I met. my friend and coworker Shannon at 8AM this morning to load up a bunch of demos we are taking down to our colleagues in our DC office. We were doing this in prep for an event they are hosting.
We had a rented Uhaul box truck absolutely packed with demo motors, batteries and model planes. It was a 10-ish hour drive down to DC… shannon drove about 2/3 of the time.. I drove about 1/3. It was fun talking and listenign to music.. We made good time and only stopped twice. By 7Pm-ish we were down in DC. Our good friend Aaron had flown down from Montreal and he came and met us.. .. and our friend Matthew came to drop Diane by. Diane was in DC hanging out with Matthew, his wife Caroline, their daughter Anna .. and Matthews mom Kate. It was a fun moment of crossing multiple friend streams !
Busy day,. Diane is down in DC ,. heading down tomorrow to meet up. Without her here I tend to de-regulate.. I forget to sleep, eat, exercise. etc.. Luck for me my good friend Doug invited me out to hike part of the catamount trail near nebraska notch. Doug is a great hiking buddy.. full of stories and a fast hiker. It was a beautiful trail and a beautiful day. I think we went about 7.5 miles
Got home in time to change clothes and drive to charlotte to meet Marie. We were doing some check out and repair on Fluffy’s lights in prep for some upcoming local events (New years !).. we quickly found the bug we were chasing. Always wonderful working with Marie
THen back home to do some fixing around the house. One job was to replace the lights in the front entrance way and tower. The former are about 35 feet in the air.. the latter is up in the cupula of the house.. Quite an adventure just to change 5 light bulbs. They were either burned out or old school vacuum fluorescents. I put in new color controlled wifi bulbs.. great for energy savings. and fun way to change it up.. Any color you want.
Always an adventure crawling to the top of the house.. I kept trying not to think that I was 55 feet in the air 🙂
Starting an early drive tomorrow. More from the road !
The day started early.. I dropped Diane off at the airport at about 4:30 then headed home for a few hours more sleep. Diane is going down to DC to see our good friends Kate., Mathew Caroline and Anna.. I’m meeting her down there Monday with Shannon and Aaron (rebar) for a work installation .
I used the day to catch up on some projects in my shop. Mid afternoon I headed up to Colchester to visit some friends.
First visit was to my old friend Val. I first met Val over 30 years ago. He and his wife and daughter moved to Vermont from Novosibirsk Russia . I met Val through my good friend (and oldest vermont friend) Paul G. Val like Paul is an amazing musician. I kinda lost track of Val over the years. Val is a gifted engineer who is strong in both theory and hands-on practice. In Russia he developed a novel architecture for generating 6 access 3 dimensional positioning using just three linear actuators along with an elegant mathematical model of how to use it. When he moved to the US, Val only spoke a little english. He got a job doing shop cleanup for Hazelett strip casting in Colchester.. by the time he retired, Val was their chief scientist. I’ll never for get some of the demos val built to test out pumping and braking mechanisms for the molten metals used in the strip casting machines. Last year I learned that our boss Kyle had worked with Val for many years at a company they founded called iTherm doing induction heating . Kyle always talks about Val in such admiration.. Kyles focus on ‘first principles’ engineering was inspired by Val.
Anyway.. it was so good catching up with Val.. he’s 86 and has had numerous health problems.. but is still sharp as a tack. It was so good catching up . I hadn’t been to Vals hose in more than 30 years. Last time I was there Val and wife Tatiana had fed me and served me their home made garlic and hot pepper vodka. (I still remember the hangover 🙂 .. Tattiana died quite a few years ago..and Val now lives alone. It was great catching up on the decades since we’d last talked.. Val fed me .. and gave me a shot glass of that same garlic and hot pepper vodka..
We talked for a couple of hours.. talking about mutual friends, tech. vodka and music. He played some piano too.
It had been such a pleasure catching up. I’m so inspired by Val.
I’m super excited because I’ve picked up a new side gig at BETA. I can’t go into it here.. but I’m really enjoying helping out with a different project. It’s really fun working with new people and new tech (I still love the old people and old tech too) .
I wish I could share more pics about what we’re doing.. Maybe someday.. lets just say it’s very interesting and exciting !
