So I won a bottle of champagne on the flight from Albuquerque to Denver for knowing that torus is a five letter word for "donut-shaped." The flight attendants thought it would be a really hard question that would take people a long time to figure out. The fact that I knew it off the top of my head left them a little bewildered. Maybe I've been hanging out with nerds for too long.

I went rock climbing the next day with Albert and Nathan and a bunch of SIPB people. I learned that I lack the strength to do a one-legged squat. This seems to be the next critical technique that I need to advance in rock climbing. All of the 5.7 and 5.8 climbs are too easy; and everything 5.9+ is impossible because I get into a situation where I have no good hand holds and one good toe hold way up by my waist, and I have to stand up on it to get a good hand.

Then, yesterday, I did 17 hours in the 6.270 lab straight. It was weird. Jess, Ehren and I rented a few kungfu movies and watched them in the lab. I highly recommend "Twin Warriors" with Jet Li. It's another Wo Ping thang and I found it a better movie than Wing Chun.

Today was the 6.270 mock contest, and it was great. In the previous two contests, we've had issues getting the controller boards out to the contestants in time and as a result there were a lot of people not very far along at this point. Last year I think there were about five moderate robots in the mock contest. This year, we had the controllers out day one, and there were twenty robots in the mock contest, 15+ of which were fully operational.

Also tonight was the Sci-Fi Marathon. I stopped by to check out the end of Ghostbusters [it's great to watch a cult classic amidst the cult], all of Hardware Wars, some great classic trailers and the new trailer for the upcoming Lord of the Rings, and then a bit of the 3D version of "It Came From Outer Space." Good stuff.