The State Fair Balloon Race with out me...

Well the Indiana State Fair Giant Hot Air Balloon Race has come and gone for another year. And, unfortunately from my point of view, it came and went without me. :-( Since I have had a grand total of ONE flight this year I didn't meet the "eligibility" requirements that Nick and Ruthie were forced to add a couple of years ago (long story). So I went this morning and crewed for an out of town pilot who came without any crew (not even a driver - strange, that). For those who have been around awhile it was the guy who years ago flew the Early Times Whiskey Bottle special shape. But this year he was flying just a regular balloon. He was impressed however when his crew picked out a landing site for him before he got there. We told him about it and he flew right to it.

The amazing part was that every pilot that flew threw their baggie and had it scored. Well except for Nick. He was the last one over the X and he just landed even though Ruthie warned him it would mean he was disqualified. If I remember correctly the furthest baggie was something like 131 feet from the X and there were only two or three over 75 feet. Two years ago I was sixth at 75 feet and last year not a single baggie was scored because we all missed the field where the hare landed. This year fifth place was 68 inches.

Finally, the first flight of the year.....

Yeah, so the title of the blog isn't so "true" right now. With me being down here and the balloon being up there (and for example, the weather being great right now and a crummy forecast for Saturday - the only day when the balloon and I are in the same place) it makes it difficult to get flights in. In fact, last Friday was my first flight of the year. The sandbags enjoyed it as much as ever and I REALLY appreciated that Ann, Sarah and Dan served as the primary crew with my lovely wife as the driver. Raley and her Grandmother came along as "interested observers". And, Jamie and James came for the launch.

Good flight but I sure could tell my "skills" were a little rusty for the first approach or two.

Now, if I could just figure out how to get the weather to cooperate so that I could get another flight in.

And the new job continues to "amaze" me...

Yesterday I learned yet another new term. Administrative leave. Yeah!! Apparently, The Captain (doesn't matter what his real rank is as the commander of a Naval installation his title is "The Captain") has the discretion to award all of the people that work for him up to 59 minutes of administrative leave. One hour or more requires at least one layer higher in the chain of command. So yesterday, if you had clocked in to work you were awarded 59 minutes of leave (to be taken yesterday only) as a "thank you for working hard and let's kick off summer". So my "short" day (every other Friday I work eight hours - Mon-Thur I work 9) got even shorter. I won't argue. If yesterday had been my RDO (Regular Day Off for you non DoD folks - that would OBVIOUSLY be the Department of Defense) like several of the folks in my group, I would have "lost out" on the 59 minutes. Of course, I wouldn't have been working either :-)

The other news is that, in an apparently very unusual twist, I may get to help a department that works in the building across the street out of a bind. Seems that usually the various departments don't mix at all, especially not at the project level (due to the way things get funded). However, this department is in a bind because the main guy who had been working on the VHDL for this particular FPGA was notified recently that he was being deployed to Iraq. I am not sure if he is National Guard or Reserve but, not surprisingly, there are a lot of both on the base. They thought they still had it "covered" but his backup had a heart attack and died last weekend. Suddenly, they have no one in their department that knows VHDL at all. I don't have a lot to do right now, they have funding to pay me (my boss likes that aspect a lot) and I get to learn FPGA design by doing. And, in a few weeks, I will be able to add FPGA design to my resume. Sounds good to me. Now if I can just make the FPGA work. I have casually looked through some of this guy's code and it appears that there are some holes big enough to drive a truck through (shall I say software guy with little hardware experience writing what he considers software - they always seem to forget that the objective is to make hardware). But, alas, I HAVE seen this kind of stuff before and the chance to play with the FPGA programming software is just too tempting.

Now my desk can be happy!!

I have now received new pictures of my lovely daughters and their handsome husbands and the cutest grandbaby in the world to put on my desk!!! Hooray!!!

Now if I just had enough work to do to. Hmmmmm.......

In the meantime I also hauled my bike to Bloomfield and back this week so that I could start riding a little more often. What I have discovered so far is that there is nothing resembling "flat" around Bloomfield that isn't a U.S. highway. And that while I can't do anything about the "old" part, I am working on the out of shape part. But, boy, am I out of shape. And hills don't help my ego.

I am sad...(eeyore voice)

I have a new desk and the only picture on it of my girls has Sarah in her wedding dress.

No pictures of son-in-laws.

And, no picture(s) of Raley.....


VERY SAD!

Well, durn......

Or something like that.

Going into the game none of the "pundits" gave Purdue a chance but they hung in there and had several chances to tie or even take the lead but could never get over the hump. The Boilers needed to do several things well to win the game. They needed to play their normal really tough defense and they did that. They needed to hold their own in the rebounding but they got out rebounded by a fairly large margin (48-33) and they needed to shoot a pretty good percentage of their shots but they missed several open shots (that they normally hit) and had a lot of shots influenced by UConn's big center. They ended up shooting only 36% and they needed to be in the mid forties. They also fouled too many times (UConn out scored them 19-6 from the free throw line) which was a direct correlation with the fact that the UConn players were just bigger and stronger than the Purdue players.

Given all of that the guys showed that they were really competitive. And they have the advantage that their top six players are all underclassmen and will be back next year. And they have some pretty good looking recruits coming in. Things are looking good for Purdue basketball.

And on to the Sweet Sixteen!!!

Whew!!

Just barely! The Boilers built a big enough lead and then hung on at the end. Washington came back to within two points on several occasions but Purdue always found a way to push it back up to 4 or 6. And then they made enough free throws towards the end of the game and JaJuan Johnson had two very timely blocks to hang on. And, oh yeah, there was a GREAT story in the Indy paper about how JaJuan's mom's co-workers in the kitchen at one of the schools here in Carmel took up a collection and bought her (a single mom) an airplane ticket and a hotel room so she could go to the games in Portland, Ore.

And now they get to play the team from U Conn. Hmmmmmm.....

I guess you have to beat the really good teams if you want to win the tournament.