I woke up early and started final prep for leaving Portland. My plane was about 430 so I use the morning to do laundry, take down the storm windows, prep the lawnmower, finish some of the tree fertilizing and of course pack… About an hour before Tim was going to come and pick me up to take me to the airport I got a call from Gabe and then call from Diane. We all got on the phone together and discuss the coming weeks weather in Portland. We have been scheduled to put up the scaffolding on Monday… Unfortunately it was a week of hard rain coming. We did some excellent brainstorming and calendar work decided that it would make more sense to push the project out exactly one week. I was able to contact the scaffolding contractor and change my flight in in a matter of 30 minutes we had made a new plan. It was a little bit of whiplash because I have been all set to go out there and have been missing Diane and was looking forward to seeing Gabe , his GF sam and GameStop nova… But I’ve now got my mental calendar settled.…

That gave me an unplanned day off… It was actually kind of good as I’m still feeling a little achy from the Covid booster… Nothing a good nap Couldn’t help… I worked around the house got some time in one electronics project I was working on… And then around six Went up to see Tim and ‘Jen for a lovely meal and a nice hang out and I know it wasn’t the day I was expecting… But a nice day all the same

It looks like I now have a bonus week where I can really catch up on a Couple of projects at work

Still missing the family though… Can’t wait to see them

Nite all, nite sam

-me

I got my second Covid booster the day before so I feel a little low today… So I worked around the house. Were heading out to Portland to help Gabe paint his house.. Diane is already there… And I was planning to go out there to join them tomorrow (Saturday So I have lots of prepping things to do around the house… I also caught up on some home projects…

I only time I left the house was to take a walk with my friend Nina… She was going to bring her new baby Helene but it was kind of rainy so the two of us just walked around Richmond and caught up. Nina is the education lead at the echo Museum and we’ve been working together on a couple of projects. It’s really great hearing about how she, her partner Mica and the baby Helene we’re doing…

She’s also been a very good advisor so far to our study hall project at beta… She is really great at it Designing experience tickets kids interested in science… She’s one of my heroes

Nit all, nite sam

-me

I woke up this morning and I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling… And then it hit me I had drunk 2/3 of a bottle of good wine by myself at Part of the memorial Gathering at hosted last night on zoom for my friend Tom Williams…

It wasn’t that bad it actually felt kind a good to feel a little hung over because that’s how I always felt after hanging out with Tom 🙂

Hangover it was nothing that a couple of cups of coffee and a run couldn’t fix…

Had a busy day at work… Highlight of the day is that I got to host the “beta bytes of knowledge” Event for the week… It was my good friend Ryan over speaking on a really well told story about how he came to One one of the early text Driven echo machines… You may never have seen one of these but you certainly heard it if you’ve ever listen to Elvis, Led Zeppelin etc.… It’s an amazing device that uses multiple Tapeheads decree wonderful echoey Sound…

Ryan story it was really fun and touching… And that was that these devices came out in the 40s and 50s and were created by an inventor in Ohio and Mike battle… They were much sod after and we’re quite expensive. Ryan is it musician really wanted to get a hold of one of those.… But he couldn’t afford the few that were still in circulation. So he called up the inventor who is now quite old and was hoping to find perhaps an older unit gathering dust. He was in luck… Or so it seemed… Because battle had 1 inch model that he used for tuning his design. He agreed to sell it to ryan for a very good price… Ryan sent the money… And then waited… And waited… And waited… Months and months and months and it some point he realize he was not gonna get his money back… And he was probably never going to get his echoplex.… At the time Ryan was working at magic hat brewery… They had to habit of making bottle caps with insane… And when you came up with the work anniversary they would make a fun Saint just for you… But when Thousands of bottles Of beer to be sold… Ryan said “got your echoplex yet?”…… You can still find them he says

…He tried a couple of times call Mike battle… He finally reached the guy but he was so ill that he could talk…

