We have a very early day tomorrow (starts at 7 AM .. ugh) .. so I’m going to make this quick…  We had a good productive day full of brainstorming.. I wish all my days could be this full of thinking… I didn’t get much sleep last night, so it was tough to pry myself out of bed today to run.. I do enjoy running here for some strange reason.. I run around the parking lots of all these half empty malls and offices… I think what makes it fun is that I’ve been doing these same runs for about 20 years.. It’s ugly.. but it’s my ugly.   Actually the scenery is not that bad.. once you get out of the city it looks very much like Vermont.   The hotels pretty nice..  I think it might be my favorite of the 7 in this black.. ( why Fishkill needs 7 big chain hotels I can’t understand)

Funny thing.. as I ran by the restaurant this morning the alarm went off…
 

What do you think made that happen ?

THough I was in meetings all day, I did get a chance to see quite a few freinds in the halls of Fishkill. here’s my good friend Bhavna who’s just moved back from 3 years in Switzerland.

And here’s my friend Jeff… … his brain is wired in an interesting way.. I think he may be the person I know who’s best at coming up with counter examples.. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of some of the code my area creates.  If you give him an idea.. he’ll either say  ‘that will ‘t work’.. or he’ll give you exactly what won’t work about your idea.. He’s also a pretty interesting unit. He wears a medic alert bracelet that says in the event of his imminent demise you should remove his head and put it in liquid nitrogen.. in the hopes that they can revive him many hundreds of years later… Pretty interesting !

I managed to catch a quick beer after work with my friend Sarala… a manager in my old area.. It was good to catch up on the technical and people stories of he area…

Then it was off to dinner at Cafe Aroma.. one of the best restaurants down here.. It was a great time there tonight.. good Italian food and my good friends from the Academy for company. I feel very fortunate to be able to attend events like this.

One interesting interlude tonight was a very spirited conversation between our two interns Chris and Marshea and some of us older folks.. They had some good insights about how to enable new hires to participate in setting strategy. I always think it’s interesting talking across generations I can see myself so clearly in their spot when I was in my early 20’s at IBM.. some things are so different now.. and some things never change. I can tell you one thing. it it’s really freaky to be treated as the ‘old guy’ now..

One bonus tonight was a visit from my good friend Dave. at dinner.. Dave used to be president of the Academy.. now he’s retired. I’ve stayed with Dave and his wife Jean several times in the past year.  Tonight, he was kind enough to bring me a few potato guns that I may  use  as props in a talk I’m giving tomorrow.

After dinner, I had a great call with my dear friend Ruchir.. then went to the grocery store to by pickles for a demo tomorrow.. It’s weird walking around a grocery store at night.. reading the magazine racks… This one reminded me of Sam….

Ahh.. now time for a bath then sleep….

We’re getting to go on a tour of the manufacturing line at 7ish . I’m really excited because I’ve never been through this facility. Hopefully I can get a picture of us in the ‘bunny suits’

OK.. time for sleep.. Hope you all had a good day.. I did . Gnite all.. Gnite Sam, I love you

-me

Very late and very sleepy.   I’m in my overly fancy hotel room contemplating who has time to make roses out toilet paper.

I had a very full day here in Fishkill. It was interesting walking into the buildings here.  I hadn’t been here in more than a year.  I know so many folks here. Walking down an aisle was a veritable mine field of memories. I must have answered the ‘how are you’ riff 50 times today. I’m glad that people care to ask.. it’s exhausting to answer though .. If you’re reading this.. please keep asking.  It was fun romaming the halls down here again.. not much had changed..

Here’s friend Pete.

And friend Chris (from Ausrtalia) and Marshea having at it on the Fusbol table.

Here’s my friend Raminderpal

Here my friend Vasant is looking at a picture of bridge that may or not may have been  built by his grandfather in Cochin India

The yellow lights in the parking lot brought back some comfort.
 

At 7 we met at a great indian place down on room 52…

Karl-Heinz and Steve were there

as was Marhsea.. from our intern team

and , of course, our President Joanne.

Guru and Takeo-san were there, too

as was Curry

Lori and Curry about to call it a night

Me about to wander off to blog…

That’s it.. I can hardy keep my eyes open i. Gotta sleep . .. Gnite all. gnite Sam.. Me…
-jc

Lessseeee… pretty uneventful couple of days.. Last night we all just vegged at home soaking up some needed family time.   Even Chai was feeling sleepy..

Diane and Elizabeth came hoem around 6:30… then another unplanned dinner party for 11. Gabe had brought soem friends with him from the mountian. Diane whipped up a Thai feast. it was amazing.. and we manged to chug down half a big bottle of Sambal hot sauce int he process.

