Nice long day here. A walk to -12°F… Considerably warmer than it might’ve been but still friggin cold. I noticed before coming to bed but it was about 27° above zero Fahrenheit… That’s almost a 40° swing the day. That would be like having it 50° in the morning and 90° at night. Guess that’s like the desert or something.

I spent the entire day at the Vermont first tech challenge ( FTC) event at CVU high school. I got there around 7:15 am but the judges had been there since 6 AM. I headed towards home around 6 PM… So about 11 hours. It was an amazing event. We had 31 teams… 13 of which were from Vermont and the balance from neighboring states. I haven’t been to a first event in at least five years… It’s a very well run exercise in chaos. The teams are generally between five and seven high school students. They all collaborate on a single robot about 20 inches on a side. The robot is operating wirelessly and has to perform some pretty amazing tasks… It needs to grab these blocks move them under some obstacles and then stack them. Some parts of the competition our one on one and some of them are co-opetition’s with other teams. The whole thing is underscored Buy a concept called “gracious professionalism”… We’re teams help each other even as they compete. It was an incredible display of good sportsmanship all Through the day. It was amazing to see the technical achievements of some of these teams. I have to say the Vermont teams need to become more sophisticated… And that’s what I’m hoping to help on. Do you like

I was there to gather information… And show a little nerd pride… I had every blinking gadget on me that I don’t. I think for this crowd it worked well

We had Miss Vermont and miss Jr Vermont there… Both are pursuing stem careers. They were really fun to hang out with. There’s been a few hours going around talking to the teams. Miss Vermont saying the national anthem beautifully. To kick off the competition

In the end… Most of the big prizes went to out of state teams… But that was fine. Vermont crew had a pretty good showing. And we learned a lot more about what we’re going to need to up our game here in the state. I’m really looking forward to working on that.

Right now I’m just really looking forward to getting some sleep.

More tomorrow!

Nite all, nite sam

--me

It’s 1130 at night and I just got home from Cambridge. We had a nice work gathering this afternoon and I had trouble pulling myself away. It was really fun.… The drive home was really nice. I’ve been trying to listen to more podcasts… ‘Diane has me hooked on something called 99% invisible… It’s really great. So great in fact that I didn’t notice the gas gauge. By the time I looked up I had 3 miles left to go before I ran out of gas.… Even though that Prius gets about 500 miles when it’s fully fueled and charged up… It’s still has a finite capacity… And I was just about to find it. I nervously watched as the “miles left”counter went to zero. I knew I was just about to run out of gas when I came over a hill and lo and behold there was the south Royalton exit. I’ve never been happier to turn into that tiny town. There was a gas station still open right at the exit and I coasted in on fumes. I had 0 miles to go and by my calculation about a half a cup of gas left in the tank.

I never knew podcast could be so dangerous 🙂

Nite all, nite sam

-me

Busy day here in Cambridge. Mid day I Got a note from a friend that. An old picture of me on a plane with Bernie Sanders was circulating around Twitter again.… I’m not exactly sure what the conversation was about… But I think it had something to do about Bernie flying first class.… For the record we were both in Coach that night.… I will say that Bernie is a very hard-working guy… Every time I’ve been on a plane with him … Which ever they were years has been quite a few times he’s been working away !That’s one thing I really like about him

https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=You%20forgot%20to%20add%20these&src=typeahead_click

Rest of the day it was really good. My bosses boss Jeff was in town and he did a really nice job of introducing himself to our team

Later this evening had a really nice dinner with my friends Subhro and Minashi

Then on the way home I ran into my good friend Jia On the street here. That’s pretty funny because she lives in New York City. I knew she was in town because I saw her at lunch. It was really great catching up with her.

OK… I got to get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow.

Night all, night sam

-me



I was a poster child today… Earlier today we had a poster session for the leader ship of my group who are visiting from all around the world. Quite a few of my colleagues get a chance to show their work on Colorfly printed posters. Even though I’m around them every day it was so fun to be able to see them proudly discussing their work for a bunch of new people.

I had my crazy hat with me… So I got several friends to try it on… Here’s my friend Alessandro

And my friend Mark

See evening I was invited to judge kind of a extended hack-athon called “the generator”… (Not the generator in Vermont)

This is a year-long set of side projects that students can do to compete for prizes. I was so impressed with the projects. I didn’t take any pictures of those… But I did get a picture of the very smart students who are running the competition

While I was at it I played with her interactive wall nearby. Very cool stuff

OK… I’ve got to give an early talk tomorrow so I’m going to bed.

Night all, night Sam

-me