Monthly Archives: April 2008

Thursday night – after !

Very cool day.. I worked at home this morning while my friend Kim was working her magic on my office. Today was the day that the furniture movers came and shuffled all of the scavengered furniture that we found into my room. I got in at 11 AM to find that that not only had they moved the stuff.. but they.. or I assume Kim.. had actually decorated. it was so cool and beautiful that I almost cried.. . literally !..  Kim.. you are so wonderful !!!!!

These pictures really don’t do justice to the magic Kim worked. Yesterday the office was dirty, dingy and basically empty.. By noon today it was funky, cool ..and clean !..

Here’s my funky new couchy thing complete with end table..and running water fountain thingy.

And my new workstation desk nee microscope probe station  and cloth noise panels.

And cool book shlefy things..  complete with fll spectrum lighting.

Kim even hung up a couple of well chosen family pictures.. a beautiful and bitter sweet touch that really made it ‘mine’ .

Oh.. I just love this desk.. it’s an old floating granite probe station with microscope. The whole thing weighs 2200 pounds (!!!)   complete with the microscope. My laptop fits in their perfectly too.  It omes complete with 2 high wheeled ESD stools…

But wait, there’s more.. it has this cool radio proof hood that lowers over the whole thing.. to hide the mess. And.. it says ‘DANGER’.. Is this cool or what ?!?

I even have a new window in my door  and a real whiteboard. . It feel like home !
It felt really great to work in there today

I did have ot leave for a lunch time meeting at UVM. I’m on the board of advisers to the CS department there..We had a great strategy meeting on the future directions for the department..

It turns out it was Josh’s (one of the CS prof’s) birthday… there was even cake !

I had to jump right back into meetings after lunch, so I ducked into my friend Allison’s office..and got on my conference call.  Alison’s on sabbatical in Vienna this semester.. It was cool camping out in someone else’s cool office.. I liked her stuff.

I struck a bit by this poem on her wall.

I finally had a break in calls and zoomed back to IBM for the rest of the day. My cool new office. By my calculation the new furniture made me feel 34 percent more productive and 52 percent happier.. Not bad

I cut off around six and headed for my last meeting of the day. The VoMIT  (Vermont’s Own M.I.T. club) board meeting..at Zen Garden.  I always love these meetings.. what a bunch of smart and goofy people.   I leaned that since our last meeting. my friend George had had open heart surgery to replace a prolapsed mitral valve. he looked great tonight.. it’s the kind of thing you prefer to hear after the fact. We talked about the  MIT summer teachers scholarship (recently won my MMU’s Bill Esholz !).. and ‘Project X’,, the scary robotic project that VoMIT is taking on for the Haunted Forest.   It was a good meeting !.

After leaving there, I did a bit of last minute Passover shopping then went home to see Gabe and Diane..  

I found that a whole bunch of kids had come by this afternoon.. Including Colin .. who’d made us this sign..

And this nice message from Brad…

OK.. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open now.. Gotta sleep. I’ll write more tomorrow.. Sleep well everyone.. You too, Spam
-me

Wednesday night – before

Not much to report this evening. I had a full day at work.. got a fair bit done, though I can’t recall what it was. The big excitement in my life right now is the extreme makeover I’m about to give my office.  Earlier in the week I mentioned that my office at work had become kinda non conducive to doing work. i seemed to spend a bunch of time being sad and starign at the empty walls when I go in there.. I decided the right thing to do was to work on making my office space more livable. A few weeks back I cleaned out all the boxes that had accumulated in my office from the two office consolidations I’d done in the past year. Then  I started thinking about getting some decent furniture. We don’t have money to spend on new furniture … so my friend Kim and I scoured the building looking for used stuff that we could beg, borrow or steal. In the end we found some cool and funky stuff  including a ‘desk’ which is actually a giant suspended granite block once used to stabilize a piece of delicate equipment.
   Well.. tomorrow is the big day when all that stuff gets moved into my space… I took a few ‘before’ shots before I left the office today.. By the time I get there tomorrow.. all that new-to-me stuff should be in place… A brand new office.. maybe a brand new me ? Not likely.. but it’s a step towards a nicer work day environment.  


I’ll get some ‘after’ pictures tomorrow. That’s all for now. Gnite all. nite Sam
-me

Tuesday evening – three short stories for tax day

Hey friends.. happy tax day..   Diane just reminded me.. no Guitar Hero until I’ve finished blogging… I have three wierd and disconnected short stories  for you about conincidences… just like my day.. wierd and disconnected.. .

