Fishing's Dangerous Underbelly
It's been said that fly-fishing is the quiet man's sport, but if you ask Bill Henry, it's not always as relaxing as it sounds.
On a trip to Mexico a few years back, Henry, a vice president of marketing and strategy at PeopleSoft Global Services, decided to go for a little saltwater fly-fishing. And after hooking himself a 130-pound sailfish, he spent the next hour and a half battling the frisky fish and wondering who in their right mind would call this a "quiet man's sport." He finally did reel it in, only to set it free soon after.
For Henry, who is responsible for the growth strategy of the global professional services business that includes PeopleSoft Consulting and PeopleSoft Education, the joy of fly-fishing comes from the constant movement and exploration for the perfect place to drop the line. It's also a great way to clear his head.
"You're walking the whole time — six, maybe 10 miles in a day," says Henry, who has gone fly-fishing in 13 states to date — one of the most beautiful, he says, being Alaska. "I get to go out for an entire day and focus intently on something that's not work. You come home completely refreshed, physically fresh, mentally recharged."
His love affair with fly-fishing can be attributed to his father, who used to take him to the Sierras as far back as when Henry was 10 years old. And now, as Henry discusses his love for it to this day, he mentions the gift he's giving his father.
"I told him that for his birthday I'd take him fly-fishing anywhere in the world — so we're going to head to New Zealand for a week as soon as we pick the dates."
No Longer Man vs. Machine
When Dave Snyder would sit on his couch and watch "BattleBots" on television — a show that pits remote-controlled robots against each other in a ring until one "bot" renders the other useless — he was thinking about more than just who had designed the best one. Snyder, a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, was thinking about how he could design a better one.
With that, he and his friend Kevin Doyle began the process of designing a robot to compete in "BattleBots."
"We were watching and we said we'd like to go do it," says the 8-year consulting veteran. "And the most interesting part of this is that everyone has an opinion on whose concept is better."
What they came up with is the "Super Collider" — which weighs in at 220 pounds and wields a 20-pound, three-foot-long bar of hardened steel that is spun by a four-horsepower motor. It's 54 inches long and 40 inches wide, and has four-wheel drive.
"Ours is like a pizza box. It's one of the flatter ones, reversible so that it can flip back over in case it gets knocked upside down," says Snyder. He adds that from start to finish, the whole construction process took six months.
In May 2002, they took their pizza box to San Francisco to compete in "BattleBots." The whole competition lasted a little more than a week, with the last two days being filmed for the show. With more than one match per day, sometimes Snyder and Doyle had only a few hours to fix any damage caused in a match.
No matter, Snyder's creation worked its way through the first few days without a problem — until the night before the televised competition was to begin, when their machine lost after its wheel got jammed in the battle.
Keep an eye out, though: Chances are, you may see Snyder back at it again soon.
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