Another busy day at SXSW. My brother Billy had stayed with us last night on a rollaway cot… So it was fun all waking up together. First order of business was to go to brunch at my cousins Mark and Kathy’s. Billy was a surprise to them. We walked over tomorrow and Kathy’s really beautiful apartment downtown and their work daughter Danielle, sister Gail and brother Steve. It was so great catching up with them. We had a wonderful brunch and just caught up. It’s been a long time since we were all together

There was work being done on the building and we got to watch the workers go by

We all got play with a Tesla coil… It had a momentary overheating problem but seems to have recovered

http://johncohn.org/base/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/img_7775-1.mov

It was so great seeing everyone!

Next up For me was a really fun and interesting interview With Simon, an industry analyst. It was really great talking to him.

Also Enjoyed hanging out with my IBM colleague Chris and Ieee colleague Jeff

Right after that my good friend Laurie came over and hung out with us for an hour. She retired from IBM sold much stiffer stuff and bought a huge sailboat. She’s living on that most of the time but was back in Austin for a wedding

Next stop was it Uber ride out to a brewery to see a movie about efforts to preserve Nichola Tesla’s Wardencliff laboratory on Long Island. One of the high points was riding with Greg… A great Uber driver with a huge interest in science. We talked Tesla coils and Rockets and all sorts of stuff. He was great

The Tesla gathering was really interesting. It was a good crowd there in the movie told the story of teslas life try amps and struggles as he tried to build a power transmitting station in Wardencliff Long Island. The small group of local people have tried to preserve what was left of the laboratory. They used an amazing amount of social media and crowdsourcing techniques to raise more than $7 million. It was quite a story

It was nice to have a tesla coil with me to show people what we were talking about. That was a big hit

Now back home and it’s not even 11 PM. Can’t wait to lie down

More tomorrow

Nite all, nite Sam

-me