Yearly Archives: 2008

Friday night – doing windows

Another quiet day.. Work was busy but uneventful. It was a cool and rainy day.. just the way I like them.. I noticed our morning glories were still holding out .

I heard that our friend Jim,  from Houston passed away yesterday. He and his family were neighbors  of ours from the 60’s through the 80’s . His son Bruce is a good friend of mine and brother Billy’s . I’ve been thinking of Bruce and his family all day.

When I left this morning, Diane was just finishing the masking of the windows…

By the time I’d gotten home she’d cleaned and primed the entire set… the two of us got the first coat of paint on them this evening. It’s about 12:30 AM and I just finished the first coat.. looks great ! ..

It’s the first time in 17 years that we’ve painted these things.. there are a whole lot of windows in this room… 84 individual panes of glass just on that one wall !
I’m still trying to keep this ‘innovation diary’ for a project at work.. I hope you guys will indulge me here. it’s only for a week.. Each day I’m ‘sposed to answer the same questions.. so here goes again.

1. What, if anything related to innovating occurred for you today? 

Cuz this is an external blog, I know I need to keep this discussion about stuff I do outside of work. I had thought about concentrating on the Project-X monster project, but Diane pointed out at dinner.. that I probably should restrict my answers to that one project.. So I guess I had 3 outside of work innovationg thingy’s today..

The first was on my drive in to work. As I passed the Checkered House resturant on Rt 2 I saw this big pile of stuf marked FREE ! One of the things was a boat !.. or at least the shell of a boat..

Anyway.. I  said to myself “Self..” I says …   “what could I do with a free broken shell of a boat… ”  ? I immediately saw a possibility for a  mutant car for next year’s Burning Man… just cut the bottom off this baby, cut the top off a car , slap them together and you have the Gilligansislandmobile… ready to cruse the playa in search of frozen rum drinks. I immediately called friend Ben .. the brains behind our Burning Man posse and suggested the idea.. He luckily talked me out of it.. I say luckily.. because I was in no position to grab the boat. Ben suggested that we figure out what we want to build then go scavenging .. rather than let fate chose our design… good thinking… no wonder he’s the brains..

Next came the one planned inventing I had for the day.. and this does pertain to the Project-X robot.. I’d planned a trip to radio shack to get parts to finish off the control electronics for the beast. I needed to find a 24VDC quarter amp supply, a 6V 4 Amp supply and a nine volt supply .. I also needed to find some cabling for the beasts voice box.. As is now usually the case, I was so disappointing in radio shacks dwindling supply of parts.. They are catering less and less to the mad scintists of the world.. and more and more trying to sell the same consumer crap you can get in the box stores.. strike one against inventors.. Anyway.. I didn’t find much of what I was looking for.. no supplies.. just some wire.. and I impulse bought a voice recorder chip that I’ll use as a looping scary message for the beast to say for testing.   I hadn’t planned to do that.. but the sight of the chip gave me the idea…   5 minutes after driving awaysI realized how I could have adapted something they had to give me my 24 v supply.. but I was too beat to turn back.. .. I guess the lessons form this exercise are.. invention rarely works as planned.. and sometimes I make the most interesting innovations on one thing (the voice thing) when I’m trying to make progress on another (the power thing)

My final invention story came from Gabe.. I got home just as he was getting ready to go to a middle school dance. He had to leave in 5 min.. but asked me if we could rig up some blinking lights for him.. We quickly pulled together some blinking leds, lithium batteries and NeFoB magnets.. taped them together into ‘throwies’ and magnet and tapped them to his pants and shoes.. Gabe has great ideas for stuff liek this.. Here he is in the light

in the semi-light

and the dark…

He said they worked great at the dance.. he lost a few in the mosh.. but hey.. what do you expect from seat of the pants … or knee of the pants.. inventing ?

2. Who else was involved (knowingly or not!) in what happened for you on that effort today? (Please don’t forget to include ST chats, email exchanges, etc.)

I got in touch with Becca and Sara from Triptych who are finishing the Project-x beasts animatronic head.. unfortunately the wet weather prevented the paint from drying.. so it looks like we won’t get the head back this weekend.. I understand the weather constraint.. It’s too bad though, we were hoping to do our final physical integration this weekend. Time is getting short.. We will manage though.. I asked becca to take some measurements of the new head dimensions.. we need to make sure that the beast’s knees don’t hit the head or jaw when it’s in a full crouch.

Anyway.. I guess this just illustrates both the pros and cons of innovating as a team.. the pros are .. you can figure out ways to work in parallel.. the cons are you have to figure out ways to interlock on technical details and schedules.. that can gate progress….. Even so.. its’ so much more fun working with folks on a project like this. Sara and Becca have such a cool artistic vision for the project !

