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I volunteered to help at the Area 5 meeting and finding all the rooms set up and the National Commissioner about to speak I ran to my car and grabbed my camera.  I set up with my 70-200 f/2.8 on my Xsi and began snapping pictures of the event.  Shortly after someone walked over eying my self and looked at me saying “I just wanted to see how small your lens was.” Really, that’s your opening from one Scout volunteer to another?  He walks me out to his hardcover Pelican case containing an L-series 100-400mm ($1600), 1Ds Mk III ($6000) a set of teleconverters ($800) and a gimbal head setup on a carbon fiber stand ($1200) and began showing me the pictures he took switching between his 1Ds Mk III and his D40.  He then started showing me pictures he’d taken… on his iPhone.  I asked if he posted them anywhere and he said no.  Awesome, you can pick out pilot’s nose-hairs as they break the speed of sound but you show them to no one.  This is the photographic equivalent of masturbating.  At the end of the day he’d still not taken more than a 1/2 dozen shots.  The best camera you have is the one you have on you.

It should be legal to steal from people if you’d put the equipment to better use than they would.

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The Troop Leadership Training Seminar was fine. A bit better than mediocre but not quite “well”. It was raining, and windy, and cold, and we were outside. To teach EDGE, a skill training method, I normally have kids learn how to dodge gunfire but was unsure with the weather if running around in the rain would be appropriate. The kids were game so I ran the session outside. The final segment involved serpentining across a field yelling “I am going to live” and then rolling across a table. At one point, one kid fell, triggering other kids to fall, creating a six kid pile-up in a puddle with a camp staff member at the bottom to which one of the kids asked me:

Kid: Did you arrange this whole training so that there’d be a pile of kids with Tyler on the bottom in a puddle in the rain?
Me: If I were able to engineer it so that I’d propose an activity that I thought we shouldn’t do, have you overrule me, then have a precise pile-up resulting in a staff member being crushed, don’t you think I’d be doing something besides Scout training?
Kid: I thought you’d say that. I’m on to you…

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Joseph Csatari is considered the successor to Norman Rockwell for doing Scout prints.  Norman Rockwell was a titan of illustration who even won over more chic artists with his perennial onslaught of Americana and unyielding talent.  Csatari is a competent artist with command of color but the command of emotion that Rockwell honed.  Anyway, there was a display of their work at the Mitchner Museum including a book signing by Csatari.  I stayed to help clean up after the event and a Scout chum took advantage of the clean up time to pepper his hero with questions.   Mr. Csatari’s age and experience quickly became obvious:

Chum: Who modeled these?
Csatari: They were my neighbor’s kids.
Chum: And these?
Csatari: I don’t recall.
Chum: Do you remember your inspiration for this piece?
Mr. Csatari: It was…. no.  No I don’t.

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Program so innovating someone would shoot me?  No such luck, my red pen exploded.  It looked most like blood on my notebook where it looks very close to blood on paper (go experience in the medical device industry!)  I was trying to think what I could put there to look best and think that these would be my top 3:

  1. Inter arma enim silent leges
  2. To a love that will last beyond this world
  3. I write you to request removal from the Pottery Barn catalog mailing list

Got a good idea as to what would look awesome on a fake-blood-soaked paper page?  Comment!

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I think I may have hit a critical point in running Scout events.  It is the day before a Webelos overnighter and I’ll receive 8 hours of sleep.  This marks the first time this has happened in the two years of me running District events.  Were I to need something that I forgot, I could still got to a reasonable large store and acquire it.  I could place a phone call to someone knowing I hadn’t woken their family.  I feel a mixture of relief and deviousness knowing I’ve bucked my own trend.

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One of my recent venial sins is buying barrels of Hawaiian Punch Light from Walmart.  Today there was a Webelos Scout (Cub Scout of about the age of 9-10) selling popcorn (a perennial Scout fundraiser) outside of Walmart and he was a pinball.  Every person exiting was hit with “Hi, my name’s Chris and I’m selling popcorn”.  That was as far as I got before I gave him a 10 which is my regular tack with such kids but as I walked away I heard him repeat this intro at least a half dozen times being rejected in various ways with responses ranging from “no thank you” to “screw off” and he kept chugging.  I don’t even know if he knew why he was selling popcorn as he was more machine than child which inspired me to create a new award for Scouts: the FLS (fearless little shit) award.  This would go to the kids who sell raffle tickets in the rain at gas stations, vend popcorn in front of low-cost retailers, or do food drive pickups in Camden.  The name may need some tweaking.

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I wanted a sample blueprint that I could show kids as a sample floor schematic.  I searched for vectorized drawings of houses and such but found nothing and started looking for neat stuff with blueprints like fighter jets but also found little so I started looking for hi-res pictures of famous buildings.  I searched around a bit and finally stumbled upon a nice schematic of the White House.  I failed to save it properly and went back to Google to get it again when I noticed Firefox’s history of search terms:

white house blueprints exploded
white house schematics
how to build a missile
missile schematic
soyuz capsule filetype:eps
pentagon blue prints
pentagon schematics
monument drawings
famous building, exploded view

I wonder if DHS takes Cub Scout program into consideration when reviewing search history…

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The evening of the first day of Woodbadge we played a game called “Who Me?” where players landed on colored spaces and could choose to answer questions to advance or not to stay in place.  There was  a spectrum of questions and I was blessed with the following:

  1. What is your biggest regret in life so far?
  2. Give an example of something you’ve failed to achieve that you thought you would have by now.
  3. What was your most embarrassing life moment?
  4. Give an example of a big mistake you made.
  5. Is there a personal tragedy that’s shaped who you are?

The person immediately to my left got:

  1. What’s your favorite color?
  2. Tell a story about something funny that’s happened to you.
  3. What animal most represents you?
  4. What’s your favorite food?
  5. Give an example of a TV show you like to watch.

The agony and the ecstasy…

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I’ve been running Engineering merit badge over the past few months for a troop and one requirement is to document power usage in your home for 10 devices, documenting its wattage and estimated monthly usage.  Below is listed one Scout’s device/wattage draw info.

Dryer – 100 watts
Nintendo Wii – 700 watts
Oven – 800 watts
Washing Machine – 4,000 watts
Lightbulb – 10,000 watts

Hm… My guess is that his dryer consists of a table fan and a CFL, his Wii is diesel powered, his washing machine is a jet turbine and he lives either in a lighthouse or at the top of the Luxor.  In any case, I’d love to see his woodchipper/blender and the Farraday cage he sleeps in so his fillings aren’t pulled out by the transformer for his 15,000 watt phone.

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I’ve been running Engineering merit badge over the past few months for a troop and one requirement is to document power usage in your home for 10 devices, documenting its wattage and estimated monthly usage.  Below is listed one Scout’s device/wattage draw info.

Dryer – 100 watts
Nintendo Wii – 700 watts
Oven – 800 watts
Washing Machine – 4,000 watts
Lightbulb – 10,000 watts

Hm… My guess is that his dryer consists of a table fan and a CFL, his Wii is diesel powered, his washing machine is a jet turbine and he lives either in a lighthouse or at the top of the Luxor.  In any case, I’d love to see his woodchipper/blender and the Farraday cage he sleeps in so his fillings aren’t pulled out by the transformer for his 15,000 watt phone.