Month: December 2020

Hey, you! You like spoilers? Good! Read on! If not, then scram! I’m literally going to spoil the entire show starting with the next paragraph, so if you don’t want to know what happened, get outta here! Alrighty, welcome to fight night 3 of season 5! The first two shows were heavy on brutal action and light on judges decisions. That’s not the case the time. Will it be “Duck was robbed” redux? You’ll just have to read on and find out. Fight 1: Copperhead v. Gigabyte Zach Goff’s Copperhead is probably the closest thing the fans will get to seeing Minotaur this year. It’s a 2-wheel drum spinner that hits hard enough to, well, we’ll get to that. John Mladenik’s Gigabyte is the Mother of All Full Body Spinners, a big, inverted wok with lots of bits mounted on the sides to smack you with. The only prediction I made for this one was that it wasn’t going to the judges. It didn’t go to the judges. Copperhead looks much the same, but the motor is definitely more impressive even if it doesn’t make the hornet-swarm buzz of Minotaur. The two bots spun up quickly and met in the middle of the arena. The self-righting bar on Gigabyte popped off almost immediately, apparently affecting their driving and allowing Copperhead to back them into a corner. A full-body spinner does not want to be backed into a corner. The next few seconds were marked primarily by Gigabyte bouncing off the sides of the arena. Copperhead had some time to spin up and hit Gigabyte hard enough to remote the shell from the body. My guess is that the self-righting bar was probably structurally important because that really shouldn’t have happened. The Copperhead folks were nice enough not to clobber Gigabytes exposed innards ad the judge counted the decapitated bot out. Winner: Copperhead (Knockout) Fight 2: SubZero v. JackPot Logan Davis is at the helm of Team SubZero this year. It’s a flipper that is best known for being able to take absurd amounts of damage as opposed to dealing it out. JackPot, driven by Jeff Waters, is a four wheel vertical spinner with two unusually large bars making it a sort of mini-HUGE. Interesting. The bots came out and met head on, with SubZero getting under JackPot and driving it around the arena. It seemed like a good time to use that flipper, but it never fired for some reason. JackPot was struggling to move in any meaningful way and couldn’t do a lot with the weapon except when it was riding on top of SubZero and whacking the top of the bot. It would have been interesting to see this one go three minutes to see how the judges would have called it, as SubZero was in complete control of the match but the primary weapon wasn’t work (note: this is foreshadowing). Eventually, SubZero’s motor gave out or it got hung up on an obstacle (it was hard to tell which) and it just stopped moving, giving JackPot the win in its first fight. Winner: JackPot (Knockout) Fight 3: Gemini v. Uppercut Oh, Gemini. Ace Shelander’s multi-bot, a pair of 125 lb. bar spinners, looks good on paper but it’s had serious problems in the arena. Alex Hattori’s Uppercut debuted last year and had a shockingly good run for a new bot. It’s an unusual vertical spinner, with a single “fist” and a counterweight, so there’s only one “side” to the weapon and, of course, it hits up instead of down. There’s no way I can make this recap a longer one. Gemini split to try to flank Uppercut, but Uppercut just went after the left bot and punted it twenty feet across the arena and over the wall. It turned, faced the other bot, and split it in two with one hit. Game over. After the match, Chris Rose asked Hattori about the fight and he just grinned and said “My bot is fun.” Yeah, it sure is. Winner: Uppercut (Knockout) Fight 4: Rotator v. BETA Victor Soto’s Rotator is a contender for the Giant Nut. It’s a well-armored bot that can mount weapons on either end and Victor is a fantastic driver, as he showed when he dismantled Tombstone last year. This is the first time we’ve seen John Reid’s BETA in a while. It’s the apex hammer bot, really hard to hurt, and it can actually cause a little damage with the hammer (which, for a hammer bot, is really impressive). The bots came out of the gate quickly and BETA just started pushing Rotator around. BETA had a huge armored wedge on it and Rotator couldn’t do a thing about. BETA just drove around shoving Rotator into the wall over and over. On the other hand, Rotator had a top-mounted disc spinner and the idea was that if the hammer hit it, the hammer would take more damage than their bot. The BETA folks agreed, and never fired the weapon. So, it was essentially a wedge bot pushing around a spinner that couldn’t do anything about it. Eventually, BETA shoved Rotator into a corner and the the spinner bot bounced off the wall and into BETA’s hammer, knocking the head of the hammer off. That was literally the only big “hit” of the fight and BETA immediately resumed shoving Rotator around. This one went to the judges and it was…not a popular decision. The judges split 2-1 in favor of BETA. I won’t get too deeply into Battlebots lore here, but, in order to discourage wedge bots, the scoring rules are heavily weighted in favor of bots that use their primary weapon. You can get 5 points for doing damage with your weapon, 3 points for aggression (and aggression with the weapon is favored), and 3 points for control of the match. Was this the correct decision? I think so, but it was tight. The only damage that was done was one hit by Rotator when it was bouncing around and on one wheel, and the rules state that the only damage that counts is damage inflicted by “…deliberate, controlled action,” and it would be a real stretch to say that was the case. On the other hand, BETA absolutely dominated the other two categories. Rotator might as well have…

