Titletown
We got things started Friday night with our second attempt at watching the Iowa Energy, Des Moines' NBA Development (aka minor) League team win the D-League championship for the first time in its short four year history. Each round of the D-League playoffs consists of a best-of-three series, with the first game at the lower-ranked team's site, and the second and, if necessary, third games at the higher-ranked team's location. The Energy made it to the championship round and won the first game in Texas against the their opponent, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers!
The team has gained a decent following over the past few years partly thanks to former Iowa State Cyclone Curtis Stinson leading the team on the court, playing at a high level as the starting point guard. The level of excitement around the team took a huge leap when the buzz started in central Iowa that the team had a great shot at winning their first league championship in game two last Wednesday.
Most people figured, hey, if the team can win game one in front of a hostile crowd on the road, in Texas of all states, then winning at home in front of one of the best crowds in the league with the championship one victory away should be a walk in the park, right?
Unfortunately, that's probably what the players thought as well, and we (along with current ISU men's basketball coach and free-throw machine Fred Hoiberg!) sat among the D-League all-time record crowd of 14,000+ in Des Moines as the Energy let the game get out of hand in the third quarter, and the Vipers evened the series one game each.
That left the final and decisive game scheduled for last Friday. We had been planning to get in a long bike ride to kick our RAGBRAI preparations into high gear Friday after work, but then the cold and wind conspired against us, so we decided instead to make the trip back down to Des Moines for the game. While the tickets were quite reasonable at face value, we got a real deal from someone we met on the street walking to the game: two tickets for five bucks each, sitting in the sixth row near one end of the court.
Turns out that we were fortunate the weather canceled our biking plans, as we ended up witnessing a great game and, best of all, the celebration afterwards as the Energy hoisted the championship trophy. I have never before been doused in so much confetti!
Dang Good Pizza
Being in attendance for such a victory meant that we had to celebrate, so we headed to Court Avenue and partook in some of the best pizza known to central Iowa at Fong's Pizza. Here is a photo of one of the many delicious slices of crab rangoon pizza that we consumed.
Full disclosure: a loss in the game would have been an excuse to drown our sorrows in cheese and crust, so we were pretty much doing Fong's no matter what!
Hackstravaganza
Saturday was the annual Cyber Defense Competition, hosted by Iowa State University at Hilton Coliseum, and my second time participating fully as a member of the Red team. There were 25 teams from Iowa high schools across the state registered as Blue teams, tasked with protecting a mock computer network for a fake corporation while the Red team members try to hack in to read and write flags to protected locations on hard drives. The Blue teams lose points for each successful intrusion by the Red team, and the team with the most points wins honor and glory and some nifty prizes.
The highlight of the day for me was during the "fire drill" in the afternoon when the Blue teams were required to leave their work spaces, and the Red team members got to walk around for twenty minutes looking for unlocked terminals and useful information laying out in the open. I happened across a piece of paper where a team had written down all their administrator passwords and promptly snapped a photo with my smartphone.
Obama vs Osama
Of course the most significant event of the weekend was the announcement on live TV by the President Sunday evening that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed in Pakistan by a team of Navy Seals. While previous generations had Martin Luther King or JFK, 9/11 was the first event seared into our memories, and I remember walking across campus in Ames that morning on my way to a parallel programming class when I met Bethany from our dorm coming the opposite way between Music Hall and Carver Hall. As I was about to offer a friendly "Hello," she stopped me to mention some bizarre news about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. It would be another few hours before I returned from class and learned that what seemed at first like a strange accident turned out to be anything but.
It is hard to believe that nearly a decade has passed since that day. While I don't believe the elimination of bin Laden has suddenly rid the world of terrorism, the event does provide a sort of cathartic satisfaction that also seemed to be felt everywhere from DC and NYC to the campuses of Penn State and Iowa State.
One can only imagine the thoughts going through the heads of the Executive branch in this incredible photo apparently taken at the White House as the events were going down in Pakistan. Hopefully the successes in fighting terrorism continue for this and future administrations.
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