The first is probably only interesting to me. I looked at my calendar today and realized that I had back-to-back meetings with people named ‘Tim Farrell’.. One a freind and senior chip scientist in East Fishkill, NY and the other, my buddy Tim, the chiropracter. I don’t know whay that struck me as so odd.. maybe because that’s not such a common name.

OK.. second story… Our Van turned 100,000 miles today.. in our driveway.. OK.. so   gave it a little help. I noticed it was at 99990 last night.. so I took Gabe to school this morning.. and did 4 laps from our driveway to the Willis’s driveway to make it land exactly on 100000 . I was actually able to capture the change on  video .   For some reason, changes involving  numbers like that have huge significance for me.  It’s linked to the part of me that thinks all things have souls of some kind… After all.. a lot happens in a car…they can take you to births, to picnics.. .. and to memorial services. We’ve been through so much in this one.

I toasted the car with a cerimonial Red Bull to honor it’s birthday..  

Thank you DTB 241

For the record.. I still carry the key to my first car.. a ’71 volkswagen camper named maggie..    Here she is.. I hope she’s still haling hippies somewhere in California.

It reminds me of the song “Long May You Run: .. a love song that Neal Yong wrote for one ohis old cars

Long May You Run
by Neil Young

Weve been through some things together
With trunks of memories still to come
We found things to do in stormy weather
Long may you run.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.

Well, it was back in blind river in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift on the long decline
Long may you run.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.

Maybe the beach boys have got you now
With those waves singing caroline no
Rollin down that empty ocean road
Gettin to the surf on time.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.

OK.. here’s the third story.. and it’s the strangest and coolest. This morning I was talking to my friend Marc at work.Marc and his wife Peggy have always been adventurous travelers . Marc was telling me about the  trip that they had just taken to Antarctica in March. He mentioned that their boat had stopped in South Georgia Island off the coast of Antarctica .

I realized that I’d never told Marc about SamStones. I told him that friends of our our friends Jeanne’s mom  had visited South Georgia  Island  last year and had left a SamStone on Shackelton’s grave. Marc looked at me a sec and told me that he had a bunch of pictures of Shakleton’s grave. About 30 minutes later he sent me the following picture. Take a look in the lower left.. . I was actually able to enlarge that part of the picture… looks familiar.. no ?  Marc had never even noticed the stone in his picture before this. Is this a small world.. or what.. Sam’s spirit is truly everywhere..

OK.. I gotta sleep now. Hope all your taxes are in.. Talk to you tomorrow.. Gnite Sam
-me

Monday evening – breakthrough

I was out of sorts all weekend … angry and sad even though we had a bunch of fun stuff going on. It happens …..     The funny thing is my mood didn’t shift until Gabe sat me down and told me he was going to teach me Guitar Hero..

Now.. you must understand how strange it is for me.. I thing about video games all the time.. I work on the processors, I talk about their technology.. but secretly.. I just don’t ‘get’ video games of any sort. Maybe I lack the eye hand coordination.. or the attention span.. but I’ve never, ever, ever enjoyed holding a game controller in my hand.  (sorry EMC friends.. I’m from another planet, I guess) .. Anyway.. Gabe stuck the Guitar Hero controller in my hand and switched the thing to sub-pre-beginner-neub mode..   He let me pick a song.. Well.. first problem.. no Mozart… OK.. what’s the next best thing. I selected ‘Anarchy in the UK’ from the Sex Pistols from 1976. I have a big attachment to the song dating back to 1991 when I was writing my  thesis in Pittsburgh.. It was a hot August day.. I hadn’t slept in 2 days.. the windows were open..and I was busy writing. Suddenly my elderly neighbors put on Frank Sinatra at eardrum splitting volume… I tried closing the window… but it was too hot.. I ended up putting on this song at full volume   to neutralize the Sinatraism…

Anyway.. Gabe showed me how to work the controller.. and started the song..  First I got a few notes then lost it… failure.. then I got a few more… then a few more… I kept going back and re-starting the program.. Well gentle readers.. I  ended the evening with 85% correct and  a string of 83 correct notes .. Yeah. It was still on easy.. but somehow it felt like a breakthrough..   It was all I could think of today. I felt much better… like I could do anything…   Actually the only thing daring I tried today is that I ran my morning jogging loop backward… not much of a step.. I know… but it was progress… It was stepping out of my rut a bit.. and in that, it was also a breakthrough…

OK.. Gotta sleep now… (actually gotta go play Guitar Hero)  See you folks.. Nite Sam
-me