Busy day. One of the bright spots was that Gabe gave us the credentials to watch his new puppy nova in her doggy daycare. He’s taking her there a few days a week to socialize… It’s so fun being able to watch her from here.

Around for Diane and I took off towards Middlebury. Tonight was the fall Meeting of the Vermont Academy of science and engineering (V’ASE) .… I love this group. It’s a bunch of senior scientists and engineers from all over the state… We get together just to talk… I’m trying to get a few things done. I’m very proud of what we’ve done in education hour each. Give them away about $20,000 a year in small grants to Vermont teachers in science clubs such as FIRST robotics. (We’re currently excepting proposals for our fall grants… Go look at https://www.vtscieng.org/k-12-outreach)

It was a great meeting… First-rate a public talk by Middleberry professor and Weir mental advocate Bill McKibben… He gave a excellent and quite sobering talk on the state of climate change. It was a pretty good call to action. The other vase members and I were very charged up to see what we should be doing as a state body to lobby the government. More here later.

From there we went over to the Middlebury alumni hall for a great dinner and socializing . It was so great catching up with some of our Sciency friends.

We got introduced as board members… And we welcome the new members. I had a great honor of introducing Dr. Mark Levine the state commissioner on health… He’s the guy who helped Vermont have the highest vaccination rate and the lowest morbidity around COVID-19… He’s a real hero and it was so great to be able to honor him in this way.

We also got to honor Vermont teacher of the year…

I love my geeky friends

nite all, nite sam

-me

The day began with Oded and Tally… We took a nice walk before they headed south

I spent the day trying to get my job done and trying to get my new job of retiring done… It is tiring to be sure… So many ends and outs to close up 40 years of stuff

Tonight Dianne put on a yoga class… We had several friends come over… It seems to me that everybody is dealing with a lot of stuff right now. Whether it’s a personal level, work level, family level… And there is certainly a whole Lotta stuff going on in the world.… Dan and heard an article where she heard that people around the world are starting to suffer from a lack of joy… I thought that was a pretty profound statement…

We gotta create some joy !

nite all, nite sam !

-me



This afternoon my sweet friend Oded and his wife Tali showed up at our house for a short visit. Oded and I have been friends for a long time… He worked at our Haifa lab in Israel… But recently left for a job at Citibank. He’s a real expert in cyber security and a great mathematician. He loves math and runs very famous blog about math brain teasers.… I’ve actually only met him face-to-face once but we talked often. It was really great meeting his wife. They had been on a trip driving around New England and had found a way to come see us… It was so much fun hanging out with him he has exact kind of geeky

Humor and party tricks that I have… It was fun to actually share them in the same space. We had fun hanging out with them and hiking yesterday… I took another walk this morning

I really love it when friends come by

note all, nite dam

-me

Today was the second and final day of hack and mighty… It really turned out to be a lot of fun. It wasn’t as crazy as a full in person events of a couple of years ago… But it was a heck of a lot better than anything virtual. I really enjoyed meeting some of the new IBM folks that I’ve been able to recruit to run the local event… And really appreciated the help of the people who are helping us virtually…

‘Diane helped us pack up… We announced our awards… And then we hit the road.… OK beautiful 4 Hour Dr. back home with a full moon in the back window. It was so cool to see the moon behind our house when we got home

That trip to Cambridge was really nice… It was great seeing some of my team and CSean campus. It’s kind of hard to believe this is the last real event of my first chapter of my IBM career.… So I got to get my head around retirement. I know it’s gonna be fun

nite all, nite sam

-me