It’s Monday night and I’m at the IBM Learning Center in Armonk NY. I drove down early this morning after about 4 hours sleep .. yawn. The drive down is nice.. spent some of it on the phone.. some of it just quietly thinking. I find that since Sam’s passing I have had trouble listing to news on the radio.. or listening to the comedy channel we get… or reading newspapers.. I don’t think I want to hear about other peoples troubles right now.. A cop out perhaps.. but good self preservation.  

 

The Learning Center  where I’m staying is an IBM owned hotel/conference center on the campus of our companies headquarters. This is one of my favorite hotels in the world. Not sure why. It’s sort of  part monastery, part luxury hotel and part penal colony. The dorms are all in beautiful stone buildings set in a heavily wooded park with trails crisscrossing every which way. I’ve been coming here frequently for the last 10 years.. each dorm is attached to some memory of some business deal or some corporate task force I was part of.. not all good memories.. but not all bad either. As peaceful and beautiful as this place is.. it can also be a little eerie Nearly everyone here is an IBM employee.. it’s like invasion of the body snatchers but with briefcases !

    I’m really glad I came down here .. I have a series of meetings today and tomorrow related to my day job and my outreach stuff.. I’m also trying to attend a conference held for some of our best college interns.  I say ‘trying’ because I have some hot day job stuff that’s keeping me on the phone most of the day. but I was able to here a few of the talks and hang out at dinner.

 Our dinner table  – great conversation  !

 It’s so very energizing hanging out with all these 20-somethings who are still in college. They’re all so cute in their business suits. They are a very sharp bunch of folks to be sure. This kind of stuff recharges me so much. When I’m around ‘kids’ like this, I end up trying to see myself through their eyes.. to them I’m a grown-up .. it sort of freaks me out. I love talking to them about their intern projects, their schools and their backgrounds. I tell them about what I do.. and do as much meddling with their careers as one can safely do in a 5 minute conversation. I did a bunch of talking about my family tonight too… many folks asked me about my Sam button. I like talking about all of my family

    Speaking of family.. this place really does feel like an extended family to me..  Quite a few execs attend this particular event because they too get a charge out of it.  Once again.. I got hugged by many of them.. At the very least I get the tow arm hand shake (you know when you also grab the other guy’s elbow) I don’t think I get many regular  handshakes from folks I know well anymore.  Here are a few of the friends I ran into.

 My good friend Jane.. We finnaly had a chance to sit down and have a good, long talk. It was so good to reconnect with her

John I..  I once hooked his daughter up to  a 400,000 volt generator

My hero Irving.. now a Visiting prof at MIT

Nick – the godfather of IBM.. all of our hero !

I also ran into two guys.. a father and son.. who are named Eric Larsen .. Even more trange.. John-from-Voices mom’,  Pam, told Diane abotu a book about Marconi I might like written by another guy named Eric Larsen… Eric.. i think the world is telling me ot talk to you about something ?

 I know I’ve said it before.. but at a time like this you can see that the company has a deep and wonderful soul.  

 
Speaking of time’s like this.. It’s midnight.. and I’m going to friends for an early breakfast tomorrow.  So.. that’s it for today.. more tomorrow. Love you all.. love you Sam

 

-me