Monthly Archives: March 2014

Saturday night – safety not guaranteed

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Just taking in one of those strange coincidences that sometimes come in to your life and make you wonder. Today I had a really good visit from new friends Ryan, Hillary and Nathan. Ryan is making a set of short movies about folks in Vermont who are making ‘stuff’ .. (things music, art, robots, etc). Ryan is a recent-ish transplant to the 802 and is using this project to  build some roots in the place.. i think it’s gonna work.. Anyway..  we had a great , wide ranging conversation.. then they headed off in to the afternoon,..

fade to this evening…..

Diane and I decided to watch a movie.. something we do maybe once a month. I hit netflix looking for a suggestion and took one of the top recommendations it made for me in ‘critically acclaimed comedy’.. There was a movie called ‘safety not guaranteed‘  which i don’t think i ever heard of.. We watched (and really liked) it.. as the credits rolled i saw that ryan had written and performed the music in it.. .. huh ?!?.. i then found out that my friend jared  had engineered it and my friend ken had done some of the audio effects..   I keep trying to remember if ryan subliminally put the name of the movie in my head…     but even if he did. how in the heck did it end up at the top of Dianes netflix queue ?!?!.. Coincidence ?.. insane big data ? alien intelligence ? im baffled..

anyway. check out the moview.. we really liked it ..

 

Speakign of safety not guaranteed. Gabe and I took advantage of having an audience here.. and the timely delivery of some left over liquid nitrogen (another coincidence) to do some quick science mayhem..

 

first we used soem thermite to fuse a big pile of coins.. (run gabe !!!!!)

 

Then we blew up a bucket of water with liguid nitrogen in a soda bottle (sorry no pics… too scared !)

OK.. time for bed.. still pondering the strangeness of the universe.

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Friday night – smarter in Turkish

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I was working late this afternoon when I got a Facebook message from my friend Jale in Istanbul. She was flicking through the channels and found The Colony on .. dubbed in Turkish. She send me this clip. I think we all sound smarter and nicer  in Turkish..

 

Not much more to to report for the day. My week has been insanely busy and I’m in great need of goofing off. Oh.. I did get this nice vid from my friend Liggy of fans playing a section of the EEL keyboard in Bolder the other night. I’ts really nice to see folks enjoying something we made 🙂

The EEL on tour from john cohn on Vimeo.

OK. time for bed.. still jetlagged

nite all, nite sam
-me

Thursday night – old friends

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The first day of spring .. and its snowing out.. Finally home after 2 days of travel  back from Poland. My flight last night got canceled afte waiting at JFK until after midnight. Not all bad because it gave me time to catch up with my old friends and cousin-in-laws Bill and Deb who’d been on the same flight. The next available flight out was at 5PM today.. so I grabbe a hotel and worked all day from there.. not too bad..

I did wake to some sad news. My friend Bruce called to tell me that our old friend Martin Trotter died of pancreatic cancer on Mar 10th. Martin and I have been work buddies since the early 1980’s . Marin worked for IBM in Hursley England. In 1984 we swapped jobs // he came to live in Vermont while we lived there in England I was working at IBM and Diane was in grad school. ..  Martin was one of the smartest and hardest working guys I knew. He was quiet and had a very fumy ., self effacing sense of humor. He always amazed me with hom much he could get done on his own at work..  I tried finding pictures of him online and came up with just these two… that’s so like him /  Martin is back right in the group photo.

its so like him to be so accomplished.. and yet not very visible… We will miss you Martin

I downloaded Linkedin on my new phone. I was trying to track down some of our Martin’s old  friends so I could tell them.. Somehow i  accidentally managed to hit a button that sent out 547 LinkedIn invites to folks..

while I hadn’t meant to do it.. i managed to hear from a ton of old friends as they accepted the invites. It was a nice feeling which lifted my spirits…

 

if you are one of those old friends.. thanks for being out there today ..

nite all, nite sam

-me

Wednesday night – dzięki Warsaw !

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On my ay home after a very good trip to Warsaw. Got some good customer,  co-worker and university time in there. I absolutely love the people of Warsaw.  They were so nice and friendly.. and very. very smart.   I will be coming back here…  I want to thank all the people that made my trip so productive and enjoyable !

The trip home was peaceful and productive as well. I managed to clear out my inbox completely. I can’t remember the last time that happened !

 

On a more serious note, I did make one pilgrimage while I was here. The wall of the Warsaw Ghetto was right outside my hotel. I ran by it the other day.. . This morning my friend Piotr let me get out and take a look again. It is a section of the wall of the old Jewish section of town.. it was the site of terrible tragedies during the holocaust. About half of its 400,000 residents were deported to concentration camps in 1942.

I was speechless as I stood before it . A stark contrast from the warm and friendly place and people i’d been visiting. It’s a reminder of how precious and fragile life can be..

 

Im glad to be almost home

nite all. nite sam

-me