The evening ended up with another   xbox / bad movie marathon…

Last night I stayed up too late fooling wiht the tools I’m hoping I eventually master for my science YouTube video project. Here’s a pretty lame sameple of what I did with the Poser figure animator..and the quarter crusher animation that Seth did for me last week. My aim is to use the animation to get some concepts across quickly… and use an animated figure  (eventually of me) to be a minuture ‘host’   Not much yet.. but with practice.. and some artistic help.. I’m hoping to make something that kids will find wierd, funny and interesting… (I just got an unsolicited art school critque that said … “don’t hold your breath” 🙂 )

We woke today to beutiful winter sunshine  and bluse skies.. still no snow.. but the temperature was back down in the 30’s.. hopefully we’ll get soem snow back this week.

We packed the car with Max’s stuff, Mason’s stuff (he’s coming down for the week) and my stuff.. .I’m goign to be in Fishkill for a few days of Academy meetings… which I’m really looking forward too.  The car was absolutely packed !

We had a goodbye family hug…

Then all crammed into the car

Max took the wheel and we were off…   It took me 20 seconds to get bored in the back seet. I’m not made to be a pasenger.. so I passed out..   

One cool sight.. we passed the aftermath of an ice storm in Barre.. the trees looked like crystal sculptures.

I took over driving in Springfield MA.. Max took over as DJ. The rest of the drive we just talked and listened to music (Lots of Keller Williams !).. it wan’t bad.. about 5.5 hours wiht traffic.

I must say the scenery goes down hill once you leave Vermont. Don’t you just love those well disguised cell towers.

We got to pratt about 5:30.   We moved all of Max’s stuff in….

Turns out Max found out a few days ago that he  is goign to have a roommate this term.. He didn’t realize that they were goign to move anyone else in.. so he hadn’t left the room in a ready-to-move-in-state. That called for a little ‘rearrainging’. Noting a few dumpsters out to the trash/recycling couldn’t fix..

And here is said roomate.. meet Adam from Statin Island.. he’s a design major and seems like a nice guy…

OK… Looks like Max is ready to load up the car with the stuff I’m taking home.. so… I’ll finish here.  Talk to you tomorrow.. Thinking of you, Sam

-me

Nice, slow day.   I woke up at 7.. figured that was too early .. so went back to sleep until 9. Diane headed out to the store…. while I hung out at home and tried to wake up. Our friend Dwayne came over for a nice visit  at around 9: 30. Dwayne’s son Jarred died on Thanksgiving  in 2001 / We sat around talking about our kids, our families and our jobs for about an hour.   He’s so easy to talk to .

Diane showed up around 10:30,. We took advantage of the warm weather and melting snow to try and finish up Gabe’s snowboarding rail. When I built it, I forgot about the part of us not having any hills in our yard.. Ooops. So.. the only thing left to do was to build a hill. Our idea was to use the giant raft that Max made last summer as a movable mountain. We had a couple of strong friends around so we went outside and pried the huge plywood raft out of the wood pile. We dragged it over and leaned it into the wood pile.

Then we all grabbed the rail out of the garage and started to walk it out into the yard. I seem to have managed to design the legs to make it impossible to carry and walk with it at the same time.

Diane had the great idea to turn the thing over.. and that made all the difference. It was so easy to carry upside down.

We shuffled the rail out tot the ramp… now.. what’s missing ? …. Oh yeah,  SNOW !… The idea is to pile the whole thing with snow, make a jump .. and pasta fazoole … It’ll be cool to try and get it  to work.   Now we just have to wait for snow !

It was a beautiful day for a barrel roll.. Mason managed to stay up there.

The day was so beautiful that we decided to go for a walk.. Deb came by so Diane, Deb, Elizabeth, Chai and I headed out to the lower gorge.

As we walked down to the river, we found that there was still  a quite a bit of  snow back int the woods.

The river was very high and runnign fast. it was really nice with the rocks still covered with snow

The running water was too much of a temptation for me.. I had to go in for a dip. Deb and Elizabeth graciously averted their eyes due to my.. errrr…. lack of porper bathing attire…

They didn’t have to look away long.. The water was quite refreshing… so refreshing that I was in and out in less than a minute.. It felt SO good. When you jump in a rushing river that’s just about freezing.. it really makes you feel alive .. that is unless it kills you. The cold water seemed to completely washed away the rummy mood I’d been in for about 3 days.

I stayed in even longer than Chai !

We had this great slanty sun as we walked home. It was nice.. ( though I still couldn’t feel my feet. )

When all my parts thawed I took Chai out for a late afternoon run.. The snow was mostly gone on the rivershore trail.. except for where it had been packed on the trail.. It was tough running on the snow.. but it felt good to run rather than snowshoe for a change.

I made it to the turn around point where I always talk to Sam.. it has a great view of Robbin’s Mountain..

I got a jump on my springtime ritual of writing Sam’s name in the snow there.

OK.. I’m going to go help cook.. or at least help eat.   Tomorrow  I take Max back to Pratt… gotta get some sleep before that. Tallk to you then.. Nite all. Nite Sam.
-me