Fastest Cube on the High Seas

STOP. If you haven't read the post just previous to this one ("Fatigue Cubed"), go here to read it, then come back to here. Sorry for the inturruption...









You're not going to believe this. During the Rubiks cube wizardry demonstration in the ready room this afternoon, someone mentioned that Rubiks Cube was going to be a Captain's Cup event. The ship's MWR division is hosting an ongoing competition among the ship's departments and the airwing's squadrons. Events in this "Captains Cup" have included a dodge ball tournament (held in the hangar), a basketball tournament, a macaroni and cheese sculpting contest, a pie eating contest, a treadmill relay marathon, etc. OK, OK, the mac'n'cheese thing deserves some photos...

I didn't take these photos, and no I didn't compete (although I think I'm safe in saying that Ann and I could have kicked butt with some mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, olives, pickles, and cranberry sauce), and they're about a month old, but this is one way sailors stay busy and motivated to fight terrorists. OK, back to the story. So someone in the ready room crowd mentioned that a Rubiks cube competition would be part of the Captains Cup. I filed that thought
away. A bit later, I was on the computer and checked the list of Capt's Cup events--sure enough there was a Rubiks cube event. But no scheduled date. We have a petty officer in the maintenance department who has been very motivated to keep HS-8 competetive in these events. We are actually second overall right now, behind the ship's reactor department (yet another reason to make fun of the Nukes). Unfortunately they have a very comfortable lead. We still have a big lead on 3rd, and we're slowly eating away the distance to first (mac'n'cheese not withstanding).. I quickly headed over to give her a heads up that we had a Rubiks cube wiz in the squadron and to recruit him for the event when it came up.
Once again, fast forward a few hours. I get back from dinner and the ASDO tells me that this petty officer has been looking for me urgently. When I tracked her down, she said she had called down to the Fun Boss (the guy who runs MWR) to ask when the Rubiks cube event would be. It was scheduled for tonight at 1930. She was telling me this around 1800! She had already spoken to the maintenance DivO to make sure he could make it to the event. So a crowd of six or seven of us headed down to the aft messdecks to cheer on the HS-8 rep for the Rubik's cube race tonight. He was in the first heat. They had to complete the puzzle three times in the preliminary round. He finished it in 1:55, 1:33, and 1:45! They took the seven fastest cubers from the first two rounds and they advanced to the finals. His 1:33 and 1:45 were the two fastest scores from both preliminary rounds! In the final round, between seven people, they again had to solve the puzzle three times, and their total time would be their score. Our guy did it in 2:13, 1:38, and 2:11. Unforunately, those two slow times resulted in a very close second place finish overall. But, he had the two fastest times of anyone who competed! And, the guy who won doesn't work for Reactor, so we'll continue to close the gap. So what started as an impromptu out-of-nowhere demonstration of Rubiks Cube Geeky Brilliance resulted in the unofficial crowning of the Fastest Rubik's Cube Solver on the Ship! So much excitement for one day.

On a completely different note, one of the JO's from HS-8 joined the Bible Study tonight! It was great to have her there, to expand the HS-8 representation. We started on Philippians chapter 3 tonight. Small group due to the busy airplan, but it was still a good study. Now, it's almost 0230. I'm flying late tomorrow night, so I'm back on the night schedule again. It's about time for bed, but I'm not too tired yet. I think I'll go work a Sudoku in bed. Gotta love it.