Buster and the Scholar Award

In the center of this photo is Buster, star of the show Mythbusters.  He is flanked by his co-stars Jamie Hyneman (left) and Adam Savage (right).  Together with their build team Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci, and Kari Byron, they've been entertaining and educating our family for years.  Our daughters Kiera and Alannah have done "Diet Coke + Mentos" and ""Phone Book Friction" for science fair projects at school.

Our oldest daughter Kiera was nominated by her school to be part of a brand new Math Science Preparatory program program being offered by Genesee Community College.  This enrichment program offers area middle-schoolers access to higher-level math and science courses, continuing into the high school ACE STEM program.  Students who complete the program have the option to earn an Associates Degree within months after graduating high school.

She was also nominated for "6th Grade Math Science Scholar of the Year," which the college was awarding to 2 students. She took an entrance exam for the program and was asked to submit an essay talking about an invention that impacted the world and her own life.  Kiera did hers on crash test dummies, with an emphasis on Buster.

From the "Scholar of the Year" nominees, 21 finalists were named who then had to create PowerPoint presentations explaining how science and math played a role in their selected inventions.  The finalists, families, and school representatives were invited to a breakfast where each 6th grader gave their presentation.

Once the presentations were made, Kiera was named one of the "6th Grade Math Science Scholars of the Year!"  The press release from the college has more details.  Way to go Kiera!

Here is the essay she submitted:

Kiera Gross
Pavilion Central School
3/29/12

Buster (and relatives)

A crash test dummy stands in place for a person while testing safety hazards in dangerous situations. They allow us to measure the impact of a force on a body and collect data through shock gauges, accelerometers, and other monitors. You could say crash test dummies have a real impact on my life.


Crash test dummies started in 1949 when jet pilots needed to test ejector seats. This dummy was taller and heavier than most men. Then another dummy was invented that was closer to a man's height, weight, and width. A woman dummy also was made that was lower than the regular female dimensions. Today, vehicles are tested by a whole family of dummies. We made dummies to measure damage and injuries resulting from collisions. With the information from the dummies, we can create safer vehicles. Seat belts, air bags, and collapsible bumpers are all the result of dummy tests. Today because we've tested a lot, we have more safety features and have saved many lives.


Buster, a crash test dummy used in the show Mythbusters, is my favorite dummy. Buster was first used to disprove the “exploding toilet“ myth. He went through several more myths before he started coming apart. The Mythbusters had to rebuild him. The Mythbusters used steel for the joints because they didn't want the legs and arms to keep falling off. They used poplar wood for the bones because poplar is very similar to human bones in strength. They used Dragonskin  for the cover because it is like human skin. Grant, the techie guy, added a new 'brain' which was a whole bunch of testing equipment in a black box inside Buster's head.  Mythbusters built the first reusable crash test dummy.


Buster is not usually used like a regular dummy. He has been put in falling elevators, dropped in water, shot out of a drainage pipe, used in myths with improper use of construction equipment, launched on ancient rockets, had a foot stuck in a washing machine, and put in cars that are dropped, crushed, flipped, tossed, flung, shot, and blown up. Buster's instruments tell us whether the events are survivable, survivable with injury, or deadly.


Buster and 'relatives' have affected my life. Buster has been my main explosive entertainment and has provided some learning opportunities. For example, when he was dropped in water from different heights I learned that the water's surface tension can cause 220G-forces. 100G is usually fatal. His 'relatives' have improved safety features on cars, bikes, and other things I use almost daily. For example, bike helmets are safer today because they have been tested by dummies. Crash test dummies have changed not only the world but me personally. They have taught me some things and, in the case of Buster, have made me laugh.

Applying the WD-40

Been a while since I've blogged. I've been thinking about this one for a while and the timing may be right on this.

At one point in my life I was a real busy drummer. I was in a blues band, big band, and played regularly in the community concert band and symphony. When the kids came along adjustments needed to be made so I set aside the big band and the symphony. Then a couple of years later the blues band fell apart. There were many years where my only drumming was for the six week concert band season. Each year I could feel myself getting rustier and rustier and it was discouraging.

When I joined the church I'm currently at, I eventually got the opportunity to sit in on drums once a month or so, which was both helpful and sometimes more discouraging, in certain ways. Even after a couple years of that, and even considering I spent some time practicing at home when I could, I still felt rusty...Obviously there have been some big "ups" (the biggest being the first entry in this blog) but there have also been many "downs" along the way.

Late last summer, the main drummer at church took an extended leave of absence and I was called on to fill in. Let me just preface what I am about to say by saying that I would gladly trade every positive thing that has happened for him not needing to take that leave, but circumstances are what they are.

Playing every week has its challenges. But I do enjoy it and appreciate the opportunity to serve. Not surprisingly, doing this for a few months now has really helped in a lot of ways:

• I can feel the rust has pretty well kicked off.
  
• I now feel like I've gelled w/ the rest of the team. With multiple guitarists/bassists it can be hard to get in synch playing just once per month. Weekly helped me get there.
• Playing enough of this music I've "found" myself as a Christian music drummer. There are some nuances to worship playing that are slightly different than straight-up rock-n-roll, and I think I've picked the important ones up.

