Monthly Archives: June 2008

Wednesday night – geek out

Started today with a haircut with my newly married buddy Deb.. Not much hair left to cut.. but it’s still a good time to catch up on what’s going on around town.. If it’s happening, Debbie knows about it. She’s such a great person..

She’s got all sorts of Sam stuff around her shop

My work day was full and productive.. a good mix of stuff. Nothing much new..

Tonight I hosted a pickup meeting for part of the Haunted Forest ‘project X’ team at my house.. We had quite a crowd

Here are Seth, Leo, Homer, Buddy, John and Brandon out in the lab.. trying to get one of the microcontrollers to speak to us. The controller is going to work the face of our monster.

Jana, the goddess of the haunted forest was there tonight.. She has a year round. full time job planning for halloween.

And from what she tells us.. there are many more in her profession than we might think.

Homer brought over his models for the creatures arms.. You can tell form these models that this is going to be very. very cool.

Meanwhile, inside.. while we geeks were out in the barn.. the ‘cool kids’ were inside writing on each other and singing ribald songs. Here is Nicholas and Carolyn.

And Selene

Last saw, Max, Nicholas, Carolyn and Selene were heading out to go caroling.. in June… ?

OK.. gotta sleep.. but before I do.. I gotta share a great video that I was sent today..

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I just gotta give this guy soem SamStones !

Ok.. time for sleep.. gnite all.. Gnite Sam..

Tuesday night – Kasey’s Sam Cohn guitar

Today’s highpoint was short and sweet. Diane and I took Kasey P to Advance Music to pick out the guitar he won with this years Sam Cohn Musical Soul Award. Every year kids, teachers and staff at MMU can nominate any student in the school who has a musical soul… We then select the years winner out of a hat… so Sam can have his say.. Ths year our super close friend Kasey was the winner.. It could not have been a beter choice Sam and Kase were freinds for years.. Sam was always over at Kasey and Jakes.. or they were over here.. They were always up to fun and mischief.. like the time Sam managed to run their snowmobile into the house… sweet memories..

Jeff, the manager of Advance has very generously worked with us to get
a great deal on these Sam Cohn guitars.. in fact they’ve been very
generous to us in many ways since Sam’s passing. Please help us show
our thanks by giving them your business.

Our firend and neighbor Kyle was working there in case we had any questions. We gave him a SamStone to put in the store. Look for it next time you’re there.

It was really fun watching Kasey walk into the acoustic guitar room at Advance. He really was like a kid in a candy store.. He started pulling down guitars and strumming them. I’m sure it was a hard choice to make.. After about 30 minutes of trying things out, Kasey found this beautiful Taylor acoustic/electric. Its got a very sweet tone.. The two of them fell in love immediately.

It was wonderful seeing Kasey sitting there playing a guitar he got from Sam.. I’m sure Sam approved of his choice..

I can still hear Sam playing that guitar in my head… I love the sound.

Gnite folks.. gnite Sam.. keep on playing …

-me

Monday night – peace day

Two very different stories for tonight… First.. my day.. I had a long one.. the kind where every moment of the day from 8AM until 9PM was proscribed.. no free time.. but still it felt OK. Lots of variety and progress.. or at least it felt like progress. One of my friends asked me today why I never write more specifically about my work .. I hadn’t thought of that much before. I gues smost of what I do is IBM’s confidential business.. not something I should shre here.. also .. I do enough thinking about work while at work.. I don’t want it to take over my life anymore.. even if I do really like it (which I do)

Anyway… Work was good.. then around 5:30 I packed up my gear and headed to Champlain College for a Jolts and Volts show. I was tonight’s entertainment at the Governor’s Institute for Games and Media. My buddy Ann is the director.. It was so much fun doing a show for them.. All of my friends are working there as councilors this summer. They welcomed me with a hand drawn sign (guys.. can I get that sign if you still have it .. it was so… so .. ‘dynamic’.. (inside joke))

The show went well. It’s allways challenge to adapt the show to older kids like this.. I have to ‘dumb it up’ on the fly.. This time it worked pretty well.. The crowd was already self identified with high geek quotient.. just my kind of folk.

After the show, my friend Awesome demonstrated her mastery of Kendo on poor defenseless Tony. (“Luke.. I am your Father…”)

Then I let some of the kids and councilors take turns on the go cart. Here is Emily.

and awesome.. (we call her that as a joke.. but I always have to think to recall her real nake which is alllllison.

