Greetings from Saratoga . Diane and i are here hanging out with my mom. It will be nice to have a few days just hanging out and relaxing. Today we went to Lido Beach . It had great sand and cool pelicans
We hung out long enough to see an awesome sunset
We then walked back on the beach to a really excellent Greek place for dinner
We ended the day in the hot tub outside
Not a bad start to a vacation
Nite all , nite Sam
-me
Dan and I both woke up feeling pretty sick. Just a little bit of SXSW flu. We were slow in getting out of town… But we got an Uber to the Hertz place picked up her car and started driving the strangely familiar Route from Austin to Houston. Are used to drive it quite a bit when I was in high school… And then again in the 90s. Hadn’t done it for quite some time.
Took us about 3 hours to get to Houston. First stop was memorial high school, then memorial drive elementary. Then a stop by our old house .. then back to the middle school. Brought back lots of nostalgia!
We Got to Billy slab around 4 PM… We’d never seen it. It’s truly amazing. He has every tool, every fabricating technique… An expert in all of it working on so many cool projects. I was so proud to see him in his element. I am certain amazing things are going to come from this lab !
(For some reason, my camera won’t let me post pictures… I’ll have to do that tomorrow)
After CDI… We went back to Billy and Shawn’s house. Got to see all the kids except for Kris. It was really fun hanging out. Around 9 o’clock we went out for sushi. Had a truly wonderful meal. Towards the end my cousin Leslie and her husband Bret Showed up. Quite a lot of family around that table!.
Now trying to get to sleep in order to wake up before 5 AM for a flight.
It’s been a great visit. I’ll post the pictures tomorrow
Nite all, nite Sam
-me
<next day>
Got the pictures working so i will add them here
The drive to Houston was made prettier by the wild flowers
Even if there were snakes !
We got to Houston.. and first stop was my old high school
Then my old elementary school
Then our old house !
Then my old middle school
From there across town tonbillys amazing CDI ( center for device innovation) its the lab billy built from the ground up for medical device innovation. It is simply amazing and 100% Billy’s creation !
CDI is in an old nabisco plant
Here are some of the shops 
Billy is duly proud of the plave
Lots of models of body parts everywhere 
Billy gave us a demo of a new invention f
Lots of spare parts
!
a wall of inventions
Learning to use the laser spot welder
holding hands in IR. 
Billy teaches us VR surgery 
What an amazing place
Turn off thisgFrom there we headed back to Billy’s to see Shaun and the kids
We went out to a huge sushi dinner and were joined by our cousins Leslie and Brett
Ok. There are the pics from yesterday
Before I go any further, I need to point out that the sxsw logo
Actually point southwest (SW) not south by southwest (SXSW)
What’s up with that. ?!?
We spent another day wandering around this huge event looking for things to see
I went to a great talk on creativity in the age of invention by nick law. Great speaker . Then hung out some more with our friend Colin
Diane and I met my high school friend.. Phil for lunch. We hadn’t seen each other for about 40 years.. he was still the same guy i remembered! It was so fun catching up !
Diane and i then stopped by the Driscoll hotel to see the Donald Trump tweet library. Funnyish but very scary
Near dinner, Diane and i walked west to meet our old friend Dave
we stopped in a bar called holy Roller to go to a reunion party for some friends from a conference I went to 2 years ago in Frankfort. Didn’t expect to see anyone I knew .. but turns out knew many folks there .. most of them from Germany
On the way home ,Diane andbi stopped for really good Thai food
We got back to the hotel around 10. Dave called again and Invited me to a nearby bar with electronic music.. Colin met up with us there . It was good to get to talk to Dave a little more
Now tome for sleep. More Tomorrow!
Nite all, nite Sam
-me
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