שנה טובה ! Happy new year friends It’s new years eve  by the Jewish way of keeping time. By the Old Testaments calculations tomorrow begins year 5,775. Its a funny sort of new year.. no parties, no funny hats.. just contemplation. Its a time to think about the past year successes and failures..a nd prepare for the coming year. the idea is to get yourself written into ‘the book of life’.. I hope its a sweet new year for all of you..

 

this last one has been good..

We lead the year out with a  really nice day today.. beginning with brunch at our freinds george and jane who’ve recently moved to vergennes..

 

after brunch, we took an explore around george and janes new neighborhood. despite driving through vergeense many hundreds of times in the last 34 years, I’ve never really explored it like we didi today

 

on the way home, diane and I stopped at the new Stone corral pbrewery in our home town.. we sampled 4 of their 8 beers. They were excellent !

we finished the day in a great way to close out the year. we each went through all of our clothes… we are trying to declutter our house and our lives..\

 

in the end, we have 18 (!!!) bags of clothes in good condition to donate tomorrow. thats a greta way to start a year

 

Shana Tova everyone !

nite all, nite  sam

-me

We had such a nice slow day together.. Just what i needed after a long trip.. A run around preston pond with the dogs.. Then a kayak around gilette pond…

The water is very low while they are fixing the dam.. Gave us great viewing for fish, snapping turtles an a few painted turtles. So nice that this is only a mile from home

We came back and floated in the pool.. I actually fell asleep floating.. Not a bad place to work off my jet lag.

About 4 we headed into burlington for the second day of the art hop.. Last night diane went and it was packed.. It was pretty subdued today.

We were going to go check out the grand point north show at the waterfrront.. But decided not to when it started raining.. Instead we had dinner at the Spot with ellen..

Now.. Jet lag is closing in. Gotta shut my eyes.. More tomorrow

Nite all, nite sam

-me

 

1.2. Gigawatts ?!? What was I thinking..

I fulfilled a life long dream today,. i got to see the flux capacitor ! I actually got to drive around in my friend Peter’s mint condition 1981 Delorean !!!!

Actually.. hanging out with Peter was a treat in itself.. His  is a very funny and brilliant guy.. our conversations zig zagged between work , cars, the club of rome, you name it. He  made a special point of bringing in the time machine.. which he got with 0 miles on it.. .. into work. It has only 5000 km on it now. .. It was a thin

 

The car was even signed by John Delorian himself !

 

We took a quick spin on the highway out to shiphol airport.. it was great watching everyones reaction as we drove by..

we were moving fast.. but I can only assume that we never hit 88 mph.. since i’m still here and it’s roughly ‘now’ 

 

Peter arranged A fun impromptu  photoop by running in to the student event and yelling that everyone should exit the building.

people didn’t quite know why.. but as they poured out, they saw the beautiful and iconic car and loved it..

 

 

i was suddenly feeling like an introverted Doc Brown

 

Here’s friend Andy  from England taking the wheel

 

and my freind Fiona from Ireland.

what a treat.. Thank you peter.. you are one cool dude..

 

I had just 5 min to bus around the event and say good bye to the organizers and my friends.. I managed to get a quick pic of Rolf’s sausage cooking device. He and andy were speaking this afternoon. I wish i could have heard them both !

 

now flying home to burlington after more than a week away…   gotta say its strange flying on 9/11// my thoughts are out there for all the folks who were affected

who wasn’t ?

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Another late night.. almost 1 am and only one work call to go 🙂

Today had a great mix of meetings and got to spend time with the IBM interns in the extreme blue and smart camp programs. It was double fun because quite a few of the projects had an IoT component.

Also got to catch up with em old friends including Wing, Peter , Andy.. etc

We managed to get out for a walk in the beautiful nature reserve near the ibm site

 

there was a beautiful collection of small garden huts where city folks could go to be in nature.. it was all deserted this time of year which made it surreal

i ran in to my friend Peter.. had a great conversation and got to see his delorean material.. tomorrow I hope to see there real thing

spent the rest of the time meeting new folks, doing interviews and seeing some great technology

 

 

all of the events were in an old type write factory that used to be an IBM building.. Now its a high tech incubator. complete with a garden on the roof .

 

i loved looking at the cool tech that the startups and extreme blue teams brought in

 

including a teletype tied to twitter

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after the event, Frank took us to Haarlem and we met up up with my good friend Rolf and some of his friends. I’d met them all at at Rolf’s phD defense a couple of years ago

the 

 

now back to the hotel.. met up with the irish team again including my remind fiona

”

 

ok.. it’s 1:30 time for be.. good day..

night all, night sam

-me