Another blog from my phone. There seems to be something that happened to my photo transfer app when I upgraded. I’ll get to the bottom of that tomorrow. Just home after a long afternoon and evening of nerdiness. Today was the Vermont tech jam put together by my good friend Cathy R. It’s a great showcase of high-tech companies working in Vermont looking to hire and some great talks and panel discussions.

It was so much fun seeing so many friends from so many different connections there today.

I let a panel on what Ayite meant to the state of Vermont. I had four great panel is Milo who is a high school student from CVU, Jill who is the president of the local AFL-CIO and a retired letter carrier, Polly who’s the chief data scientist at a start up and my good friend Tim who has his own AI start up around horse racing.

The panelists were really good… And so was the audience. We quickly used up to 45 minutes and ended up going an extra half hour and could’ve gone on for much longer because the audience was really responding… But we had to get out of the way for another panel .

There was an award Sarah Moni later on and my friend Jake won a big prize… Again… Last year he won something here too

After tech gym I went home and pick Dianne up and we met a bunch of friends at Queen city brewery… It was a very interesting mix. We met up with our friends Tim and Paula… But also our friends Avery and Jen and JIM who were there for a family reunion… Our friend Hannah was there and she picked up our friend Julia who is in visiting from Montana. Cathy from tech jam also showed up.

Nice eclectic mix Of people

We finished off the night by stopping in at a going away party that my friend Karen was throwing for her self at Muddy Waters. Karen has decided to move to France on Monday. I’ll miss her ! She’s a very interesting and fun person.

Time for bed. More tomorrow

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Spent the day very busy at work… Around 530 Dianne came in and reminded me that I probably need to stand up at least once a day. I took the dogs for a walk to the beach… The light was so beautiful

I love living here…

Night all, night Sam

-me

Just back from a snowy drive home from Middlebury College where we had our file annual meeting for vase the Vermont Academy of science and engineering. It was a great evening. Started with a board meeting then a wonderful talk By astronomer David Latham from the Harvard Smithsonian observatory we talked about looking for exoplanets. Finally a very nice dinner with lots of great conversation with old friends.

My friend Rich took me through their physics display cabinet and showed me this cool rocket powered sled they used to demonstrate newtons laws

We had a really good crowd

I got to introduce the teachers of the year awards… Snapped a selfie of Frank introducing me

David Latham’s talk was really good… He basically said that just about every star out there has some sort of planet around it… That’s something to think about

Here’s the moment where Frank step down as vice president and grace takes his place. They’re both great folks

In addition to awarding the teacher of the year awards we also recognized new vase members.

The party broke up around nine… Came out to find the car covered with snow

On the way home I stopped at the Middleberry cemetery to see a crazy thing that Max had told me about. There’s a grave where a mommy is buried… It’s a long story but evidently the mummy was brought to Middlebury in the mid-19th century… And ended up in someone’s attic. It was later found in in turd in the cemetery. You can see the date as 1863 BC . You can read about it here https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-amum-her-khepesh-ef

OK… Having to log by phone is a little tough… I hope this comes out OK.

More tomorrow

Night all, night Sam

– me

 spent a good part of my after work time working to repair our wood-stove.. Our wood-stove is our main heat.. so having it out of commission is not ok this time of year. It’s an old soapstone hearthstone Mansfield. It’s a wonderful stove. It has an fancy ‘afterburner’ system that vents the output of the firebox through 4 perforated steel pipes . where any remaining combustibles are burned. It’s what makes it a very clean stove..

 

Unfortunately, those air-tubes take a lot of beating. thy tend to buckle and fail. Last time we replaced one it was over $1000. this time a new set was going to be over $400 !!>. No way.. so I set to work making my own. It turns out the air tubes were 18.5″ stainless steel with a bunch of drilled holes. Diane went to Queen city steel for me and bought 8′ of 3/4; schedule 40 type 309 stainless welded tubing.. Schedule 40 3/4 has an OD of 1.02″… the fittings in the stoves exhaust manifold are exactly 1″, so I had to taper all four tubes down to that size. It was tough getting these things to fit. The stove exhaust manifold has warped with heat.. and everything is kind of frozen together.. With some  coercion.. things came apart.. OK.. I then drilled 140 holes of different sizes ..  drilling stainless is never fun.. but it all came out ok. Each tube had progressively bigger holes.. then had to fix the stuff into the frame with stainless hardware. It may not sound hard.. but I’m covered with grease, ashes and metals splinters.. but the darn thing is back together and ready to go !

 

 

here re the old tubes.. all bent and oxidized  

 

here are the new ones I made 

 

drillign the 140 holes was nice and meditative 

 

thank goodness for crisco.. its the only way I could get the peices to fit !

 

 

my hads are pretty beat up 

 

so are my arms.. just so man things to scrape yourself on in that firebox

 

stoves ready now.. good thing.. we have snow coming !

nite all,nite sam

-me