Mississauga Bowling Championship 2012

I'm no bowling expert, but I am from the midwest. More people than you might expect have based their entire opinion of the midwest on Woody Harrelson's 1996 smash hit Kingpin. It didn't help the general bias that when a local user group did a coding exercise about bowling scoring I was the only one who knew the rules, or that I was near the top during a work outing with a steamy 119. During a recent trip to Toronto for some apartment hunting, Ginger and I stopped for three games at nearby Planet Bowl.

I lost the first game, handily.

I won the second game, handily.

The tiebreaker was a difficult one to digest. Ginger employed some deep mental strategy. "I don't have a chance" she'd say over and over again. Suddenly in the fifth frame, she picked up another ball... from there on out the throws were all pretty good.

Going into the bottom of the final frame, we were both tied at 108. All she needed was one pin.

Championship Throw

Congrats to Ginger on taking the 2012 Mississauga Bowling Championship!

Experiment 1: Traffic Light

These days, I'm very interested in automating things.

As my friend Vic would say, I haven't the foggiest when it comes to electronics. Putting on a positive spin on my relative cluelessness, it's a great opportunity for my girlfriend and I to learn something awesome together. One hour in, I think we are — just look at that focus!

For our first experiment, we needed three things:

• Arduino Uno microcontroller
• breadboard & jumper wires
• LEDs (lights) & resistors

30 minutes later, with the help of this makeuseof article for beginners, we had our completed our mini traffic light!

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note A breadboard is a way to connect circuits without having to solder.

7 Sentences This Evening

1. You know what would be fun? Let's cut your hair.
2. This is going really well.
3. Why is the side so poofy?
4. I just don't know how I'll blend this.
5. Okay, okay. Now we've turned the corner.
6. This poofy-ness is making me look bad.
7. I didn't like your last haircut at first, either.

Herbal Tea of 25 Square Miles

Unexpected Brew

As it turns out, one of those awesomely-unexpected things I got from my travels to Little Rock was a phenomenal introduction to the variety of joys that come with the varieties of teas. I'm not a connoisseur, but I've now at least heard of Atlanta-based, publicly-traded Teavana.

Loose Tea by cherylsmith999, on Flickr

Assembly Lines

Maybe it's the Detroit-area youth, but there's something about How It's Made and factories in general I can't get enough of. Knowing these facts, co-worker and friend of the blog Jordan suggested that I visit Boulder's Celestial Seasonings factory tour on a recent weekend trip to Denver with Ginger.

The Tour

Photos are banned within the tour as the equipment is all custom-made, but even several weeks later, I've remembered some of the fun facts one would get by visiting. A surprising amount were of the traditional consulting "it depends" variety.

Free Tour of Celestial Seasonings by krossbow, on Flickr

The gems among the facts include

• Tea shipping containers for ingredients carry between 500 and 1300 lbs, depending on the density.
• Tea leaves must be stored in a separate room, so they don't absorb the scent and flavor of all the other ingredients in the warehouse.
• Mint must also be stored in a separate room, and if it weren't sealed an area four square miles around the factory would smell like mint. This stuff is shockingly powerful. Several people on the tour had watery eyes upon leaving.

Without a doubt, my favorite moment of the tour was a thoughtful answer to a question by a guest of the tour in the mint room.

Guide	Does anyone have any questions for me?
Asker	How long does all this mint last?
Guide	Well...it depends. If we're making a tea with a lot of mint, not very long. If we're making a tea without mint...a long time.

Stunning. It's certainly worth a visit.

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Fun Fact Boulder is affectionately known as "25 square miles surrounded by reality"