Very busy and social day today. I had intended to spend it working on my talk.. but I guess that’s what I’m doing tonight. It’s worth it, though.. It was fun getting out of the house and seeing people.. First up this morning was breakfast with my friends Bart and Bob at On The Rise. .. Bart works here at IBM in an area related to mine… We’re something like 3rd cousins once removed on an IBM org chart. Bob live in NY and works in Yorktown. I’ve known Bob for longer than I can remember.. I met him at a pizza shop in Austin… when he came over and started eating my pizza as he introduced himself.. The three of us talked about work stuff and family stuff and state of the world stuff.. A good way to start the day… It was really good seeing them both.

I got this one picture of Bob that caught him looking so serious and wise… .. even wiser and more serious after a little photoshop…

I left those guys at 10:30 in time to go home and get Gabe up to the mountain . There was a Snowboard competition up there that he hadn’t signed up for.. but wanted to see … He said the snow was great today…   On the way back down the mountain, Homer called to tell me that his fnew friend Whit was coming by the shop at 1:30 and wanted us all to get together.Whit is only in town until tomorrow..  I called Max and invited him and Jesse to go with me.. We headed down to Monkton around 1:30.. .

Whit and Nicole arrived right before we got to Homer’s shop.. They’ve been visiting from San Fransisco as Whit teaches a class in Fire art at Middlebury.  The class of Middlebury students are building Fire trees and Propane flame canons..  By day, Whit is a corporate attorney who helps get green energy inventors linked to venture capitalist in a socially responsible way.. By night he’s an artist… actually a fire artist.
Nicole is a skin consultant in SF. They’ve been going to Burning Man for many years… Last year they worked on two pieces Max and I saw and loved. at Burning man last Summer. The first was a piece called pyrocardiem , it was a ring of flame jets that was hooked to a pulse detector..you slid on a little pulse oximeter… and the torches flared every time your heart beat !… (Is that cool .. or what !>!).. Max actually got hooked up to it .. The second was a 15 foot tall polycarbonate shield where you could blow propane, oxygen  and hydrogen through soap and make floating explosive bubbles. You popped them with little glow plugs. It was honestly m favorite piece at burning man.. As Whit described it.. i had this flash back that I’d actually met him and talked about the piece for a few minutes at the show.. it is a very tiny planet … no ?

Max, Jessie, Homer Nicole and I talked for about 2 hours about flame cannons, Burning man… names of contacts the other might find usefule and possible things we could build together. It was really great getting to know them…   ..

Next step is to build one of those propane cannons.. but not until after my talk….

Thanks to Jessie’s’ mindfulness we got back on the road towards home in time.. We’d invited Lou, Kathy and August over for an early dinner… That was another very nice meeting. I had a few minutes to talk to Augie about school. He’s in the Computer Science program at UVM.. and I co-chair the board of advisers for that department… It was a great chance to get some first hand feedback on the program.. He had some good ideas which I’ll filter back to the board

Dinner was really nice.. we hadn’t all sat down for a meal together in quite some time.. it was good to catch up…

Diane figured out a clever way to keep the dogs chilled out during dinner.. She gave each of the dogs a bone to chew.. so they all sat quietly as we talked… Right before Lou and Kathy left, Max asked out permission to show them what Reptar is usually like.. He went and got the dog’s favorite toy.. his old rugby ball. When Reptar sees this ball, he goes absolutely crazy…   See for yourself

OK.. All for the night.. I’ve got to get to work on my talk.. I’m getting nervous… ande excited about delivering this talk… It’s the largest group (~4000 folks) I’ve ever spoken in front of…If  think to hard about that, it will freak me out.  It made me think o fa great interview I heard on NPR  of a woman who will be reading a poem she’s written at Obama’s inauguration next week. The interviewer asked her if she was frightened by the prospect of speaking in front of all those people.. She answered “challenged… not frightened”.. That’s how I’m choosing to approach this talk… Please remind me of that if you see me veering towards ‘frightened’..

That’s it for tonight.. Goodnight my friends.. Good night Sam
-me

I had a very good and productive day working at home today. I worked straight from 8 Am till 6 with abut 1 15 minute break it felt strangely good to be that focused. I knocked off around 6 because My friend John H. had invited me  to go hear Johnny Winter at Higher Ground. When was the last time I went and heard Johnny Winter?.. Maybe 1977 ? … He walked out on the stage looking every bit of his 64 years.. he was bent over with pain and stiff….

