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

Greetings from quaint Wallignford Ct, .. I’m down here to do a science show at Rosemary Choate academy.. it’s a boarding school where a work colleague’s kid attends. I agreed to do a show here in return for getting some of the students to help me on some outreach projects. I drove down here after a full and uneventful day at work… The drive down was peaceful.. spoke with friends on the phone and finished listening to Malcalm Gladwell’s newest book ‘Outliers’.. I really liked it. Gladwell’s central premise is that upbringing, culture and opportunity have much more to do with a persons success than does natural ability.   He claims that most superstars.. be they rock stars, software moguls, physicists or wall street law partners .. only need to be ‘good enough’ and get the right lucky breaks. In fact he presents data that shows that most ability (eg, IQ, musical ability, etc) have a threshold level above which additional skill does not matter… The argument is important because it shows that if we spent less time trying to find and focus on the kids with the most talent, and spent more time providing opportunity and encouragement to kids who are talented ‘enough’.. we’d end up with more high achievers… I’ve always believed that..

Anyway… I’s just past midnight, and I’m in the three floor guest residence of Choate… it’s nicer than almost any hotel I’ve ever stayed in.. and from what I can tell.. I’m the only one in  the entire building..

Kinda cool.. and kinda spooky.. It’s the sort of place that makes me want to walk around in your bathrobe….. just because it’s empty.. But.. don’t worry.. I won’t…..  Gotta sleep now…

Nite folks.. Nite Sam
-me

We began the day with breakfast at Jean and Gary’s with friends Jane , George, Lou and Kathy. It was nice standing in their sunny kitchen and watching the ice flow by on the river.  

We started with a scrumptious hearty breakfast…

The land is really beautiful. It follows the old 19th century town road between Huntington and Richmond then cuts left up the ridge towards Jonsville. The plan is to someday connect these trails with the ridge trails and create a system that would allow someone to hike all the way from our house in Jonesville into Richmond.

The land was crisscrossed with old logging trails.. thetre were a few old trees still standing.. but most of the growth was in the last 70 years.. Here’s a beutiful old hollow tree we found.

It was wonderful being out with friends in the new year.  we talked about the new year.. and our resolutions and hopes..   What a great group of folks.

We got off the trail and bushwacked for a ahile.. eventually Gary foudn this old foundation.. the old springh ouse for the Richmond water supply many years back.. and he knew where we were.. I can tell these trails are goign to be a great resource for the town…

The rest of the day passed pretty quietly.. I had two nice visits.. first my friend Bob from Massachusetts came by to talk.. he was up visiting freinds.. he’s looking for some help on writing soem software to help stimulate differnt parts of the brain to enhance certain drug therapies and diagnostics.. It sounds like a cool project..  I hope that I cna help him.. Later on , my friend John and his son Sam came by. John had given me two robotic arms which his copany had developed for the medical testing industry. I’ve gotten one working.. He, his Sam and I spent abotu an hour writing soem simple code to get the robot arm to do some cool movces. I’m trying to convince the two of them to help us build a robotics club up at MMU next year…   That would be so fun… !

After Dinner, Gabe and I went tin the lab and started working with the fiber optics stuff we got for xmas. We want to embed it in a wall in our house. I had an old pice of sheetrock to use as a test.. Gabe drew some designs than drilled holes in them for the light guides.

We poked them through…

Then pluged them in.. It looked great !

Even better at night.. they’re actually a little too bright to photograph !

Well.. That’s it for the day.. and for my vacation !. I’ve bene off two weeks .. and really enjoyed it. I can’t say I got any major parts of my life worked out.. but the hanging out,and puttering in the lab have really cleared my mind. I knwo that these are tough times.. but somehow I feel excited abotu the changes and challenges that are coming. My mind feels clear and open.. which is relaly all I was lookign for in this vacation. I’m actually lookign forward to goign back to work….

Good luck to all of you and yours in pahsing in to the new year.. U2 Sam
-me