The third meet of Caitlin’s 2006 gymastics season was the Begonia Gymfest held last weekend in Scotts Valley, near Santa Cruz. This was the compulsory team’s “away” meet this season, and it was packed! Our session was Saturday afternoon/evening and included 69 gymnasts. (The maximum allowed is 72 per session.) This wasn’t the worst possible session for us, but it wasn’t the best either. (I think the best possible would have been the first Sunday morning session. This would have given us all day Saturday to explore Santa Cruz. We were all staying in a nearby hotel, so getting to the meet on time would have been easy, and we could have gone to Autie Mame’s Cafe for our post-meet party. More on the cafe below…)
The meet ran a bit slow and seemed a little disorganized, but the high school gymnasium was a pretty decent venue. We could see all the events without following our gymnasts, and the gym had light panels (translucent windows) that let in quite a bit of natural light. (Lighting is a big deal for all the parents taking non-flash photographs of their kids!)
Caitlin had another beautiful beam routine, and she seems to have overcome her cart wheel problem. I thought her performance on the uneven bars was excellent, but the judges must have spotted some technical flaws that I missed. She did a very nice floor routine, but she put her hand on the floor when she wasn’t supposed to, which gets counted as a fall (an automatic 0.500 deduction). Her all-around score is still climbing, and I think it will continue to do so throughout the season. She placed third all-around in a very crowded field. Great job, Caitlin!
| Event | Score | Place |
|---|
| Vault | 8.450 | 5th |
| Bars | 8.850 | 4th |
| Beam | 9.375 | 1st |
| Floor | 8.775 | 3rd |
| All around | 35.450 | 3rd |
Continue reading ‘Begonia Gymfest 2006′
The second meet of Caitlin's 2006 gymastics season was "School Days" held last Saturday afternoon at Golden Gate Gymnastics in Concord, California.
This was Caitlin's first event at GGG, and I thought they ran a great meet! In spite of the rather small gym, there was plenty of room for spectators and gymnasts. (It may have helped that we were in the final session, since one of the earlier attendees told me that the morning and afternoon sessions had many more gymnasts.) During the late session there were about 10-15 girls per event, so the competition floor wasn't very crowded. I assume that the meet organizers would want to keep the earlier sessions maxed out. Thus the final session can run "light" and finish as quickly as possible, so the meet staff can start cleanup ASAP. Perhaps we should request the final session in the future?
Caitlin medaled in every event this weekend. She took second place on the uneven bars and fifth place on vault, beam and floor; however, between her very good score on bars and her consistent finishes in the other events, she managed to pull third place overall.
| Event | Score | Place |
|---|
| Vault | 8.100 | 5th |
| Bars | 9.225 | 2nd |
| Beam | 8.950 | 5th (tie) |
| Floor | 9.000 | 5th |
| All around | 35.275 | 3rd |
Continue reading 'School Days 2006'
I’ve received several queries about the SMB patch that I mentioned in my svn-on-osx post. Unfortunately, when I went hunting for the patch the second time around, I wasn’t able to find it. But I was finally able to solve my OSX/Subversion/scplugin problems by using the svn+ssh transport, thus:
svn+ssh://username@some.server/path/to/repository
Once I gave up on SMB file sharing, I’ve had no trouble with scplugin or Subversion on Mac OS X.
My mom has been making an annual pilgrimage to the Marin Needle Arts Guild quilt show for years, and since 2001 my wife has been accompanying her. Last year I tagged along with them at the 2005 Marin quilt show. There were hundreds of quilts, many of them beautiful and inspirational, and we had a great time at the show. I couldn’t attend this year, but my mom and my wife encouraged our youngest daughter to attend her first quilt show. After spending two hours driving to San Rafael and $7 each for tickets, they walked into the exhibit hall and saw…
About twenty quilts.
Apparently this year the MNAG threw in the towel and let some scammers run a “quilt festival” at the same venue and weekend that the Marin quilt show has traditionally been held for the past 27 years. To be completely fair, there were some traveling exhibit quilts and vendors’ display quilts being shown. But there were only ~20 “personal” quilts on display this year, compared to hundreds in prior years. Basically, my mom, wife, and daughter ended up blowing four hours driving plus gasoline plus admission, with the expectation of seeing a fabulous quilt show; instead, all they got to see was a bunch of vendors hawking their wares. What a total let-down!
I’m posting this in the hope that some other unsuspecting folks won’t fall victim.
Caira and I took a daytrip down to ConQuest San Francisco on Saturday. It was great, same as last year, but the Bay Bridge closure caused some extra traffic problems. I missed out on all the games that started at 9:00 am, but it gave me a chance to look around and see what was going on and chat with some folks whom I don’t get to see very often. Meanwhile, Caira headed straight for the miniatures-painting area. Except for a short lunch break, she spent the whole day up there. That ended up being a pretty good deal: I paid $30 for a 1-day pass for her, and she got five mini’s out of it along with access to all the paint, brushes and tools she needed.
At about 10:00 am, I finally got a chance to join a game, Axis & Allies, which I had only played once before. I got to play the Allies against two veteran players who took the Axis. History proved quite malleable — after a little over two hours, Germany captured Moscow and the Allies sued for lunch peace. (Yes, I was getting hungry.) 
After lunch with Caira, I managed to restore my reputation somewhat. I got in a 5-player game of Taj Mahal, another game that I had played only once before. I played fairly well, (or I got lucky), and scored enough points to finish in second place. I chatted with my fellow players and mingled a bit more.
I came across an in-progress game of Thurn und Taxis. There’s been quite a lot of buzz around this game, but I hadn’t had a chance to look inside the box, much less play it. So while the game was running I asked if I might read the rules and watch the game for a while. More people started hanging around this game, and by the time it was over there was a full complement of four people ready to jump in and try it. The theme sounds a bit silly: each player represents a family trying to establish the first postal service in northern Europe in the 15th century. It’s actually a very interesting and nicely balanced game. The rules are simple, play is quick, and the components are quite attractive. This game has a lot of potential to become a favorite of my family, so I went out and bought a copy as soon as Viking Hobby opened the next morning.
Some things I learned last year, and re-learned this year:
- Plan to arrive at about 08:00. This leaves time to park, walk to the hotel, register, and look through the schedule for the day.
- The coffee bar at the Con isn’t open all evening, and there’s no other place within walking distance to buy coffee. Find out when they close and set an alarm to alert coffee
addicts connoisseurs of the “last call”.
- A backpack would have been helpful. I remembered to bring my camera, but I was constantly worried about losing it.
- Bring some snacks along. Maybe some fruit, cheese and crackers, something.
- There’s water at the Con, but they only have little bitty cups. Bring a waterbottle next time.
- I needed a pen and notepad to write people’s email and other notes.
- Highlighters for the schedule would have been handy.
- Leave $3 in the car for bridge toll! (Fortunately I had $3.35 in my pocket when I hit the Carquinez Bridge.)
