7:08 AM - Tuesday morning - on my way

I'm sitting in the Albany Airport waiting for my 7:30 AM flight to Reno by way of Chicago.The flight from Albany was the only one I could find that was affordable and got me out in time to meet up with my posse in Reno for the drive to Burning Man. I drove down last night and slept in my car... It sounded like a better idea than leaving home at 2AM this morning.. It worked out well.

I took advantage of the drive down to stop in and visit Homer . He'd rigged up the other arm on our Project-X.. and he wanted me to see it. I was so glad I stopped. It is truly scary and amazing.. even without it's clothes on... 12 feet tall without it's head.. and able to reach out and menace people.. What a great project !

We had a crowd of would be victims there too.. Including our buddy Lee S.

I got here at around 1 AM.. parked in the airport long term parking spot V.. (Remind me if I ask)

I made myself comfy then went to sleep






I'm s'possed to be boarding now.. so .. talk to you alter.. not sure when my next post will be...




Love you all.. love you Sam !
-me

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10:03 PM - tuesday night - lot V

Its 1AM and I just got to the albanu airport for my 7:30 AM flight. I'm parked at lot V in the extended stay parkoing. I've made a nice bed in the. Ack of the prius$ ihope to get a few hoirs sleep. Anyone reading this early tomorrow, please give me a call at 5;30 tp make sire I'm awake !
I'm totally psyched to be heading. Out to burnibg man with max. I don't think ill be able to post blogs out there cuz there is no cell coverage or internet. Ill take lots of pics and blog while I'm there...but might not be able to upload them until sinday. We'll see. Right now I'm going to try and sleep. Nite folks. Nite sam
-me

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1:12 AM - Monday night - Simple post, complex day

 

Friends.. I apologize.. It's late (1 AMish) and I really have to get some sleep. I'm heading off to burning man tomorrow evening after dinner.. and ... as jerry garcia always said... "i like to get some sleep before I travel...."

My day was long and exhausting.. I have some many things going on right now.. I'm trying to get a bunch of stuff done before taking off the rest of the week. I feel kinda guilty for taking these days off.. but the fact that Max is goign with me makes it feel allright..

I spent last night reading all about the dos and donts of goign to the burn.. It's got more rules than you can imagine.. check out this burning man survival guide to see what I mean

I am so psyched to be going...

I did most of my packing tonight.. 2 sleeping bags, sleeping pads and a tent to share.. and abotu 100 pounds of SamStones to give out. There's a culture of 'gifting' there where you give stuff to others.. no trading or selling.. just give.. I think SamStones are perfect for that.. now if the airline will just let me ship them !

OK.. it's really late.. I have a cricket at my feet telling me to go to sleep. And who am I to ignore a cricket ?

Noght folks.. Night Sam.. be with me at the Burn
-me

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10:58 PM - Sunday night - prarie home

Quiet day tonight.. I've spent a good deal of today thinking about the weird and wonderful iron SamStones story from yesterday. It's made me feel good all day

Last night was fun. Diane , Lou , Kathy and I went to the Fair to see Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion. The Fair is a must see event around here.. it's by far the biggest people event in the whole state. It's a great place to eat all the things you avoid during the rest of the year..check out some overgrown vegetables and just people watch.

I happen to be partial to mutant vegetables.. this years take was considerably off the record due to our rainy summer.

There's even an orginization for growing these big guys.

Diane'sTomatoes might have had a chance at winning this year.. they are huge !

We spent soem time checkong out soem of the non mutant veggies too.. There was some really good looking stuff

Including these beutifull onions fro our friend Fran's garden .

There was also a husband and wife team making a huge sand scuplture.. just sand and water !

Outside there were jugglers, hypnotists and every kind of food seller. We had Samosas which were excellent.

As it came up to 8, we all flocked to the grandstands to see the show.. The lines were huge. THe show actually started before all of us were inside !

ThAs the sun set and the music started, the loghts came on on the rides. it was really, really beautiful .

Garrison Keilor and all the others were great.. It was fun watching Keilor perform.. He's a really big, tall guy.. a good singer .. and a great story teller. He's so comfortable up there..

The musicans like Pat Donahough and his guest.. Mary Vargas (? ) were good compliemtns to Keilors low singing voice.

My favorite parts of the show, though, were the short raido plays.. Guy Noir, Lives of the Cowboys The ketchu advisory council'.. The players and sound effect guys were so amazing to watch. YOu could tell that they were having a good time, too .

