Saturday night – unplug at the end of the day

September 20, 2008 johncohn

It’s almost 1 on Sunday morning and I’m just sitting down to blog. I was busy all day with one project or another. I’ve just finished filling the nail oles on the molding we put up.. I ran out of Spackle.. so I had to call it a night.

I stuck a samstone in every void I had to patch.. it’s quite a time capsule now !

Actually, what made me really call it a night is when the Spackle I did have fell of the ladder and went ‘kersplat’

This house painting and prep is a ton of work.. but it’s very satisfying. Diane mad a bunch of blank room templates that we’re colring in to find some paint colors..

Guess which one is Gabe’s ?!?

I spent most of the day over at Homers frantically working on the ‘Oriject-X’ monstor. It’s really coming together. Today we rebolted evreying, fixed all the wiring, mounted the legs to the base… and a ton of other refinments.. He stands and waves his arms very natureally now.. or at least natrually enough for a 17 foot monstor pumpkin guy.

Homer had also captured a walking stick.. we’re taking soem movies of him because we want to copy his movements in a pneumatic robot we’d both like to build.

Homer and I worked 9 hours straight to day on the project. We took a few minutes to go on a hardware run to Vergennes. While there we dropped into the Fat Hen, Even M’ s wife’s place, for some food. It’s a nice funky place.. with many strange mumper stickers on the wall.

Somehow there we got to wondering how many grains of rice were in a cubic inch. (any guesses ? )

We each did the counting..our own way.. but I did bisections, quadrasection, etc.. my count awas about 2100… Homr devided his up a different way and came out with a little less.. so.. it’s about 2000. Tha’s usfule info.. no ?

Hanging out with Homer down there is so much fun.. I learn something cool each time I go down to work. He’s such an amazing thinker…

Well.. I gotta stop typing and begin sleeping.. I’m falling asleep as I type again. It’s always hard to go straight from blogging to sleep.. I need to unplug a little first.. just like Homer’s milling machine..

Here’ I go.. g’nite folks.. more tomorrow. ‘Nite Sam !
-me

Friday night – wordle

September 19, 2008 johncohn

Not much to report today… so.. I’ll give you a pictorial review of my week. I don’t know if you remember, but I once ran a whole year of my blog text into a thing called ‘many eyes’ and it drew a picture of the 704,000 words I wrote here last year. It was tricky to use.. but now those folks have made it easier to use.. (you can try it here) Here’s my last nine days .the words that occurred the most often are the biggest.. . I think it sums it up pretty nicely.. … it was a week of ‘got’

OK.. I have circuits to solder.. More tomorrow. Nite all. Nite Sam !
-me

Thursday night – Mom and dad’s

September 18, 2008 johncohn

It’s about 1:30 AM and I just got home from Boston. I was able to skip out on a meeting tomorrow in Boston and get back home a day earlier.. I don’t like being away from Diane and Gabe this long.. It was a hard trip.. got lots done.. but pretty emotionally tiring

I had planned on staying with my folks tonight.. so.. even though I was able to go home tonight, I wanted to go and see them . I got there about 7L30 this evening after our meetings were over. My mom met me with the gift of a snake shaped gourd… is that cool or what ?

It was great seeing my folks.. I really enjoyed having them out with my work friends on Monday night. Tonight was a quick visit.. I helped my mom set up the new laptop she got for her birthday.. and helped her hook it up with the camera they got for their anniversary.. It was fun playing with new hardware…

I spent some time looking at pictures around their house.. they have so many pictures of my family.. its so nice and so sad..

Families are made of memories…

Time to sleep .. Gnite folks.. gnite Sam.. we all love you
-jc

Tuesday night – homecoming

September 17, 2008 johncohn

Hi friends.. I’m still in Cambridge. I had a surprisingly good set of meetings today.. It’s the time when some of my friends role off the committee I’m on and some new friends role on. It’s strange and sad about not seeing some of these folks as regularly as I do now. We’ve all become really close. They’ve been with me through some of the toughest times of my life.. I’ll miss them… At the same time, I look forward to getting some of these new folks better.

Anyway.. back to today.. I started with a run up Memorial Drive and the Charles River back to my old dorm.. it was a beautiful morning.

Here’s the famous Citco sign that I could see from my old dorm window. Pat O. has a miniture of this sign in his own little fenway park in Essex.,

I stopped by my old dorm, Bexley.

Here’s my old dorm room from when I was a senior

Here’s the window where the police caught me rappelling down the building.

and here’s my sophmore year window.

And Kresge Auditioriam.. a.k.a. ‘the potatoe chip’

On the way howm from work I pulled up behind a car with both Diane and my undergrad school stikers… We gotta meet these guys !

We all decided to walk to dinner, so I took folks on a wlak through MIT-land..

Here’s my orm window again !

And Bexley again.. this time I placed a SamStone.. That’s my window again above it.

Here we all are on the atairs of 77 mass ave.. the main MIT entrance.

I was taking my crew down the ‘infitinte corridor’ when I ran into my good freinds Kim and Kathy. Ki’ms the Dean of Undergraduate Research here.. he runs the Edgerton cdenter. Kathy is a biologist and has invented a toy wiht Lego that teachs folks about protein synthesis. It was so cool running into them like that.. As always.. really small world !