Monthly Archives: October 2008

Saturday night – rail jam

Today was wonderfuly calm in a relative way.. maybe a minor lull.. but still so nice. I woke up at 8:30 afetr a full 8 hours sleep. I felt liek a new person.. I did some small jobs around the house. Diane has been reallllly patient with all the other stuff I have going. She’s handling 99 percent of the painiing job .. and everything else .. by herself since I’ve been so stupidly busy over the past 3 weeks. Around 10 I had to head to catamount to work on the porject-x monster. I got there in time to see Seth getting a ride down in the tractor.

I saw soem cool stickers on the ‘haunted forest mobile’

They had a ton of volunteers there carving pumpkins. It’s funny…. The place has been completely empty all the times I’ve been there.

We spent some time getting the beast positioned and leveled.. He’s got a great location.

Seth and I spent about 6 hours getting the wiring cleaned up, installing the 2 wiimote numchuck interfaces and testing stuff out.. It was hard working out there.. the generator was running next to our heads, it was pretty cold out there..and we ddin’t have all of our supplies.. Buut we managed.. we used the supplies we found there…

Justin was there volunteering so he hug out an helped us It was really good catching up with him ..!

Around 4 we managed to get everythign working.. so I zoomed back to Richmond to the block party. The main event was the rail jam !.. They trcuked in a bunch of snow from an ice rink..

Sumner was doing soem great vinyl DJ scratching

While Urion kept a beat.. it was a great sound.

Luckily, Gabe had an extra jacket.. I was so freezing I even wore a yellow coat !

The rail jam was excellent.. they brought the  Sam rail and a flat rail..

Here’s Gabe making his first run.

Adah and Senyah were there looking colorful. .

So was Gabe !

Jacki was there with her Sam pin

There was some great music going on..

And… then a bonfire.. what a great evening !

My last act for the night was to cut up the chilis from the garden into an infernal relish.
I ate a bunch on my sald.. and let me tell you its hot..hotter than anything I’ve ever eaten .. Those of you who know me know thta’s saying something.   I cant wait to have soem on my oatmeal tomorrow !

OK I’m gonna sleep.. Nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me

Friday night – leftovers

Sigh…. this is the first breathing room I’ve had all this week. It’s been an insanely busy week at work and outside of work. As I’ve been reporting it was like every crazy project I had taken on suddenly came due at the same time.. 

The big one on the list was a paper I’m writing for a conference It was due today.. and I finished it at 11:59PM.. Yee-haw.. Well.. I say finished.. I sent it out for a bunch of friends to look over. Diane did a wonderful job of helping me edit it… I’ll get soem comments back and send it in on Monday.

I was still working on it at 4:44 this morning when I took this picture.. I ended up falling asleep on the floor out in the yoga space where I was working. Somehow I managed to get up and function prety well today with about 3 hours of sleep…

Not much specifically cool happened today, but I notice that I have a backlog of several days on my camera.. I think I’ll settle for eeek in review leftovers…

2 days ago Jessi stopped over to hang out..She was back from college on break. it was really nice seeing her. She’s loving school

Gabe had a couple of soccoer games.. here’s the 2nd to last.. under the creepy eye of my cameras color swap thing

We had our last full project-x meeting at homers on Tues night.. Brendan was back from college .. he and Seth helped us strap on the guys arms. Seth and I manged to get the Wiimote numchucks wired into the guys arms.. it’s gonna be very cool ..

Wed night we had our innagural brunign man mutant car design kick off party at Bens.. it was ben, dwayne, homer and me.. I’ts goign to be great workign with homer on this..

We had a great time tossign around ideas… including.. mutant make-up mobile, slide mobile and romman gally mobile.. it’ll be fun working this out. Ben’s place  had much interesting signage ..eg.:

Let’s see.. where’s that leave us.. Oh, thursday.. I was at a uvm meeting that haded out peace pops.. since I’m still vegan.. I took a few and haded them to the first two people I met.. that would be these guys.. whoever they are.. they were happy to get ice cream from a stranger.

Then.. I stayed up all night and worked on teh @%ing paper.. woke up.. and wnet to another set of meetings with UVM..

Late afternoon after a bunch of work meetings sleepingess got the best of me, so I took off for home.. I stopped by the ahunted forest to see the beast.. homer had dropepd him off in the morning.

I got home in time to see Sumner and Kevin who’d dropped by the house to say hi. It was really good tlakign to them.. both of them now driving. It’s one of those things Sam won’t ever do…..Oh man….

Tonight I went to a lecture back at the sheraton.. the guy was a motivational speker . Nice guy.. but the message didn’t click for me. It was good to see how someone else worked a room. He did have some good stories. One thing he did was play a movie clip of Kennedy annoucing the race to the moon. that was wierd because I mentin that speach in my $%&ing paper.. Did I mention that I was writing a paper ?

