible.  People should read more science fiction...  Hilary Clinton is on Twitter.  She must not have a lot to do in retirement...  I was really very happy with pretty much everything in the first season of Orphan Black...  I was going to do movie reviews here, but I'm up three movies and I haven't written about them...  While I was away I read Ready Player One.  If you grew up when I did you should absolutely read it...  Might be time to make a summer to do list - although last summer I tore up the list as soon as I made it...  They've heard from the IRS folks and it does sound like rather than being political, the keyword searching was mostly pragmatic...  The Bulls are out of the NBA playoffs and the Pens are out of the NHL playoffs.  Might be time to catch up with the Cubbies...  The 1314 folder in my inbox now outnumber the remaining 1213 folders...  I seem to spend a whole lot of time watching MSNBC lately.  I used to really dislike it; I wonder what happened...  Do you think if I put a cookie sheet behind my wireless router that I could improve reception in the opposite direction?  Might be stupid enough to work.  Maybe not...  Still not making really good use of my mornings.  I should do something about that...  Any ideas on how to get a cat to the vet for a checkup if I can't even get her in a carrier?  Really can't even catch her...  My alma mater did pretty well at the Tony's last night...

Congrats Mrs. TANBI

Tonight Mrs. TANBI graduated in the 20th class of Leadership Pittsburgh's Leadership Development Institute.

She is now an official emerging leader, which is something I have known all along.

One speaker at the graduation said LDI is the equivalent of many MBA programs.  So that's way cool.  I am very impressed.  Everyone should congratulate Mrs. TANBI on the achievement.

Peaked Too Soon

This evening I got to do the coolest thing.  I hooked the laptop up to the TV and watched The College Ultimate Open Semi-Final live.  I think this should count as national TV as I assume someone actually gets ESPN3 as part of their cable package even though it turns out we don't.  I had to use the Watch ESPN streaming feature on their website (which of course requires that you actually have cable - a rant for another day).

If you missed it there is going to be a rebroadcast on ESPNU later this week.  That running is scheduled to record on the DVR, but why wait when you can see it live online?

Pitt was one of the two teams playing in the semi I watched: Pitt Vs. Oregon.  The other Semi is Carlton vs. Central Florida (which is probably over now...it is, Central Florida won).  I can't say I am a rabid Pitt Ultimate fan, but it was nice to be able to root for a Pittsburgh team and I will happily root for them in the final tomorrow.

For me though, the reason watching this game on television was so cool is that in the spring of 1989 I actually played in it.

1989 College Nationals was in Wilmington North Carolina and I was a junior in college.  I played for Carnegie Mellon's "Mr. Yuk" and it was my third and the team's fourth (and last) trip to Nationals.  We'd played really well in pool play.  I had actually thrown two goals: one a total rainbow hammer to Greg Wolff against Indiana and the other a much longer than I thought it was flat flick to Ron Papineck against North Carolina.  That year I was arguably the 7th starter or the first or second guy off the bench, a dedicated middle who could handle a little and would work real hard and smart on D.

We drew returning champions Santa Barbara in the semi-final.  I remember they had this fake up the line, dump over the mark break pass at the staple of their offense.  Midway through the first half I discovered that off a turn you could totally stymie their play by just standing in the break behind the mark and giving them the easy pass up the line which it turned out they didn't want.  They were so disciplined that they'd let the stall go up to 8 or 9 before they'd abandon the called play.

Yuk actually lead something like 8 to 3 at halftime.  After that we collapsed, or they really rallied, or both.  I think we lost like 15-12 in the end.  After the game we talked about easy things we forgot to do that could have got us another couple of points.  We never sent our handlers deep, we never threw our zone, really aggravating stuff in hindsight.  These days the teams actually have coaches, with clipboards, they probably would catch things like that (although I guess what would make one team better would probably make both teams better).

I think there was an ESPN in 1989.  I doubt there was an ESPN3 or an ESPNU.  Would have been nice if there had been though.  It would have been nice for my friends to have seen me play in the National Semi-Final (and would be great to be able to go back and watch a tape now).

I guess it will be enough to be able to do it vicariously.

Ellipses...