3. In general, do you feel more optimistic or more concerned about the potential / likely success of this effort today than yesterday?  Why?

I’m getting very nervous that we won’t be able to do our integration testing for the project-x monster this weekend.. we’re running out of weekends !

4. Please take a picture of something (anything) that is suggestive of this effort in any way that is meaningful to you….  (or draw one).

hmmmm.. already did the pictures above.. I’ll re-include a video we took of the beasts skeleton a few weeks back.. it looks nothing like this now.. but.. you can get an idea of the jaw working.

..

5. Did anything hinder your innovativeness today ?

lack of time.. lack  of focus.. lack of lack of parts .. lack of sushi

6. Add anything else you think pertinent to your day. 

 Let me sleep on that.  nite all. Night Sam !

-me

Thursday night – the perfect pizza

What a beautiful fall day..I worked at home in hopes of making some progress on a paper I’m writing.. but  the wonderful weather made me take an unintended mental health day.. I worked all day.. but my mind and heart were outside. Diane and I took a great walk up honey hollow during my lunch break..  the colors were amazing or this early in the season..bright reds , oranges and yellows miced in with lots of dark green hold outs. I’s more colorful for this time of year than I can remember it being for years !..   .. and wouldn’t you know I forgot my camera !

You can just feel fall everywhere.. in the colors, in the smells .. in the animals.. ike this guy.. I’m sue he’s just trying to top off his reserves before the snow hits.

Aroudn 4 I took another break and went and watched Gabe’s soccer game.. He’s really getting good.. It was nice just lying in the grass as they tried chasing the ball around.. I defintely prefer the spectator role ..

Diane and I hpkanned to work on the house painting project tongiht I’d suggested ordering Pizza.. but Diane offered to cook instead.. and what emerge was the perfect cohn-mariano pizza.. one pizza, three different types of topping.. !

Cheese and suteed onions for Gabe..

Onins, olives and cheese for beutiful Diane..

And the random condiment , no cheese vegan model for me !

After dinner we spent  few hours working on the painting prep. I managed to cut myself pretty badly with a coping saw (can you believe that ?!) fixing a piece of molding . After the project I was covered with blood and caulk !.

After prepping for a bit, Gabe came down and asked for some help with the audio editor.. He’s   getting very good with this remix software that we found.. Right now he’s helping me build up a science based musical thing for my show. It’s really fun working with him on this..

OK.. change of gears.. I’m participating in a study at work on innovation.. they’ve asked me to keep a journal about innovation for a complete week. I’m not interested in taking on another writing project like that.. so I agreed to do it  only if I could include my entries in this blog as well. ..As such, I’ll keept this on the topic of non-work related innovation.  So here goes:

 

–1. What, if anything related to innovating occurred for you today?

I did not have a particularly innovative day.. I did spend some time thinking about the Project-x robot monster. I debated rebuilding it’s arduino-based control board to clean it up. in the end I opted not to do  that given time constraints.  I did some experimentation with the creatures jaw.. but I couldn’t find a way to improve it’s electronic bite.My main concerns wrt. innovation at this moment are related to how we cna make the three basic power supplies for the beast (24vdc,6vdc, 9 vdc) tight, robust and waterproof. ….I had some ideas on how I could do the whole thing off a  single24vdc supply.

2. Who else was involved (knowingly or not!) in what happened for you on that effort today? (Please don’t forget to include STchats, email exchanges, etc.)         

Diane helped me out by taking the monster’s head into Williston to give it to jana. jana in turn took the thing to Sara and Becca. Homer helped me.. but he didn’t know it.. I  talked an idea over with him in my own mind. .. I never called him to discuss it though.

3. In general, do you feel more optimistic or more concerned about the potential / likely success of this effort today than yesterday?  Why?

 Uhhhhh.. I’m till scared about our deadline.for Project-X. so I’d guess I’d say I’m the same level of concern . It’s an insane project with insane constraints.. that’s part of what makes it fun !

4. Please take a picture of something (anything) that is suggestive of this effort in any way that is meaningful to you….  (or draw one)…

Can’t be much more suggestive than this !
 

 

 

 

5. ..Did anything hinder your innovativeness today? 

Loaded question.. the fact that I have a day job got in my way f innovating today.. but I did actually innovate a bit there as well.. just not in a way that I can share here.. My stumbling blocks at home are always lack of time..at work it’s often much more complicates. .. it is a combination of lack of time., fighting established agendas, scarcity of funds.. and my own shyness.

 

6. Add anything else you think pertinent to your day. 

 I hope thiat doing this survey daily in this bog will be fun and useful..

