Tonight I’m writing from Pittsburgh. I was invited down to speak at the 25th anniversary of the CMU CAD Center.. the place I did my doctoral work. It was a really nice invitation… I was glad to go since the program and it’s members were such a big help to me over the years.
To make that work.. I had to leave the house today at 4:30 AM.. yuck ..
It was cool to be coming back to Pittsburgh. Diane , Max and I lived here from 1988 through 1991.. Max was 5 weeks old when we first got here.. In fact.. I think I started grad school here exactly 20 years ago today !
The city looked unchanged
I took several work calls.. then had a luch break… I used it to go find our old house at 2331 Pittock. It looked great.. as did the neigborhood. No on one was home.. so I just lefet a SamStone there.
THen I stopped by the University of Pittsburgh Fine Arts bldg.. I snuck up on my old friend Mike who’s a professor there. We hadn’t seen each other since Sam’s death. He had one of the Sam cards sitting on his desk
On his wall he had a relic of a collaboration we had done about 17 years ago. he’d aasked me to write a program to create a bunch of equal area shapes of a certain type.. As I recall I made him 13, 000 of them .. from which he chose 11 (not 11,000) .. He then had them cut out of thich sheet aluminum… added some pan then hung them in a museum gallery .. Which ines do you like ?
I also liked looking at Mike’s art.. seeing these pictures now shows me just how beat my camera is now.. These paitings actually have really nice colors.
At that point it was time to head to my meeting. i drove back across the bridge to CMU.. From there I got a great
view of the Electrical Enginering Builiding at CMU .. Hammershlagh hall.
I parked the car then met up with JohnL and Shun.. we walked back across campuss to the meetings.
I was very, very surprised to see this right inside the front door at Hammershlagh. It was both nice and freaky to see my name and picture there right as you come in. I think it’s been there quite awhile. The publicity flt a little creepy.. but I did like the call to do school outreach. that was worked into the article.
We went upstairs and immediatly started seeing our frinds. Wojtek dragged me over to see a plot of my first class project chip (and it worked !)
I then checked out my advisor Rob’s new digs.. snazzy !
THen I went upstairs to see my old offic.e.. I stuck a SamStone on the window I used to stare out of.
Then it was time for the meeting… ther ewere more than a 100 folks there.. Here’s Diana and her friend from Intel.
My friend Bill from IBM who lives nearby here.
Bill. Dave and Steve D.
Tamal and Saul
why good freind Bill J !!!!
Me and Tom S.. whom I havents seen iun about 17 years ?
Then came the speaches… Firstup was Prof Steve Director , He was the first Cad center head.
And there’s always Roxxy !
Next up was Larry S..,. CEO for the SRC.
THen Ralph C.. who talked about the successes between the the SRC and CMU.
Then Shawn Blanton, the head of the center gave a good talk.. Then it was mine turn.
My talk went pretty well (I think).. short.. and maybe a little funny. I ended by asking all the folks there to consider doing volunteer outreach .. It felt karmically good to ask them.
Larry, Leah and Hannah were there.
Then we all walked over to Phipps conservatory for a great meal amoung the orchids..
Here’s our rowdy table.
Here’s John M
Dinner was great all round.. great company. great conversation, great food. I’m so glad I came !
Then we walked back across campus to get our cars.
Several of us returned then to the hotel bar..They had wall to wall McCains i.
I had an iron cirty.. ‘what was I thinking !?!) Unfortunately it tased like I rembererd it. : You can’t keep an Iron man down” they said that right !
Afterwards, Jay and I sat around talking about his book had the attached Wiki. He has this cool thing going on.
OK.. tjat’s it for tonight.. I am falling asleep at the keyboard.. More tomorrow. Gnite All.. Gnite Sam !