The Wilcox Family Blog

This is the rope-climbing robot myself and ASD student Joe Cole worked on, as a competitor in the “Robolympics” program I developed after Robot Sumo was done this year.

We were hoping to modify the base to allow it to compete in robot drag racing, but there simply wasn’t enough time.

Ours was the only team to successfully complete a robot that would climb the rope, although two other teams came close. There’s a red Lego Astromech droid on top of a pole that triggers a touch sensor to reverse the robot (usually) when it gets to the top of the rope. If I’d had more time, I’d have replaced that with the ultrasonic distance sensor.

Adam White’s stripped-down speed demon completely dominated the robot drag racing event. No one stood a chance against him.

Saturday Nichelle competed in her first bodybuilding competition of the season, at the excellent National Fitness Gym in Oxford, Ma. The event was sanctioned by the National Gym Association, and MC’d by our favorite hostess and natural bodybuilding promoter, Laura “Turtle” Tourtellot.

Natural Mass Bodybuilding & Figure Power Fest, May 22, 2010, Maximum Fitness Gym, Oxford, Ma.

A huge number of people help out Nichelle as she prepares for these events. There’s our friend Denise DeFelice, who accompanied Nichelle all day, and handled her makeup. Diet advice comes from a number of bodybuilders and trainers (I need Nichelle to give me all the names). Her old manager from Best Fitness, Tom, double-checked all her poses. Denise Richardson, former Ms. America (not Miss America) winner, offers advice via phone and e-mail. Then of course there are the friends and family who cheer her on while training and at the show. (Thanks, Barbara, Naviana, Toni, and Toussant!) But, in the end, it’s Nichelle who’s started with some God-given talents and desire and added a superhuman amount of hard work, especially considering only a few years ago she weighed 100 pounds more than she does now.

Seriously, this is NOT a women I would argue with.

Nichelle looked stunning and performed fabulously. The crowd, which wasn’t that large, absolutely loved her! After Laura read her biography, someone behind me commented, incredulously, “Mother of four?” I am amazed at how much she improves from competition for competition. She isn’t just beautiful and superbly “cut,” she’s also incredibly graceful and has a phenomenal stage presence.

Nichelle Wilcox, 1st Place, Heavyweight AND Women's Best Overall Winner

Nichelle placed first in her “heavyweight” category (118 pounds or above). We were ecstatic. I believe someone in the crowd was jumping up and down and yelling, but I shan’t name names.

When we were getting reading to leave, we were presented with a huge surprise. Nichelle had been awarded the “Best Overall” award for the women competitors, but a glitch had left it unpresented during the awards ceremony. At that point we were beyond thrilled!

Yes, that's our License Plate

Nichelle took six entire hours off her strict diet to eat however she wanted. We celebrated at the Jasmine Restaurant, in nearby Auburn—sadly, they do not serve 担担面. (Naomi showed off her Mandarin language skills and delighted the entire staff.) On the way home we stopped at Wal-Mart, because there were still a couple of the six hours left, and Nichelle wanted cheesecake.

Nichelle expects to compete next at the 2010 INBF Natural Connecticut Bodybuilding and Figure Championship in New Haven, Ct., on June 19, and again in New York City later in June. Of course, she also plans to be back at Laura Turtle’s Granite State Open, in Dover, N.H., in October.

Nichelle at NGA Natural Mass Bodybuilding & Figure Power Fest—Click to jump to our Picasa Web album for more photos from the event.

Thanks to Bob Richardson.

There’s something fascinating about zombies, and a current cultural meme seems to have made them even more popular than the silly idea that the world will end in 2012. (One of the most popular video games around now is the second installment of Left 4 Dead, called Left 4 Dead 2, which is a teamwork-based game pitting humans against hordes of “infected.”) I’ll remind readers that I was a fan before the current massive popularly, generally ever since reading Max Brooks’ brilliantly-written survival-guide parody The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, and his captivating World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War novel.

Zombies seem to be everywhere. There’s even a Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me parody centering on a zombie apocalypse.

LARPing—live action role playing—is detailed in Little Brother, which can be downloaded for free at Corey Doctorow’s site, or, of course, purchased in hardcover.

Somewhere between reading Little Brother and being inundated with zombies, it occurred to me that a zombie hunt LARP would make a great party game for David and his friends on his 11th birthday. Here’s what we did:

• One person is elected to be the starting zombie.
• The zombie “infects” others by giving them a gentle “Indian sunburn.” (I didn’t want the kids biting each other.)
• Once infected, a human has wait 30 seconds and then become an active zombie, hunting any human he can find.
• The only way to stop a zombie is to shoot the zombie in the head with a Nerf gun. Such a shot removes the zombie from the remainder of the round.
• Zombies move slowly and relentlessly, generally while moaning loudly.
• The round ends when all human have been infected, or when all zombies have been killed.

Overall, this went very well. Next time, I’ll include a couple of minor improvements:

• The kids kept barricading themselves in bathrooms. This sort of interior door will absolutely not stop a zombie, but will slow one down for a moment or two. I think to account for this, I’ll have the zombies go back to a central location, and get a paper sign that, when slid under the door, requires those within to open the door.
• I need to figure out a way to allow for simulation of decapitation by sword. I think a Nerf or toy sword to the neck should work. Water-based magic markers would be fine, too.

