I set a new record time for reaching the office this morning of 26 minutes.  All it required was a start time of 5:18 am.

Nicolai has been nominated by US Soccer for 2018 Player of the Year with a Disability. Votes are collected from National Team and Youth National Team coaches and staff, National Team players who have earned a cap in this calendar year,  American professional soccer league head coaches as well as select media members, former players and administrators. The winners will be announced during the first week of December. The U.S. Soccer Player of the Year award is the highest honor awarded to soccer players in the United States. The Male and Female Player of the Year awards are the oldest and most prestigious awards of their kind, dating back to 1984 for the men and 1985 for the women. The Young Male and Young Female awards were added in 1998 and the Disabled Player of the Year in 2012.

Below is the bio listed for Nicolai:

Nico Calabria, Forward – Amputee National Team
Nicolai “Nico” Calabria had an outstanding 2018 for the U.S. Amputee National Team, scoring six goals, and dishing out four assists while captaining the squad for a fourth straight year. He opened his 2018 account by scoring two goals and had an assist in an invitational tournament in Houston that included England and Haiti. At the 2018 World Cup in San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico, from Oct. 25 to Nov. 4, Calabria led the U.S., scoring four goals (one against tournament runners-up Turkey) and providing three assists. These were no tap-ins; he scored with his head or foot, while both assists required impressive athleticism and ingenuity. Calabria was born with one leg and hip and started using forearm crutches at the age of five when he took up the sport of soccer which he has played ever since. At age 17, he was named to the U.S. National Amputee Soccer Team. He has since captained the team at the 2014, 2016, and 2018 World Cup tournaments and is the all-time leading scorer for the U.S. with 17 international goals.

Our backyard is a haven for deer and it is fun to observe them as they try to make sense of Nala.  She barks her head off but won’t cross her electric containment fence to chase them.  Eventually, they figure this out and will come right up to the boundary.  This little guy is sporting a pair of new antlers.  They can grow from 1/4″ to 1/2″ per day so it will be interesting to keep track of this fellow.

DeWalt just announced three new cordless tools which I pre-ordered yesterday taking advantage of some serious Cyber Monday discounts.  They included a barrel grip jigsaw, a 5″ random orbit sander, and a router; all with brushless motors.  To make room in my shop, I listed the tools pictured here on Craig’s List. 

A large number of Formlabs 3D printers are sold to dental labs and dentists. They are used to print 3D models of patient’s teeth, surgical tool guides, and dental appliances.  Today I made a day trip to the Jacob Javits Convention Center in NYC to attend the Greater New York Dental Show.  It was a great opportunity to check out some of our competitors, understand the applications of 3D printing in dentistry, and meet a few of our sales folks.  I left home at 6 am and returned at 10:30 pm traveling by train to Penn Station. I probably covered about 8 miles on foot including the walk from Penn Station to the Convention Center and all the walking I did at the show. Pictured above is a new tower under construction that I passed along the way.

My soccer team played to a scoreless tie in the Division 1, Over-56 League championship match played this morning shortly after last night’s torrential rains subsided.  We went on to win the title in a penalty kick shootout which ended 6-5 in our favor. Our opponent, Juventus, a mostly Brazilian and Argentinian side, gave us a run for our money in the extremely close contest. I was injury free and played well nearly earning an assist off a flicked on header that landed at the edge of the 6 yard box on the foot of a teammate. This is my 15th year playing soccer for Concord United and only the third time we have won the league championship despite many trips to the finals. We finished the season with an undefeated record of 11-0-1 with a total of 28 goals for and 5 against.

Earlier this week, Maya announced to the family that she had declared her college major;  Electrical and Computer Engineering.  Although my degrees are in electrical engineering, I spent far more time studying computer architecture and logic design. I will admit that part of me is very thrilled with the direction she has chosen but I am also confident she came to the decision of her own accord.  This afternoon, out of the blue, she asked me if I had any electronic stuff she could have.  I quickly offered up a USB in-line tester and an AC outlet tester (which we had used during our electrical troubleshooting yesterday).  I then realized that I had the perfect item to pass down to her, a Tektronix oscilloscope that I have owned for 40 years.  I purchased the $3,000 piece of test equipment new with some financial assistance from my parents when I was in college, not the kind of thing most students would dream of spending their money on.  As a visual learner, however, there was nothing more fascinating to me than being able to see waveforms which represented the movement of invisible electrons.  In some ways, this oscilloscope is a symbol of my lifelong passion for and commitment to the field of engineering.  I can think of no more fitting item to pass down to Maya as she begins her own journey on a similar path.  This scope has long since been replaced by more advanced digital models but it is still a fine and very capable instrument.  It may be one of the most pristine surviving examples of this model and while only worth a fraction of its original cost, I suspect it may one day become valuable as a collectors item.

When Maya returned from having her hair cut this afternoon, it was not immediately apparent that anything had changed.  Fortunately, we had before and after photographs, which when studied carefully, revealed a 4 inch change in length.  I spent several hours tracking down an electrical problem which I traced to a circuit breaker which had tripped but still appeared to be in the on position.  Maya assisted with the project as we checked voltage on every breaker in the house.  Naturally, the guilty breaker was one of the last we probed.

This year we enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with my cousin Heather and her husband Burton.  Sadly, it was also our first without Nicolai.  We did manage an extended FaceTime call with him before sitting down to a magnificent meal.  Earlier in the day, Burton and I set out to participate in the Concord 5K Turkey Trot.  Temperatures were in the low teens so we dressed accordingly.  When we arrived downtown, we learned that the race had started 30 minutes earlier than the 9 am start time that Jeanine had communicated to us.  Hard to be disappointed anytime I get a chance to wear my turkey hat.

To keep my commute close to something reasonable, I have been leaving the house every day between 5:30 and 6:00 am.  At this time of year, the sunrise is just beginning as I approach the office.  This morning it was particularly dramatic and I managed this photo, taken through the windshield and while driving.; not something I would recommend but worth the result on this day.

I finally found some time to create GIFs of Nicolai’s World Cup headers.  He scored the first in a loss to Turkey and the second was the winning goal against El Salvador.

Maya took it upon herself to make a pecan pie for Thanksgiving.  Please study the pecan pattern and tell me Maya was not destined to be an engineer. To further reinforce that notion, while waiting for her pie to bake, Maya took apart a NAS hard disk drive for the fun of it.

Snow-covered fields caused the postponement of the championship finals for the over-56 soccer league in which I play.  Weather permitting the match has been rescheduled for next Sunday.  Taking advantage of the free day, Maya and I decided to drive to Schenectady, NY to visit my mother who is recovering from pneumonia and has just been released from the hospital.  We found her to be well on the road to recovery and her ever-energetic self.  She claimed a 50% improvement due to the visit alone.  Maya and I took care of a number of small projects at my mother’s request before enjoying a Chinese take-out dinner.  Judging from her appetite, my mother is well on her way to gaining back the weight she lost while subject to the food at the hospital which she found to be quite objectionable.  During our road trip, Maya and I had a great opportunity to get caught up and we stopped a few times to enjoy the lovely scenery along the way.

Maya has returned from Olin College for the Thanksgiving break.  I got to hear all about her latest school project, an automatic coffee maker (the “Flavorista”) that dispenses a cup onto a conveyor belt that moves it under a stand holding the ground coffee beans into which a robotically controlled nozzle dispenses hot water, in a spiral pattern, over the grounds.  I can’t wait to see her project in action.  She also shared details of her recent trip to Seattle where she was hosted by Blue Origin, a company she has decided would make for a great summer internship.