Just as the show ended, they lancehed a good set of fireworks. We watched them as we all filed out.

The traffic was too heavy to leave, so Diane and I wandered around for a bit. I put a few SamStoens by the scariest rides.. those were Sam's favorites. ..

We met up with Lou and Kathy and ate the last of our requisite fair food.. fried dough.. yum ! Then we drove home..

Today we had no plans. It turend out to be a perfect day to do a project with Gabe. He wanted to paint his room to be even brighter. We took hm t the paint sotre and he went wild. The boy loves color.. I think it's his calling..

We all came hime and prepped and sanded his room.> Ten we started painting.. Orange trim and a green door to compliemtn his purple walls. It sounds funky.. but it really works.. it's so.. Gabe !

Late afternoon Liz and RJ came over with their new rats. Liz's is named Rashi (Yes Ruchir.. like your Rashi !) . RJ's is named Phera. They are actually pretty cute !..

Havign my camera outside gave me a chance to update my slef on the sate of the old barn.. It's really coming down..

Speaking of down. it's time for me to sleep ! More tomorrow.. as I prep for Burning man., Slepp well everyone.. Gnite Sam !
-me

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5:33 PM - Saturday afternoon - iron miracle

Hi friends,
It's 5ish on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I'm blogging now because Diane and I are heading to the Fair to see Prairie Home Companion . I wanted to blog now while the following story was fresh in my mind

I've had a [pretty low key day which is just what I needed.. Diane went walking with Kathy so I took the dogs on a run up Honey Hollow. When I got back I was thinking of all the things I to do .. and feeling kind of weighted down by that.. So I asked myself what I wanted to do. I felt like doing something Sam related.. so I wandered into my lab. There on my work surface was the tree of iron SamStones that I'd cast at the iron pour back in July. When you cast something there are lots of extra bits of iron that represent the channels where the hot metal poured in and flowed through.. (Think about the plastic models you may have built as a kid..) these chases need to be cut apart and ground down to make a finished piece.. ..

I figured that would be good project to fit my mood.. so.. I started to cut the thing apart. Easier said than done.. I tried a hack saw.. that would have taken a day !.. I tried a cut off wheel.. even that was slow going..

so I broke out my Uzi.. ie. my diomnd bladed cut off tool.. That did it.. it went through the hard metal like butter. In a few minutes I'd cut all the cast iron SamStones apart.

The next step was to grind off the remains of the chaces and sprue.. and remove the 'flashing' that sometimes sticks out where the two halves of the mold come together. I was about to move my stuff up to the grinder when the follwoing small miracle occured. I gatherd up all the rough iron 'stones' into my right gloved hands.. they were still hot from the cutting.. then I decided that I needed a picture of this step.. (everthing in my life is blog fodder).. I dropped the pile of stones where I was as I stood up..I didn't even look at them . went to my work table.. picked up my camera and put in the battery that was charging. I turned on the camer and walked the 3 feed back to where I'd been cutting the stones apart. As [iframe]d the shot.. I notices it looked funny.. This is what I saw through the viewfinder

I swear... it happened exactly like that.. I was stunned for a second.. then said the only thing I could think of.. "Hi Sam"... Then I ran and got Dianea and Gabe.. We took a few more pictures...

Then I picked the stones up and did the final cutting and grinding. As I worked I was thinking of Sam.. and how little we really know about how the unverse is put together..

That boy has a powerful spirit..

THat's all for now.. We love you Sam.
-me

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12:35 AM - Friday night - night at the opera

We left Ruchir and Rashi this morning at about 5:30AM . We were sad to leave without seeing those guys some more, but we both had stuff we needed to do around noon back here in Vermont. It wasgreat seeign them as always. Diane really enjoyed getting to visit them, too.

It was nice watching the sun come up.. it used to be the only way I saw that was when I'd stayed up working all night. I don't do that much anymore.

The drive back was nice and uneventful.. Diane and I enjoyed the quite time talking.. I only saw one good bumper sticker.

We got home to find Gabe mischuef in full swing. He'd booby-ttrapped the doors to the bathroom and the room that Jessie was sleeping in . He'd taped party poppers to the door and riggeged them with pull strings.

When Trevor came out of the bathroom .. 'BOOM'.. it was pretty cool and funny.. (not sure Trevor thought so, though )

Jessie had been here with Gabe last night. She showed us the weapons she had to confiscate,.. a stapler ?!>!

