Crazy busy day… The thing that stands out the most is the memorial service for my friend Jeff Edwards. Jeff was one of the dads involved in Boy Scouts and Max and I were active. I was part of a cluster of guys who were my really good friends and support network during those days of having young kids. It was an interesting guy… Quiet…Very smart… Very opinionated… And a wicked dry sense of humor. His sense of humor was captured in the fact that his ashes were in a milk can… Jeff was a dairy scientist and spent all of his time testing milk. He would’ve thought that was hysterical. AtThe memorial service was in the Richmond library good portion of the town Shao. It was packed. Jeff’s wife Karen got up and talked and the one thing that she made us I’ll promise to do was to take our blood pressure medication… Jeff died of a brain aneurysm. So please text Jeff when you take your meds… Jeff’s kids Jeremy, Tyler and Kim all stood up and gave really moving tributes to their dad. It was fun stories in the midst of sadness. A bunch of other relatives to talk to talk… What are my favorite speakers with my good friend Clint wore his scout uniform in Jeff’s honor… He told about some of the great stories that we all shared and the boys were camping hiking etc.…… I remember great story when some of us dad’s including Jeff smuggled beer into the scout camp… We thought we’ve gotten away with it. Many years later I learned from Max and some of his friends that they knew perfectly well we were up to.… Jeff. That was funny.
Will miss you Jeff
Earlier in the day I had another moving moment. I went to the motor vehicles department to get my drivers license renewed. I’ll over there were signs about organization. I told the woman who was helping me about Sam and that he was an organ donor. It turns out that someone close to her it was an organ recipient… Then one of the other women working there came and brought her Samstone over… We were all there laughing and crying for a little bit. It’s pretty amazing. It turns out that they do a big donor appreciation event On national organ donation day sometime in April. I’m gonna see if I can participate
Lots of other stuff happen today including a talk I did at UVM… I guess I’ll talk about that tomorrow.
Just came back from a really great talk with my friend Kyle Clark did at generator tonight. ‘Kyle has started this crazy cool company called Beta technologies here in Burlington. They’re making vertical takeoff and landing fixed wing electric airplanes.… I’ve been spending a fair amount of time over there and cannot believe the wonderful things that they’re making.… Kyle Talked about the technology, the application and the culture behind building that’s wonderful machine. I was particularly proud to hear that they have six people who trained at the generator.… That’s exactly the kind of thing we’re trying to do to build people skills and help the state build high-tech businesses. It was seriously one of the best talks I’ve ever heard!…
Can’t specifically asked us not to share Photos from his talk… So instead I’ll share an old photo of their first Prototype… The new plane is so much more amazing… Can’t wait till that goes public
Nice peaceful day at home. Got out in the snow with the dogs and went for a ski by myself. Spent most of the day catching up on work.
One cool thing is that ‘Diane and I got our 23 and me results back last night. 23 and me is a genetic service that scans your DNA for variety of health and ancestry information. The good news is all the health stuff checked out pretty well.… It was really fun looking at the genetics data. Though the results of my ethnicity were no surprise… I’m just about 100% AshkenazI Jew. I could’ve told them that and saved 75 bucks
It is interesting to see about 2% of other stuff mixed in there… Wonder what happened there?
It was also very cool to see The map they made of near and distant relatives. I found Max in there of course… But I also found a second cousin and another person I knew was related to my dad. Aside from that I knew nothing about all the names and people. They were spread out all over the world and in keeping with the Jewish diaspora
Another fun thing about the reports was the traits they listed. For example I am less likely than most people to be able to carry a tune. Like 70% of people I have the gene that allows me to smell the metabolites of asparagus in someone’s urine… (Not just your own)… It said that I was genetically predisposed to like vanilla over chocolate ( totally false)… And that I was slightly more than average to dislike cilantro… Also false.
It’s fun to learn new facts about yourself… I’m looking forward to digging deeper
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.