All of this adds up to having much more confidence in my playing, which allows me to stop worrying about my playing (trying to sound like the recording, or the main drummer) and just do what I've always done best as a drummer: listen to what's going on around me and try to complement it the best I can. I'm not at 100% of where I was before things dried up for me musically but much more comfortable with where I am.

Now to how I see God working in this. Just as playing every Sunday was becoming too burdensome, a new family joined the church. Their 16 year old son is a drummer and in fact has come in to give me some relief. We now share the load 50/50 which is fine with me. After helping with the kids' ministry it gives me one week per month to just attend a single church service with no extra commitments, which is really nice.

The other interesting thing that has happened: my "phone" has been ringing off the hook. The big band I used to play with? Their very reliable drummer retired at the end of last year and so I will be playing with them again. I've also received calls about playing with the local Chorale (which I had to turn down) and to play in the pit band for the high school's musical (Grease, should be fun!). I would have been too afraid to take them on with the way I had been playing before, let alone the fact that I wasn't even getting the calls. That they came after the rust had been knocked off and during a time when I scaled back my commitments at church would be called "coincidence" by some. Not me though...

Twitter Lists: What Good Are they?

Apologies to those who have read this before in a previous post but I thought I'd break it out and provide updates when I find new, interesting things to do with lists. Came up with a new one recently so thought I'd add...

Twitter Lists
People have been trying to figure out lists since Twitter introduced them. I'm still figuring it out. I do tend to use/organize lists differently on Twitter web than I use, say, groups in TweetDeck. The ones I've made public are for the benefit of those who follow who are looking to follow certain categories (including myself!). But I'm doing/thought of some interesting things to do with private lists that I thought would be worth sharing:

• Build a "must-reads" list. Thanks to the computer situation around the house (and sometimes, the time I have to check Twitter), I don't always have TweetDeck at my disposal. I only follow about 300 folks but that can be a lot to try to read/catch up on if I've been away for a bunch of hours. With Tweetdeck it's easy, especially if you skim past "conversations." I will freely admit that there are those whose tweets I don't want to miss, especially some who don't tweet so often. So I have built a private "must-read" list that I can go-to during quick check-ins. It's worked great...just trying to settle on the sweet-spot of how many I can put on that list before it becomes burdensome.
• Start an "ungrouped" list. I love Tweetdeck, but one area that is notoriously bad in it is group/following management. They have the whole "new followers" column thingie, but still there are times where I may decide to follow folks from the Twitter interface. When I do that, I always have to remember to go into TweetDeck and search the person so I can add them to a group. Not any more with my "ungrouped" list. I put new follows in there, then pull it up in Tweetdeck to see who I still need to "group." And Tweetdeck does have a nice means to move people to/from lists/groups.
  
• "Anonymously follow." I don't do this (yet) but I can see where this could be a neat feature of lists. One of the neat things about lists is that you don't need to follow everyone who is on your lists. So you could conceivably add folks to a private list without actually following them and keep up with their tweets without their name showing up in your "following" & yours in their "followers" list.
• "Mobile (TXT) Management" For those of us in the growing minority without smart phones/data plans who use the SMS interface at times to interact with Twitter, it can be a real bear to manage. I have a limited text plan myself so I don't just have all tweets coming to my phone. But, for example, when I go to a concert and I follow the band members on Twitter I like to see their updates show up. But Twitter does not make it easy to turn on mobile updates on a user-by-user basis. So why not use a list for this? You still need to pull up the person's profile to enable mobile notifications, but at the same time you put them in a private list called "mobile." That way, you have an active list of people whose tweets are coming to your phone (provided you remember to take them off the list when you turn mobile notifications off!)
  

That's about it for this post. Appreciate comments and your suggestions on things you do with lists!

It's a Small World After All...

...thanks to the Internet! Those of you who follow this blog (I'm talking to both of you) will remember that I recently put my North drum set up on Craigslist. I picked Craigslist because it's free and it's kinda local. I didn't want to have to be responsible for packing those beasts for shipment. Got a guy in Boston who was looking to grab just part of the set. I wasn't too keen on doing that because I felt I had no chance to sell just pieces of the set locally. He offered me a price that was fair for the number of drums he wanted, and found I could do okay with the remainder (thanks to a North-drums related Yahoo! group). He also offered to come pick them up.

I was on the verge of taking it when I got an e-mail from a guy calling himself Phoebus. The e-mail simply asked if the drum set was still available. I'm thinking "interesting nickname," then go to his website and find that is his actual name and that he's a big-time songwriter/producer...in Greece (as in Athens, not the Rochester NY suburb). As in multiple platinum records to his name and described by many as the go-to guy if you want a hit song. Realizing I don't have a random crackpot on my hands I decide to write him back, telling him I have a deal pending and that it would take a good offer for me to back out of that. Oh and I'm not keen on shipping.