My 12:30 meeting was with Julie C... she's been helpign me with time management for the last few years. She's really helped me over the last few years.. Today she had some cool news. She and her husband Kevin just adopted month old twins.. a boy and a girl.. (Xander and Neliah (I think)...) They now have 4 kids under 4 ! She' was so happy.. !

Here is a picture of the newborns. So cute !

I had to leave work a little early to get home by 5:L30.. our friends Anne Marie, Steve, Jen. Tim K, Tim F, Vivien and Deb were coming over for a quick potluck before our big night at the opera.

Tonight, our good friend Wendy was singing the role of Musetta in the Middlebury Opera Company's production of 'La Boheme' .We all carpooled the hour drive down to Middlebury.. The show was in the newly redone Mibblebury Town Hall Theatre.. it was a beutiful venue.. and it was completely packed !

The production was really wonderful.. As good as I've seen anywhere.. and in such a cool small venue.. !

It even had 'opera text' !

Wendy was great !.. She has an amazng voice and a great stage presense. It was so cool watching her perform. The entire cast and the musicaians were all wonderful..

The company got a standing ovation. It was really, really good..

We drove Anne Marie and Steve back to their car in Hinesburg.. then Diane drove us home. I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.. 2 nights of 4 hours sleep hasn't been enough.. I'm fallign asleep now.. so that's all for tonight.. Good night friends.. Good nigt Sam

-me

ps. y firend Paul and his family just got back from a 3 week vacation in Europe. Paul put a SamStone on Jim Morrison's grave in Paris.. How cool is that !?! Sam would dig it.

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12:20 AM - Thursday night - Max’s nest

Diane woke us at 5AM to get on the road down to NYC. Our mission today was to drop Max off at his new apartment in Brooklyn. We managed to get out of the house by 6.. which beat our goal.. I was pretty sleepy, though..

The drive down was really easy.. Diane began the drive while Max and I slept.... then I took over in Connecticut. Our satellite wasn't workig.. so we passed the time talking like they used to do.. and checking out passing bumper stickers like these !

We had to stop from 11-12 to allow me to give a presentation by phone. It was a talk to a fairly large group of people.. We parked in a Barnes and Noble parking lot in Stamford. I made the call in the car while Diane and Max wandered around the strip malls. The talk was pretty high level and light hearted .. it works great in person.. but I don't think it went over that well by phone..

We got to NYC around 1.... we could tell that Max was feeling good about being 'home'

We pulled into Brooklyn and drove down to Max's new apartment.. It's in a funky cool neighborhood about 10 minutes walk from the Pratt Campus.. There are lots of small shops and restaurants.

At last we were at the door.

Diane added Max's name to the mailbox.

And up we went. It's a GREAT place.. recently renovated and bright.. Here's Max's room

Here's a quick visual tour.. Her's the hall.

The bathroom

The brand new kitchen

Ewwwwwww !

The living room

And Frylock guards the front door.

There's even roof accesds that they can use... !

We got Max all set there then walked back to campus.. then to teh Red Bamboo.. Max and my favorite veggie resturant..

It's a great, funky and varied neigborhood.. every ethnic.. every type of resturant.. every language !

Red Bamboo was amazing..

We got back to the apartemnt.. hugged max... then off Diane and I went . I feel good about Mmaxs living situation.. I/'m so proud of the guy he is !.

We got to Ruchir and Rashi's about 8PM.. My good friend Wolfgang was also visting there.. Rashis' parents are also still in town.. So we all had a great dinner. (Sorry.. I forgot to take a picture !!!!) .. As always it was great seeing Ruchir, Rashi and their kids. It was also great catching up with Wolfgang.. and with Rashi's folks.. they head out day after tomorrow.
One thing that came up during our much varied dinner time conversation was the nature of fruits and vegatables.. Wikipedia solved the big debate: yes.. Okra is a Fruit !!!!!

After dinner Diane played with Isha and Anika.. Ruchir, Wolfgang and I talked about work..

It's been a long day.. but a good one. Time to sleep now.. we have another long drive home in the morning.. Good night everyon.e. Goodnight Sam !
-me

ps. This video has been circulating on Youtube.. I thinkk it's cute.. and appropriate when I think of dropping my kid of at school

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12:33 AM - Wednesday night - things worked

Today things worked out.. ... at least in a gadget sense... i made small progress on many fronts and it felt pretty good..