I also hope to get some sleep tonoght.. so nite all. Night Sam !

-me


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday night – swathes

 

Got home around 11:30 to find Diane still up and painting.I was glad to see her !. It was a good fast trip to NY.. the highpoint was seeing Max.. Here’s a a couple of pictures I took after blogging last night.. They decided to give their freind Ross an inverse Mohawk..
 

We all got to bed around 2:30.  Around 9:30 I dropped Max off at math class … and then I headed north.   Before I left, I ddi get a shot of the bullet holes in max’s building’s door… pretty strange !

I hadn’t gotten very far when I got a call from my good friend Camil.. he was calling from Lebanon.. He needed some info about Sam. He was planting a Cedar tree in Sam’s honor and needed some  details..   and an inscription. It is so wonderful for camil to do thiis for us !

As I drove out of the city I was thinking how cool it is that there will be a samll memorial to akid with the very jewish name Cohn in muslim Lebanon..  Speaking of jewish.. I’m still supriised every time I drive through Max’s neighborhood and bussess and stores with their names written in Yiddish..  (here yeshiva (school) y’sahdi hatorah)

From there I drove up to Yorktown for a day full of meetings. I took my firest meetign with friend  Mark.. we went out hiking rather than staying at work, we were evidently at great peril of tick bites.

Weused a beutiful trail that used to be an old railroad.

Then i was back at work.. I rnan into many freindstrhough the day.. including Bob M who had this poster the wall..Makes me feel like a bolshevik !

The drive home was uneventful. I listened to  ‘ A whole new mind’  by Daniel Pink.. So far, Ireally receommend it..

As I said I go home around 11:30 … to find diane still painting.. She’s still wrkign onchoosing the colors.  Judging by the swaths of colors..  Diane’s still looking !

For completeness.. we uncovered soem of the original lead-based wainscoting paint !

OK.. about 1:30 and I need to sleep !.. See all of you !

Gnite all, gnite Saml!
-me

Tuesday night – Max’s apartment

It’s about 12:30 and I’m sitting in Max’s apartment in Brooklyn. I made the call midday to come down to NY for a party tonight and a set of meetings tomorrow. I’m really glad that I decided to come
My main motivation for coming down was to go to a retirement  party for Nick D. the ‘godfather’ of the IBM technical community. He’s retiring after 44 years at IBM.. including several years up in Burlington. Nick has been a patron and mentor to me and thousands of other technical folks here at IBM. He’s an amazing guy.. I’ve seen him walk into a room of 500 people and know more than half of their names, where they live, what they do.. and even stuff about their families. He’s so smart and so down to earth at the same time..  and so passionate about what we do and who we are. We’re all really going to miss him.  

There were about 300 of us there tonight.. including many friends from all over the place.. I ran into friends brad and carl in the bar.. I knew most of the folks there. It was fun seeing so many freinds in one place.


They had some great old pictures of Nick..

My freind Doug kicked off the program.  Frist Adalio S.  (I think ?) got up and made a presentation to Nick on behalf of hispanic engineers. Then My freind Joanne and I got up and presented Nick with a cool word art thing we’d made for him… Then   there was a live CSPAN segement of Vermont’s Congressional rep, Peter Welch making a proclimation at the US Capital in honor of Nick.

Then Nick’s successors John K and Linda S. got up and announced a new scholarship created in Nicks naeme at hisalma mater of RPI.

Then there were tonsof video tributes form customers, IBM folks and nick’s family.. His grandkids (in vermont) were so cute !

Sam P. made a nice video tribute

As did Lou

Even Nick’s mom did a piece !

Then Nick got up and spoke..  He was inspiring and human as always..  He talked about how much he loved this place.. and you could tell that he really meant it..

Everyone was standing at the end.

As Nick Sat down. they rolled a movie that the guys in Austin had made. It was all IBM execs playing a song  they’d written.. and .. they didn’t suck at all  !.  Tony B. actually played excelelnt lead..

I grabbed this shot of the 4 ‘dancers’ .. Note cousin Mark on the left  (with Helene, Calvin and Brad. I

The party went on for an hour or so, then we all filtered out.. I drove into the city to Max’s .. There was hardly any traffic so it was only about 30 minutes in..   Max and his friends were just hanging out in there very awesme apartment.

Max cooked me a great dinner.. then we all hung out

Then Max cut his own hair.. then some of his  freindshair.. It was fun and bizzare.

Now.. it’s 1AM.. and they are shing Steves head for soem strange reason..   Interesting place !

It’s been reat seeing Max and his freinds.. They have a good life here..

OK.. I gotta sleep.. more tomorrow.. Nite all. Nite Sam !
-me

ps. Here’s the latest version of the project-x robot’s head..