Al Gritzmacher's Blogosphere

I closed a checking account a few days ago. It was with great reluctance, but they really left me no choice. I have had the account since I opened it in the early ’70s. At that time I also had a savings account at the same bank, the old-fashioned passbook savings account, where you brought in your book and they entered your deposits and withdrawls into your booklet. You had to bring it in to get your interest added too.

I had the savings account since my teens. It was the account the Union, Sun & Journal opened when I had a paper route. They made you set aside some money each week into an escrow account in case you didn’t pay your bill. They kept the passbook, and if you stiffed them, they took it out. If you didn’t, when you quit, it was yours. Continue Reading…

Welcome to Spring in WNY. It snowed today. Most of the morning and a good part of the afternoon looked like this.

Try as it might, it couldn’t stick and didn’t accumulate except on the furniture. It made an interesting day, had it been just rain, it would have been depressing. But snow made it a bit interesting.

It wasn’t really cold, either. I went outside several times with just a sweatshirt and worked in my garage for a few minutes in my shirtsleeves.

For those of you who might have noticed I haven’t written anything here recently, here’s what has been going on.

The last two months have been spent pretty much all with robotics. So much so, that I haven’t been skiing this winter at all. One day out to Holimont has been all I have done.

The robotics team finished their build season and we worked furiously up until the last minute when we had to seal up the robot in a big plastic bag until our regional competition in Pittsburgh. We spent the last weekend working on it at the Kenan Center, our local recreational center, where they let us use some space to practice and work on the robot while school was closed for part of the spring break. Continue Reading…

This next Saturday, January 8th, 2011, will be the Kickoff for the 2011 season of the FIRST Robotics Competition.

In case you’re not familiar with this program, you can learn a lot about it at the official website of FIRST or you can watch the kickoff ceremonies Saturday. I’d urge you to do both, if you’re curious about it. Continue Reading…