I woke to the aftermath of a 4AM cooking spree by Gabe and his friends.. yummmy...

It was the first mornng I noticed it being in the 40's.. it's definitly getting fall like outside..

I had a really full day of meetings.. first one at 7:30.. last one at 11PM... A few short breaks including this one when my friend Narayan came by to tell me that he and his wife are expecting their first child !

My day was spent mostly on the phone in meetings.. mostly good meetings today .. I did manage to do a little programming during lucnh while I was on the phone.. I finally got the spirometer interfaced to FLASH for my friend Peter's NSF grant. He's trying to see if video games can help kids with Cystic Fibrosis keep to their breathing exercise regiment. My job is to write the low levl interface code that translates the devices raw flow inout into a stream of XML data that the flash environment can read.. here it is working...

Around 6:30 I headed over to Homers with Seth and brenden.. We all worked on integrating the arms together and interfacing them to solenoid valves that we could control with our micro controller..

Here's the assembled arm under computer control.. yee-ha

And finally the entire arm working under electronic control.

..

Tonight was Brenden's last nght working with us.. he heads back to school tomorrow. He's been great to work with .. as have been all of the kids.

There was a houseful of peopke at the house tonight including Max, Gabe, Diane, Elsa , Jessie, Merideth, Anna, Ted, and Eric

Well.. gotta get to bed. we leave at 5 tomorrow to take max back to college.. It's ben a good summer having him hear.. I'll really miss him...

Gnite all.. gnite Sam
-m

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9:58 PM - Tuesday night - canon street

Quiet day.. one of the high points was getting the following pictures from my good friend Hugh in England. He made the trek up to Winchester to place a SamStone at our old house at 75 Canon street. My friend Joanne had just visited out old house and taken pictures.. but she didn't have a SamStone.. Now there's one there !

Here's our 'local' down the street. The Wykham Arms.. The Publican's name was Graham.. I wonder if hes' till there.. I have many happy memories from Canon St. and the Wykham...

Beleive it or not.. that was the only newsworthy thing from my dayl. Maybe that's good !
Well.. I'll try to have a more exciteing day tomorrow.. More then.. Nite all. Nte Sam
-me

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11:47 PM - Monday night - running on fumes

Today was tough. I felt really overwhelmed.. everything I tried to do was hurried and incomplete.
I felt like I was running on fumes.. both cars had the same problem.

Our friends Larry and Leah are still in town which is really nice. They're great to talk to and gave me a needed boost from the over-programmed funk I'm in.. Last night we (Larry. Leah. Diane. Max, Gabe and I _ all went to Joyces' for a tofu-fest.. Tonight Diane, Leah. Larry and I hit Mimmos for Italian. Good food, great conversation. We really enjoy spending time with them.

We were talking to Larry and Leah's daughter Hannah just befre dinner.. she'd seen the picture of the picture of her that I posted of her the other night.. I asked her to take a picture of the pictue of the picture and send it back to me... So here it is.. round trip...

Ans here's a picture of the picture of the picture of the picture just for good measure..
(How long can we keep this up, Hannah ? )

I have another set of friends in town as well. Murali, Anand and Mohit (not in this picture) are visiting from Bangalore to work with my firend Ed. We tried to meet up fo lunch.. but they unfortunalty got a bit delayed.. and I had a meeting to go to .. so our meeting was all of 10 minutes... They grabbed my lucnh for me and broght it to IBM.. We were able to get toghether for another 20 minutes later in th day.. and I was able to drink my Thai soup with them afterall.
hese guys are so bright and motivated.. it was inspiring to talk with them !

Here's Ed looking wise.

I got home too late for Yoga.. LLeah called and asked us out to dinner again.. so as soon as Diane was done, out we went.. there were soem cool storm clouds gathering as we headed out.. We've been havign a huge sotrm for the last hour.

We got back around 10:30 to find Gabe playing Spin-art with a fan in his room. That kid is crazy creative.. look at this.. I love it !

Seconds after this shot the pen fell in the spinning fan.. that was pretty cool, too !

Last night Gabe showed me another funny thing. He was sitting there witht he dogs.. and they and him made a perfect valentine heart.. accidentaly .. and he noticed..

OK.. that's all that's goign on here.. Hope tomorrow I feel better and more at ease.. I hate being this busy.. Nite all.. nite Sam !

-me

ps. Saw this bumbersticker today.. wierd wording.. great message..

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