Yearly Archives: 2012

Sunday night – pre-labor

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Let me start by saying happy birthday to my Mom and to my baby Bro !.. Happy birthday you guys.. I love you both !!!

Great day here. hanging kind of low. I seem to have caught some sort of mild stomach bug on my trip to china this week..  Doing a little nothing is what my body, mind and soul felt like doing.. so it was good.

 

One thing I did reflect on s that today was the temple burn at Burning Man..While  I had hoped to be there this year, I had too much stuff going with work to make it happen. I’m not that sad to have missed it..I think I need to adjust my thinking and plan on doing it every several years. a visit there can last you for several years i think.. It was funny. Burning man was very much on my mind when I ran across this cartoon in this week’s New Yorker..

We didn’t exotically do nothing today.. the morning was actually quite full. Diane took me and the dogs on a surprise run in the woods on a new trail she learned about last week. It’s the Preston rook trail off of the Bolton Notch road.  it’s only a couple of miles from here .. but we’ve ever seen it. its’ about a 3.2 mile loop  that takes you by beautiful  preston pond way back in the woods.. then there’s a little .6 mile climb out to Libbys Lookout with a beautiful view of our part of the Green Mountains that i’d never seen .. It was great…

 

 

Then back to the house for a while.. a short float in the pool.. then Gae and I went and met Marcello and his family, All of us managed to ‘fall’ off the Richmond bridge. Gabe with back flips.. me jut doing a pencil. It’s about a 40 foot drop.. so feet first works for me.. It was just what I needed to make me forget my tummy bug .

later in the day, I finished the GSM -arduino interface that alows me to receive SMS messages from my phone to control my flame thrower. I’ve been meaning to get this whole thing working so I can show someone what the guts of an SMS controlled flame sculpture would be like..   Inally it works.. Here’s the setup..

here’s the GSM modem, arduino and relay

here’s the SMS sent from my phone

and here’s what happens when the device receives my message .. nice !

OK. thats all for now.. more from labor day tomorrow

enjoy your holiday everyone..

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

saturday night – westfordpalooza

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wow, Diane and I just came back from the best party . but more on that in a sec… Let’s start with today, which was an absolutely gorgeous day.. I slept until nearly nine thanks to a healthy case of jetlag..   first thin after that was a great game for Gabe’s soccer team up at MMU.. the weather was perfect.. so ws the game..

on the way home from the game. Diane and I stopped in for our annual anniversary pilgrimage to the round church where we were married 26 years ago yesterday. long time. good time..

i saw this original key to the place there today.

and we met Dave.. who was chief tour guide at the round church today. really nice guy.

after that.. came home and tried to meditate.. which ended up turning into a nap..

 

Around 4:30 we headed up to Westford for ‘Westfordpalooze’.. a big party in the sicks of Westford held by three families, including my friends Bill and Corey. . I beleive this was their 7th year of holding the party..

it was at one of the couples houses.. what a beautiful spot !!!

they built a makeshift stage out of the barn..

and my buddy Bill’s brother Pete even made special (delicious) beer for the event and brought it up from Massachusetts.

here are my good bud’s Mike and Jeff..

mike was even rocking one of the limited addition party shirts.

 

 

 

the place had great gardens and  paddocks with horses and llamas.

 

there were some great signs and bumper stickers around the place..

the first band guys even write a song for the event !

x

here’s host bill

and friend rick. again.. he’s everywhere !

i got out the hoop as it got dark.. and folks had real fun with it.. dancing to the really fine music

one of the best hoopers was 6 year old elaine.. she was amazing.. !


they even had an wind powered air pump..

the bonfire was lit just about time for darkness .. it took the chill out

heres jeff on solo..

while they played, everyone hopped.. even Mike !

ok.. jet lag commands me to stop right this second..

 

more tomorrow.

nite all, nite sam

-me zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Friday afternoon – annnnnnnniversary

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Hi folks.. Blogging from an airport restaurant, about to board a flight back to the us after a really great and useful short trip to china. I don’t have much battery or bandwidth.. So I just want to wish my wonderful wife a happy anniversary … The great thing about time zones is that while it’s already our anniversary over here.. It will still be our anniversary when I get back to Diane .. It’s nice to know that after 26 years I still can’t wait to see her..

I love you my wif’ . See you soon

Nite all, nite Sam
-me

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday (I think) evening – Eggplant !

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Eggplant  !!!  (or 茄子 qie zi)  .. That’s  what you say in Chinese when you  take a picture . as in ‘Say cheese !’..  I suppose eggplant is no weirder than Cheese. > A freind wrote it down for me on my hand

Let me back up for a sec to last night.. My big job was to stay awake long enough so I could go to bed at a normal time.. That worked out to about a 36 hour day.. but.. no better way to stay awake than to hang out with friends. I had a great dinner with my friend JY and his colleague (and my new friend) DS. We even got some good work talk in..

We went to a nice local place with very traditional Beijing style food.. traditional except that the menus were ipads..

the food was GREAT !  here’s some shrimp thingy

and this weird grass stuff they always serve you in Beijing.. It’s like the stuff you clean out of a lawnmower.. only tastier.. (just a little tastier, though )

we got this weird mashed potato dish that come on ice with a cherry blossom.. seriously. .it was three types of mashed potatoes.. including mashed potato with blueberry sauce..

this was good spicy wish.. spicy enough that even I could taste it

 

there was this woman at the restaurant playing the ancient Chinese equivalent of a pedal steel guitar.. I kept thinking she was going to bust out with some hank williams or greg allman.. .. but no luck

We decided to walk back to the hotel thoguh the muggy, smoggy and really pretty beautiful beijing night.. You can see the air.. you practically needed to claw your way through it .  t was seriously great seeing the city this way   This place is so vibrant .

I got 8 hours sleep then woke refreshed.. … I met my reind Gary downstairs for breakfast.. which included 1000 year old egg (Yum !)


and this guy.. (Those are leechies that were his eyes … (quick.. anyone get that reference ?))

Then we made or way over to the IBM event..

I was doing one of the keynotes.. My host was my good buddy Jo

She runs the lab here.. I havent seen her in a couple of years and it was just great catching up

my talk went pretty well..and I enjoyed the othe speakers.. Lots of awards were given out.

there were more than 500 folks there !!!  I ran into so many old friends.


Here’s my good friend Hua-pin..We used to work together almost daily  I haven’t seen him in almost 5 years !!!  He’s now a great badmiton player. He’ll be in the Chinese national competition next week !

after the morning session I spent the afternoon in some really excellent work meetings. I got so much done this afternoon for my day job.. It’s SO much easier sitting FFace to face with soemone in front of a white board (or napkin in this case) to get ideas across.


This evening there was a dinner .which was good fun. It was fun catching up with folks/  Most of the folks

were the organizers ..which happened to be about 80 percent women … which was a strange change !

Mei-mei’s glasses were cool.. so we swapped.. which made us both blind.

here’s Matt. he actually lives in South Burlington !!!!  We noted it was 96 degrees here at the same time it was 48 in Vermont.. twice as hot 🙂

mohammed is on assignment here.. he’s from egypt.. he’s also a vegetarian.. not always easy here.

just ask this poor chicken !

tripe !!!

Here’s Patty.. she’s the real organizer of the event..

and my freind Jia is here.. We got to catch up which was great..

I got back to my room aroun 8.. and have been in work calls for a coupl of hours. Its now midnight so I should sign off (oops.. one more work call first.. jus remembered)..

More tomorrow !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me