A few weeks later he got a call from a family member to tell him that Mike battle passed away… But had this box that was addressed to Rhonni. Long story I know but he eventually got his beautiful device… Better still he brought it and played it it was so fun and other people from the audience got up and played it. Super great story

Later that evening we had a work session for fluffy the magic bus… By the time I got in there they managed to get all of the seats out of the bus. My biggest contribution so far I was buying pizza… It’s gonna be a big project but fun

I’m gonna try to help debug the hydraulics on the lift..l I’m guessing a bad motor cap…



This is going to be a lot of work

Night all, night Sam

– me

Last week I was very sad to learn one of my mentors and favorite people Tom Williams had died . I’ve known and worked with Tom four nearly 30 years… No more I think about it it’s probably closer to 40. He was a bigger than life person… Brilliant, funny, adventurous… And super kind. He was one of the worlds foremost experts on the testing VLSI chips… He Coinvented level sensitive scan design (LSSD) that has been used by chip makers all over the world.… tom Spent large part of his career and IBM was the senior test guy in the whole company… Eventually left and became a fellow at synopsis. Tom was very well-known industry and served on many IEEE boards.… he got a lot of recognition including recently the Coffman award… Which is the highest award for someone in electronic design automation. He was always flying somewhere in the world to gift tax meet new people etc.… He was Such a role model technical skill and give back for me and for so many others

Tom was the biggest extrovert I have ever met… And that’s saying something. You would walk into a room with Tom and He would Either already know everyone in the room … Or he would get to know them before he left . Not only that but he remembered and could tell you about their jobs their interests, their kids… It was really amazing the guy had the biggest Rolodex in his mind that I have ever seen. And he truly loved people !

Tom Was an fantasric mentor… I truly cannot count the number of times I’ve run into him at some city in the world and we sat down for a good meal… Usually Italian… With good wine… Usually Amarone…. An eaten good food generally ..no make that always… Covered with garlic. He was always so generous with his time, energy and expertise… I remember right before Sam died Tom and his wonderful wife Candace Lent us there condo in Canmore Canada… It was such a wonderful gesture…

What made Tom such a great mentor is that he would give you really straight advice… He more than anyone helped me professionally corral all my energy and make sure that Even though I was having fun I needed tocontinue to patent and write papers… whenever I saw them he would ask me about papers and patents… Almost like a parent.… Will it work out very well for me. I remember Tom was the guy who cut me elected to the IBM Academy… A group inside IBM that was has been very important to my technical and social groups.… In a matter of fact when I got into the national Academy a couple of weeks ago I made a mental note that I had to reach out to Thom to tell him… He would’ve been quite proud… But sadly I never got a chance to do that

Tom was a friend and mentor to so many people in our industry… When I heard he died I started reaching out to old friends and they all have the same sort of stories and feelings about time that I do. I took it upon myself tonight to put together as many of toms friends from IBM. Like many things in the past couple years we decided that virtual was better… But that also allowed us to pull in friends from all over.… At 8 o’clock tonight we gathered by zoom to toast our friend and mentor. We each had our own bottle of fancy wine… I have managed to find a bottle of aMarone at a local liquor store… And we all had garlic of one form or another.

I didn’t really keep count but we had at least 20 people on there many my thoughts decades. It was very touching to hear all of the stories we shared… It was remarkable even though each of our relationships With Tom were unique… The overall story was the same… Great technical magic with amazing humanity. We swap stories and toasted him for nearly 2 hours… We had a lot of fun telling Tom stories… He was notoriously bad at spelling… Quite mischievous… And damn hard to manage.… (in other words A man after my own heart!)

It was so wonderful to be together even for such a sad occasion

I recorded the meeting so that if anyone out there is a friend of Toms and would like to see it please let me know

After we hung up I had a good long cry… Hadn’t done that in a long time.

I left them call feeling pretty good… I’m feeling very committed to try to be the kind of mentor time was to me there’s many other people as I could… If we all would pay that forward the worlds be a pretty good place

Hey Tom You are loved and missed ..

Nite all, nite sam

-me