All posts by johncohn

Tuesday night – Town meeting day

March 1, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

Today is the first Tuesday in March.. and as such, it is Town Meeting Day here in Vermont !. Town Meting day is such an amazing tradition.In towns across the state people take off work and gather in churches, school auditoriums and grange halls and vote on their towns business for the year. Business can include everything from town budgets and school budgets to declaring our town a nuclear free zone. as ours did back in the 80’s.. Even in today’s busy culture I was pleased to see about 250 of my fellow towns folks gathered at the middle school this morning to talk about Richmond’s issues.not bad for a town of 3000 .I was able to hang out for an hour and a half to vote and watch the fun. I got to stay because my email was still down and I could not get meeting notices !!! (bliss) Going there always reminds me how much I love this town.. most folks know most folks. if not by name.. at least by site.. We have our share of characters… some you can predict exactly what they’re going to say and when. others.. you can never tell what they’re going to say..

The meeting is run by the select board.. a group of civic midned folks who dedicate their time in what has got to be a thankless and tiring job.. My good buddy Clint (hand raised here) presided over the proceedings as his dad has in the past. He had his hands full during a debate about hiring/training a paramedic or two for our rural rescue squad. Amid debate one resident moved that we delay the debate on the issue to a later date.. What happened then was a 45 minute debate on debating that would have made Abott and Costello proud.. We had been debating the issue, then we debated if we could delay debate on the issue.. then we debated if we could debate on moving the debate on the issue .. (i kid you not !) Clint did a fine job of keeping us all kosher to Roberts Rules.. even when it got tough.. !

It was getting really confusing… Clint joked that he could use a lifeline just as his dad Toby walked in .. perfect timing.. Toby has run the meeting since I can remember.. I’ve been coming to these for 30 years.. I don’t think he’s been here that long, though. Here they are conferring

Eventually the board had to cal the secretary of states office.. they said the debate could be moved.. but just to a specific date and time within the next 3 months.. I had to leave before it was resolved.. Not sure where it landed.

I’m still waiting to here how the elections all came out.. does anyone know ?

nite folks, nite sam

-me

Monday night – offline

February 28, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

I woke this morning and , as always. one of the first things I did was roll over and check my email on my phone.. I hadn’t received a single email since midnight the night before. That’s odd, I thought.. even on a Sunday night I’d expect to get some email.. By about 8AM.. I was perplexed.. surly, someone wanted something from me today.. Monday’s are notoriously bad for email.. especially Mondays after having been traveling.. but.. nothing, nada, bupkis… .. not even a line of junk mail.. By 9 I realized something must be wrong.. I average about 130 real emails a day.. that doesn’t include junk mail.. or email I send..

I called our help desk..a smiley voice from across the world answered me.. She walked me through the steps I already knew. about mail file full problems.. . I waited patiently for her to finish .. She was doing her job.. I then explained that somehow , my mailfile was full.. but at the same time it was telling me that it was only 15% used..

We both poked and prodded at my mail file .. then she agreed ‘something was wrong’.. She put in a repair ticket and told me that my problem should be resolved within 8 hours.. 8 Hours ?!!> Nothing more she could do, she assured me. she was very nice, so I took her workd for it. I wnet to work … still emailless..

I had a hard day in the sense that i was on several tough calls… nothing seemed to be going well at work. . Still.. my email was clogged.. I imagined a giant hairball somewhere in the either.. Pretty soon people started sending me instant messages….. I learned that email was getting returned with a ‘john’s email is full, try again later’ message.. not only was I not getting email… I was looking like an idiot ads I wasn’t getting it…

One more call to the help guys.. I told them my email database told me it was only 15% full.. they told me they were working on it.. and had sent the problem to ‘the server guys’ ..

midday.. still no email.. I was getting philosophical by that point.. based on the phone calls and instant messages I was gettign.. I suspected little of the email I was missing would be good news… ‘So what,” I wanondered.. if all that bad news went to the bit bucket..

By around 4 I realized I was enjoying the lack of interruption.. I no longer felt compelled to multitask.. My day wasn’t goig well.. but I knew that the email break only was helping…

by 6 I called the help folks again.. it had been 9 hours.. Once again I was told how to do what I’d already done.. again I waited.. Finally I was told that my request was still waiting with ‘the server guys’ .. and wouldn’t you know they’d gone home for the day.. I was told my problem would have to wait until tomorrow..

I’m sitting on the couch at the time I normally start my second work day.. and I have no frustrating emails to read, write .. or respond to..

bliss…..

I think I’ll go hang out with my wife 🙂

don’t try to email me…

nite all, nite sam

-me

Sunday night – foundation

February 27, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

Blissful day at home.. getting used to the timezone again. I woke well rested at 10:30 to streaming sunlight.. and temp in th high teens. Didn’t do much today.. Got out long enough too play in the glorious snow we have.. Diane, the dogs and I snowshoed up in Honey Hollow. There was about a foot of new snow over a think layer of ice that made for easy walking for both us and the dogs.. Stilll. My poles would poke through occasionally .. and then you realized there was about 3 feet of snow everywhere we walked..

