If the truth would be known, i have been apprehensive over the last several weeks about quitting teaching. I am now comfortable with the decision and I have let my class know that I am bowing out of teaching and letting my two compatriots take over. I have been teaching this Sunday School class for the last 9 and a half years. You would think that I would want to give it a rest. I really didn't know that there was a problem, pride, that would cause the Lord to want me off of the team. Perhaps I have learned as much as I can learn or maybe he has another spot for me or, maybe he wants me to give it a rest. I think the latter is true. Now with only two classes left, I can concentrate on learning some lessons from the Lord. It will also give me a chance to be in better contact with my wife, whom I have been neglecting over these last few years. I have a chance now of seeing what we need to do to get her back to Church on a regular basis. At the moment, that is one of the more important things that I can do.

In hindsight, what I can do is build a simulation which incorporates a minimal set of hardware parts and shows the functioning of the bot in a virtual environment. This is the cheapest way to get a spiderbot running and I can then decide if I want to pursue it further. The math equations will need to be worked out anyway (that's part of the fun). I like standing up simulations and it will still give my grandson some programming experience.

It looks like next challenge on the board is to research existing sim systems, such as Tokkotsu which is based on Player and Ogre with a physics engine. Good stuff!

Just as I expected, I was shot down when we entered the mall and I asked her if I could buy an iPad if they had them in stock. However she did have a valid point in that the iPad was just released and it might be better to wait until they get all of the bugs out. But right now I am more interested in getting Robot parts to build a spiderbot with my grandson. That part we haven't discussed yet. My grandson will be continuing on the BotBall competitions and I want to make sure his programming skills are up to the task.

The second test against The Peddie School was won by us at a score of 75.

This has been a great experience in my life. I have been with a great group of high school students which includes my grandson. Today is the start of the double eliminations. We start in the 41 bracket and our school is in the 23rd bracket. We have a good chance at placing high enough that we will make the final competition on Sunday which will include the last eight brackets. The guys are excited and I am excited about the prospects. To put this in perspective, there are about 65 teams at the Global Conference on Educational Robotics being held at the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Our team came out 3rd overall out of about 55 teams at the regionals in DC. We are now with the best of the best in the country, and since this is an international competition we have one team from Kuwait and two teams from Poland. The competition is friendly and ideas for designs have been passing back and forth freely between teams.

Since things have settled down at work, I have decided to take my name off of the job market. I am starting to warm up to the work that I have been assigned on an Army program, and I seem to be getting caught up on a different project that has been going on for the better part of 8 years in a maintenance mode. I realize that I may be taking my future in my hands at this point but I think that maybe the Lord is wanting me to rethink my position at this point. Anyway, I am about to remove my name from the pool of people on several job related web sites at this point. Time will tell whether this was a good move or not.

Well, time to think about the trip out to Illlinois with the BotBall team. In a little over 24 hours, I will be carpooling with the BotBall teacher to drive 5 guys out to the Conference. If you would like to know what is going on here, go to http://www.botball.org and look at the information. It looks like my grandson and I will be taking the Prius with the robots and the teacher will be taking 4 other team members. The trip will be about 13 hours and I will keep you posted.