Very busy and social day today. I had intended to spend it working on my talk.. but I guess that’s what I’m doing tonight. It’s worth it, though.. It was fun getting out of the house and seeing people.. First up this morning was breakfast with my friends Bart and Bob at On The Rise. .. Bart works here at IBM in an area related to mine… We’re something like 3rd cousins once removed on an IBM org chart. Bob live in NY and works in Yorktown. I’ve known Bob for longer than I can remember.. I met him at a pizza shop in Austin… when he came over and started eating my pizza as he introduced himself.. The three of us talked about work stuff and family stuff and state of the world stuff.. A good way to start the day… It was really good seeing them both.

I got this one picture of Bob that caught him looking so serious and wise… .. even wiser and more serious after a little photoshop…

I left those guys at 10:30 in time to go home and get Gabe up to the mountain . There was a Snowboard competition up there that he hadn’t signed up for.. but wanted to see … He said the snow was great today…   On the way back down the mountain, Homer called to tell me that his fnew friend Whit was coming by the shop at 1:30 and wanted us all to get together.Whit is only in town until tomorrow..  I called Max and invited him and Jesse to go with me.. We headed down to Monkton around 1:30.. .

Whit and Nicole arrived right before we got to Homer’s shop.. They’ve been visiting from San Fransisco as Whit teaches a class in Fire art at Middlebury.  The class of Middlebury students are building Fire trees and Propane flame canons..  By day, Whit is a corporate attorney who helps get green energy inventors linked to venture capitalist in a socially responsible way.. By night he’s an artist… actually a fire artist.
Nicole is a skin consultant in SF. They’ve been going to Burning Man for many years… Last year they worked on two pieces Max and I saw and loved. at Burning man last Summer. The first was a piece called pyrocardiem , it was a ring of flame jets that was hooked to a pulse detector..you slid on a little pulse oximeter… and the torches flared every time your heart beat !… (Is that cool .. or what !>!).. Max actually got hooked up to it .. The second was a 15 foot tall polycarbonate shield where you could blow propane, oxygen  and hydrogen through soap and make floating explosive bubbles. You popped them with little glow plugs. It was honestly m favorite piece at burning man.. As Whit described it.. i had this flash back that I’d actually met him and talked about the piece for a few minutes at the show.. it is a very tiny planet … no ?

Max, Jessie, Homer Nicole and I talked for about 2 hours about flame cannons, Burning man… names of contacts the other might find usefule and possible things we could build together. It was really great getting to know them…   ..

Next step is to build one of those propane cannons.. but not until after my talk….

Thanks to Jessie’s’ mindfulness we got back on the road towards home in time.. We’d invited Lou, Kathy and August over for an early dinner… That was another very nice meeting. I had a few minutes to talk to Augie about school. He’s in the Computer Science program at UVM.. and I co-chair the board of advisers for that department… It was a great chance to get some first hand feedback on the program.. He had some good ideas which I’ll filter back to the board

Dinner was really nice.. we hadn’t all sat down for a meal together in quite some time.. it was good to catch up…

Diane figured out a clever way to keep the dogs chilled out during dinner.. She gave each of the dogs a bone to chew.. so they all sat quietly as we talked… Right before Lou and Kathy left, Max asked out permission to show them what Reptar is usually like.. He went and got the dog’s favorite toy.. his old rugby ball. When Reptar sees this ball, he goes absolutely crazy…   See for yourself

OK.. All for the night.. I’ve got to get to work on my talk.. I’m getting nervous… ande excited about delivering this talk… It’s the largest group (~4000 folks) I’ve ever spoken in front of…If  think to hard about that, it will freak me out.  It made me think o fa great interview I heard on NPR  of a woman who will be reading a poem she’s written at Obama’s inauguration next week. The interviewer asked her if she was frightened by the prospect of speaking in front of all those people.. She answered “challenged… not frightened”.. That’s how I’m choosing to approach this talk… Please remind me of that if you see me veering towards ‘frightened’..

That’s it for tonight.. Goodnight my friends.. Good night Sam
-me