My day basically started at 5:30 this afternoon. I know I went to work.. and that I worked hard.. I just can’t remember what I did.. Oh, wait.. two things I do remember..My friend Brian came in to talk about his IDP (career goals).. and he was wearing a Sam button .. which brightened my day..
And the second thing I remember is that I checked my blood pressure and weight… 163 pounds and decent heart rate and blood pressure.. at least my outsides are working.
Around 4:30I grabbed my cell phone and tookmy last call in the car as I drove up to MMU. I was determined to see some of the movie filming.It was so great to watch… Today they were filming the ‘Lean Mean Diet Machine’ segment.. It’s with Andrew, Annalise and the ‘young dancers’..(Jade, Katie,. Caitlin, Tana, Hannah, Katherine).. I watched for about an hour.. the kids were looking so good..Here are some still pictures and a video montage I took…This movie is going to be just so awesome…
Travis and Raye – aren’t they cute ?
Fake posters for the shoot
Piles of props
Casting calls for tomorrow (Max gets to sleep in)
Rainey at the controls
Andrew and the girls working on ‘Lean mean diet machine’
Make up !
I got home from that about 6:30 and helped Diane shuttle the van down to the park for the kids to use when they pulled the Raft out… Meredith, Caitlyn, Max and Cody took the smaller raft from Jonesville to Richmond.. When we got back, friends Rand and Julie , Eric, Ryan and Parker picked us up for dinner . We went down to the Roadhouse Café in Waterbury. It’s a place that specializes in Louisiana style food.. and lots of great Vegetarian dishes . I had Veggie Etouffe and it was excellent. I really recommend the place. It was good to be out with these guys.. I especially needed to see Eric and Parker. They were with Sam the night of his accident.. We have a very strong bond now with them. It did my heart good to see them both doing well.It was a really goodevening. We got home around 9:30 and the house was packed with kids.. some in the pool, some on the tramp.. some inside.. They are such great kids…
Ryan, Parker and Eric
Rand, Julie, Ryan, Eric, Parker
We had a great time looking at the pictures and vid’s I took of their filming today. and eating pizza that Diane made for them. It’s a really nice sort of Chaos.. eg. We have 5 cell phones charging and we don’t know whose is whose.. but there’s an interesting symphony of ringtones come from them 24 hours a day.. Never quiet, never dull
.I’ve got to go to a meting now with my friend Camil .. so I’m going to post this now.. More tomorrow.
11ish on Monday night. I’m just back from my trip to New York. Coming home always feels so good to me now.. I miss everyone so much when I’m gone.At the same time it’s harder now.. every time I walk intothe house after being gone because I know that Sam won’t be here.. Oh Sam…
The trip down and back to NewYork was surprisingly easy. There’s lots of good time for thinking in the car. I find I really enjoy that quiet down time now. It really felt good to go to Bill’s housefor Linda’s visiting hours. I now really understand why so many ot the people who where there for us after Sam’s passinghad suffered some loss of their own before.. You really want to reach out to others to help.. It’s like a wave.. I think.
I woke this morning confused.. I’d stayed up late again blogging.. when my alarm went off, I rolled over and saw this
I couldn’t figure out for a few moments where I was.. then I remembered I was still at Ruchir and Rashi’s . They’d graciously let me stay in their daughter Isha’s room.. while Isha stayed in their room.It was strange waking up in a kid’s room. I went down stairs and had a great breakfast of rice, peas, potatoes and curry..
Every meal at Ruchir and Rashi’s is a gourmet feat. I really enjoyed my stay with them. Their kids their kids are so beautiful and Rashi’s parents are very cool. I took a few work calls then Ruchir and I had a great work/personal catch up session..He’s an amazing guy
They’re Hindu… but they dig the Buddha too
Casa Puri
Around 12 I headed over to IBM Somers for a few meetings with friends there. I had a great meeting with my friend Willow and her colleagues in communications. Willow is going to have a baby in December. It was cool seeing her pregnant. I forgot to smuggle my camera in to get a picture.. darn. We talked about some ideas about better ways to share the cool stuff IBM does with our employees and with kids in schools. I think we actually came up with some good ideas.. I then went up and met with some of my friends in the Academy office.