He offers my asking price for the set (the entire set) and says he'll try to arrange for a friend in NY to pick it up. I decide to counter-offer by telling him I could take it to a UPS Store (not an option for most as they are normally unwilling to pay the packing rates). He said no problem, so we worked through the course of a couple weeks swapping e-mails back-and-forth with the details, while I figured out the best means to package and ship (many thanks to Rick at Orcon Industries in Leroy for getting custom boxes together for me!) and today I shipped the drums! In the process I learned a lot more about International shipping, USPS shipping limits and "dimensional weight" than I ever thought I would! Phoebus was a supremely nice guy to deal with, patiently answering my ignorant questions despite a very busy work and home life. I really hope he enjoys the drums!

So to summarize: guy in middle-of-nowhere NY posts an ad to the Rochester Craigslist and ends up selling to a mega-producer in Athens Greece. Exactly what I expected to have happen when I listed them...

Selling (Update: SOLD!) my Drum Set

Update: SOLD! More later!

Well I finally got the nerve to put my Drum Set on Craigslist.



Don't worry, per my previous post I still have my trusty Slingerland set:



Feel free to pass on the link to anyone who might be interested in the Set! Thanks!

2009...never could have guessed...

Well, 2009's just about ended and this has been what I'd call a surprising year for me in many ways. Looking back on the year I see a bunch of things, mostly small, certainly trivial in that grand scheme that I never would have expected to have seen/experienced at the beginning of the year. I'll list some out, then you take your turn:

Twitter-related:

• If you told me I'd be following nearly 350 people on Twitter at the beginning of the year I would have told you that you're nuts.
• Never thought I'd win so many things on/thanks to Twitter over the course of one year. CD's, "gift baskets," tickets to concerts but of course the biggest thing I won had no monetary value to it. (yes, I brought it up again!)

Music-related:

• If you had told me at the beginning of the year that there was an artist that I would buy all the CD's he's put out and travel 100+ miles to see him...twice, I would have gone through a pretty sizable list of names before coming up with the right one.
• For the first time in years we had a 5-month span of seeing at least one concert per month. Did not expect that.
• This has also been the biggest year for buying CD's/"downloaded albums" in a long time. If you add in the CD's I won this year and singles that companies were giving away my library has grown tremendously.
• Of course I'd have never expected fulfilling a life-long dream (or two) as a drummer this year.
• Related to that, I wouldn't have thought at the beginning of the year that I would have truly revived my interest in drumming again.
• Never would have expected I'd play host to a touring musician either.
  

Life in General

• Though I guess I should have expected it, I did not expect Kiera to get weapons from Santa for Christmas (just happened to be top-of-mind).
• On a sad note, I never thought I'd lose 2 friends this year, one I knew in real life, and another I only knew thanks to the Internet. Rest in peace, Marty and Jason.

Beyond all that, my life was filled with blessings too numerous to mention this year, I just thought I'd mention some of the "surprises."

What about you? What happened to you this year that you didn't expect would happen?

I am a Drummer...

People reading this title who know me will probably say straight up: "Well, duh..." but it's not that simple, or at least hasn't been so cut-and-dried of late. Otherwise I wouldn't be dedicating a blog to the subject. I hinted at this in my first blog entry but it has really been hitting home in the time since.

Yeah, I'm a drummer. Have been since 5th grade. But since the blues band broke up a few years back I haven't been much of one. Once that happened, my drumming was reduced to just playing in the local community Concert Band. That would be 6 weeks each Summer, and then the drums would go away for 10 1/2 months. In that time I started getting involved in music at my old church. Started playing guitar because there was really no room for drums. Had been playing around with guitar for years but this had me playing every month so I started getting better at it.

Fast forward to our current church, and I find myself doing some occasional drumming on the worship team as a sub. It was good, it was kicking off the rust, but I could still feel a lot of rust. In the meantime I started playing guitar for the Sunday School program when I wasn't on the worship team. Guitar was still something of a focus point. It's what I practiced with any sort of regularity, and it was feeling more like I was a (slowly) developing guitarist who still plays around with drums.

Fast forward to this Fall. I mentioned this in my first post:

Played w/ worship team on 9/6. Hadn't been scheduled for worship team much at all lately so it was already affecting my confidence, but then we had the kind of practice where it seemed every time we stopped it was because of something I was doing wrong. And it's not about simple "don't forget the chorus goes here" type stuff but criticism that strikes at the core of what I considered my strengths. Very discouraging day...

...After posting the video I tore down the North drum set...and set up my other, smaller Slingerland set (the one I play when I play out). Thus begins almost nightly wood-shedding sessions. I practiced like I haven't in ages, not because I felt the need to "get ready" for Binghamton but because I actually wanted to practice....

And so it continued for a while after that. Of course with the practices came more continuity to my play, less messiness, even picking up a few licks I used to be able to do. Rust started shedding quickly, and with that my satisfaction with playing grew. Those couple of months were the beginning of a shift to me. From being someone who considers drums one of the things I play back to being the main thing I play again. It took a low then a high to get there, but I'm glad I went through both. Yeah, I still mess around with the guitar, but I am a drummer first and foremost, and I'm comfortable with that.