A variant thing happened this evening. ‘Diane and I were at a park nearby Zory committee meeting at the town center tonight. The meeting ended early and  there were plenty of sunlight outside. I decided to crawl out on the roof and take a look at the bell that has been hanging over the town center. The story we’ve always been told is that that is the bill that used to be in our house. Supposedly it was taken from the house during a fire here in the 1970s. About 10 years ago the town library and ‘Mary Ann called to tell us that she had found our belt and it was in the town vault. It was being put up on top of the town center which we thought was pretty cool. We’ve always told the story and believed it was true. Tonight ‘Duncan and I crawled out to take a look at the belt and get some pictures. Lo and behold the bell inscription actually says that it was for the Richmond Academy which was the twin sister building of our house. That building was taken down many years ago.…

It was fun to find this out and may be a little sad to have to retire the story… But I replace it with this story 🙂

nite all, nite sam

-me

Happy Easter to find the Easter Bunny had left me a  surprise.. my favorite peanut butter eggs.. Thanks you easter bunny !  Diane also made anise iced easter bread.. yum !

Around 10 DIane and I headed to Charlotte to a work session for Fluffy. Today was devoted to cleaning off playa dust  off of everything.. The bus itslef, the Fire control stuff and all the cabling  for the lights. It was a big deal… We got covered in playa desk… Brought back memories. Including caustic dryness of the stuff. We rinsed everything down with vinegar water which helps neutralize the alkaline sand. 

the other task was to explore some possible simplifications of  the clouds. We’re trying to reduce the effort needed to setup and take down the clouds. Aimee lead the effort which involved laying the clouds out on the floor and looking at them from above. She’d worked out the patterns using some versions of the clouds I’d laser cut in acrylic. 

We will have  a decision on any changes to the  clouds this weekend.. then its time to start reimagining the cloud mounting. 

diane and I got home in time to take a quick walk up to Huntington gorge in the beautiful afternoon sun.. 

 

We love where we live !

-nite all, nite sam

-me

We had a great time today showing Hendrik and Johannes around Vermont.  First stop was BETA

 

 

From there we went downtown to Burlington.. we walked chucrch street up to Halversons for lunch.. then went back to BCA to see the “CoCreated’  AI art show . Both Hendrik and Johannes are researchers in AI driven visualization.. so they foudn it interesting.. I think 🙂
. 

on the way home we stopped in hinseburg for sugar on snow… Yum !

Great seeing these guys !

nite all, nite sam

-me

This was a very fun and busy day.. It actually started shortly after midnight.   We stayed up late to watch a rocket launch. Our good friend Doreen,Max’s future mother  in law spent her whole career at NASA designing satellites. Even though Doreen retired a few years back.. She and her husband (and our good friend) George back to watch the launch of her final project, the TEMPO spaced-based spectrometer for measuring pollution. It was going up on a  satellite being launched by a SpaceX Falcon reusable rocket.   Doreen sent this pic of her and George by the rocket

The launch was scheduled for about 12:20 AM. we watched in ton the NASA streaming service.. SO coooooool !

We watched the launch , the watched the amazing Falcon rocket land its 1st stage  back on a robotic ship.

It was great watching.. but I needed to get some sleep.. I woke up at 5 to drive  down 3 hours to Springfield MA watch our Rookie FIRST Robotics Team 9101 Green Mountain Robotics compete int he New England Regional Championship.. It was so exciting !

I headed home about 3… but learned on the way hoem that our team 9101 had been chosen as Rookie of the Year and was invited tot eh World Championship in Houston in 2 weeks. So proud of the team !

I got home to Jonesville around 6:30 .. Our friends Henrik and Johannes had already arrived. Hendrik is my good friend (and mentor) from MIT-IBM.. Johannes is his super nice  partner. He just finished his PhD and will be beginning a post doc at Harvard in AI Visualization.. a pretty hot topic now.  It was great to see them both !.. We’re goign to show them BuETA and Burlington tomorrow. 

Fun day !

-jc