Yearly Archives: 2008

Thursday night – overload

I hit red-line today… too much to do.. too much to think about. Nearly all of it stuff I’ve taken on by choice.. not because I had to. I had to stop around 4 because my rain was full.. literally. I could no longer think. My life feels busy in the way it did before Sam died.. and I don’t like that.. yet.. I really like most of the stuff I’m involved in.. A curse of riches… Just too much stuff.. I’m trying to find enough time to step back and pare off some of the less critical things before I go crazy .. It will mean some hard choices. I even wonder about this blog sometimes.. It takes up to an hour every night… .. Time which I could be sleeping, reading, hanging with my family. For now.. it still seems like a good investment. Writing helps me calm down after a busy day

Enough whining.. I have some pictures left over from yesterday to share.. and some from today.. Here’s a few pictures from my stay at Ruchir and Rashi’s night before last. Here’s one of Isha with a loose front tooth

She’d just had a birthday… One of her gifts was the Game of Life.. I couldn’t help meditating on message on the back.. Who knows where your choices will take you ?

Isha and Anika took my camera and took this flattering shot of me brushing my teeth…

Nika and Rashi’s dad come to say good bye as isha and Ruchir and I drive to work. We dropped Isha at her summer writing camp.

One shot from my day at Yorktown.. My friend Peter turende 50 yesterday.. He looks actually younger now than he did when we were in gra school together nearly 20 years ago. he and my freind Chandu helped me get through a very tough but interesting linear systems class in grad school. Happy birthday Peter !

Flash to today… I woke early and took Diane’s early morning yoga class. then we took a run. It was a good balancing way to start the day.

In the middle of a packed moring, my firend Anirudh showed up..He’s another one of my grad school buddies. I haven’t seen him in at least 2 years.. he’s now a big shot manager at one of our suppliers. It was really nice catching up with him.. we had a good talk about Sam, life, fortune.. and circuit simulation. It was good to see how much un he’s having in his work..

g

Tomwards the end of the day there was a receiption for folks who’d been honored at IBM in the past year. It was a really nice reception with creat finger food… and even wine and beer !.. Thomas Watson Sr. (founder of IBM) would never have imagined this ! ere’s a picture of a cluster of the honorees. ..

I ran into so many good, good friends at that receiption that I hadn’t seen in months !. it reminded me that I need to get out of my ofice more an walk around the halls.. I saw my freind Kim.. and she howed me her Moreno glass ring that I traded her (vindirectly) for soem work she did to help me..

I also saw my friend John who was happy just to be over in Williston.

After work we had another of our Haunted Forest ‘Project-X’ meetings. We’ve been making progress.. but having soem technical difficulties as well. The pneumatic ift we bought onebay has a mechanical problem. We either need to pay to have it repaired.. or get itreplaced. This is a critical piece of our scary creature.. so we need to reslve this quickly !..

Our goal tonight was to create a mechanical mock up of the head/fave animatronics. We had a good crowd their tonight including Ed.. another VoMIT (Vermons’ Own M.I.T. club) member. He’ looks appropriately crazed in this picture.

We also had KC, Seth and Brendan..

And Lucy and Ceasar… Buddy showed up too..

We were trying to figure out soem proportions for the monstors jaw and face. Seth ran upstaris and did some trials with the jaw size..

We at below and watched.. I’m sure this would have looked pretty wierd to anyone not involved in the project.. It looked pretty wierd to me !

Just as we were begining to work, a huge thunderstorm came rolling in.. the sky turned pitch black.. Here’s Admiral Gabe braving the storm..

By the end of the night, Lucy, Cesar and Seth had built a really good mock up of the monsters head.. complete with eyes and moving jaw.

Oh no.. it ate Seth !

OK.. sleep beckons. More tomorrow.. Nite all. nite Sam !
-me

wednesday night – bathtub

Greetings from the bathtub. I just got back from a conference in yorktown. This is the first time I’ve beeb home in more than a weel and a half. I’m celibrating by taking a nice long soak in the tub. We’ll find out if my blackberry is waterproof. Ib the past week and a half I’ve been in 3 totally different sets of ibm $eetong. Differnt topics, diofferent people… Different time horizons. Each of them has been really great. Together they’ve been. Exhausting. Not so. Much physically.as mentally and emotionally. I need a few days to unburn my candle.

