All posts by johncohn

Monday night – We have a dream

January 20, 2009 johncohn

I have much to do in my life right now.. but I have got to step back right now /.. like so many others around this country.. and marvel at the wonderful history we’ll be making tomorrow. I’m thinking back to the day I first heard Martin Luther King’s name. it was the day he was assassinated.. I must have been 4 years old. and I came in and my mother was crying. She told my about Dr. King.. Ever since that day he was one of my inspirations.. It’s amazing to think that 46 years ago he was working to ensure that a black man could eat in any restaurant.. stay in any hotel.. .. Could he have imagined that we’d be swearing in our first black president tomorrow ? Of course he could have.. I’m sure he’d be wondering why it took us that long..

Well the day is here.. and I’m proud and hopeful.. So thank you, Dr. King for putting the wheels in motion that are bringing us to tomorrow.’s inauguration…

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring

from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will

be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white

men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands

and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last!

thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Good bye George Bush…
Welcome Brrack Obama..
Goodnight Sam

-jc

Sunday night – art car

January 18, 2009 johncohn

Folks,
I need to apologize in advance. It’s nearly 2AM and I need to go to sleep. I’m also using differnt editor.. so I have even less of a spell checker.I really can’t see the spelling errors without it. Hope this is legible.. I’ve been working most of the day on the charts for my talk next month. I wonder if My Obama is working as hard on his speach. Diane has been a wonderful help goign through and helping me refine the message. It’s a complicated, subtle and maybe contraversial set of suggestions I’m makingin this talk . She’s really helping me to make sure the points come across.. She’s wonderful.

Not much to report on the rest of the day.. I did take a break midday to work with Homer and Mitch on two projects. The first is a variable delay timer for the propane flame throrower that Homer is teachign the Middllebury college kids how to build . It needs to have a way to adjust boththe flame time and the repitition rate of the 25 foot flame jets.. I ended up using a small microcontroller to build this little delay relay. It’s not pretty.. but it works well. Homer’s testing the flamethrower next weekend.. stay tuned for that…

The other thing we worked on was designs for the Burning man art car design.. As you may recall, it’sgoign to be a 20 foot ferris wheel.. Homer’s built a great scale model.. We discussed the loading and unloading.. saftey (believe it or not) , and started estimates for weoght and cost.. It will be a big project. Does anyone have 30 thousand dollars lying aroudn that they’d like to toss into this project.. Not us !

Homer’s models are always great.. this thing is a work of art.. and works beutifuly…

OK.. Starting to nod off here.. so more tomorrow… Big week this week…. Obama will be our pres.. That’s so amazing and cool

Nite all Nite Sam
-me

Saturday night – stuck in Facebook

January 17, 2009 johncohn

The day started very early with Max packing up and heading back to school for the spring semester. It’s always tough to say good bye to him.. but I know that he’s enjoying Pratt. I’m so proud of him down there. Here he is saying by to the girls…

Abbot and Lindsey are driving Max and Emma back in Mason’s car. It was a tight squeeze with the four of them and Reptar. They had to leave soem stuff here fdor me to bring when I take Gabe down to NYC in early Feb.

I have to admit that I’m already missing Reptar.. He may be crazy.. but he’s so cute and crazy.. It’s certainly much quieter now that he’s gone.. and no low objects are in constant danger of getting shredded.. but I miss his weird obsessions. I sensed that we were kindred spirits somehow.

Gabe. Diane and I actually headed out before Max left.. We had to get Gabe to a competition at Sugarbush.. and besides.. if we got out the door first it would probably help get max out the door.

It was a beautiful, cold mornign.. around -8 I think.. it was about the 3rd day (I think) of zero degree weather or below. Gabe got dressed as we headed down to Waitsfield.

We got to sugarbush in time for Gabe to register, then DIane and I went and holed up in the lounge.She’s helping me with my slides for this ISSCC talk. She’s such a good reviewer.. she asks just the right questions. Her input has really improved the clarity and flow of this talk.. We worked there for about an hour.. then it was time to go out and watch Gabe. First, I left a SamStone in the lounge…

Diane and I trudged up to the terrain park. It was about -6 when we headed up there. I think it probably warmed a bit after that.. We stood and watched the skiers and riders and tried to stay Warm. We were right under the lift.. which gave us time to shoot plenty of lift pictures of Gabe.. Unfortunately.. I didn’t have enough smarts to catch any pictures of him competing. he had a pretty good day out there.. I’m so impressed that he competes like this.. he’s getting really good !

There’s no missing him with that pink helmet !

I slipped another SamStone in the crash pad of one of the lift towers…

After the awards, the guys from Pure a local board shop .. had a swag toss.. Gabe got some good booty.. These events are so cool.

We dropped Gabe off at Bolton on the way home.. Then I started back on this talk.. which is what I did until about midnight.. Then.. I was just about to go to sleep.. and I made the mistake of logging in to Facebook. Big Mistake !.. I’m trapped in there… there’s so much going on.. I’m running in to all sorts of old friends.. It truly is amazing.. but .. I’m afraid I’ll start hanging out in Facebook instead of sleeping one of these days… Yikes !

OK.. Now.. I must sleep.. Talk to ya’ll later.. ite Sam !
-me

Thursday night – Brrrrr

January 16, 2009 johncohn

Lessseee.. What’s up here.. Not much. I’m spending all of my time split between work and working on my ISSCC talk . Not much time for just hanging out these days. I worked at home again today.. again, I am finding it to be really productive, especially when I need to write.

I worked until about 5, then I had to head to UVM for a meeting about the Cystic Fibrosis Game that I’ve been volunteering on. The meeting was the first full group meeting we’ve had. I twas lead by Peter and Jason. both Doc’s at UVM’s medical school. Also there were Ann D and Jack from Champlain, a dad of a girl with CF, A 32 year old CF patient, several respiratory therapists.. and me. I’m the hardware geek on the project.

This is the first time I got to see the prototype flash game that the Champlain students have create.d It’s a cute and simeple driving game. Gwen demonstrated running the game by blowing into the spirometer. It was cool to see the whole thing working. it’s all being readied for a clinical trial which will begin in May. It’s all very cool. I like the thought that something I helped build will be used to help kids who are ill.