If you don’t want spoilers, pray make haste and depart this page as there will be almost nothing that isn’t a spoiler. Seriously. Hie thee away! Get thee to a nunnery! All that stuff. Shoo! OK, with that out of the way, welcome to my take on Fight Night 2 of Battlebots this season. It was another two-hour episode that featured less action per minute of broadcast than an NFL football game. I get that they need to pay the bills, but this feels excessive. Fight 1: Shatter! v. Ghost Raptor Just like last week, we started off with an enticing fight. This one featured Adam Wrigley’s Shatter! facing off against Chuck Pitzer’s Ghost Raptor. Shatter! debuted last year and, for a hammer bot, it was really interesting, featuring ablative armor and unusual wheels. It didn’t perform especially well, but you got the sense they’d learn from those defeats. Ghost Raptor is an older bot that’s taken several years off, but it still looks competitive. It features a top-mounted bar spinner on an articulated mount, allowing it to change the angle of attack and do some lifting. Shatter! box-rushed Ghost Raptor because that’s what you do against spinners and everyone knows it. The hammer scored a couple of early hits and it looks like a much more threatening weapon than it did last year, when the head actually fell off one time. Ghost Raptor was dazed by the early blows and attempted to out-maneuver Shatter!, which wasn’t going to happen, and to push the hammer bot around, which did. But, the damage from those early hits was too much and Ghost Raptor just stopped moving. Wrigley explained afterwards that, based on what he could see, there was no shock absorption between the spinner and the internals, so mashing the spinning bar could knock stuff loose on the inside. It looked like that was exactly what happened. I like the way this guy thinks. Winner: Shatter! (Knockout) Fight 2: Ribbot v. Tracer Last year, David Jin’s Ribbot, covered in frog-shaped green foam, looked like one of those ridiculous gimmick bots like Royale with Cheese that was fun to look at but served little function other than a punching bag. After they walloped End Game, you kind of had to take them seriously. This was the first year competing for Jason Woods’ Tracer, but he’s been in the pits for ten years so it’s not like he was a newbie. The concept behind Tracer seemed to be “Duck, but with a vertical bar spinner.” The bot was built to be indestructible first and damaging second. Ribbot, a Swiss Army bot, came out with their undercutter, a low mounted disc spinner. Ribbot tried to get around the side of Tracer, but Tracer was more maneuverable than they had expected and they wound up going weapon-to-weapon. After a nervy couple of seconds, both bots were back at it. Ribbot swung around and caught tracer on left side of their front shield, flipping their opponent on its back. In theory, Tracer could self-right by using the spinner, but that almost never works and such was the case here as the little green frog that could claimed another victim. Winner: Ribbot (Knockout) Fight 3: Kraken v. Black Dragon Fun fight, this one. This is the third year for Matthew Spurk’s Kraken, a bot that barely competed the first time out but improved mightily in their second year. It’s a control bot with huge front jaws and a couple of teeth. Gabriel Telles brought Black Dragon back for a second year. It’s not a revolutionary bot; it’s a vertical spinner, but last year it showed a good combination of power, reliability and quickness on it’s way to the Final 16. Kraken performed an immediate box rush because, duh, and was able to get Black Dragon in its jaws almost immediately. However, Black Dragon went with their lightest spinners, a pair of vertical discs instead of the drum they usually use, and they did this in order to increase their top armor. This mean that, while Kraken could hold Black Dragon, it couldn’t really damage it. Kraken did manage to burn a belt off of Black Dragon, but most of the damage was done to Kraken’s teeth (later, tooth) when the two of them came together. The other issue Kraken had was that it couldn’t get Black Dragon’s back wheels off the ground, so even when the Brazilian bot was clamped, it could still push Kraken around the box. This one went the distance and, honestly, I could see it go either way. Black Dragon did a little more damage, but Kraken exhibited more control The judges were split, but Black Dragon was declared the winner. Winner: Black Dragon (Spit decision) Fight 4: HUGE v. Mammoth This fight right here is why you should watch Battlebots. HUGE made a, um, huge splash when it debuted because it was so much bigger than the other bots. It’s a giant vertical bar spinner mounted between two wagon wheels. It looks like a joke, but it most certainly is not and it has clobbered some very good bots (ask Bronco). Ricky Willems saw HUGE and said “Hold my beer” and built Mammoth, a bot that stands 6’4” and shovels opponents out of the box. This fight was nuts. The two of them came together right off the bat. Mammoth smacked HUGE, but HUGE’s spinner flipped Mammoth completely off the ground, bending its weapon in the process. This happened several times and somehow, both bots survived and landed on their wheels. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looked like HUGE had this one under control, or, at least, like it was going to be the only bot able to do any damage. But, while the big spinner bot is surprisingly nimble, it doesn’t have great traction. Eventually, Mammoth was able to get HUGE into the corner and prevent it from getting its weapon up to speed and squared up for another hit. The big shovel/lifter/spinner on Mammoth kept whacking HUGE and eventually got one of HUGE’s wheels out of the box and that was that. In the post-fight breakdown, Willems showed just how much damage he’d taken: Both structural support bars had holes in them and HUGE missed knocking his weapon chain off by less than…