Here are Awesome, Kate Emily Tony and Lauren.

I came back in from my last packing run to the car and found they’d created a 21 hand salute for me… Sorry you’re missing the sound effects.. it was truly wonderful and bizarre.

OK,, that was my day, or at leas the end of it..

The other thing I wanted to call to folks attention was the very cool efforts of our friend’s Steve and Annie’s son Aaron.Aaron is the founder of the Student Peace Alliance (SPA). The SPA is is the student version of The Peace Alliance.. the Peace group that is lobbying for the creation of a Department of Peace. Think about it.. we have Departments of Defense.. and Armed Services.. Why don’t we have a Department of Peace.. After all.. you get what you work for !

Anytway.. Aaron’s SPA orginization was just recognzed by Ben and Jerry’s, the estate of John Lennon and Peace One Day as a ‘Peace Pioneer’ .. SPA has created more than 100 student chapters… and is promoting many initatives to focus people on waging peace. We’re really proud of Aaron

There’s an info meeting at Aaron’s home on Wednesday night.. let Diane or I know if you want instructions on how to contact him.

SInce we’re on the topic of Peace.. check out this video from the Peace One Day founder ..

..

I find this so inspiring…

Right now.. time for bed. more tomorrow. Gnite all. gnite Sam
-me

Saturday evening – Lunatics Labratory

Before I forget There’s a great short video on the ‘Shout it Out’ movie on WCAX’s website right now. You can see it here ...

Nice productive day.. We started by meting Homer and Mary for brunch.. Homer and I had some errands to run today for the Haunted Forest project, so we used it as a chance to get the families together.. It’s always great hanging out with them.. We made crepes with strawberries from the garden.

Gabe, ian and Trevor came down as we finished and took their turn with the crepes. Gabe even folded hos own crepe.. He is now officially a man !

And a fine creation it was !

I ran upstairs to get dressed.. and pulled on one of my favorite shirts.. It’s one that I wore in one of my favorite family pictures.. That makes me want to wear it.

Homer and I took off around 1:30. First stop was Barre.. Homer is working on a new sign for a welding shop.We had to measure and photograph it for the replacement.

The building was next to an old historic building : The meeting hall for ‘Socialist Workers Party’ which dates from 1900. When all the Italian stonecutters came to this country and settled in Barre they organized into radical socialist Unions.. It’s a pretty cool heritage for the only State in the Union with a socialist senator !

We finished our measurements and headed towards Waitsfield. On the way we went by a stone cutter and found this huge set of hands…

Homer strated to crawl up on them.. until one of the neighbors yelled at him to get off..

We got to Bills around 3:15 and said hi to his family Bill has a cool daughter named Tesla.. The name of my favorite inventor.. How cool is that..

We then spent a wonderful 3 hours crawling through all of his cool electronic
and mechanical junk .. He has the best collection of cool gizmos,
giblets and thingy of anyone on the face of the earth..

It was so cool watching two of my most respected mentors working with each other as we scrounged for motors and power supplies for Project-X.. the giant robot project we’re doing for the Haunted Forest.

We did pretty well.. we found a bunch of gear motors which will help us get the beast’s arms to move around in a scary way.. It was a successful mission.. We had one last thing to do before leaving bills, We had to help him load an old Plasma Etcher into their horse trailer for transport to his production building. I was wondering if it was the first time in history that a plasma etcher was ever transported in a horse trailer.. if not.. it was very likely it was the first plasma etcher transported in a horse trailer with a girl named Tesa wearing an orange shirt.. And that made it special.

Bill celebrated the loading by setting off fireworks.. that’s his response to most things.

By the time we loaded that big heavy thing it was after 6. Homer and I needed to be heading home. We drove up for the Appalachian gap.. which as particularly beautiful in the late afternoon..

We got to Homers right at 7.. which is when he needed to be home.. We unloaded the loot we’d found at Bills. i also got to see some of the new ‘water panels’ that Homer’s been working on. The pictures don’t do them justice.. they have the coolest depth.. many layers of colors over some patterns made by a grinder.. They look like living water… very cool

I got home around 8… long day.. 110 miles of Vermont countryside.. and a new horde of robotic motors. Not a bad day.. now I think we’re all going to watch a movie.. so I’ll sign off now.. Tlk to you all tomorrow !.. Nite all.> nite Sam
-me