I decided to build myself a nice, flat workbench last night. I looked for some free plans on Google and quickly came up with Building a Basic Work Bench. It’s a little smaller than what I wanted, and I already had a perfectly good workbench-top, a door (80″ x 30″) that we had removed from it’s hinges upstairs! 80″ x 30″ = 2400″ square inches of pure workbench. So, with a rough plan in mind, we headed to Home Depot.

I already had one 2″ x 4″ at home, so we got 5 of the straightest 2×4’s we could find, and box of 3″ deck screws. I returned home and made a quick plan (as you can see in the image above). It only took about 2 hours to complete, so I was happy with my spur-of-the-moment build. Now I have a nice, flat place to build the next sailplane I will crash! Some photos were taken and my rough plan was made with The Gimp, and you can see them in the workbench gallery.

This weekend, I competed in my first-ever sailplane competition. The competition was held in Lexington, Kentucky by the Bluegrass Soaring Society. The 2004 Mid-American Soaring Championships was held for the 28th year, this year at beautiful Jacobson Park on the east-side of Lexington.

I’m currently working towards my League of Silent Flight Level II certification, and I need 6 contests to complete that level. The contest spanned both Saturday and Sunday, and I had a plane that could compete in two different levels — both “Unlimited Sportsman” and “RES” (Rudder/Elevator/Spoiler). My first day, Saturday went pretty well for my first contest. I ended up 5th out of 9 in Unlimited Sportsman and 9th out of 16 in RES. Sunday, however, was a different story all together. I was again competing in two classes, and while the clouds were very low early in the morning (around 600 feet), I took my chances and went up for my first RES flight. The flight went pretty well, and I got 6:49 out of 8 minutes for the flight and an 84 out of 100 for my landing points. Then I said “Hey! Let’s shoot for one of my Sportsman class flights!” Feeling all heady with my earlier flight, I brought it back to the line. I plugged the battery in, switched on my transmitter, and with fellow LASS-mate Gordy ready to time me, I sent it up the winch. Pretty good! A little too left, okay now it’s way left, push it back right, okay good! Left again? What the hell? No response! NOOOOOO! It nosed in about 50 yards from the winch, so hard that the nose was in about 6 inches, and the very sturdy fuselage and tail were shattered. One wing was completely snapped in half, and the other sustained minor damage.
I hauled it back to the pits, and after investigating a possible radio-frequency conflict, I figured out the issue was actually with a battery cable. It would seem that a lot of jostling and pulling in and out of this cable caused a weak connection in the wire, as it would cut power at the slightest touch.

But not to fear — I came back with my 2-meter Spirit and finished out the rest of the day (4 flights), managing to get 9:58 out of 10 minutes on both flights and 91 out of 100 on two flights, with the other two being rather unimpressive. Overall, I think I finished DFL in the Sportsman class, but considering I killed one of my planes and got a zero in the first round, not so bad.

So aside from the calamity, I had a blast! Lots of fun. You can see photos of the contest here: 2004 Mid-American Championship gallery at LouisvilleSoaring.org

Celebrating 100 years of fearful-eyed bunnies and overweight children. See it all in the 2004 Kentucky State Fair gallery.

Hey! It’s the birthday of my favorite Japanese native ever! That’s right -Mayumi’s birthday today. Apparently, November in the late 70′s was a hoppin’ time for many of our parents, and out popped Eve, myself, Nick, Mayumi (among many others, no doubt). Anyway, give Mayumi a shout-out today and wish her a happy 26th birthday!

Her birthday also occurred last year, on this very day, and i made a note of it. You may also want to search the gallery for photos of Mayumi.

To round it off nicely, I had some of my office-mates pitch in to help say “Happy Birthday Mayumi”. The resulting images can be found here: Happy Birthday Mayumi gallery.

I gots lots of cards and gifts and shouts-out over the past couple of days for my own birthday, but don’t forget that we’ve got two birthdays coming up — N. W. Smith on the 21st of August (tomorrow!) and Jackson Jacksonius Cooper on the 23rd of August. Let ‘em know that theys old when you get the chance.

For today is my 26th birthday. Yayay! I have received well-wishes via voice mail on two different systems, via the Internet (link), in person, and in the form of lemon tarts!

There is a website, it’s called SomethingAwful, and each Friday they publish a new themed “Photoshop” contest where they do amazing things with digital imagery. This has somehow caught on like wildfire, and even become VERY funny! And I’m not EVEN joking! Just take a look at this this entry for this weeks contest, which is based around reworking strips from a popular (ne’ classic) comic graphic novel, “The Watchmen”.

I loved The Watchmen, and having the crew at Something Awful take strips out of this classic graphic novel and re-work them in a way that only Something Awful can do is just dandy.

There was a big, big cicada-killer bee-thing on the window in the stairwell at work. It was confused, but awesome. As per usual, the University of Kentucky has come through with information about the cicada killer wasp. “ The wasp stings its prey, turns the victim on its back, straddles It, and drags it or glides with it to the burrow.”. My father claims to have seen this actually happen in mid-air!

Recently rescued from Target where it was on clearance, this bonsai is being called “Bunny” and the other one “Mr. Peapod” (though the latter prefers “Young Master Peapod”).

Both of these things have their own galleries. Make with clicky on photos.

…and it opened up my eyes…

Kelly ran her first-ever triathlon today. Each year since 1981, the E. P. Tom Sawyer State Park Triathlon has been run (not surprisingly) at lovely E. P. Tom Saywer Park. The first leg is the swim, which was 800 meters. The registration required an estimation of how fast you could swim this to “seed” you and give you a start time. Kelly said “24 minutes”. What she actually did in the pool this morning was something closer to 15 or 16 minutes! Crazy. She was passing people left and right.

After the swim is a 14 mile bike ride, and Kelly’s toughest leg, at least she thought it would be. Turns out she was wrong on that, too! She finished that in just about an hour, with no mishaps, spills, or terrible accidents causing her feet to be permanently trapped in her toe-clips.

The final leg was a 5k (3.1 mile) run, which she completed smiling and “feeling great”. Total time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Not bad for her first ever! She’s hyped for future triathlons. “I wish I would have started this stuff sooner,” she says.

Needless to say, I’m terribly proud of my lil’ Kelly. Despite all her fears, she really kicked ass out there today. If you’d like to see pictures, I suggest you check the 2004.08.07 – Triathlon gallery.