After that.. I got in the car and headed back towards Vermont…it was pouring so the driving was a little slow.. I had good music.. so I didn’t mind much. After several hours I pulled off to grab a bite to eat and realized I was in Northahampton Mass, the home of SmithCollege where my mother went to school. I grabbed a sandwich and drove to the campus.. I’d never been their before and was surprised how sam and how very beautiful it was. I ran back to the car to get a SamStone to place there.. As I was wandering around the green looking for a place to put the stone I noticed a big ornamental lamp on a handsome old building. As I looked at the lamp, it went off then immediately back on and stayed lit. “Thank you Sam:.. I climbed up on the stair railing, stood on my tip toes on the rail and placed the stone on a rock curlicue thingy above the door… It was definitely the right place for it..
After I placed the stone I called my mom to tell her I was at her alma matter. She got a kick out of that.The rest of the drive was uneventful.. I got a couple of good calls , listened to some good music and thought about my family..
I got hoe pretty relaxed to find the house full of kids..It was nice coming back to that warmth
Josh
Brendan
Andrew
Carrio
Jordan and his eveil ferminted lillypad juice
Diane painting SamStones.
I’m pretty beat.. time for sleep. More tomorrow. G’nite all.. g’nite Sam.
Today was a day of contrasts.I woke early-ish to start my trip down to NY.. I had hoped to get on the road by 6AM.. but I’d stayed up to late last night wiring the trampoline and blogging.. It was closer to 7:30 when I actually hit the road.
The ride down to NY was very peaceful.. The day was beautiful and I had tons of good music to listen to . I notice when I drive now I no longer automatically get on the phone. I will occasionally make or take a call. But more often than not I’m sitting quietly in the car thinking… or talking to Sam.I find I get places much more relaxed and composed this way… I took the more scenic route and stopped for a brief rest at Ironville to take in the sites..at the perinieally closed Penfield museum. I even found the memorial marker for the owner’s horse ‘Billy’. That was unexpected !
Some of the buildings on the Penfield Museum site
The memorial to Penfield’s horse !
It took me about 5 ours to get to Poughkeepsie. My first stop was at my friends Bruce and Mary Beth. Mary Beth and their kidsBrad and Danny had made a beautiful vegetarian spread for me. I had a great meal with them.. then Bruce and I took a long walk to talk about work stuff and personal stuff. It was so great seeing all of them ! Stopping there was a great way to break up the trip…
Mary Beth and Bruce
Yumy lunch
Me in their bathroom
They had a SamStone in their living room
From there I headed south to Mt.Kisco for the visiting hours for my friend Bill’s wife Linda who died at age 60 the week before last. I got there around 4 and stayed for about 2 and a half hours. There was a steady stream of folks coming and going. I spent some good time listeningto Bill, and looking at their pictures . It was nice to see a slice of their home life. Bill seemed to be doing pretty well. … though I recognized that coping ‘bubble’ that we had immediately after Sam’s death that insulates you a little from the world outside.I kept having to swallow my instincts to say things like “I know what you’re going through:because a)I don’tand b)I realize from the vents we had around Sam’s passing that the last thing any grievingperson wants to hear is about other people’s tragedies.. I even wore my Sam button on the inside of my pocket as not to draw questions away from Bill.I spent some time talking to some of the other guests and to Bill’s kids and their spouses. I was very glad I had come.While at Bill’s, I ran into thisgroup ofmysterywomen who I’ll just call Aents X, Y, Z and Q. Mystery women.. you know who you are !
Bill
Agents X, Y, Z and Q
Around 6:30 I headed out. My friend Joanne and I decided to have our meeting this eveninginstead of trying to meet up tomorrow morning. Next October, Joanne is going to be the next president of the IBMAcademy.. which is the job that Bill currently holds. I’m going to be the VP of the Academy for the Americas. We spent about an hour brainstorming on how we were going to approachour Academy jobs tohelp the organization.Ataround 8Joanne headed north to visit her daughter .. before she went she demonstrated the very cool convertible/hard top thing she has going on her car.. Very cool
At that point, I headed into Somers to my friends Ruchir and Rashi’shouse., When I got there Ruchir was their with his two daughters Isha and Anika as well as his father in law who is visiting from India. Rashi and her mom had stepped out to catch a movie.
We had a great couple of hours playing with the kids talking, cooking and eating.Ruchir even showed me how to cook my own pratha !
First you smash it flat
Then you roll it
It was supposed to be a heart.. but now it looks like Africa
Yum.. Hot and delicious
Our Helper
Ganesh keeps watch over their house
Isha wants all the books read backwards.. so I obliged.
