Awesome Weekend

What an amazing weekend! This has to be one of the more amazing weekends I've had in a while.

My Workbench 3.0 is finished. I'll post pictures of it on here once I take some. I'm thinking of staining it or painting it. Not sure why really since it's just a workbench, but a $3 can of stain might make it look even cooler! Won't happen for a while if I do anyway. Workbench 1.0 was a design issue. Just like the real world, our design team on the Workbench project never spends time with the actual hardware so my first design was very difficult to make work. We sent off a new RIT for the weekend and came back with 2.0 which was a much better design (and relatively cheap to make happen with the changes from 1.0). But in the process of building 2.0, I made an engineering change (EC) that was bad. So I left it Saturday and came back on Sunday to implement 3.0 which works extremely well! My workbench now folds up against the wall when I need to park in the garage, but when I need a workbench, folds out to an amazingly sturdy 2' x 4' workbench. Plenty big for what I need it for.

The game Saturday was one of the more memorable. We had tornados all around Ames around 5pm (game started at 6pm) so they cleared out the stadium and delayed the game till 7pm. The sirens went off for Ames and we watched as the clouds would dip and swirl around. They finally had a tornado up by North Grand Mall but that was a good 5 miles from where we were. It's funny how you can tell those of us who grew up in Iowa around tornados and those who haven't (C - this means you! haha). Just different reactions to tornado warnings. We sat around and continued to tailgate while watching the clouds. No rain though, just a lot of wind. The wind continued into the game and played a HUGE role in the play of the game. I had some of the best Prime Rib I've ever had along with Pheasant, and some pork loins. I need to figure out how Ben made that Prime Rib and add it to my list of things to make.

Iowa State looked good for the first quarter, but that's because we had the wind at our back. We started to freeze at the game because of the cold wind blowing at us pretty much non-stop for the 3+ hours we were standing out there. Colorado came back when they had the wind including a 57 yard field goal with the wind. Things got scary in the 4th quarter with ISU unable to move the ball into the wind and only a 7 point lead. Poor clock management too and as usual I blame McCarney. So Colorado has 3 minutes to score a touchdown to send it to OT which I don't like since we're 0-2 in OT this year:( They run 4 screens in a row getting 10+ yards every time. We continued to run a zone defense so why wouldn't they run the screen. Finally Curvey backed up and read the screen perfectly and returned the interception for a touchdown.

Now I'm a big fan of almost everything in life, but one of the greatest thrills has to be with 60,000 other people screaming and jumping all over the place like we were at that moment. I can remember other touchdowns that were exciting, but the emotion of this touchdown was amazing. Put Cyclones up for good by 14 points with 1:30 left to play. Kansas is up next, but we need a lot of help to win the Big 12 North. Need both Colorado and Missouri to lose again and a big win over Kansas. Still not ranked but that should change after we beat up on Kansas:) The team is playing really well right now.

Concerts this weekend and I have more practicing to do.

And Happy Birthday Jeremy (was yesterday). Hard to imagine my "older" brother getting older but then I realize I'm getting old too. I'm one of the few people in the world that can call his older sibling his "little" brother too;)

Song of the Day - I have a couple of U2 songs going through my head since the new U2 Vertigo DVD comes out tomorrow. Check back tomorrow for some U2 fun:)

Video of the Day - I finally saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this weekend on Friday night. I give the movie a huge thumbs up, 10 stars, um..... you get the picture. I loved it as I love all of Tim Burton's stuff. Johnny Depp was incredible and I wonder why he wasn't nominated for anything in that performance. Funny how a movie like that isn't made to win awards but I think it should be. It was also fun watching it with someone that knew the original movie so well and could point out the similarities and differences so well. I really enjoyed it.

Webpage of the Day - This one's for you mom - When my mom was in China for a month this summer, she was amazed at the signs that would be translated into English and it was a very poor translation. With the Olympics coming, I think it's interesting that China is wanting to fix these translations for all the tourists. Good for them though but how are they going to do this?

HAVE A FABULOUS DAY!!