Slow day here. Gabe took off for lacrosse camp for a couple of days during his break. That left Diane and me to work in the yard and try to prepare for the change of season. He didn't feel much like a change of seasons with weather in the mid-30s. We did get out for a good run. And a late Afternoon hike.

The big task for today was to decide What to do with the climber thing. Could we say one more time? Or was it time to burn it ?

 

The climber thing was a big Cedar swingset that we got for the boys when we returned to Vermont from Pittsburgh in 1992. Sam was not even yet born. I remember thinking we were going to go to New Zealand for a postgraduate school vacation, but we Excited to spend the money on a swingset instead. They proved to be a great choice. We spent so many happy hours swinging back and forth on that thing. It was our spaceship, it was our game Center, . The boys and I would swing for hours. We had this strange Wooden horse thing and I would ride with the boys In front of me and we would sing the stupidest songs. My favorite was doggy meat. It went something like this: the doggy meat, the doggie meat ….the dog Geeeee. Meattttttttt

Somewhere over that 20 years though it started to rot away.. Slowly at first. First a rung here, a rope there. A screw would pop out or a bucket would break. But still we would screw it back together and continue to ride. Eventually pieces would fall off. first the slide, then the bucket, then the ladder, Then the tarp, then finally the thing was not safe to ride.At that point Max was away at school, Sam had died, and Gabe was getting pretty big. We took the pieces apart and saved some of them. The ones that had solid wood we used to create a huge crazy chair out of.

 

took many many work telephone calls out on the swings and no one could tell.

What was left of it was guarding max's mud pizza oven. During one of the huge windstorms we had a few months back it blew over and shattered. The question before us was whether we tried to salvage it. But we finally gave up on it and burn it. I voted for salvage. But I have to admit, it didn't. All the main supporting members were broken. There was hardly enough wood to hold the screw. But I was determined.

It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pretty. Diana and I spent about two hours reinforcing the thing with about 100 deck screws, a bunch of scrap wood, and anything else we could find. We had to bring it back into true, reinforce all the major beams and remount the roof. End, was about as strong as it ever was., Which isn't saying much. I know full well that the next major windstorm will probably take it down again but I bought myself some time… I don't have to say goodbye to it yet.

 

It's funny the things we cling to
Time for bed
Night all, night sam

-me

 

 

Worked around the house today which was nice. Managed to clean up a bad leak in our very spooky basement. That was satisfying.

You gay gay then I started working on a project. Has to do a project for chemistry involving photography. He wants to try to make deuaguerratypes… More properly tintypes, The old silver and white portraits that you see in old westerns. They use an emulsion made out of gelatin and silver nitrate. We're going to try and make them duringGabe's school break. One thing we needed was a large format camera. I went up in the attic to try to look for one. No luck But I did find one treasure…

My old HP 25 scientific calculator from high school. You all know I was a real nerd but never as much a nerd as I was in high school. My parents, who love me very much to this day, wanted me to have the best calculation devices. Be that sliderule or be that the newfangled electronic calculators. I remember my first calculator was something from Texas instrument… But when I saw the new Hewlett-Packards with their logs and exponents I couldn't stop salivating. I remember this thing got me through so many tests… It was a thing of beauty, perfect weight perfect balance perfect finger pressure on the buttons that we fit together like hand in glove. It's padded fake leather case fit snugly on my belt. What a fashion statement. (Actually I've never wear to calculator on my belt nor would I ever)

I found that thing buried in a box marked treasures it even still smelled the same. I showed it to Gabe proudly and he thought I was nuts.

, They don't Make them like that anymore

some how day quickly turned in to night… Gabe and diane I wondered upstairs to watch a horror movie and I sat downstairs programming C-sharp which was horrors enough for me.

alright time for bed, more tomorrow.

Night all, night Sam
–me

Ps. Large camera. If you have something like that say and old Polaroid or other large boxy camera with a big back please let me know.thanks

Busy day… Lots of work stuff not much to report highlight of the day was driving an hour up to Shore AcresRestaurant in north hero for the goodbye dinner for the IBM smarter cities team.

 

They were nice enough to invite Diane and me to their final dinner.It was team member Robert's birthday today. The shore acres restaurant was a perfect setting for a party

 

 

I'll really miss these guys.

night all nite sam
– Me

 

The high point of my day was going to City Hall to watch the smarter city's Team that has been here in Burlington readout to the mayor into the rest of the city. For the last three weeks they been talking to hundreds of people across Burlington and the surrounding area. They're looking at ways of reducing carbon especially techniques around Burlington's newly installed Smart meters.

There are six people on the team and there from all over the world from France from Brazil from Germany from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and even as far away as Syracuse New York. It's been really great getting to know them. I can imagine how fun it was working on something like this for three solid weeks basically outside of the requirements of your existing job

It was interesting to see what they Presented today. They had chosen for different areas to focus on including Smart Meters, biomass, electric vehicles. What underpinned all of it was the notion of data integration. They Highlighted the need to collect data to form a good baseline for current power levels, the need to share that data both inside and outside of the city To break down interdepartmental barriers and the ability to share that data as open data with the community. That all resonated very much with me.

We were really proud to have them here in the city. I hope they enjoyed themselves as well.

While I was at Townhall I took a quick peek over at the Burlington firehouse Gallery to make sure the Floersch piece was still working well. There was a great group of people on the device as I walked over. It made me really happy.

Thanks to Collins work we can now login remotely to Extend and maintain the piece. It's pretty fun to be able to login and see people playing with it. Here's what it looks like From home. When people are playing pong

Ok.. Time for bed.. Moretomorrow

Nite all, nite sam

-me