All posts by johncohn

Satuerday night – Chai turns 9 (and more of Vilnius)

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Nice day back home. The big news today is that our beautiful dog Chai Mariano Cohn turns 9 years old today..

 

She’s gettign to be quite a mature lady. She’s been my friend, my comfort, my alarm clock and my running buddy for a long time. Sam loved (loves) her too

Happy birthday girl !!!!

 

Today began with Gabes soccer game at MMUU.. you can see the heavy frost still in the shade at 10 AM !

a few weeks ago we were standing here sweating in shorts !

 

then back home for a breakfast birthday for chai. She got a squeezy toy and a puzzle (believe it or not) .> She had to fgure out how to open it to get soem cheese. Didn’t take long.. smart girl !

then a nice walk up in Honey hollow. The leaves are past peak.. but still so pretty and peaceful. i needed the down time !

Satori.. is wondering why chai’s getting all the attention today (Well. .she got a squeezy toy too.. they both want to play while i’m typing !)

Couldn’t resist the cool water.. it might have just been in the 40’s .. but I can’t resist cold water.  so i took a little dip in the creek. . it really wakes you up.. and gets you back in your body in an instant.

then back for chais birthday dinner.. eggs, cheese and bacon !!!

 

OK.. thats it for today.. what follows are some pics from this week.. Here’s a few shots of Riga Latvia..   gotta love this poster !

I drove with Ugis , joe and simone from Riga to Vilius.. we went near the town where my great, great uncle was from.. we found his tombstone in israel . You can read about that here.

we were also only 60 km from Kaunas where others in my family were.. No one still left after the Holocaust.. It was strange being there knowing that past..

next morning.. I was at the Vilnius TV station by 6:30 AM.. first stop.. makeup (yuck)   then on tv where 25 percent of the population of the country watched me talk for 10 minutes.. so funny !

by the time we left the tv station the moon and venus where against a brightening sky.. i always love it like this.

Here we are with my handlers  ready to go into the IBM meeting.. you always need a hulahoop at ibm meetings.

this is the famous TV tower in vilnuis. Sever folks were killed trying to defend this tower from soviet tanks in 1991 ~


Here are the students at Vilnius university after my talk..

one of the TV ladies tried the hoop


there was a redbull truck in the lot.. here’s one for Sam !(we always pour the first sip out for him )

then another talk at IBM.. great audience !

then soem sightseeing at night of the old city.. the one my ancestors called home

then a lovely dinner


a great walk back to the hotel


and a long 8 hour flight where i worked the entire way..

home to vermont

where it was snowing !

ok.. gotta run.. more tomorrow.

happy birthday chai

nite all, note sam

-me

 

Friday night – back from baltics.

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Home again after a very busy week in the baltics.. 6 customer presentations, three university talks and a bunch of media things.. and then a full days worth of work in the evening with folks back home. It was a great trip.. I met so many wonderful people.. still I’m really beat… So beat in fact I can’t seem to type well enough to upload my pictures from Vilnius, Actually.. I think Photo bucket may be down.. with everyone’s permission I’m going to wait until tomorrow to upload them.. right now I just want to hangout with Diane and try to stay awake for an hour more or so so I can sleep through the night..

I promise to get those pics up tomorrow.

for now..
nite all. nite sam
-me

Thursday morning – History of computing

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Grabbing a few secs between meetings to put up soem pictures from yestradys visit to Riga.. I’m pretty swamped to day between the IBM Forum I’m doing here with clients… and media stuff (eg. 6AM TV show , 8:30 talk.. , university talk, another talk, two interviews).. All good stuff. .but keeping me very busy on top of a big project for my day job.. I’m pretty beat..

Anyway.. back to yesterdays trip to Riga

Fish for breakfast.. i know I’m in the north of europe !

After my IBM talks and Media stuff, I went to the Latvian Technical University for a talk.. I think there were about 300 folks there. it was really great meeting these students. I was the kick off ot heir engineering week.. I wish I could have hung out to talk to them more..

one of the high points of my trip so far was a special short tour that my friend Ugis arraigned for me to visit the Technic Museum in Riga.. There Andre, the museums 80 year old wonderfully warm and knowledgeable curator took me on a tour of his collection crammed in the 5th floor attic of the Technical institute. In there was a beautifully layed out history of computing in eastern Europe.. He had everything from 1950’s vintage vacuum tube flip flops to modern computing elements. The high points ere the Russian copies of early IBM 360 and 370 machines and Bulgarian versions of DEC PDP11’s. it was amazing to see. The collection is a treasure.. that I suspect few get a chance to see .

Andres display of calculators. and mice.

 

A russian version of the Apple II

 

an early russian printer

Collection of early PCs

Old component test station

Card reader frame

old switching components

hand calculators

Model of first electronic calculator in russian total memory was 150K bytes !

the brains behind it.. don’t you love this pic !?

picture of the real thing

early print outs

danger.. high voltage (fist computer had 800 volt supply) looks like Fearless leader from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Core memory planes

acustic digital delay for printer

Logic board for tube computer. (with germanium diodes !)

 

paper tape (cut by hand)

early drum memory

 

audio tape recorder retrofit for data .

crazy Swedish tape machine

front panel of ECIM IBM clone  russian duplicate 370 processor.. the hilight of the show for me !

the crew who built it

early computer art

psuedoselectric

removable disk drives

Another surviving IBM clone console.. so cool !

the guts.. !  Discrete ECL logic !!!

 

some sort of test console..

 

Bulgarian DEC clones

oops a lightning strike !

 

 

 

An old ASR 33 (I used ot have one of these !!!!)

 

great tour !.. I was so pleased to have spent the time with Andre !!!

 

OK.. now I’m in Vilnus .. about to head to the University for a talk.. More tomorrow.. with pictures from here..

Nite all, nite sam

-me