Because of time zones, this stuff got pushed into the next day, but at the end of yesterday, my dearest and oldest friend rafe came by to hang out and meet some of my friends. It was really fun… He drove 13 hours to get back from Utah and we were able to spend a couple of hours together. It was so great to see him… It was fun watching him interact with some of the high school kids. He’s a natural at this.

Now this morning… All of the students were going back to open sauce I was heading back to Vermont… I had a whole bunch of stuff to get done this week so one and a half days of open sauce was all I needed. There were a bunch of people hanging around, looking exhausted and happy… We all ate cold pizza that we found outside. Now t is a hackathon.

I got to SFO and got on the plane to Newark. We were late landing because our stupid president felt he had to go to the last World Cup game in New York and stopped traffic in and out of New York City for like an hour and a half… Here we are circling.

I’m not sure, but I think this is three Mile Island

Then we were in Newark and then eventually I got a flight back to Burlington… It was like an hour and a half late and no Ubers are lit lifts around so I took a $65 taxi ride home. Being in a taxi after using Uber and Lyft seemed like I was stepping back a few centuries… But it was fun.

Super glad to be back home… Diane comes back tomorrow. Can’t wait to see her.

nite all, nite sam
-me

Today was the opening day of open sauce… (And my only day at the full conference)… It is the biggest geek fest in the entire world. 40,000 makers and golfers and influencers all crammed into small spaces. It’s impossible to describe. My pictures won’t make any sense to anyone, but I’m putting them here so I can remember them. Were many things that I saw that were just fantastic… My favorite was a table full of plasma art that I just kept coming back to. Funny Forward thing is that when I got back home my cousin jake texted me and asked me if I was at open sauce. I hadn’t even found him there, but it turns out that one of the glass blowers who I was watching with the plasma. Art was his housemate… Small world.

 

 

 

The other big thing that was cool was to see our friends Seth and john and hannah with their company grapple and they really looked great… They had a good crowd and I was so proud of them.

These guys had a bunch of old Ibm and Apollo equipment that they had gotten

This guy had anLLM that made you into cartoons real time

there were two windtunnel projects there which is really funny because I was working on a software windtunnel project this whole trip

I also ran into my friend Karmanyah would take a step away from UT Austin to work on a start up with his friends he’d moved out to the West Coast. He and I work very closely together on starting on board our electronics project for Hackclub, which in some ways led to us all being there today.

I helped this hacker with her cosplay light up braids.. note her wierd cosplay contacts.. cool and creepy !

Coincidentally, I ran into my friend Henry who I’ve known since he was a little kid… He does his first robotics in central. Vermont and his dad has been super super helpful at building first… Total coincidence running into him

But perhaps the biggest coincidence was running into my very good friend Collin we haven’t seen in about five years. Collin and I used to build all sorts of things together and then he went to Houston and worked for my brother and then he kind of disappeared. The story is kinda long and complicated, but it was so great to see him… I hung out with him for several hours.

Another coincidence as I ran into Henri who I used to work with at Beta. He was actually my good friend Shannon’s housemate. It was so good catching up with him and his girlfriend.

That was the end of the day… Seth, John and Hanna came out. Got to talk to them a little bit. They were happy and tired… They both have been a success.

Then all 120 of us got on a train and went to Menlo College where we were staying… It was kind of weird. It was like a sale of some sort of monks cell … But at least I had a single. 

what a long, fun and exhausting day !!!!

it was amazing,. so glad I was there !

nite all.nite sam
-me

Here’s the tail end of last nights birthday celebrations.. it went to about 1:30.. then up again at 6 to head down to San Mateo for Open Sauce.. 

the whole idea of this  Outpost Hacakthon is that that hackers in our group would show their hackathon projectss at Open-sauce.. the worlds biggest maker faire.. tit fill up the whole San Mateo County fair site.. and open-sauce differs from the old bay area  makerfaire.. because of all the influencers .. 

So moving all the projects wa a big deal.. the teams spent last night carefully boxing their projects.. including some projects they’d brought with them from all over the world (india, indonesia, england, austria, germany, italy, Columbia, mexico, africa, switserland.. and who knows where all.. all I know is that we payed all of their airfaire 🙂 

we all walked to the caltrain station .. and got off in san mateo.. clay and company drove down in the uhaul truck (at 18. clay is too young to rent a car.. but uhaul doesn’t care .. lolo)  he had all the projects and all the luggage.. 

we got on to the open sauce site and set to work.. Alex, Clay. and Max started  getting everyone organize.. at 19.. Alex is the oldest

we unloaded the projects and everyone started to setup.. meanwhile me and several other folks when witht he truck to drop stuff off at Menlo College where we are staying

This is soooooooooo fun 

nite all. nite sam
-me

it was another busy day of helping the hackers.. my last night shift ended at 2am.. and my morning shift toda y started at 7:30 my job was ot help people find circuit compnents they need whcih often meant helping them design their circuits.. I love it !

Kids were in various stages of consciousness after staying up at least one night maybe two… They were asleep in every corner… There was food, wrappers, and cans and electronic stuff all over the place.

It was heaven.

this is Acon .. he was sort of the boss of this event

Around 4 PM we all straight around, trying to clean up because 40 of the world’s top maker influencers were coming to visit us… Have to admit that I didn’t know many of them, but for example, tyro Pyro who I’m a big fan of came… Mark Roewer, electro boom…… Smarter every day strange parts. All sorts of names which I’ve heard but didn’t really know

here’s styro pyro.. he’s a super nice guy

Here is the staff… All of them (except me were 19 years old or younger… Here’s my good friend Clay, who is 18 who is the co-lead for the event

Around midnight, I got dressed up in a weird inflatable costume of something tung tung tung sahur.. It’s a weird meme of a giant stick who runs around with a baseball bat and wakes kids up to eat their breakfast Ramadan meal… It was huge on TikTok I guess… So I got dressed up like that and got to come in and sing happy birthday to three people who had their birthdays, so we had birthday cake and ice cream… It was a hoot… Last hackathon I was Santa and handed out ice cream

Anything to make the hackers happy !
nite all, nite sam
-me