"This is part of the natural business cycle for upgrades," said Todd Swank, senior director of product marketing at Equus Computer Systems, a Minneapolis-based custom system builder. "We saw a spike in sales last year when consumers had to upgrade their PCs for Windows XP, and so now there's no catalyst for desktops today driving the upgrade cycle. But this coming fall, when we see Microsoft's Windows 10 launch and Intel's new Skylake CPU, I think we'll see another spike in demand." Read Full Article Here: http://www.crn.com/news/mobility/300076104/partners-bullish-on-pc-sales-despite-intels-revenue-slash.htm?itc=hp_ots
On Friday, we drove over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house to celebrate her birthday. Actually, we kind of drove next to the river and I don't remember a lot of woods, but we did go to Grandma's house.
We had the joy of starting the day watching our niece, Karli, plan in a volleyball tournament. Her team did really well and placed second in the tournament after an exciting final set of matches.
It was a fun way to spend a Saturday cheering along with Miss Sheri's side of the family. Except for Avery. He wasn't in a real Cheering mood.
Avery did brighten up a bit when we went back to the farm and I told him we wanted to give Luke's pacemaker a good test run. It's been three weeks since it was installed, so I wanted him to chase Luke around the fields for awhile on the 4 wheeler. It seemed to work pretty good and he nearly stayed out of the way for the whole hour or so that he chased him.
Luke seemed to enjoy things more when he got to drive.
We spent much of the day in Rock Rapids, Iowa which is also known as the City of Murals. There are beautiful paintings like this all over the town which is pretty cool.
For supper, we went out to the Pizza Ranch for Grandma's birthday celebration. These guys have great pizza and chicken!
All of Grandma's grandchildren are starting to outgrow her, but part of the problem is she's sitting down and they're not.
"Hopefully this release will put [Intel] back in the game," said Todd Swank, senior director of product marketing at Equus Computer Systems, a Minneapolis-based custom system builder. "Intel has traditionally been focused on high-performance chips for desktop and server platforms, and then competition shifted as the mobile platform rose in popularity. Intel has been hard at work coming up with solutions for the mobility level, and we're seeing some well-thought-out plans here." "It all comes down to market share. … Intel's had a lot of issues competing with ARM in the past," said Swank. "Intel's been hard at work, and it's interesting to see the LTE advanced solutions they've come out with. Their new chips have some great new features, and it’s proof that they've started to adopt to the mobile space." Read Full Article Here:
These are some clips of a few qualifying matches that occurred during the 2015 FRC Robotics Northern Lights Regional in Duluth, Minnesota. Our team is # 2169 KING TeC out of Prior Lake, Minnesota so much of the video is focused on them. It also has a few good clips of tournament champion team #525 and the impressive robot they built.
2015 FRC Robotics Northern Lights Regional in Duluth
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for March 1, 2015
At work this week, 5 of us suddenly discovered we all wore the same outfit. And no, it wasn't planned!
On Friday, I drove up to Duluth to join my family at a robot tournament. I always get tempted to climb up this thing when I'm there, but it's dang cold outside.
We were there to cheer on the Prior Lake High School robotics team, KING TeC, as they competed in the Northern Lights FRC regional tournament. This year's game is called Recycle Rush and this is how it's played:
The game leaves a pretty messy playing field after each match!
We really like to see our boys pretending like they like each other at events like these. It doesn't happen that often.
The kids spend a lot of time in the stands, singing songs, doing cheers and generally rooting on their team as well as other teams. We parents try to do the same. Some parents do it much better than others. I'm one of the others.
It was exactly 2 weeks to the day that Luke had went through his pacemaker surgery, so we were a little nervous when we came back from lunch and discovered he was volunteering to help with the tournament by carrying flags back and forth to the field. He did this for about 3 and a half hours straight.
It might not seem like a big accomplishment to carry flags back and forth, but we were really proud of him.
Going to these tournaments is a great experience for the kids. They get to stay in hotels for 3 nights with no parental supervision and get to eat out at nice restaurants with their friends every meal. I'm surprised we can get them to come home when it's all over.
We also had the treat of going and spending some quality adult time with other team parents. These are some fun and interesting folks to hang out with.
I came to discover that Dave isn't really keen on getting his picture taken.
We didn't stay out too late, but we did have the chance to engage in some great talks with a lot of fun people.
The next day, our good friends, Jen and Dan Walters, arrived. Since it was so cold outside, Dan and the ladies stuck together pretty closely as we walked to the restaurant.
The team did very well in the tournament making it to the quarter finals and winning the Industrial Design award. Coach Volm was so excited he could hardly contain himself.