Dinner was wonderful.. we had lentil balls, dahl , curried okra and a wonderful potatoes and dill curry. On top of everything was fresh coriander chutney and three types of indian’pickles’.. Rashi and her mom showed up around 10- and we had a nice talk with them.
Rashi and Anika
Pickled fresh Tumeric yum !
My pratha ..obucket.com/albums/r319/johncohn/jul07j/jul2207064.jpg”>
Okra
Make it hot !… Mixed pickles and coriander chutney.. yum !
Letil balls. Isha’s plate
It’s now about 12:30 and I’m about to fall asleep . Today was a strange mix of happy and sad… I’m glad I came down. More tomorrow. Gnita all.. gnite Sam.
Where to start ? I went around today with some sort of weight on me.. not really knowing what was troubling me. When I sat down to write I realized that today was the eighth month anniversary of Sam’s passing.. Sam was on my mind so vividly and so close to me today,,, all day.,, it’s amazing that my heart knows this stuff even when my brain does not..
The only thing I had planned today was to take Hannah, Avery and Brittany F to Homer’s to learn about CNC (computer numerical control) routing. Homer is one of the best people I know for transforming ideas into stuff (My brother Billy is great at that too) .
Hannah showed up at around 9…Before we left, I triedto sweat talkour pool heater into restarting after it ran out of gas. It responded to my kindness by blowing it’s front door off and singeing all the hair off my forearm.. yikes !
It did finally start so Hannah and I headed off to pick up Avery, Brittany and Avery’s mom, Jen. We showed up at Homer’s around 1-:30.
The girls talked with him for awhile and came up with the idea of making a metal stencil for making (appropriate) graffiti. The design was a hand.. with the girls three initials in it ‘B’-‘A’-‘H’ and some curly-queues and what not. They drew the picture and gave it to Homer. He scanned the image and ran it through his miraculous programs that transformed it into cutting instructions for his giant router.
The girls looking at the setup
The router was scary and smelled funny
Homer shows them the ropes
Brittany looking wistful
The scanned artwork
Avery featured on Homervision
Staring Avery’s eye !
A short intelude for me to show them the fire organ idea
He then used the router to cut the girl’s design our of perforated aluminum.It’s amazing to see that giant machine doing such delicate work
. I think it’s so cool when you have the tools and material to take something from idea to object in less than an hour. We used the stencil and the scrap to paint some pretty cool street art.. and make some cool shadows. It was very cool.The girls loved it (I think !) .
Some frolicking was allowed
It was a nice way to spend the day.. but I was somehow grumpy.. I think because of thinking about Sam.
That ended up taking a good portion of the day.. I came back here to find Diane and Kevinin the new Adirondack chairs that Scott has been building for us.. It looks like Dianehad a peaceful day.. She’d spent some time up watching the Voices movie filming.. which she enjoyed.Diane ended up taking Kevin back to Avery’s while I started to putter in my lab… I’d had an idea bout creating a set of lights that bounced in synch with the person jumping on the trampoline. I’d seen someone synch of a flamethrower with his tramp. So I figured lights would be pretty easy.I though about a few ways to do it.. and finally settled on using ultrasonic. I took a Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller and hooked up an ultrasonic transducer.. Then I adapted some code that sent pings to the transducer and then measured the time for the response.. That roughly correlates to the distance. I wrote some rudimentary code that would allow me to stick the sensor under the trampolineand measure the distance the trampoline surface was deflected. I then wired up some solid state relays which would let me control lights with that information. I got something crude working just before dark. At that time, Diane suggested we go out to eat.. (India house yum !).. and go by Barnes and Noble.. to pick up tour reserved copy of the Harry Potter book. By the time we got homethere were a ton of Voices people here. I hooked up my circuits to the lights and stuck it under the trampoline.. It Worked !, Travis made some good suggestion on how to improve the visual effects.. by measuring the lights on the amount the surface changed.. not just on it’s absolute deflection.. It Worked Even Better ! . Max was kind enough to test it out for me.. Pretty cool. I think Gabe is going to love it…Sam.. I hope you were watching.. you would love it too !
