A JJ Heller Style birthday

Today is Puppy's birthday. A few months ago Puppy heard a song on the radio by J.J. Heller. She calls it Love me for me which are the main lyrics in the chorus. The actual song is called What Love Really Means. Puppy instantly fell in love with that song and with J.J. Heller herself. She wrote her a letter and even got a response from her.

Since then I found out that J.J. Heller and I have a lot in common . . .

1. Her daughter has the same real name as Puppy.

2. She has a husband named Dave. I am a husband named Dave.

3. She blogs. I blog.

4. She made her daughter rainbow cupcakes for her recent birthday. We made Puppy rainbow cupcakes for her birthday.

5. She has a lovely singing voice. I have a lovely singing voice blog.

So for Puppy's birthday we got her the J.J.Heller C.D.. that has What Love Really Means on it. When Puppy found out that J.J Heller's daughter got rainbow cupcakes on her birthday she said I'm having a J.J. Heller style birthday. Puppy you bring your own style to every birthday and everything you do and as pal J.J might say we love you for you. Happy Birthday!

Ron Santo (HOF) One Down Two To Go

Say what you want about the late Ron Santo. He wore his heart on his sleeve.  It did not take much time to figure out the 3 things he was most passionate about:  1.  He loved the Cubs and wanted nothing more for them to break their century long World Series Championship drought.

2) He wanted to cure Juvenile Diabetes.  Not only did Santo, a diabetic, raise awareness of the disease through his playing career and subsequent broadcast career, he also raised over 60 million dollars for JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund)

3) He wanted to be enshrined in Cooperstown, New York in Baseball's Hall of Fame.

It was obvious that he wanted to achieve all of those goals in his lifetime and the consummate competitor would not be satisfied until those missions were accomplished.  On December 3, 2010 Santo passed away without achieving any of those lofty goals.

The most frustrating thing for me personally was the HOF snub. The other 2 goals will take much serendipity to accomplish, the HOF was a no-brainer.  He definitely had a HOF career as a third baseman for the northsiders.      I think 3 things shied voters away from voting for him when he was on the ballot as a player. 

1) He never got to the post season and did not have a chance to wow the casual fan and generate enthusiasm beyond Chicago and the National League.  There was no inter league play this time, so American League fans did not have much opportunity to see his body of work.

2) There were 3 more HOF worthy players on his own team.  These men Ferguson Jenkins, Billy Williams and Ernie Banks were so worthy of the Hall of Fame that they have all been enshrined there.  Many voters didn't seem to want to put a 4th player there when the Cubs had little or nothing to show for such an honor. 


3) He was no Brooks Robinson.  While Santo, in my opinion,  was definitely the best third baseman in the NL in his career, Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles was the best in the Majors.

I don't think that any of these reasons were valid enough to keep him out of the HOF in the original voting or when he appeared  on the Veteran's committee ballot.  For the above  mentioned reasons or others the voters decided he was not HOF material.

Until now. Almost a year to the day after his death Cooperstown has come calling.  The Ron Santo legacy is now 1/3 complete.  Now we need to find a way to beat Diabetes and a team in the World Series.

 


I wonder what team team they will enshrine him for?



What happens at an FLL scrimmage?

Last Saturday the First Lego League (FLL) team that Spider Droid is on (TheFanatix) hosted a scrimmage in advance of the December 17th regional. It was quite a bit of fun.

The scrimmage was held at the Elgin Tower, the tallest building in Elgin. It's a cool building with a fully dunctional old time elevator manned by an elevator operator. The kids loved that elevator almost as much as the robots they created and programmed. Almost. Thanks again to the Elgin Technology Center (ETC) who let the host team use the facility.

I recently caught up with the coach of the Fanatix and asked her for a little more info on ETC.

While at the scrimmage armed with a camera, an ipod touch and no official capacity, I decided to interview participants, coaches, mentors and parents and give you an idea of what happens at a robotics scrimmage.

I talked to one of the hosts of the event ...

I spoke with a mentor of the fanatix who had participated in a scrimmage before. She told me of some of the personal benefits of a scrimmage.

Team spirit is a big part of FLL it is not uncommon for the team to dress alike. Many teams have custom t-shirts made.

Some can only afford milk jugs

Two of the 5 teams at the scrimmage were rookie teams. Both teams were from the same school. I spoke with one of the parents about what FLL has meant to him so far.

I talked to two members of last years state champion I-Lego Team.

One of the main reasons for the scrimmage is to practice table runs and technical judging in an atmosphere that is as close to competition as possible. At the onset of the scrimmage the coach for the Fanatix explained and demonstrated a bit about how the runs are scored.

The table challenges are based on the theme for the year. This year the theme is Food Factor. What makes FLL unique is that the robots are only part of the competition. Each year every team has to research to a theme related problem and then create a solution and then present that solution in several ways. I will be talking about this in a little more detail in a post later this week when I talk about Ask magazine's December Robotics Issue. In the radio biz, that is what we call a tease. I'm not in the radio biz, but some say I have the perfect face for it. Enough about me, lets get back to the scrimmage.

Here is a clip from one of I-lego's runs. I added the music with the help of youtube. It does have a food related theme.

I talked to members of the HCA Roarbots along with their coach about their experience so far as a rookie team.

Here they are demonstrating some of their program . . .

G2 is another one of the teams that was at the scrimmage. I spoke with their coach.

and his son, a member of G2.

Watching A Practice Run

The Fanatix discuss their technical judging component.

Fll means differen things to different people here is what one of the Fanatix had to say.

I hope you have enjoyed this behind the scenes look at an FLL scrimmage. Hopefully you have discovered like I did that FLL robotics packs in everything . . .

Plus the Kitchen Sink