He sat down ion a stool in the middle of the stage.. picked up his guitar… then the years just melted away. He is one of the best southern blues rock guitarists that there has ever been. .. and he sounded as good as he did30 years ago.. He was lightening fast and clean.. and his voice was sting.. It was an awesome show…  As always,  … as soon as the live music started, my head started to clear.. as the music washed over me .. I got lighter and lighter.. it’s probably the most spiritual thing I ever do…

Higher ground was packed… and for once.. I think I was at or below the average age in the place.. Luckily, there were few kids in the place watching us geezers dance.. It wasn’t a pretty site…   One pretty site I did see was some of my light up beer trays in use.. here’s number four.. the purple one being modeled by the lovely Terry.. Lights on…

Speaking of ‘lights on/ lights off’.. I finally finished the installation of the blog linker in the tower.. Now all of the lights in the tower blink off off for one second each time someone reads my blog.. .. Here’s a vid I took outside tonight while Max visited  the blog..   .. the same thing will happen when you visit it.. , gentle  reader. If you’re reading this now.. you just made the lights blink on my house… Go ahead.. do it again !

One strange thing did happen today… I needed to find some photographs of myself dressed up for an audition thing I’m doing.. since I rarely get dressed up… I asked a bunch of my work friends  to see if they had any photos of me in a jacket.. One of my friends at CMU found this picture .. This was taken at the DAC conference in 2005 (I think.. They’d brought in this palm reader to a party I attended.. She’s the women who read my palm and said ‘you’ve lost a child’… and I pulled my hand back from her in shock.. This was in 2005.. a year before Sam died…   I had no idea that someone had taken a picture.. Seeing this gives me chills…

Funny as it sounds.. the story of the palm reader actually is somehow reassuring to me.. there are things we just don’t understand.. and I need that…

Gnite folks.. Gnite Sam.. I love you
-me

Woke up early and well rested in my personal hotel building at Choate.. I had time to take a short run around the beautiful campur.. really it was nicer than mpst college campuses I’ve visited..

Here’s the guest house I stayed in.. again.. I had the entire building to myself !

Here’s a few scens around campus from my run..   Here’s the dining hall

and some churchy thing..

And here’s my host Kevin in fornt of his house.. he and his family are the house parents for 12 tean age boys…

We climbde the hill to breakfast.. past all the pictures of past administrators.. I loved these old pictures.. lots of famous names Mellons. Carnegies, etc…

And then into the dining hall.. I felt liek I was in Hogwarts !

They did have orange juice and grape juice which I mixed together to give me super strength .. (though oddly they had no green tinkertoys to stir them).. Went well with bmy gagle-peanut butter-hot sauce-and-A1 breakfast.

I showed up at the I.M Pei designed tehatre aaround 9 for set up.. the place was perfect.. the kids filed in around 10.. THere were abotu 320 of them I think..

The show went really well.. teh kids stayed with me the whole way. A very funny and wierd thing happened at the end of the show.. The lights in the building failed… It was a perfect time.. Was it the tesla coil that knowcked them out .. or Sam ? I think it was Sam.. everythign I touched that was electrical for the rest of the day was freakign out as well (my headset, phone. lap op.. the car ciggarette  lighters stopped working, GPS stoped, then radio stopped.. .. I must be rasiatign soemthing !)

After the show I hung out with a bunch of the kids and tlaked.. while they rode the gokart.. It was a blast.. and I got soem good insight into what they liked abotu the show.. and about the fields of enginerering and science .

My friend Bruce had arrainged my visit.. .. his son Matt goes to Choate.. even thoug Matt was in China for the term Bruce showed up and helped me move my stuff, cleanu up, etc.. now that’s dedication.. 

After we cleaned up. bruce and I grapbbed a quikc lunch, then I went and visited a few classrooms in the scince building.. Around 1:30
I got on the road home.. None too soon.. it was rain and ice the whole way home !.. The 4 hour trip took 6 and a half hours.. but I had anothr good book on tape.. so it flew by..

I got home around 8 in time for a great dinner that Dinae made.. Then I had to spend a couple of hours workign to make up for lost time today..

One small hobby thing I finsihed is the blog hit counter.. This light in one of our front windows now blnks whenever anyone reads my blog.. .. So read it.  Is that Geeky.. or what ?   Here I am reading my blog

OK.. I can’t stay awaake anothe rsecond.. TTYL.. Nite Sam
-me