Last year at this time I ended a blog post with this:

I wish each of you health and happiness for you and your families as we start off in 2011, and when we look back on it a year from now I hope we will all see it as time well spent.

• We started the year off by getting a new puppy! A two month old Rottweiler named Toby.



• I gave the Scout Sunday sermon at the church I grew up in.
• I was a course participant in Wood Badge course W5-61-11-1



• Toby got bigger.
• Traveled to San Francisco at the beginning of the Summer
• Watched our kids start piano lessons, and take to it like fish to water.
• Toby got bigger.
• I was a camp councilor for our regions’s Junior Camp for 3rd through 5th graders.
• Took my son to Resident Camp in Longs Peak Council. I really enjoyed just being a Scout’s dad instead of the Cubmaster!
• Our family went down to the Philmont Training Center to take a Cubmaster training course.



• I started my second year as Cubmaster for Pack 223, with a great group of boys and volunteers.
• Toby got even bigger.
• I got a new camera, which should result in more photos being shared here as well as on Google+.
• We went back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving, having a wonderful time with my sister and her family.



• At work I got a brand new lab in a brand new R&D building, all ready for fantastic things in the next year!
• Toby got bigger still.
• I finished my Wood Badge ticket in December with a workshop on the physics of the Pinewood Derby.



• Spent Christmas here in Colorado, seeing family and friends for the holidays.

Not to be outdone, ’12 is going to be another year packed with activities.

• Unpacking all the stuff we moved to the fancy new lab
• Travel to Israel with my wife, mother-in-law, and some friends to see the Holy Land.
• I am going to be the Director (in Training) of Junior Camp for our Regional Churches.
• Continue to put on the best Cub Scout program I possibly can for the families of Pack 223.
• Head back to Philmont for the Philmont Leadership Challenge. A week in the backcountry of New Mexico extending the skills I learned in Wood Badge.
• Hopefully the end of 2012 also finds me working closely with the next Cubmaster of our Pack, because my tenure will be up by that coming summer.
• One thing is for sure: the dog will continue to grow.

One of my Wood Badge ticket items is to attend a training course for Cubmasters that goes beyond what is covered in the Position-specific training. The second part of that ticket item is to bring back something I learned and implement it in my pack. It was part of the same quest that brought me to Wood Badge in the first place, I knew there was a lot more to learn.

Previously I had looked through the courses offered within our council, and within the council to our north, but nothing really jumped out at me. So I started looking through the Philmont Training Center website. I knew I wanted to go someday, and my Wood Badge Ticked gave me the perfect excuse. It turns out that Philmont is only a 4 1/2 hour drive from my house, so there really wasn’t any excuse not to go.

After researching the course for a while, I realized this might be a good experience for the whole family. PTC seemed to have an extensive family program, both for spouses and any kids that came along. The more I researched it and asked around, the more I was convinced. After talking to my wife (and she took some convincing) we agreed that it would be a good trip to take. Family time, learning skills to be a better Cubmaster, and cover a Wood Badge Ticket item? Sold.

Strictly for Cubmasters Course

This conference offers everything Cubmasters and prospective Cubmasters ever wanted to know about their responsibilities, including delivering a quality pack program, the charter renewal process, Webelos-to-Scout transition, conducting the pack meeting, practical ideas for ceremonies and keeping the pack program energized.

Our time at the Philmont Training Center did not disappoint. The week is a great combination of spending time together and also letting the everyone try out activities with their peer group. The course I took was exactly what I was looking for, the faculty and classmates became friends that I will share with even now that we have returned to our home units.

There’s way too much to cover, so I’m going break this up into a couple of posts. One on the Strictly for Cubmasters course and what we covered and one on the family program. I’ll link to them here when they post.

2010 was a pretty good year.

• We took a family road trip to Texas to see a niece and nephew that had moved there from Colorado. Got to see Cadillac Ranch and the Big Texan on the way there and spent a morning at the National Scouting Museum



• I finished my PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and my family (including my Mom, yay!) was able to make it to my graduation.
• Learned how to Geocache and introduced it to family, friends and the Wolf den.



• Took a family road trip around Wyoming, including Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. We even found some geocaches along the way.



• Traded in my Tiger Den Leader role for a Cubmaster role in my son’s Cub Scout Pack.
• Took my son to the Central Wyoming Council’s Centennial Rendezvous with his cousins and Grandpa.



• Volunteered for two days at Adventure Base 100 when it came to Denver, and took the family on the day I didn’t work there.



• Attended University of Scouting for the second year, actually getting to take classes this time, since I spent the whole day in BALOO training in 2009.
• Continued my outdoor training by taking the Webelos Leader Outdoor Training and Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills combined course.
• Had a fantastic Thanksgiving with my side of the family in Wyoming.
• Had an equally great Christmas my my wife’s family at home in Colorado.



• …and now a quiet New Years at home with my wife and kids.

2011 is shaping up to be a good year too.

