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

..

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.

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

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

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.

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..

Nice weekend.. I’ve got too much stuff swimming in my head to relax much.. but we did get to see many friends.. so I can’t complain.

Yesterday afternoon we went to friend Patrick’s Eagle scout ceremony thingy.

It was good to see Pat, his family and all those richmond Scout folks.. Max and I had many years fo fun with them so many years ago.. It’s a nice group of folks.. and thay all look good in khaki.

Here’s Owen (aka Eugene).. He had a letter printed in Dear Abbey a few months back !

Brother Abbot… also and eagle scout…

Pat’s sister Elsa looking unboyscoutly

There was a nice short cerimony for Pat. they got his folks up there with him

At one point they had all the eagle scouts in the audience come up and stand behind pat.. I looked out of uniform

As soon as the ceremony was over we had to zoom own to Burlington to meet our out of town friends.. On the way we stopped in to see Max on his last day … actually his last hour… of work.. I think he’s had a good and productive summer…

We met up withour two sets of friends. Larry and Leah from Pittsbugh and Tim and Diane from Connecticut and their two kids Mathew and Katie.. Larry and I went to grad school togeher… he’s now a hot shot profssor at CMU… Leah’s a writer . (first piece published yesterda, congrats Leah !!!) .. and Tim’s an IBM buddy. He’s actually the IBM Corporate Comedian… What’s more we went to rival high schools in Houston (albeit 7 years apart) They’re all really nice follks.. it was cool that they could meet. Hey.. Nicholoas is in the picture too..

We all walked around for a bit… then Tim, Diane and the kids went back to their hotel..

Larry. Leah , Nicholous. Max, Gabe, Ian . Alex, Diane and I went to American Flatbread for dinner…

We also ran into Jesse and Chris H.. they came too. It was quite a crowd. Thought they swarmed out as soon as the Pizza was gone.. leaving us to talk..

Larry whipped out his ultra cool new Iphone and showed us a picture of their daughter at the Muscualr Distrophy camp wh’s a councilor at.. She worked with this cute kid this summer.
Hannah and I go waaaaaaaay back.. we were once picked up by the police driving the wrong way down a one way street.. long story…

We dropped by Dobra Tea on the way home and selected from their 11 billion flavors of tea.. then went home to bed…

This mornign Diane and I had a slow start.. we finally got out for a run around 11.. We went up and did the loop at Hiney Hollow… We took a SamStoen to replace the one we always put near the stream corssing. so far 2 have been picked up there.. I like that.

Diane was cleaver and had brought two good pair of garden clippers.. we spent abut a half hour cutting back soem of the stcker pushes that had grown into the trail… You can now get through there without bleeding !.. It felt good to do some coluntariy trail work like that..

Soeakign about trail work.. soem is badly needed up there.. soemone took a skidder through the wet muck. it was a MESS !

Around 2 Larry and Leah came by the house. Leah and Diane went off for a hike.. Larry and I went out to Homer’s to work on Project x. I could tell that larry liked the place… He enjoyed meeting Homer, too. Homer and I we’re trying to figure out how best to mount the creatures arms to the lift… Larry chipped in with some ideas..

The key problem we have is how to brace the bcreature against wobbling too much or even falling over.. Homer put soem heavy babatries on the lift. raised it to 16 feet then started shaking it.. Ut swayed like a willow. Larry and I were terrified 🙂

Homer had a good idea on using a ladder to stabilize the beast.. It worked.. sort f.. btut we still need to think this out.. We did manage to get one of the creatures pneumatic elbows hooked to the lift and to an electical solenoid.. … in the end we were able to raise the creature and wave an arm.. Sounds like progress to me !

THis is how projects evolve…

We ended up having another nice dinner with Larry and leah.. this time at Joyce’s .. a nice Chineese place near Larry and Leah’s hotel .Another great night…

The only thing that would make it greateer was a full night’s sleep.. and that’s where I’m headed.. Gnite everyone.. Gnite Sam
-me