The Boise Tech Show was a flying success put on by Fishers Technology. Thanks for having me out to provide a little entertainment, promote STEM education, talk about the power of a growth mindset, and make a Guinness World Record attempt.

This one was for the “Most catches [of tennis balls] in 30 seconds while standing on a Swiss ball”. The previous record was 36. Jonathan Hannon and I have been practicing for a couple of months and it still took us 3 tries to complete a legal run (the legs had to be straight, had to catch with alternating hands, can’t fall off, etc).

We warmed up back stage which was a good thing since it was harder to balance the ball on the board than on his hardwood floor.

I was wobbling all over the place but Jonathan kept the balls coming quick.

Check out Maker Space. It’s a ” member-driven community-oriented space where you can make your project using a variety of tools “. They were having a fundraiser and I said I’d set a record to spice it up a little.

The record attempt was a literal pain in the neck. I first attempted it in January of 2018 and thought I’d broken it was a 46-minute run balancing a 2.5 lb hoe on my forehead besting the Guinness minimum of 30 minutes. Little did I know that a week prior a 1-hour 1-minute attempt would be approved after my attempt, invalidating mine.

Here I am over a year later and this time I went for 1 hour 15 minutes 15 seconds. It was a lot more painful than I remember last time. I was hurting after just 6 minutes. Fortunately, I had some good conversations, and finally realized I could spit instead of gagging on my saliva (you can’t swallow while looking straight up it turns out).

TEDx Boise was phenomenal! Taking flight was the theme and the speakers shared their moving stories. I had three records to break and they all involved flight.

If you had asked me if I could have broken one Guinness World Record as a kid I would have told you I would love to but didn’t think I could. Today I broke my 100th!

More accurately, I broke my 98th, 99th, and 100th Guinness World Record Titles! I started with a short talk about my STEM story and how I wasn’t smart enough for the gifted program to an MIT graduation in electrical engineering.

Chris Knight and I then went after the record for most ping pong balls caught in one minute with chopsticks. The previous record was 32 but we have been practicing. Even with a couple of bobbles and a dropped ball with a few seconds left, we got 82 in one minute.

Next up was the fastest time to transfer a 20-pound weight hand to hand 100 times. It took a couple of tries but I passed the previous mark with 100 transfers in 14.9 seconds.

Last up was a big celebration for my 100th Guinness World Record attempt. Most lit candles in the mouth. They were all stuffed in my mouth and had to be lit for 30 seconds while only held with my mouth. The flames danced and the wax poured but I made it 30 seconds with 100 candles in my mouth!

Today I spoke at the Wisconsin Technology Association about Private LTE and then gave an update on the state of 5G. I had an intermission juggling performance and storytelling of why I break world records between the two and finished off with an official Guinness World Record attempt.

The attempt today was a repeat of a record I previously held of most target hits with a foam dart gun in one minute. The target had to be less than 25 cm and placed over 5 meters away. The gun has to be a single shot that much be cocked before every shot. Last time I went after the record it stood at 11 hits. I got 16. Ashrita Furman took it back with 17.

On my first attempt, I got 17 hits. On the second I got less. On my third attempt, I got 19 hits breaking the record. I was hoping to get a few more and tried a few more times but wasn’t consistent enough for an entire minute to crack 20. I suspect I’ll be coming back to this one again in a few months.

Thanks to the team!

Today’s record fit squarely in the easy category. It’s now much more difficult. The minimum mark set by Guinness was 11 minutes 57 seconds for the longest duration spinning a flying disc. It had to be on one hand but you could switch fingers (so long as it kept spinning and didn’t touch anything except one hand).

I was shooting to break the record and at least make it to 15 minutes. Six minutes in my thumb started to cramp and I wasn’t sure how long I was going to make it very long. I was standing in the back of a business review conference with 2 cameras on me and was able to switch fingers to give my thumb a break. It gave me a second wind and I kept going.

