Yearly Archives: 2008

Saturday night – sick

i friends.. I’m writing from bed and it’s only 9:45. I woke up with some sort of bug this morning.. I’ve been feeling feverish and achy all day. I’m pretty sure I got it from the woman who was sitting behind me on the flight down to Pittsburgh. She kept saying how bad she felt.. I’m sure my defenses were down after the travel to burning man and Pittsburgh..
It’s kinda nice to be a little sick.. it sort of forces you to slow down.. As such, I don’t have much to report..
This morning was very quiet.. I did some catching up on the placed and found SamStones on the SamStones website .Angus. MJ, Burt and Sarah came over with a donation to the Sam Cohn Fund. Angus has made another snowboard movie dedicated to Sam.. the money is from the sponsorship. He did the came thing last year with the Tonar project he did with some friends . It’s so cool and generous that he does this !

Around mid afternoon I worked with Gabe and Jack to make a skateboard ramp.. I estimated it would take a half hour.. it took 3 hours. I was in my normal manic state when I get on a project and didn’t notice the time.. I could tell the kids were getting restless.. but in the end, it came out pretty well. We took it down to Gary and Jean’s in Richmond. Thier house is sort of on a cul-de-sac now that the richmond bridge is closed ! The kids had a good time skateboarding on the now empty road.. Gary and Jean say it’s erie how quiet it is without the cars.

We all walked across the bridge and got Pizza at the Bakery and took it back to Gary and Jean’s to eat..

One other thing that happened today is that I had to say goodbye to a good freind. my old trusty Canon Powershot that I’ve been carrying for a year and a half to illustrate this blog has fibally bit the dust.. literally. Burnign man really did it in. I tried to take it a part to clean it.. but was not able to get it all working again.. Tomorrow I’ll need to get it’s replacement. It’s been a good companion to me. I’ll have to think of something cool to do with it.

So.. In liu of new photos.. let me share a couple of shots that Cesar and Lucy took on their cross country trip…

Here’s a Samstone they placed on the Tesla monument at Niagara falls.. I’m a big tesla fan.. Sam once wrote a reort on him and went into school dressed like Tesla !

Here’s one they placed at Old Faithfull Geyser

Here’s one at the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming

And finally one thye place at Mt. Rushmore !

Sam is truly everyhere…

OK.. All for tonight.. more tomorrow. G’nite friends.

Love you Sam
-me

Friday night – art hop

I woke this morning in Pittsburgh.. showered quickly and drove to the airport. I got to the airport with none o the delays I had anticipated which gave me more than an hour of wandering around time. One of the the things I wanted to see in the airport was the doorway that my friend Mike (the one from yesterday’s blog) had designer here nearly 20 years ago.. Amazingly, it was just down from my gate. I remember seeing all these models of this structure on Mike’s desk. He agonized over the design and worked out every detail. Should the blue be on the right.. or the left ? That process made me realize how much thought goes into everything in our daily life.. Everything man made thing we touch or see was designed by someone..

I worked hard on the flight to JFK.. IA few min after I got off the plane I ran into my friend Tina. She’s from Austin.. We work together closely on a number of IBM projects. It was great running into her because we had several things to talk about.. It really is a very small world.

I got back to Burlington around 4.. then had a couple of phone meetings in the afternoon. By around 5 I was pretty beat.. so I headed home. Ave, Kevin and Nate stopped by just as I got home just to say ‘hi’ They’re on their way tot eh homecoming bonfire at school.. Sam belongs there, too.

Diane, Gabe and I decided to go to the Burlingotn Art Hop this evening. it’s an annual collection of local artists and shops. We staryed at JDK.. and worked our way basically south.

At JDK we met David’s good friend Marshall..who’s a painter. . There’s a certain resemblemnce.. no ?

We stopped at Church and maple and saw some of my good freinds from Champlain who were demoing thier wares.. Her’s Brian.. fresh back from South Africa.

Mike man was there..

As were Awesome and Alex.

We wondered from there down pine street. Most every shop and buliding had soem thing goign for the art hop It was a lttle like a microscopic comercial version of burning man ! There were art instalations. cosutmes, etc.

We wanderd by teh Iron pour early.. hthere were lots of my old frinds there.. Here’s Yko with his b’trothed.

Here’s a funny group doing a movie using paper rollers which they accompanied with home made folk music. . i think this song was called ‘Jesus goes to Gitmo’
It was pretty strange and funny.

Thereywere still a few hours off of metling so we wandered down pine streed. We ran intoold frineds Robin and Sandy. It wsa Robin’s birthday. We hadnt seen each other in maybe 15 years.. whihc would make me pretty hard to recognize.

From there we toured a few gallerys and stores..

In one exhibit I saw this woman with a funny logo:

We then made the long hike to see the tail end of the fashion event. We went tehre also to meeteup with Tim and Jen..

Tim and Jen’s daughter Marie was on of the models.. she looked good !

From there we went back to the iron pour, but the furnace was still not up to speed. I saw many of my old iron pour friends there.. It was great to see Matt.

And Thea …

We just couldn’t wait for the pour, so we packed up and headed home.. right past the fire dancers..

I tell you .. this really is a bit like a scaled back burning man. lights. pvideo. techno music the works.

OK.. I really need to sleep .. More tomorrow.. Gnite all.. Gnite Sam !
-jc

thursday night – CMU anniversary

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 !

Tuesday night – After Burn

First of all, I want to wish my darling Mama and cute little baby bro- happy birthdays today. Ma is an amazingly energetic 75 will Billy is a boyish… what ? … 48 ? . Happy birthday to you both !




I’ve been walking around in a pleasant daze today trying to readjust to the real world after Burning Man. Several times today I’ve tried to describe what it was like out there on the playa.. I remember reading the “What is Burning Man” essay on BurningMan.com . It said “Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.”.. I remember thinking.. that was hyperbole.. but I’m finding it to be true. I’ve tried at least 20 times today to explain to friends what the event was like.. and came up short every time.

Already some of the folks in our group are talking about next year… at this point, I can’t imagine not going.. I wonder how I’ll feel then.  Here’s a montage of folks from our group. None of us remembered to take a group shot !



Anyway.. that was last week. This week we’re back to just the three of us in this huge house. It feels strange and quiet.. but also peaceful. I like the extra time with Gabe. He’s such a fun kid to hang around with.  He’s taken it upon himself to redecorate his room and bathroom using a bunch of wild colors.. Now he wants to add fiber optic lighting to the walls. That should be a fun project to do together.

Man.. It’s only 8:30 and I can hardly keep my eyes open.. I’ve had 9 hour sleeps the last 2 nights.. I’m guessing that I need another.   I’ll end here cuz I think Diane, Gabe and I are going to watch a movie.. Peace out folks.. Peace out Sam
-me