In finding myself really energoized and excited about the things I’m involved in at work…there’s jiust too much of it right now. I suppose I should just be happy that I’m mostly happy.

Man..this water is hot … I need to get out before I melt. Well.. Its a first anyway.. First blog post from under water…

Good night folks..wash behind your ears U2 sam

-me

Tuesday night – Watson

I woke around 5 this morning and headed from Endicott to Yorktown . We’d all had a great stay there.. Diane. Gabe, Trevor and the dogs were leaving a bit later this morning.

I got to Yorktown in a little more than 3 hours. it was a beautiful drive.. and I had several good calls with friends on the drive over.. I got to Yorktown jus tin time for the start of the conference I was attending. The conference was really interesting.. lots of good friends from Yorktown.. and several freind from Academia.. Not only was it very good seeing everyone.. but the meeting was super interesting as well

At one point my buddy Bob and I had to go take a call.. Bob’s about to celibrate his 50th year at IBM ! In that time he’s won just abut every industry award ther is..

I particulary liked thi one.. igned by Ronald Reagan !!!

The meeting broke up just after 6.. we all headed to a nice restruant in Mt. Kisco fro a group dinner. I was so busy talkign that I forgot to take my camer out.. I only got this picture as folks filed out after dinner. You’ll have to take my word for it that it was fun …

Im staying at Hotel Puri again.. We got here about 10:30.. Rashi and her parents were still awake. Rahi, Ruchir Rashi’s dad and I satt on the patio for while and talked abut politcs, the afterlife,Deepak Chopra, tainted ayurvedic medicines and Quinua. I always love tlakign to these guys.. I realized that I was having trouble staying awake though.. I went upstairsto go to sleep. Juchir showed me the picture he’d recently made for his daughter Isha’s birthday. It was the only brithday presant she said that she’d wanted..

Cute family.. OK..all for now. Must sleep. Goodnight to my cute family (and friends) G’nite Sam !
-me

Sunday evening – Endicott

We’ve had a very peaceful day here in Endicott. It’s always quiet and relaxing here… Gabe and Marcia (if that’s their real names) are great hosts.

Diane’s brother Joe came by a few times.. His kids Victor and Vincent have been in and out all day. They are such good looking grown up kids. Both of them have jobs this summer. Vicotr works at Roma’s pizza (yum !) .. Vincent works as a golf club catering.. he’s looking at colleges now.. including Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth.. He’s quite an amazing student.

We hung around outside trying to beat the heat.. Here’s Joe..

,. and Marcia

.. and a bunny that hung out much of hte day driving the dogs crazy !

Midday Linda, David and Andrea came over to hang out. Andrea was wearing these very cool blue contacts that made her eyes glow supernaturally..

We all sat down and turned 50 punds of clay into samstones. We all miss Sam so much .. It’s amplified when we visit here.. We all expect Sam to come walkign into the room at any time.. There are signs of him all over here.. And reminders of all the fun he and his brothers had when they visited here Making SamStoens was the perfect thing for us to do…

We took a short break inthe afternoon to walk the dogs down to the Naticoke river.. A favorite hang out for all of our kids.. We walk down there on a usually dry creek bed wich is full of fossils..

We spent a few minutes down at the river to let the dogs romp. It brought so many good memories back to me.. I skipped soem rocks and thought of all the times wwe brought the three boys down here… I had to walk off and be by myself for a bit down there… to be with Sam….

Linda pointed out some forget-me-nots.. down there.. nice ..

David and Diane found rocks with fossils in them.. We went back and made a few SamStoens with fossil rpints in them.. That was pretty cool.

Around 6 we went and got Chineese food for everyone.. Both Gabe and Trevor are also doing vegitarian right now.. so between them and us it was a Tofu fest I got a kick out of this sign in the fronto of the Chinese place.. Note the footnote on the bottom.

It rained otrrentially as we drove to pick up the food.. When we got back to Diane’s street we found it blocked by a firetruck ! We’;d seen another road closing on the way home.. We thought it might have been a tree or power pole down.. but it turned out that they were only filling thier tank…

Well.. that’s about it for the day…Linda, David, Andrea, Diane, Gabe, Trevor, Vincent, Victor and I are about to hit the 9:30 PM showing of Batman.. I’m psyched !
Nite all.. Bye Sam.. we’re missing you..
-jc