Well, the greatest sport known to humanity is back and…it’s wow. I’m not going to say that Battlebots will be the best thing that happens in 2020, but I’m not going to say it won’t be. The format is essentially the same: Two 250 pound robots bashing each other until one of them is too damaged to continue or three minutes pass. There are a couple of new wrinkles. Robots without wheels can be a lot bigger (500 pounds, I think), there’s no audience, and they’ve upgraded the hazards inside the battlebox so they’re presumably more than just nuisances. Other than that? It’s Battlebots. What more do you want? There will be spoilers here. There will be so many spoilers. There will be very little that is not spoiler. If you don’t want to know how the fights turned out, you are in the wrong place. OK, now that we’re clear, let’s go over the fights in this 2 hour season opener! Fight 1: Sawblaze v. Whiplash This promised to be a heck of a fight. Jamison Go’s Sawblaze made the quarterfinals last year and Jeff Vasquez’ Whiplash made the semifinals. Go and Vasquez are two of the best drivers around and their bots are among the most reliable and maneuverable, although neither of them are huge hitters. Or, at least, they weren’t last year. Sawblaze somehow got lower to the ground than last year, and the dustpan forks on the front of it pushed Whiplash around for most of the early going. Whiplash got in a couple of hits with their articulated spinner, but they never really squared up on Sawblaze and, even after taking out one of their opponents’ tires, couldn’t win the shoving match. Last year, Sawblaze introduced a new type of weapon: The hammer-saw. Instead of just using a sawblade on an arm that swung down on the top of their foes, they added some weight to the blade and swung the it with a great deal more force. It had never been especially destructive, but this time, with Whiplash pinned against the screws, Sawblaze brought the weapon down and split the top armor plate. Something important (and probably expensive) broke in Whiplash as it was rendered immobile and counted out. Winner: Sawblaze (knockout) Fight 2: MatCatter v. Fusion I had MadCatter figured as a sacrificial lamb for the new bot from Team Whyachi. Fusion is a combination spinner; horizontal on one side and vertical on the other. The Ewert family had been pretty successful introducing new bots (check out Hydra last year), and Fusion looked like a good one. Meanwhile, Madcatter looked like…a cat. A cat with a vertical spinner and a kind of goofy paw-lifter device, but still…it didn’t look like it could live up to Martin Mason’s enthusiasm (not that anything could). MadCatter performed the mother of all box rushes, sprinting across the box and bopping Fusion before either of them could get their spinners up to speed. The initial hit seemed to take all the speed out of MadCatter, but Fusion wasn’t exactly running rings around them. In fact, it was MadCatter that was clearly on top, picking its spots, getting under Fusion, and delivering hits and trying fruitlessly to flip the other bot. The cat wasn’t doing a lot, but it was the only bot doing anything. Fusion was struggling mightily with things like “going in a straight line” and eventually started smoking, which is often a precursor to stopping entirely. That was the case here and the bot I thought was just there to provide an opponent won a pretty convincing victory. Winner: MadCatter (knockout) Fight 3: Axe Backwards v. Malice Speaking of sacrificial lambs: Kurt Durjan’s Axe Backwards. This genuinely interesting looking bot, a full-body vertical spinner, has been dissected by some very ordinary bots and just destroyed by some of the good ones. Malice, driven by rookie Bunny Sauriol, was an unknown quantity, but the 65 pound horizontal drum spinner looked menacing enough to make me think the newbie would make short work of Axe Backwards. Kurt taunted Bunny during the countdown, but once the fight started, the roles reversed immediately. A single hit effectively ended Axe Backwards as a mobile piece of machinery. Malice could have just pounded Axe Backwards to a pulp, but after getting in a couple more shots, she backed off and let the referee count out the flaming wreck of little plastic-y axes. Winner: Malice (knockout) Fight 4: Bloodsport v. Skorpios Justin Marple’s Bloodsport had an impressive debut last year, albeit against some seriously inept bots (thankfully, the multi-bot trend has almost completely died out). Zach Lyttle’s Skorpios went a long way in the tournament last year largely by being very well-driven and very hard to hurt, but without doing much in the way of damage. I had Skorpios as the favorite based on what I saw of Bloodsport last year, but this year’s version is a very different bot. The horizontal lawnmower blade was replaced by a spinning disk