Tag Archives: ericiv

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day 3558: and yet still more hockey.

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day 3558: and yet still more hockey.

the regular season of hockey ended and ouru local arena is in the process of taking down the ice but the fun never ends for us! while we’re not doing The Neverending Hockey Season again this year, odin is going to a seven week bluedevils AAA hockey development camp, so we get to drive an hour twice a week and stand in a freezing arena watching him run drills. yay!

i jest. he never ceases to impress me with his self-motivated desire to keep improving his game. we’d have been just as happy if he decided to take it easy after the regular season, but pushing the limits of his abilities is what he chooses to do.

( he’s in the red “socks” running a passing drill )

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day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls.

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day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls. I.

after we sent the last flock to a nice amish family we thought we’d get some new chickens soon but then frida came into our lives and we decided a new puppy and new chickens was a bit too much to take on at the same time.

so we decided to wait until spring had sprung knowing the down side of waiting until frida was older was it would be that much more difficult to teach her the chicks were not actually food, despite what all of her instincts were telling her.

the local tractor supply store had some chicks for sale this weekend and we thought it was as good a time as any to pick up a few and start her training.

i have to admit i was not very optimistic we’d have much success, since malamutes have a strong prey instinct. the chicks are spending their first couple of weeks in a bin on our dining room table under a heat lamp and while frida hasn’t jumped up on table, she hears their peeping and looks at me like she’s wondering when i’m going to give her a snack.

day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls. II.

basic training at this stage involves getting frida used to the chicks by putting them next to her snout and telling her “no bites”. when she doesn’t attempt to bite, she gets a treat! odin is a big helper and after years of training knows how to make the chicks feel safe. or at least as safe as they’re going to feel when put next to the snout of a canine!

day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls. III.

we got the chickens yesterday and when we tried the training after they first came home friday tried to chomp their heads off 🙂

but today she’s doing much better and she’s really, really, really trying to overcome her instincts. her tongue is a “tell” to what she’s really like to be doing.

day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls. IV.

after a looooooong 30 seconds or so of doing a great job of not attempting the eat the chicken, frida finally got a treat.

i think it took a lot of effort on her part.

day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls. V.

odin is doing a tremendous job here as well, calming both the chick and frida. if he were to let the chick start flapping her wings or wiggle just a bit too much it would probably set frida into a bit of a frenzy. he’s both a dog and chicken “whisperer” 🙂

day 3557: attempting to teach frida to not eat The New Girls. VI.

a super successful day of training! no harm, no foul. ahem.

i’m amazed that frida has come so far so quickly. we’ll see how she does after a few weeks when they’re running around on the floor

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day 3529: sort-of slowly learning to play as a team before the state championships.

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day 3529: sort-of slowly learning to play as a team before the state championships.

i enjoy sitting in the penalty box. it’s easy volunteer work – you just open the door when a player gets a penalty to let them in the box and let them out when the time is up.

hearing the coaches interact with the players offers a unique perspective on the game. i can’t imagine coaching a bunch of nine and ten year olds. they’re old enough to take direction and understand their individual positions in the game, but they are still young and early in internalizing the lesson that they can only win by playing as a team.

in this game they kept falling back to playing as a set of individuals, swatting the puck around while the other team ran circles around them playing as a coordinated unit. according the scoreboard, the game was close, but looking at the style of play it was clear odin’s team was probably going to lose when they got tired.

they came off the ice after the first period and the coach asked, “so, how do you think that went.”

their simultaneous response, “baaaaaaaaad!”

the state championships are coming up this weekend. hopefully they can learn from the loss.

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day 3499: yet another exciting round of The Dictionary Game before bed.

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day 3499: yet another exciting round of The Dictionary Game before bed.

me: “what do you want to read before lights out?”

odin: “the dictionary!”

we take turns giving each other random words and time each other with a stopwatch to see can find words faster and then read the definition.

it’s a fun game and with almost every word both of us learn something new.

he’s looking for “zenith” on this round. for now i can usually beat him, but i don’t think that will last for long.

