Oy… I’m so  sleepy. I just came back from a very cool night out with my friend Gary and his friend David from MIT.   Gary and David grew up together.

David is a Science historian who’s just written two books on various historical interpretations of science. His last book was on the topic of the moon landing in 1969 and its impact on society. . His previous book was on the evolution of control theory and Cybernetics.. which is close to  my own interests. We talked about how  science and engineering advances are always described in terms of  a ‘heroic’ inventor taking methodical steps towards a glorious purpose.. In reality, almost no major invention is like that. It’s much more likely that the advances are the result of many folks efforts which explores many dead ends and failures before finding some useful result. This stuff is important to me as I want to help more kids begin to think of themselves as inventors. I can tell that this first meeting with Dave is going to be the beginning of an interesting collaboration.

 
The earlier part of my day was pretty slow.. I worked really hard today on IBM stuff. Nothing heroic.. but it was satisfying nonetheless.   I got this picture from Rushir today. He put a samstone in their family shrine.. Very nice

I had meetings until 6:30 PM then I cam home. I was pretty sleepy all day because I didn’t get much sleep at all.. Last night at midnight I’d driven in to the Inn at Essex to have a meeting with my friend Camil…  All the bars were closed  so we opted to walk around Essex Junction  for about 2 hours and talk until about 2 in the morning… We saw some cool bats as we walked

We did lots of work talk.. bit then Camil asked me about Sam.. did I think of him much? I told him ‘of course I do..’ the n proceeded to talk about Sam for about 30 minutes. I’m so glad when someone asks about Sam .. or about us. So many folks worry about bringing  Sam up in conversation.. as if they’re worried that they are going t remind me of something painful.. I know I’ve said it before.. but you’re not going to remind me of anything .. I’m always thinking of Sam.. I welcome questions and the ability to talk about Sam and how my  family  is dong.  . Asking questions like that means that folks care. .. anyway.. I woke up this morning at 7 feeling like I’d only slept 4.5 hours.. which is how I always used to feel…. I went years on 4-6 hours a sleep a night.. and this is how I always felt. Note to self:.. sleep is good.

 
Not much happened this morning.. This afternoon I stumbled across my friends  Dave and Chuck  just after they’d finished teaching a unit on sound at IBM’s Exite  Summer Science Camp for girls . Dave and chuck had some great demos including this one.. which is a rubber membrane stretched over a 12 inch sub woofer. By changing the frequency you drive the speaker, you can change the patterns in the salt grains on the membrane.. May sound strange .. but it’s undeniably cool.

 

I heard from Gabe today and he’s doing well .He had his 5 year Nadokinak ceremony at camp on Sunday and he said it was great. I’m really happy he’s liking that, Diane and Jen drove up to give the camp some of the SamStones.  they helped create.

 

I got home around 6:30 just as Diane and Jen were heading off to see Hannah and Avery play a soccer game.. Max was the only one here.. He went out to jump on the tramp while I pretended  work on my blog. I heard him having fun.. so I put down my computer and I went out to jump with Max.. The funny thing about trampoline is that it makes your muscles sore.. particularly  the muscles you use to smile.. My face hurts from laughing every time I get off that thing.

Would Chai like this ?

 

The last glimmer of sunlight.. on my foot

OK.. time for sleep..   More tomorrow.. g’nite Sam..

-me