which was clever, because Skorpios’ already weak weapon was never going to get through it without destroying it’s own saw. This proved to be the case, as the first time Skorpios brought the saw down, it was bent and rendered ineffective almost immediately. Bloodsport also surprised me by managed to get under Skorpios, something that very few bots have managed. There were no huge hits, but it was a death by a thousand cuts as Bloodsport took apart Skorpios’ front wedge and kept pounding the underside of one of the lowest bots around. Eventually, Skorpios just stopped moving and that has traditionally been something that was very difficult to achieve. Impressive. Winner: Bloodsport (knockout) Fight 5: Captain Shredderator v. Lock-Jaw Brian Nave’s Captain Shredderator has been around forever now, and very little has changed. It’s a brutal full body spinner that can do tremendous damage to an opponent while doing as much, or more, damage to itself. There was a lot of talk pre-match about how he’d simplified the bot to try to make it more reliable. In the other corner was another known quantity: Donald Hutson’s Lock-Jaw. It looked pretty much the same as always, but apparently, this was a ground-up rebuild. I figured Lock-Jaw had this one in the bag on theory that betting on the…

I’m writing today from my home office. I haven’t been able to say that since…2001? In any case, it’s been a while and it’s nice not to be dragging Nicole to work with me and making her put up with whatever stress I’m feeling. My blind kitty has adjusted marvelously and he’s sleeping in his bed next to my desk. This isn’t bad. So, let me briefly go over how we got here. This summer, during the lockdown, our cashflow was actually pretty good since we weren’t (and still aren’t) going anywhere near restaurants. We figured that we needed a bigger place than the one bedroom apartment we were in if I was going to be working from home for the foreseeable future. We started looking at two bedroom apartments and the lighbulb lit up. “We can’t afford to live here, but what if we bought a house close to here, close enough that I could come into town a few times a week? Was our credit good enough? Could we afford it? Were there any places nearby where we would be happy living? At the time we started looking, the answers were “no,” “no,” and “who knows?” But, with decent cashflow, we were making inroads on the credit. We started looking at some of the towns around here and found some that would work (and many more that wouldn’t-anything requiring that I get on the interstate wasn’t going to work). Then we found a place we really liked and everything to a lot more real. We decided to cash in our savings, get our credit card usage under control, and make sure we had enough on hand for putting a chunk down and then moving. It takes a while for the credit reporting places to show the changes and, in that time, we missed out on the place we’d found (we dubbed it “The Parsonage” because it was between a church and a library and had no neighbors at all…sigh). Back to the drawing board. Unfortunately, a lot of other people were having the same thoughts we were and prices were going up at a crazy rate. We found some great places in bad locations, so lousy places in good locations, and some great places in great location that were just out of our range. It was getting frustrating as it felt like the window was closing. But then (and I can’t believe I’m starting a paragraph with “but then…”), Nicole found a house that had been listed an hour earlier. She set up a showing for the next day and then told me “I found it.” Sure enough, she had: A house in a town we liked that had a style we loved and at a price we could swing. We met the realtor at the house and within about 5 minutes we were ready to make an offer. It was a good thing we didn’t wait as there were several offers on the first day, but ours was accepted, so…huzzah! The next bit is crazy. We were pre-approved for the amount, but we now had to get down to locking in an interest rate and…holy smokes, interest rates are nothing right now. I do not have what anyone would mistake for good credit and we still came in south of 3 percent. We started giggling because that was beyond our wildest hopes (with the caveat that we have few wild hopes regarding percentages). And here we are, a month later, and we’re in the place and it feels pretty great. We got incredibly lucky in that a lot of dominoes fell precisely where we needed them to to make this work. The long and the short of it is that we’ll be paying substantially less on our mortgage than we were paying in rent on our one bedroom apartment. We got really lucky. After a crazy, awful, frustrating, scary year, we seem to have landed no only on our feet but in a better life as well. Things could have been very different. I am not particularly deft with money (those of you who know me well may enjoy your chuckle at the degree to which I am understating things) and I was afraid that I had permanently locked myself into renting. It can be cheaper to own, but you have to be able to save money to buy and it’s hard to do that when you’re renting…it’s a hell of a treadmill. I’ll leave with this: If you have an opportunity and urge to buy, or you are in a position to refinance, now is a great time to do so. I’d never paid much attention to interest rates (see above paragraph) but apparently they’re as low now as they’ve been in the last fifty years. A very generic picture of the back yard and some beautiful sunlight.