Today was very busy… It’s actually the only day I’ll be home in almost 3 weeks of travel

I made the most of it to reacquaint myself with my family

.… tThat sounds worse than it is because most of it is just fun travel

The high point of today was meeting up with my old boss Raja And a bunch of other friends from work… Together we had about 20 years

Of catching up to do… Mitch had brought a bunch of old pictures and org charts… Which allowed us to walk through all the people we’ve worked with… Some weird lost track of… Some had died… Most had going on to live going of lives, There’s nothing like meeting with old friends to remind you both how precious, fun, interesting and short our mortal life star… All good! There’s nothing like meeting with old friends to remind you both how precious, fun, interesting and short our mortal lives are… All good!

Tonight we held a public hearing for the Vermont state AI task force. I was so happy that we had such an engaged and passionate crowd there.… We spent more than three hours listening to the public brainstorming on solution… And generally trying to figure out how we can push our brave little state forward as artificial intelligence becomes more common place

OK… Time for me to get some sleep. I’m still jetlagged. More tomorrow

Nite all, night sam

-me

My deep thanks to my friends at generator for allowing us to meet there

Just about to land in Burlington… and I am so glad to be almost home ! I left my hotel in Sapporo at about 9am ‘this’ morning and am about to land about 26 hours later . I know that may sound terrible.. but I always enjoy my time in the air . It’s peaceful and timeless to me.

I actually got back to the IS and hour earlier than i took off from Tokyo due to the magic of time zones .

The hardest part of the travel was on the flight back from Dulles to Vermont . We boarded the plane at the right time .. but then spent 2 hours on the runway in the plane .. it was 90 degrees out so the plane was pretty toasty. After al llmyhqt they took us back to the gate .. i was thinking I’d be stranded there but at 8:30’we re boarded

We just landed

That’s the second time around the planet this month and boy it feels good to be home In sweet Vermont !

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Yesterday Was a crazy day… I was focused on Sams birthday.

At the same time, I was in Japan to receive a really nice award. I just received the John Choma education award from the IEEE Circuits and systems society. My good friends Rob and larry nominated me for the award. In the past, it’s always been given to classroom university professors… By giving it to me the IEEE called out my “unconventional methods” for promoting STEM. They meant my videos, builds , talks and tv . It was both nice and humbling to be recognized in that way. I’m hoping that’ll inspire others to find fun ways to engage the public around engineering

It is great to be there in person. I didn’t think I’d know anyone there .. but turns out I knew a ton of folks.. and they were from all over . It remained me why I like the IEEE so much. It’s the worlds biggest community of nerds !

I got to give a short speech where I thanked ieee and my family . I called out Diane and the boys as my inspiration and Co-conspirators. I also called out that it was sams 27th

My good friend Dave got a distinguished service award right after me . He has long been one of my hero’s .. it was great to see him get that recognition.

Afterwards there was a huge banquet with koto music and wonderful food and lots of sochu . I got to talk to so. Many folks ..

Jose M from Cmu was there. He was a pleasure of I knew from back in the day . He’s now the president of ieee . It was great getting to know him better.

The rest of the night was a fun blur of business cards and nerdspeak. I was in my element 🙂

The. A really nice quiet 45 minute walk alone to my hotel

It was a great end to an emotional day..

Now heading home

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

I woke up today at about 430 in the morning and couldn’t figure out where I was… It took me a while to figure it out… I remembered I am Sam’s dad

Sam would’ve been 27 years old today… Hard to Really… Sometimes I find myself wondering what kind of person he would be now… That something I can never know

I had a really busy day here in Japan… But I’ll put that telling off until tomorrow

I spent A bunch of today just hanging out and thinking… I had to intentionally get away from the crowds. I took a few walks.

I found a nice park and set up a little shrine… I even found some red bull. I listen to some music that reminded me of Sam and went through a whole bunch of pictures. I cried some in this strange city. It felt good to do that.

I want to share some of those pictures. I’m only on my cell phone here so I had to go cut and paste those pictures out of a website… I don’t know if they’ll come across in the blog

But what a sweet kid… Really

I wonder what you would think of us now my son… I think you’d like the way we turned out

I miss you every day

I love you

Nite all, nite Sam

-me