The Stamp II microntroller I used for the tramp lights
Some crufty BASIC code to do the range measuring and light control on the microcontroller
‘ ========================================================================= ‘ ‘ File……. Ping_Demo.BS2 ‘ Purpose…. Demo Code for Parallax PING))) Sonar Sensor ‘ Author….. Parallax, Inc. ‘ E-mail….. support@parallax.com ‘ Started…. ‘ Updated…. 08 JUN 2005 ‘ ‘ {$STAMP BS2} ‘ {$PBASIC 2.5} ‘ ‘ ========================================================================= ‘ —– Program Description ——————————————— ‘ ‘ This program demonstrates the use of the Parallax PING))) sensor and then ‘ converting the raw measurement to English (inches) and Metric (cm) units. ‘ ‘ Sonar Math: ‘ ‘ At sea level sound travels through air at 1130 feet per second. This ‘ equates to 1 inch in 73.746 uS, or 1 cm in 29.034 uS). ‘ ‘ Since the PING))) sensor measures the time required for the sound wave to ‘ travel from the sensor and back. The result — after conversion to ‘ microseconds for the BASIC Stamp module in use — is divided by two to ‘ remove the return portion of the echo pulse. The final raw result is ‘ the duration from the front of the sensor to the target in microseconds. ‘ —– I/O Definitions ————————————————- Ping PIN 15 Light PIN 0 Light_2 PIN 1 ‘ —– Constants ——————————————————- SELECT $STAMP ‘define constants based on hardware/environment variables CASE BS2, BS2E Trigger CON 5 ‘ trigger pulse = 10 uS Scale CON $200 ‘ raw x 2.00 = uS CASE BS2SX, BS2P, BS2PX Trigger CON 13 Scale CON $0CD ‘ raw x 0.80 = uS CASE BS2PE Trigger CON 5 Scale CON $1E1 ‘ raw x 1.88 = uS ENDSELECT RawToIn CON 889 ‘ 1 / 73.746 (with **) RawToCm CON 2257 ‘ 1 / 29.034 (with **) IsHigh CON 1 ‘ for PULSOUT IsLow CON 0
‘ —– Variables ——————————————————- junk VAR Word ‘ raw measurement rawDist VAR Word ‘ raw measurement inches VAR Word cm VAR Word old VAR Word diff VAR Word ‘ —– Initialization ————————————————– Reset: DEBUG CLS, “Parallax PING))) Sonar”, CR, ‘ setup report screen “======================”, CR, CR, “Time (uS)….. “, CR, “Inches…….. “, CR, “Centimeters… “ ‘ —– Program Code —————————————————- Main: old = 99 DO GOSUB Get_Sonar ‘ get sensor value inches = rawDist ** RawToIn ‘ convert to inches cm = rawDist ** RawToCm ‘ convert to centimeters IF inches > 120 THEN GOTO done DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 3, ‘ update report screen DEC rawDist, CLREOL, CRSRXY, 15, 4, DEC inches, CLREOL, CRSRXY, 15, 5, DEC junk, CLREOL ‘IF inches < 26 OR inches >120 THEN GOTO down diff = ABS(inches – old ) IF diff > 10 THEN GOTO way_down IF diff > 5 THEN GOTO down DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 6, DEC old,” “, DEC diff, ” up”, CLREOL LOW Light LOW Light_2 GOTO OOR way_down: DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 6, DEC old,” “, DEC diff, ” way down”, CLREOL HIGH Light_2 HIGH Light GOTO OOR down: DEBUG CRSRXY, 15, 6, DEC old,” “, DEC diff, ” down”, CLREOL LOW Light_2 HIGH Light OOR: PAUSE 100 IF inches > 120 THEN GOTO done old = inches done: LOOP END
‘ —– Subroutines —————————————————– ‘ This subroutine triggers the PING))) sonar sensor and measures ‘ the echo pulse. The raw value from the sensor is converted to ‘ microseconds based on the Stamp module in use. This value is ‘ divided by two to remove the return trip — the result value is ‘ the distance from the sensor to the target in microseconds. Get_Sonar: Ping = IsLow ‘ make trigger 0-1-0 PULSOUT Ping, Trigger ‘ activate sensor PULSIN Ping, IsHigh, junk ‘ measure echo pulse IF junk < 9200 THEN GOTO ok ok:</span> rawDist = junk rawDist = rawDist */ Scale ‘ convert to uS rawDist = rawDist / 2 ‘ remove return trip ‘IF rawDist > 9200 THEN GOTO Get_Sonar RETURN
The setup.. the transducer is under the tramp
OK.. Gotta sleep now.. I’m heading off to NY tomorrow at 6AM to go to a memorial for my friend Bill’s wife.. I’ll be back on Monday…