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day 3486: The Hockey Life.

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day 3486: The Hockey Life. I.

after playing offense and scoring a goal, odin is back on defense while playing against la crosse who they’ve beat once and lost once in overtime.

day 3486: The Hockey Life. II.

“maintain your self control.” easier said than done!

as one does as a hockey parent, i sat in the opponent’s penalty box. it offers a great view of the game. you’ll note, there’s a player in the box. i have to admit it was a bad call 🙂

day 3486: The Hockey Life. III.

odin moves the puck down the ice. viroqua had more shots on goal but their goalie was too good and they lost. la crosse is conference 3 team ( viroqua is conference 4 ) so they should feel proud at beating them once and almost beating them again in overtime in previous games 🙂

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day 3480: the first day odin played offense and scored a goal.

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day 3480: the first day odin played offense and scored a goal.

as many of you know, odin has been playing hockey for years. and for all those years, he has played defenseman and quite enjoyed it. but for whatever reason during a tournament in la crosse odin’s coach asked if he wanted to play right wing which is an offense position. he gladly accepted.

all the game play is different for a winger and i thought he’d spend a lot of time making mistakes and being a little discombobulated with the change. but he proved me wrong ( not uncommon ) and did a great job picking up passes from defense and moving the puck down the ice and passing to other teammates, disrupting the opponents and working the boards.

and he was at the right place at the right time in front of the net and scooped in his first goal ever against a tough goalie.

even sitting up in the stands, i could see the look of surprise on his face. quite a moment. i don’t know if it was coincidence or not but his goal seemed to rally the team and they scored several more before losing in a close game.

i doubt he’ll soon forget his goal on his first playing offense against the formidable la crosse team.

i should add that his team came in last place in the tournament. they played four games and lost all four. they weren’t going to play in the tournament because it was against teams that aren’t in their conference. they were all teams from bigger markets with larger pools of players to select from who play on ice all year round. but one team dropped out and the organizers needed another team to play on short notice so we went. they lost handily to the best team from sheboygan, wisconsin but played well against sun prairie and la crosse. the viroqua underdogs were evenly matched with both teams having similar shots on goal and could have one those games if they could figure out how to get more shots past their ace goalies.

they’ve lost most games they’ve played this year. but that obscures the fact that they are a solid team who is playing with a ton of heart and have lost many games by just a goal or two or in overtime.

when the pieces come together they’ll be formidable.

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reminiscing about seeing the future of mobile with a danger sidekick while sitting in the neonatal intensive care unit.

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day 57: eric IV. the mobile edition.

scott knaster, now at google wrote a nice post about working at danger in the early days where he notes, “The Hiptop (in product form as the TMobile Sidekick) was my first indication that people would soon be getting lost in their phones.”

in fact, the sidekick was the first time i saw the future that would take a long time to become fully realized. i remember the thrill of ssh’ing into a server and instant messaging with friends in january 2004. FROM A PHONE! and a little later, the sense of what the world would soon be like after posting to the blog. FROM A PHONE!

but the real thrill and sense of the future would hold came while sitting in the neonatal intensive care unit with odin and kris, looking at pictures i had taken on the sidekick and socialize with folks following odin’s adventures on flickr. bringing together mobile and social and photography was going to mean lots of people would be getting lost in their phones. but it wouldn’t really become a seamless thing until the cameras on phones could begin to become “good enough”. working in motorola r&d labs in new business development and strategy we all could see the hardware maps and knew it would happen around 2007. the year the iphone was born ( danger was co-founded by andy rubin who went on to start android which it now owns along with motorola mobility ).

in a funny bit of timing, i just realized i wrote this a day after the iphone was first announced in 2007 and i suppose i should say i didn’t have anything to do with the infamous motorola rokr E1.