Definitely feeling like spring is coming. it was in the 40’s and sunny today.. probably 15 degrees warmer than it ‘should’ be .. The world is waking up, the snow is melting. the brids are chirping.. and even the flys are buzzing. it’s wayyyy too ealry for all of that.

The rest of the day we spent on a bunch of small projects. Around 4 I sat down to start working.. and I’m still at it nearing 11 PM. I’ve got SO much stuff going on at work..

I did take a break to do something I’ve been meaning to do for weeks.

When Sam died, we had copies made of the necklace he always wore.. it was his name in Mayan Hieroglyphics . We had it made when Sam. Diane and I were in Mexico the summer of 2006, just months before he died. We promise each of the kids a trip anywhere in the world they’d like for their 14th birthdays, and Sam picked the Mayan Yukatan. It was a great trip. We went down o Tulum one day and found a little stand making pendants of your name or initials in Myana Glyphs.

S-A-M

Sam loved that thing and wore it until his last day on Earth. Here’s a picture of him wearing it.. that’s hanging in our living room.

We now have his pendant hanging where we can touch it whenever we want..

Our firend Chris also helped us sandblast the same symbols into the memorial rock we have for Sam  out our back door.

Sam’s freind Nate has the same symbols tattoos on his shoulder. Coincidentally, I saw a picture of nate’s ink today when I visited his folks.

I finally got around to hanging my copy of Sam’s pendant on the necklace I always wear.. it has my burning man pendant on it.. now it has Sam, too.

it feels good to wear.. heavy and strong. I’m glad I have it with me , now..

Gotta go to sleep now.. Night everyone
Nite Sam
-me

Today was the perfect ‘that kind of day’ I have so much on my mind about work that I needed the kind of day that forced me not to think o fit.. It was incredibly sunny and beautiful out..   Diane. Gabe , the doga and I left here about 7am for Smugglers nithc for the final event in teh ASaSA )American Ski and Snowboard Association) for our regien. Gabe had a pretty good day.. he came in 2nd. that gives him enough poins to go compete in the national finals in Colorado in early April (along with a thousand or so kids). I’m going to be taking him. it’ll be be so much fun !

After the event today there was a rail jam in memory of Molly, a 5 year old girl who died of lymphoma last July.. this is the second rail jam her family has held/. last year it was raising money for her treatment. this year its a memorial .. The money raised goes to help the family of kids battling cancer.

I met Buck. moolly’s dad and tlaked for a bit. .he knows about Sam. We shared alot in that short conversation about our kids. I know exactly how much it took for Buck and his family to turn it on for their friends and hold this event.

Even though the event was for a very sad reason, It was a good turnout.. which made me happy.

The rest of the day was sleepy and fun.. I did two geeky projects.> Gabe and I finished the forge we’d made. We needed to add legs to the forge.. Gabe did all the welding. He’s such a natural at this stuff. Makes me so proud..

TH elegs on the forge will kep us from having to bend down to heat the metal.. a great build for a sunny Saturday afternoon

I also did another goofy project Diane and I are obsessed with this new power monitor
I installde in the house.. We’re trying to figure out what appliance take which power.. the catch is, you need to be staring at the screen all the time to see the power changing.. which makes it tough to figure out what’s using the power.. Today I wrote a simple program that plays a simple tone sequence over the sterieo when the power he house is using increases or decreases suddenly .. it makes it easy to figure out what device is using the power.

Right now it s driving us crazy   dah-dah-dah dah .. dee-dee-dee-deeee

here’s the code if anyone’s interested..

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
from time import sleep
import re, urllib2
import audiere

def read_entry(url):
   
    try:
        resp = urllib2.urlopen(url,None,100)

        html_code = resp.read()

        soup = BeautifulSoup(”.join(html_code))
        power = soup.findAll(“powernow”)
        return int(power0.contents0)
#        print soup.prettify()

    except IOError, e:
        print e.reason

go = 1
last = 0

# Open default audio device
d = audiere.open_device()

threshold = 50

while (go == 1):
    this = read_entry(‘http://ted5000/api/LiveData.xml‘)
    diff = this – last
    print this,” “, last, ” ” , diff
    if  abs(diff) > threshold :
        steps = abs(diff) / threshold
        freq = last
        for i in range(steps) :
            t = d.create_tone(freq)
            t.pan = 1
            t.play()
            sleep(0.05)
            t.stop()
            if diff > 0 :
                freq = freq + threshold
            else :
                freq = freq – threshold
   
    last = this
       
Gotta go now.. Diane is watching the “Flying Nun” on Youtube..
Now that was a weird show

Nite folks.. nite sam
-me

In the middle of another incredibly busy day, something happened that took me out of my hectic spin and made me sit down and thin.k. I was trying to wolf down a salad while talking on a conference call (muted while chewing)..   my first bicuspid on the top right met a slightly stale cruton… and broke.. .. really broke !.   I fished the piece out from the stuff I was chewing and stared at it. i was about a quarter of the tooth.. big and hard and toothy. and where it used to be was a funky hole … terra incognita for my curious tongue..

I sat and stared at the piece.. that tooth had been with me.. part of me.. since i was 10 or so.. it’s seen me through middle school and high school. through college(s) .. through my professional career. through meeting my wife.. the birth of my kids.. the passing of one .. It was with me when I slept on the floor of the Colony.. it tasted rat…

After all that, It seemed kind of heartless to throw the piece  of tooth away.. it seemed wierd and pretnetious to give it some sort of ceremony.. what to do ?   I resolved to blow it up .. maybe this weekend.. it seems fitting..

I called the dentist and set up a time to get it ‘fixed’.. whatever that means.. maybe if it can’t be repaired I can make soem thign cool to go in its place.. that would be an up side..

I got therough the rest of the day by gently avoiding the righ side of my mouth.. I sipped my drinks.. chewed my salad left-ily. The day wasn’t the same though.. It was like the loss of the tooth had snapped me back to reality .. I was pretty calm.

Calm that is until 4:30 when Guido brought in a group of 6 goofy Weebelos to do some mad science stuff. Great kids.. .. an nice end to a tough day..

Ah.. here’s something else to chew on.. IBM did a 2 minute composite of my  friends Jai, Julia, Jeff and I  talking about ‘data’   . It’s pretty interesting

OK..   That’s it for tonight.. I’m going to put my tooth piece under my pillow and see if the tooth fairy shows up.

Night all.. night Sam
-me