One of our stops today was to explore the foundation for an old mill we saw while hiking on the other side of honey hollow creek a few weeks back. After living ere for 30 years, it’s unusual and fun to come across something ‘new’. We’re pretty sure this was the foundation for a small mill sometime in the past 100 to 150 years. .. There’s a small sluice just down stream from here.. We don’t know what they might have been doing here.. it could have been a small lumber mill… or a grain mill.. or even an electric generator.. No way of knowing now.. All that is left is this well built rock skirt that would have been the basement built into the slop of a hill .

A perfect place for a samstone..

It felt so good to be out in nature after the last couple of days of travel.. The trip was good though.. it’ helped me rebuild my foundation a little. I got to do what I love which is meeting new people and getting them excited about science and engineering. Every time I do that, I’m reminded that that’s what I should be doing with my life.. I guess I am doing.. just need to do it more…

ah.. gotta sleep now.. more tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

Saturday-ish – Electric city

February 26, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

Greetings from Newark USA>. I landed here a few hours after 2 hours of subways, a 14 hour flight from Narita.. and now a 5 hour layover until the flight home..I’m SO looking forward to seeing everyone at home !

The day has been fun in a way that only a 23 hour travel day can be.. In some ways it’s a bonus day.. I left Tokyo about 6PM.. on the 25th .. and got to New Jersey at 4:30 the same day.. not bad.. It would be a recipe for eternal youth if I didn’t have the opposite happen on the way out.. Though somehow.. I still think I came out a day ahead, since I traveled over the Atlantic to get there.. and over the pacific to get back..

Both topics (going home, and going around the world this week) remind me of one of my favorite roamntic geek cartoons from htttp://xkcd.com

ANYWAY.. i DIGRESS… PROBABLY BECAUSE i’VE BEEN AWAKE FOR 36 HOURS…
where was i ? Oh.. In Japan..

I woke up on today number 1 in Sugnami-Ono.. I quickly packed .. then got on hour train ride to downtown Tokyo station. I’ve been on subways all over the planet.. and Tokyo’s are among my fav’s.. clean. quiet. fast and full of polite and clean smelling people.. When I say polite.. I mean really polite.. as in the nice sleeping lady on the left actually offered me her seat since I had luggage (can you believe that ?!?)

here’s me looking like the only-gaijin-white-guy-can’t-read-Japanese on the whole train… guy..
At least .. I brought no dangerous goods.. which I guess would be bad goods…

At Tokyo station I met up wiht my good friend Hiroshi-san .Hiroshi-san was at IBM for more than 20 years.. we got to kow oneanther well when we served on the same corporate committee… He’s a smart, funny and all around wonderful guy. We hadn’t seen each other in about 2 years, so it was very good getting the time to catch up. Hiroshi helped me find a locker to store my bags.. then we headed north (I think ?) two stops to Akihabara.. or ‘electric town’.. the centre of electronics ‘otaku’ geekiness of Tokyo.. and therefore, arguably the world..

First stop was lunch in a Soba place overlooking the crowded market.. (Nintendo was making a major announce today.. which made it extra crowded, I heard)

Next stop was Otako (geek) heavan.. store after store of electronic components, chips. resistors, LED’s.. Just amazing stuff.. a

THe great thing about having a native guide is that Hiroshi-san took me to the absolute geekiest place in Akihabara…which.. by the chain rule.argument I made above . makes it the geekiest store on the face of the planet.. . What was even cooler is that the store was full of people… actually looking at the stufff… flipping through the chips, sniffing the resistors, squeezing the capacitors.. . which means they still remembered how to make stuff.. My heart rejoiced !

we spent about 30 minutes going through packets of kanji covered parts, .. i greedily stuffed some into my basket..

then thoguht better of it.. and put most.. (not all ) back on the shelf..

a few minutes after we got to the store.. we were met by the Takemura’s. Takemura-san senior is an old work freind of Hiroshi-san.. Here’s his son who’s a 3rd year design student.. he was san amzing kid.. he had this beutiful 1951 Leca camera .. ti was like a work of art… They Takemura’s had come to meet me since they’d seen some the engineering paradise video…. how cool is that ?

together the four of us rifled through the components some more and compares currents, voltages, feeds and speeds.. I can think of no better use of a tokyo morning

After we checked out.. we went out for lunch number 2..It was great hanging out with the three of them Takamura-san gave me some cool anime figures and a tamborine that I need to work into a movie soemhow.. (I’ll do it !)

Young master Takemura gave me a very cool Manga !.. They are such generous and kind folks !