Honorary Degree

Will the honors ever stop?!? A few weeks ago I received an honorary masters degree from the prestigious Kellogg business school.

So really, this is Linda's MBA school. They invited all the spouses or partners, to join the students for a weekend. During one of the events they gave each of us partners these Masters of Understanding degrees in recognition of the support we give. Very thoughtful. But hell, as far as I'm concerned I've got a MU from one of the best business schools in the country and I'm going to put it on my resume! (not really)

If you should need some understanding I'm available for consultation.

Japanese Language Proficiency Test: RESULTS

I passed! やった！

I'm really really amazed. As I wrote in my previous post, I didn't think I had a very good chance at passing this test. 50/50 at best. But I ended up doing exactly what was needed to pass. As suspected the listening part was my worst of the 3 at 50%. But the writing/vocab was totally shocking - 93%!! The grammer part was also good enough at around 80%. Overall I got a 70% and needed only 60% to pass. I'm very proud of this test because it's so official. This is the Japanese governments indication of skill. Now for the humbling part, this is by far the easiest of the 4 tests. It's kindergarten. The next step, level 3, is not just a little harder but is probably more like 2-3 times more difficult.

The scan is of the test results but I also got a very nice certificate, suitable for framing.

Hockey Quiz

When I was a kid we would alternate choosing people for a pickup hockey game. I rarely went early in those drafts. So which one of these 2 teammates would you take first for your team? There is no illusion here, Finley is 6'7" and Bina is almost a foot shorter at 5'8" as well as being around 70 pounds lighter. Both are defenceman where size counts yet 'little' Robbie Bina has been a dominant player for the Sioux this year and has so far racked up 25 points to Finley's 7. So, who would you pick now? Not so easy. Of course I've got to go with any guy from Grand Forks named Robbie. Duh.

On Saturday, March 3rd, 4 of us went to St Cloud, MN to watch our UND Sioux beat St Cloud in the last game of the year. The smallish arena afforded me a good chance to get some closeup photos of the action. I have them on my Flickr account.

Best Wife Ever?

Thursday and Friday we got a good old fashion Minnesota snow storm. It was great! I think at home we got about 18 inches of snow in two waves. Just enough in each case to force us to blow out the driveway twice. But that's ok because the snowblower is one of the funnest things about winter - if not the funnest! I've been a little disappointed in the last few year with the lack of blowable snow. Here is a shot of Linda getting in on the fun.

Jersey Design Process

In 2005 I took it upon myself to design a biking jersey for our club at work. For years before that we had talked about how cool it would be to have one but, as always, nobody wants to do the work. I finally decided that if I did it at least I would like it enough to wear it. Being that most of the club riders are engineers, it was probably best in the long run that I stepped up.
The first image in this post is from the concept phase. What it shows is how I played around with the corporate color scheme (green with orange) on the body and sleeves - trying to find a nice balance without being too green. I'm not a big green fan.

In the concept phase I came up with 2 candidates. One design was more aggressive then the other. I figured I would let the group decide on which one to use. The next image is of those 2. Which one would you vote for? As I recall it was a pretty close race but the more conservative design won. Not all that surprising.

Next I sent the design to Voler to be printed. They took my computer file and combined it with their template. The 3rd image is the resulting artwork that was printed. What is very interesting about their process is that this artwork has all the sizes on it. If you look closely you can see the outlines of all the sizes starting with the x-large on the outside, then large, medium, etc... It's a very cleaver way to cut down on the amount of unique printing.

The jersey was a big success and I ended up ordering around 150. When I started out I was worried I wouldn't even get the minimum order of 25 jerseys!

You can see me wearing the jersey here.

UltiMed Animation

Last Summer I did a freelance animation project for a contract engineering company. It was to demonstrate a new product they designed for the dispensing and disposal of syringes. A version of the animation has become a part of the company homepage. UltiMed

They messed around with the timing of the animation and slowed it down - which makes it slightly jittery. I often run into this. Customers are always concerned that the viewer will not 'Get it' unless it's really slow. Yet one of the benefits of animation, and particularly web animation, is that viewers can stop it, rewind it, and generally watch it until they 'Get it'. I believe the concerns comes from a TV mentality where you get to see something once and then it's over.

Notebook Sketch

At work I was recently asked to visualize a new device concept. It was sort of an odd looking design that led to my comment that it was like putting Frankenstein's head on Tyra Bank's body. That in turned lead to my notepad doodle. I kinda liked it so I decided to show it here. I always have a notebook by me to take down information as well as sketching. I have a stack of old pads that are like my visual work diary. It's fun to look back at them.

Did Frankenstein ever smile? Maybe he would have if given a better body.