Just write something already...  We have so much Doctor Who on the DVR watching it is suddenly a thing...  Just about time to start paying attention to hockey again...  I feel like I know exactly what happened in that Cincinnati IRS office - and it wasn't a conspiracy...  Have you been watching Orphan Black?  You really should be...  Company last weekend and this weekend.  Mrs. TANBI is back in prime entertaining form...  I am really, really, actually close to true inbox zero - nothing in the INBOX, nothing in TODO, and nothing in FOLLOWUP.  That's never happened before...  Still waiting on that FIOS channel for the Roku.  Wouldn't say no to a Slingplayer channel either.  Truth be told I think maybe coding that second one really ought not be that hard...  I've got a vacation coming up.  I was going to spend some money kitting up, but I appear to have missed the window...  The President's security speech pretty much made sense to me.  Don't recall hearing much on domestic surveillance though...  That sidewalk chalk they said would last 30 days is going to last much more than 30 days...  Verizon is having a free on demand weekend - but nothing that's included is anything we don't already have access to.  Might be a little bit of a misnomer...  The Qdoba queso burrito tastes pretty good, but its a little bit of a mess to eat...  After hearing about the locker rooms at West Point I have come to the conclusion that we've arrived at the point where we can't assume we're off camera anyplace...  Working on trimming down my portfolio at work substantively.  After that I will have to figure out what to do with the time...  Not at all happy about hearing the current agenda of the House financial services committee lately, and really disappointed in the committee Democrats...  The US College National Ultimate Championships are on ESPN3 tomorrow (we don't get ESPN3) and on ESPNU on Wednesday.  Guess I was ahead of my time...  Today we debated turning on the heat, four days ago we debated turning on the air.  Don't have to convince me that Climate Change is real...

All David Honor Roll

Haven't done this in a while.  Here are the Spring 2013 All David Honor Roll students:

Jessica Bergson
Akiva Krauthamer

Dan Miele

Andrew O'Keefe

Jennifer Oughton
Camille Rohrlich
Isaac Rudich

Great work everyone.  Keep it up next semester!

Ellipses...

I have to admit I sort of feel like my government has let me down this week...  Another year at CMU is just about in the books.  Time really flies...  Getting pretty comfortable using the laptop as my primary computer.  Now I have to figure out the NAS thing...  One of our cats is having bathroom problems again...  Is it interesting that many of the people aggravated over Benghazi don't really know where Benghazi is?  Maybe it is just sad...  I may have officially lost a significant portion of my job today.  Time will tell...  After too much consideration I believe that actually Star Trek: First Contact is the best Star Trek film.  Maybe it isn't apples and apples...  I really wish the Roku had a FIOS channel, or maybe a Slingplayer channel...  The Bulls did really well considering three of their five starters weren't starters...  We're having a party Sunday.  Don't know if anyone will be here, but it should be fun... Having the thought we should do a Pittsburgh TD Meetup again - I mean having the thought again...  We did a ton of prelim work on renovations for our property but it looks like we missed the window...  Someday soon I have to move the rest of my stuff into the new desk and maybe organize it some...  Is anyone surprised the people responsible for doing taxes are paying special attention to groups advocating the abolition of taxation?  Not sure anyone should be...  Putzing around with the idea of a "David's Crit" again.  Probably won't come to anything...  Today is was like 90 degrees, two days ago it was like 35 degrees.  Global climate change seems pretty real to me... 

Spring 13 Semester Reviews - Day Last

Thesis Day 2 and Seniors.  I started this format with Seniors in the last session last year because there were wayward souls unable to make it back from LA on time.  I think it works rather nicely.

Morning Session, Thesis Day 2:

First up today we have Grad3TD Matt...

... his photo is staged because I was so enthralled I forgot to take a picture.

Our last thesis this year is Grad3TD Dale...

... next up for him is to find someone to higher him.  True story.

Afternoon Session, Seniors:

First up, senior PM/SM Ariel...

... she was emotional.  Now possibly looking for event work.

Next is senior BSA PM/SM Brian...

... he's become an expert at theatre and math.

And then senior PM/SM Brian...

... he couldn't find his pen.  Two time comment of the week winner!

Next up senior PM/SM Devrie...

... she used the coveted "I've discovered I don't want to do theatre" finish.

Moving along to senior TD Robert...

 ... we're going to miss him when we can't make our winches go.

Next is senior TD Sonia...
 

... I said Sonia had an "infuriating positivity."  Really, I did:

You have this infuriating positivity. #seniorcrits @dboevers
— David Holcomb(@Holcomb_d) May 15, 2013

Last picture this semester, senior TD Tiffany...

... I gave her the worst entertainment rigging presentation topic ever.

I am going to miss this bunch a bunch.