I had a hard stop 1 hour 35 minutes in to take a conference call but by the time I made it there, I didn’t want to stop. I got my headset on and kept going. I then took another conference call.

It wasn’t until three hours two minutes fifteen seconds (3:02:15) that the Frisbee spun and hit my shirt that the record attempt ended.

I was spinning at just over 110 revolutions per minute for over three hours. That means I made over 20,000 revolutions in a row. My arm and fingers felt super weird when I finally stopped but not in too much pain.

I broke this record once last year with 100 poker chips balanced on a single finger. It was broken by serial record breaker Silvio Sabba a few months later with 102 chips. I decided to break it back by a bit more and went for 125. The fact that 1 chip fell off and I only got 124 doesn’t disappoint me.

I did drop all the chips on the table a few times because an official attempt is always more nerve-wracking than practice and shaking and balancing 125 free-stacked poker chips do not go well together.

At one point Jeremy decided to help so he knocked down an entire stack of chips. I’m just glad he didn’t hit the stack I had made.

It was another successful Guinness World Record attempt at the annual Cradlepoint partner conference. This one wasn’t quite as hard as last year (most juggling backcrosses in one minute), but it wasn’t nearly as easy as I expected. It turns out that the force of throwing a hot dog sausage 100 feet is enough to destroy a typical hot dog bun.

Fortunately, Jake Smith and I spend the morning practicing throwing and catching hot dogs in buns in sunny San Diego (rather unsuccessfully, I might add, much to the delight of the hovering seagulls). I made a trip to the store to Trader Joes to secure studier buns and Michelle O. made sure the dogs were provided (thank you!).

The previous record was just shy of 69 feet. We broke it on our very first try much to our surprise. We market it out and decided we’d see if we could beat it. About 10 throws later we got our best result at 105 feet 4 inches! It had to be a clean catch and not touch anything except the bun after leaving Jake’s hand.

It also had to be cooked, be over 5.5 inches (and less than 7), and take place on level ground.

I hope Mark Brunell doesn’t mind losing this record (I doubt it as he has a Super Bowl ring…) It was great to hear world champion surfer Shaun Tompson today and have him at the event.

Thank you to all who made this possible including Jake Smith (congrats on your first GWR!), Stoney, Mary, Chris, Mauricio, Ken, Eric, Michelle, Jessica, Jen, Alex, Cradlepoint, and several more!

I spit a table tennis ball.

This is not unusual (for me). I often spit table tennis balls but usually, I try to catch them in my mouth again. In this case, I tried to spit it as far as I possibly could. I was pleased with my result. The ball traveled 58 feet 7.75 inches in the air before landing in the raked sand at the Hobble Creek Park softball field.

It was a bit cold but my two year old had fun helping me rake and measuring the start line. It had to be a flat surface with sand so the ball would make a mark when it landed.

I had to try this record attempt a few times. The first time was a the Kymeta dinner at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain with several influencers in the mobile industry. I got nervous which is detrimental to grabbing small chips and carefully and quickly placing them precisely on a different stack of chips. but on the first attempt I tied the current record of 188 chips stacked in 5 minutes (1 at a time). I decided I wanted to beat the record which took a couple more tries. I finally got 189 and we called it a night.

I went to upload the evidence the next day and discovered the current record had been updated to 200 chips stacked in 5 minutes since I had left for Spain. I took my chips to the dinner the next night at Tapas but the restaurant I was at didn’t realize I was with a group of 8 people who had ordered 40 plates of food and felt that I wasn’t worth the 2-foot by 2-foot table space I was taking.

The next night our group wandered around looking for a place to get drinks for an hour before we settled for a bar with no table space for the record so I packed up and gave up on breaking a record in Spain.

I took the supplies to Germany and broke the record there instead. It was in Buchloe 45 minutes southwest of Munich. Again, I got nervous, but not quite as nervous and stacked 204 chips in one minute (in the practice right before I got a lot more). On my 2nd try the stack fell down so we stuck with 204 as the official number.