• I have been invited back to my hometown troop to give the sermon on Scout Sunday.
• I’m signed up for the spring Wood Badge course WE5-61-11-1
• We’re going on a family trip to San Francisco to visit my sister and her family.
• A summer full of scout camps, including Cub Scout Day Camp with our District and Cub Scout Resident Camp in Long’s Peak Council
• I signed up the whole family to go to the Philmont Training Center in July so I can take a Cubmaster Training class

While 2010 was a pretty great year, I am excited for the potential of 2011. Looking at all the plans we have it may be busy, but I am sure it will be worth it in the end. I wish each of you health and happiness for you and your families as we start off in 2011, and when we look back on it a year from now I hope we will all see it as time well spent.

Happy New Year!

In order to celebrate my birthday tomorrow DARPA is offering a $40,000 prize to the first person or group of people that can find 10 red balloons. DARPA, aka the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is not just looking for any ten red balloons, but ten specific red weather balloons they have positioned around the United States. They are calling it the DARPA Network Challenge to hide the real reason for the contest, because the “Arlen is so awesome we want to give away money to celebrate” was too obvious.

10 99 Luftballons

So there you go, 10 AM tomorrow go win $40,000 for my birthday.

Find the location of these 10. I doubt they will be this close together.

OK, so it isn’t really for my birthday, but to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the internet. More specifically the ARAPANET, the internet’s predecessor.

To mark the 40th Anniversary of the Internet, DARPA is hosting the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

Still, it is a good reason to use lots of things DARPA has helped develop: GPS, the internet, maybe some robot minions, or even a Predator if you have one to help with the search, which would be way cooler than the social networks other groups are using.

9 Amazingly Unique Bridges You May Not Have Seen

Ah, the Dropkick Murphys. Good stuff.

I was out in Massachusetts again for a few days. Actually I was in Mansfield, for a two day meeting at our company headquarters. To get there I had to rent a car in Boston and drive about an hour or so. This was the first time I had to drive in the Boston area, and despite the city being originally plotted out prior to automobiles, I would say the Big Dig really made it a tolerable experience. I really only have one complaint.

Why don’t the interstate exit numbers match the mile markers? They do here in Colorado. They did when I lived in Wyoming. In fact, I think they have in every state I have ever lived in. I even drove the 20 minutes into Rhode Island to see if it was an east coast thing or a Massachusetts thing. Seems to be an east coast thing.

I know, I know. Therapy is always an option.

Well, I’ve always said that I thought the Wind River Mountain Range in Wyoming is way more breathtaking than any of those we have here in Colorado, but I’m not sure I would have done this…

Wyoming Mountain depicted on Colorado Stamp

“Hey, can we borrow this? Nobody up here seems to be using it!”

…just ask yourself “Where the Hell is Matt?”

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I got a chance to give a symposium talk at the conference in San Jose last weekend, and during a bit of free time I found my way over to the Winchester Mystery House. This house was under continuous construction for 38 years, under the daily direction of Sarah Winchester, who supposedly built the additions to the house to appease some spirits that were haunting her. In my opinion, a lot of the odd construction could be the building of additions without any sort of master plan, but thats just me. Not really one that gets excited by ghost stories, I was more interested in the construction of this house, the architecture, and the chance to take some interesting photographs.

The story behind the houses starts on the other side of the country in Connecticut. After her daughter and husband died, Mrs. Winchester consulted a psychic of some sort that told her the family was cursed, and she was haunted but the souls of all the people that had been killed by Winchester firearms. She was ‘drawn west’ so she went to San Jose, bought an six room farm house and started construction in 1884. This construction went on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 38 years until her death at the age of 83 in 1922. The day she died the workmen stopped. All told she spend over $5 million on construction, funded by the $20 million in cash and the $1000 per day she earned from half ownership in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company she inherited from her husband at his death.

The house has some “interesting” features, like staircases that go to the ceiling, or doors that open to blank walls, or chimneys that rise though four stories just to stop short of the roof.

She was also pretty short (well under five foot tall), so some of the work in the house was obviously scaled for her size.

Other than the oddities in the house, there was beautiful hand carved woodwork, elegant gardens, and stained glass all over the place.

Also interesting was that during the 1906 earthquake, she was trapped in one of the front bedrooms, when the wall shifted and the door was bound in the frame.

The servant staff had to pry the door open, and this is supposedly the marks on that door.

After she was freed, Mrs. Winchester decided that the earthquake and damage were signs from the spirits that she had spent too much time on the front part of the house, so she boarded up the front 30 rooms, and left them as is. Today you can still see the unrepaired damage from the 1906 quake.

For more information there is always the wikipedia article, or a room by room virtual tour on a haunted whatnot site.

As mentioned in the Cliff’s notes version regarding April, I spent a few days in Munich last month. It was part of the 10th International Conference on Hyperthermic Oncology. The trip was quick (yay for direct flights), and unfortunately the family didn’t get to join me. I did get to present a poster of one of the measurement tools we are using in my dissertation research, so that was a plus.

The conference venue was a hospital that was located about six or seven kilometers from the hotel, so I quickly learned the layout of the subway system in order to get back and forth each day. The hotel was close to the center of town, so there was a chance to see the Rathaus and wander around downtown each night.

One slow afternoon, I made it to the Deutsches Museum, by far the best science and industry museum I have ever been to. I could have spent days there.

After the conference was over, I spent my last afternoon in Munich vistitng the Olympic Park, and seeing where baby BMWs are made.

It was a nice trip, I really enjoyed Munich. Next time I’ll have to bring the family and spend some extra time.