I have to admit that there are some nights when I’m tempted to go to bed before blogging.   I’m struggling to stay awake. Diane and I just came back from the big celebration dinner at the CTRE conference. We had  a good .low key day. We woke up early and got out for a run by 6AM. I dropped Diane by a fitness/yoga place for an early morning yoga class while I ran back for my 7AM breakfast meeting.

   The meting was a collection of all the IBM fellows  who were attending the conference.. there were about 50 of the 65 of us there for breakfast. It’s fun to get together like this occasionally to swap stories, exchange views and generally scheme. One thing I learned today is that one of my hero’s Bob D. has been working at IBM for 49 years.. longer than I’ve been alive… and what’s more, he’s still a major, major technical contributor.. Now that’s inspiring. !

   From there I met Diane and we went to the conference’s morning session.  There were three guest lectures at today’s sessions. The first was Jean-Michel Cousteau.. son of Jacques Cousteau, who is also a world famous oceanographer and film maker. He gave a terrifically inspiring talk on the state of the worlds water. He spent most of the time discussing his latest project of exploring the Amazon river and it’s tributaries. He had so much passin for what he did.. and his motives were so pure.. it was a great inspiration. He quoted his dad as having said.. ‘People protect what they love’  ,,, The sole purpose of all the film making they do is get people to fall in love with the worlds oceans and the creatures and plants in them.. I can tell you it worked for me this morning.. the wale movies he shot were amazing.   Cousteau  also said that you must win someone’s heart.. over to an idea then theit  mind will follow. If you try to win their minds first, it will never work..

    After Cousteau, we heard a talk from Prof. George Smoot, the co-winner of the 3006 Nobel Prizze in physics. He gave a fabulous talk on the search for dark matter energy in the universe, it’s distribution in space.. and the importance of these findings on validating the big bang theory and the universes projected future. It was so cool.. What was  also very interesting for me is that  Smoot, an MIT grad is the cousin of Oliver Smoot, the onetime MIT undergraduate who measured the Harvard Mass Ave bridge by lying end to end across the bridge/. To discover that the bridge was 364.4 smoots plus one ear. The funny thing is that Oliver parlayed this stunt into a job with the international Standards Organization SA.. He was actually  the head of ISO  for several years.

   After Smoot we were treated to a concert by ‘The Five Browns’ , 5 20 something Julliard educated siblings who play 5 identical Steinways together.. I cannot describe the richness of the sound.. or the absolute precision they demonstrated. It was great watching them play.. and listening to them talk.. they were really normal kids. They did a memorable cover of Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ on five pianos.. how cool is that ?!

   After the Browns the session ended and we met up with the boys.. They’d just woken up … We all got our suits on and drove down to Coronado  beach.. it was an overcast day.. and half way between warm and cold.. Gabe and I messed around on the skim board some more.. I think I actually started to get it !. Gabe is getting quite good. We came up with a cool variation where I pulled Gabe along the beach as fast as I could while running. It was a very cool ride. When we were getting pretty cold, Max, Gabe and I walked out into the pacific and did some wave taunting. When we found the right wave.. the Kahuna… we tossed a SamStone through it.. It felt good. We were freezing at that point so we drove back to the hotel and got in the hot tub.

   At about 6 Diane went down for her Spa treatment.. part of th perks of this meeting.. and I went off to a work meeting.. We met back up around 6:30 to go to the big dinner.

The boys took off in the city to find dinner and fun/mischief.   Later they told us that they went into a restaurant and Max posed as Gabe’s agent/photographer. They tld the folks in that worked in the restaurant that Gabe was a famous skateboarder from the east.. The maitre-de  actually asked for Gabe’s autograph.. pretty funny !

   Our dinner was really nice.. again, I wasn’t feeling as social as I usually am. Rather than trying to ‘work’ the room as I would have done in the past, we basically stood stil land talked ot folks who unwittingly wandered in to our reach . It was very nice. there were nearly 1000 folks at this dinner.. Can you imagine making that work out for the food ? Diane and I were assigned ot host one of the tables. our table was all folks from the hardware division.. so we had some things in common.. We started talking about work.. ok I  started talking about work.. but the spouses directs s away.. we then talked about where we lived, interest.. and , of course, kids.. As always this brings up the question.. ‘how many kids do you have’… As always I answer 3.. then explain about Sam’s passing. It’s always hard to get through the story.. Folks are always receptive and responsive when we do. We gave out quite a few SamStones this evening..

    We finished the evening with a nice long quite talk with my friends Kevin and Betsy.. a good end to a good day. Diane and I went back up stairs to find the kids back home.. We’re having a great time out here. I’m so glad the boys came.. Sam, you’re so here with us too.. Tomorrow’s a complete vacation day.. nothing planned. Should be a treat.. Gnight all.

-jc