There were a couple of really great moments. One was when my sweet daughter Naomi came up to me and gave me the “Indian sunburn.” This was perfectly reflective of the psychological difficulty of fighting zombies who were formerly loved ones. I should have shot her on sight!

Lego Left 4 Dead: Coming Soon (image thanks to XenoPrime).

(Sadly, you probably won’t see this anytime soon, but you never know. I remember when Lego wouldn’t manufacture Lego weapons for their minifigs.)

Comcast has recently switched its provided-for-free antivirus vendor from McAfee to Norton Security Suite, from Symantec. The subscriptions to McAfee Security Suite are due to expire in May. (Norton is named after Peter Norton, a true god of early personal computing utilities back when DOS was king and before all the cool things Peter wrote got licensed by Microsoft for use within their operating systems.

Overall, this is probably a good move, as Symantec’s 2010 offering seems to have recovered its lagging performance, and surged ahead of McAfee in the ratings.

A month ago, I installed Norton on our mostly-gaming-and-homework computer to see how it would run. I hadn’t had any real problem with Norton, and it does seem to be less intrusive than McAfee was, doing most of its scanning during idle times. I also switched our church’s media computer over to use it, and had only one minor problem that a reboot fixed.

(I should interject that “the cloud” has allowed me to radically de-task my specific-machine-focused life, so that, for most of the things that were so critical before, it now doesn’t matter which computer I use. Our wilcoxfamily.net e-mail and calendar are hooked to Google Apps; my notes are in Evernote, frequently accessed files are in DropBox, and even remote access tasks can be handled through LogMeIn.)

Last night I decided to switch from McAfee to Norton on the computer that gets the most use at home. This is the one that hosts our shared printer. I ran the installer from Comcast for Norton, which automatically uninstalls McAfee, lets you reboot, and installs Norton. There didn’t appear to be any problems … until Isaac tried to print from the other machine, and got an error.

I checked the cables, successfully printed from the host machine, but nothing I did would fix the printing. I also discovered that trying to get to my host machine’s C drive from the network wouldn’t work (usually we do \\{machinename}\c$ to open it as a network share), although the D drive would open. I tried disabling the Norton firewall and anitvirus temporarily, but the network resources still wouldn’t connect.

I fired up a chat session with a Symantec representative named Srini, and he checked my spooler settings. Ultimately Srini wasn’t able to help. While this fairly slow support was going on, I hit the Web, searching for one of the error messages I received while trying to open the C drive, “Not enough server storage is available to process this command.” Among other results indicating the same problem, I found a KnowledgeBase article at Microsoft that describes the symptoms and a possible fix. I also discovered a number of posts suggesting that this was a relatively common problem with Symantec products, although other products or networking configurations can produce the same symptoms.

So, having nothing to lose, I took a stab at fixing the IRPStackSize property in my registry. In my case, the key didn’t exist, so I added it by using RegEdit to navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters key, and then added a new DWORD named IRPStackSize (the capitalization is important). I right-clicked on the new key, and edited the decimal value to 18 (hexadecimal 12). Then I restarted the computer, which is necessary for the change to work.

Yep, there's your problem right here: Setting the IRPStackSize parameter in the registry editor.

Upon restart, my network resources were accessible again, and printing to the shared printer worked perfectly. Tonight I’ll try to contact the Symantec representative again and let him know how this was fixed.

Alithos Anesti!

From ThinkGeek.

Naomi has become quite the artist; much like Isaac, she loves to draw.

Naomi drew this during our small group Bible study a week or so ago. She copied the illustration from the front of the drawing pad, and embellished it a bit.

Our 6-year-old artist at work. Media: Marker on markerboard.

A birdhouse NaNi sketched a number of months ago on a visit to Pat Metrano. Note the recreation of perspective.

B Butterfly - a School Art Project

Naomi used an illustration in the book to draw Junpei from Megatokyo.

A better shot of NaNi's Junpei drawing, including his weapons.

Naomi's completed drawing of Junpei from Megatokyo.

Naomi drew this freehand this week, with only her imagination as her guide.

This is a style Naomi learned from Isaac's girlfriend, Lucia.

This freehand drawing is another during-small-group creation. I love that she always gets the color orders in the rainbow correct.

External references: Junpei; Megatokyo.

Once upon a time the government had a scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person at $18,000 a year for the job.

Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created a planning department and hired two people—one person to write the instructions for $22,000 and one person to do time studies for an additional $22,000 per year.

Then congress said, “How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?” So they created a quality control department and hired two people. One to do the studies for $31,000 and one to write the reports for an additional $31,000 per year.

Then Congress said, “How are these people going to get paid?” So they created the following positions: a timekeeper for a $35,000 annual salary and a payroll officer for an additional $35,000. Then they created an administrative section and hired three more people—an Administrative Officer at $155,000 per year, an Assistant Administrative Officer at $125,000 and a Legal Secretary at $100,000 per year.

Then Congress said, “We have had this operating for one year with a budget cost of $574,000 and we are $18,000 over budget. We must cut back costs.”

So they laid off the night watchman.

(Contributed by Paul Anderson, via e-mail.)