OMG.. it’s 1 AM .. I gotta sleep.. More tomorrow. nite all. nite Sam
-m

Wednesday night – fried

Friends,
     It’s almost 11:30 and I still haven’t gotten time to work on my paper tonight.. We had our kick off meeting for next years Burning Man vehicle tonight at Ben’s.. then I had to listen to the debates. It’s late now, so I gotta make this brief. It’s been an absolutely insane week for me and for the world. I guess. This is one of those convergence times when everything seems to be happening at once. So. what’s on my plate for the next 2 days ?

  • multiple crises at work.. some brought on by the global economic crisis.. others just normal planned crisis.. all with deadlines either this week or next.. As always.. I won’t describe them here.. but work is absolutely insane right now
  • my ISSCC paper due on friday..
  • the Projext-X pumpkin guy has to be inslalled at the Haunted Forest on Friday. We’re still working out the kinks in the Wiimote numchuck joystick interfaces that move his arms.
  • the spirometer video game interface I’m doing for UVM medical school and Champlain College is due tomorrow. This si the the thing that will allow kids with resperatory illnesses like Cystic Fybrosis to have more fun while doing their breathing exerciese.. by controlling a video game with their breathing.
  • I’m leading a UVM CS department board of advisors meeting tomorrow
  • Gabe’s last soccer game is tomorrow

It seems I’m forgetting soem stuff on top of all this.. but it’s really not all bad. In fact much of this stuff is really, really fun.. 

  • As big a pain it is to write, I’m really enjoying doign the research for the ISSCC paper…. it’s on the topic of technical education outreach.. which is near to my heart.
  • The project-x pumpkin guy really looks and is working great.. it’s ben so gret workign with Homer, Sara, Becca, Jana, Seth, Berndan Cesar anfd the rest. I can’t beleicve how well this thing came out (so far).. Let’s hope it stays OK for the show !
  • I deleiveerd the working C++ code for the spirometer interface to Prof Joe at Champlain today.. I think h’s all set for Peter B’s demo .. I like workign on aproject like this that may help people. 

When it rains. it pours..  they say…  pour me 🙂

OK..   back to the @$% paper.. Sleep well folks.. Nite Sam
-me

Tuesday night – Andrew Levitt’s birthday

Today my friend Crolyn sent me a pointer to today’s entry in Steven Levitt’s blog. Steven co-wrote the book ‘Freakanomics’ which is one of my all time favorite non-fiction books.   Today would have been Steven’s son Andrew’s 10th birthday. . Andrew died ajustr after his first birthday of meningitis.. His post today was really touching.. he wote..

October 14, 2008,  10:59 am

My Son Andrew Would Have Turned 10 Today

By Steven D. Levitt

.. –> end post-info –>

My son Andrew would have turned 10 today.

I usually try to say a little something about him on the blog around this time of year.

This year, I commemorate Andrew through the words of a new friend, John Latham. In his day job, Latham is a leading climate scientist. He also moonlights as a poet.

I generally don’t have much appreciation for poetry. I have to
admit, when Latham pulled a book of verse he had written out of his
briefcase and handed it to me, I would have told him to keep it if that
hadn’t seemed incredibly rude.

But it turns out that, like me, John Latham had a son who died. The poems in the book, entitled Sailor Boy, are dedicated to his son.

These wonderful poems transported me back to the time of Andrew’s
death in a way I never could have imagined. I would never want to stay
in that state permanently, but nonetheless it is a gift to be able to
go back and visit once in a while. As time passes, it gets harder and
harder to reach that place.

Perhaps my favorite poem in the collection (although it is an odd one) is the one I’ve reproduced here:

Feast

She cuts in before I can explain.
Yes, I recollect your booking:
Three-tier cake. July.
Marinated prawns and quiche.

I say we have to bring it forward.
It wasn’t my reception, but my son’s.
Not his wedding, now.
His funeral.

At last she breaks the silence.
How about some nice pork pies?
Folk eat more when they’re sad.

I hear you laughing.

Andrew, we still miss you every day.

Addendum: Thanks so much to all the kind folks who posted comments below; they were profoundly moving.

I posted a comment there:

  • 20.
    October 14th,
    2008
    2:10 pm

    Steven,
    My friend Carolyn just sent me a pointer to your blog. Thanks so much
    for this post. Our beautiful 14 year old son Sam died in Nov. 2006.
    (see http:….Samstones.org ) Your comment ‘it is a gift to be able to go
    back and visit once in a while.’ rings so true to me.
    As I read about Andrew I had this flash of reading Freakanomics and
    coming to the part about his passing I remember putting the book down
    and crying. I couldn’t imagine then what it would be like to lose a son
    like you had. That was before Sam died. Now I still can’t imagine it..
    if you know what I mean.
    Thanks for the pointer to John Latham’s book. Think he’d mind if I
    include this same poem in the blog I keep for Sam
    (http:….blog.myspace.com/johncohn) tonight?
    Thanks for sharing your thoughts about your son… Happy birthday Andrew
    -jc

    — Posted by john cohn

I was goign to repost that poem.. but I guess I just did….

Happy birthday Andrew,,,
Goodnight firneds
goodnight Sam
-me