Yearly Archives: 2010

Monday night – Oh Atlanta !

Back home after a short sweet trip to Atlanta.. What a cool city.. Nice architecture, nice folks.. really diverse in every respect.. people. food, arts.. It’ snot the same place I visited back in the 70’s !

I had an early flight back.. but went for a run and did a little sightseeing


Ah.. here’s Maria Mitchell’s house.. where she wrote ‘gone with the wind’

I guess this is not the best part of town ?

I ran into my friend Bill from Raleigh  on the street at about 7:30.. He was in town for the same dinner I went to last night . ..

The obligatory photo from the mirrored elevator..

Go tot he airport in plenty of time.. they had a cool exhibit of Martin Luther King.. Her’s one of his suits..

and his transistor radio, watch and glasses 

Speaking of glasses.. I picked up m new glasses today.. trifocals.. made out of polycarbonate.. supposedly bulletproof.

What’s the verdict .. more sciency or less sciency  ?

OK.. all for today.. more tomorrow..
nite all, nite sam
-me

Sunday night – old friends

Greetings fro Atlanta GA.. I’m here for a quick down and back to honor my
good friend (and PhD advisor) Rob for his years of service driving a  very successful cross university research program for the past 8 years.

To get here, I had to catch a 6AM plane.. not my favorite thing to do on a weekend morning.. but all in all , I’ts been a very good trip. I got to see some good old freinds.. even some I hadn’t planned on seeing.. As I was stumbling around JFK this morning I ran into my friend Grady and his wife Jan just off a plane from London.. Actually, I  first notices Jan’s very cool hand painted driess (painted with a credit card, it turns out).. then I saw Grady behind her.. .. It’s one of those funny small workld things wbcause they live in hawaii..   It was great catching up with them..

I think we kinda look alike.. no ? (same hair stylist at least)

I worked the rest of the morning and then on the plane. I got to Atlanta around 2.. and caught the wonderful MARTA train to down town.

It’s a really nice city.. I didn’t  get to explore much.. I had a sore throat and (I think a little fever.). I went to my hotel and meditated/slept for an hour before the party tonigh

II got there right at 6.. Rob. the guest of honor was delayed.. he got there around 7.. there were about 20 of us there to roast/toast him.

Larry and leah were there.. as was my friend paul. dale, david. charlie, bill,  mehmet and rick.. It was great catching up with all of them..

It was particularly nice to see all the love that was there for Rob.. he’s really a great mentor and friend to so many of us. He’s now the dept head of CS at UI Champain Ubana..   One by one we all got up and told stories.. My effort was a poem that included the research centers 5 themes in some sort of poetic gibberish.. not my best work.. but appreciated.. I think..   there were soem good stories from several folks. People talked about Rob’s wit and his orginizational abilities.. and his broad technical skills. Several people singled out Rob’s excellent communication skills.. he’s the worl’d best power point user, I think

I was really glad to get to see rob’s wife Martha.. it’s been awhile since I’ve seen here.  She’s awesome.

here we are looking fuzzy.. i’m wearing my one tie.. a jerry garcia.. that Rob actually bought for me back in the mid 90’s.. that’s a good friend. !

the party broke up around 10.. I had a few good technical talks.. then back up to my room in this cool hotel..

Now I’m going to try and sleep off this bug I have.. More tomorrow

nite all, nite sam
-me

Saturday night – lint

Ahhhh… a day at home … a rare thing .. my first act was to clean the lint trap for our  dryer.   Diane pulled this chink of lint from the outlet a few days back.. including 3 guitar pics.. which must date back to Sam…

After seeing this, I realize how dangerous this was.. evidently, dryer lint fires are one of the leading causes of hours fires..

George helped by filming me….   I pulled a colony by duct taping our pool vacuum house to our shop vac

climbed to the dryer vent..

opened up the vent

and… suck .. it was so full of gunk !!!!

Next step was to clean up from our destroyed bathroom window..  .. yuck..

Later in the day Diane. George, the dogs and I drove out to Priscilla and Tim’s they were just back from a mushroom hunt.. check these out..

We had only 2 hours.. so we took a short road walk in the beautiful fall weather

Tim. kept getting distracted by mushrooms.

uhhhhhh… not sure about this one..

We stopped at Huntington gorge to show George. It was way past flood stage.

We ended the day by attending an acapella concert Avery was singing in.. We got there to find out that Owen and Claire were also singing !!!

>..man.. I’m sleeeeeepy.. time for bed. More tomorrow !
nite all.. nite Sam
-me

Friday night – flood

Just got in from a 7 hour drive back from NY. Had a good-ish meeting down there today..
but down and back 700 miles in 24 hours is just no fun. The high points were seeing max and Ruchir and family.
   One thing I missed while gone was an epic flood here in Vermont. I talked to Diane at 6:30 this morning and she told me that the wind was so strong last night that it blew off the bathroom window. She found it smashed to pieces on the ground.   Today the water was so deep that it covered several of the roads out of our house.. The running trail and the field across from us are underwater. Bridge Street in Richmond was shut because the riverwas flowing over it.. Diane and Gabe called me on my drive home to tell me that the water flowing over Bridge street at the park was deep enough that there were actually fish in it !
   Hmmmmm..aside from the flood, I don’ think I have anything else to report.. hope that’s ok.. it’s gonna have to be..

nite all , nite sam
-me