Yikes…. I’m sitting in this meeting pretending to pay attention. I’m actually sitting here worrying about what I’m going to say when when I do my keynote address in an hour or so.. Wish me luck !more about how it goes later.
-me.

OK.. now I’m back.. I think it went pretty well.. I’m glad it’s over… SO.. now where was I ?

oh yeah…

September 11^th… . It’s a date that brings back terrible memories  to everyone.. It still does to me.. though they seem much. Much more distant this year.

I’ve only got a few minutes to post. I need ot wake up in 5 hours to catch a plane to DC then on to home…

   I had a really good day here in Austin. I spent a good part of the day working in my hotel room… The part I wasn’t working I spent worrying about my talk tonight. I do my best worrying while pacing around form room to room. On that particular circuit I started noticing the patterns in the wallpaper here.. I noticed that there were 7 distinct swirly patterns in the print.  It was much easier thinking about that  than thinking about finishing my talk…

 Wallpaper swirls in my hotel room

Around 11:15 my friend Wolfgang came over for lunch. We walked over to a tex mex place nearby and ate outside.. Today was cool (by texas standards at least) and wet..The air felt really good. I really enjoyed spending the time with Wolfgang.. we had a good set of personal and work talks. He gave me some very good advice today.. Now.. let me see if I can take it…  After lunch we took a short walk around the area.. we came across a little park with these really cool stone cows. They’re huge and beautiful.

 Cows and Wolfgang

Good bumber sticker in the parking lot of the hotel

As I came back into the hotel after lunch I was nabbed by my friend Ginny from the SRC. She’s coordinating this event. She asked me to see if I could make my  do to make the talk a little funny…She hadn’t seen the talk.. but she said things could use some livening up here.    Yikes.. it wasn’t really set up as a funny talk. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to funni-fy it a bit..   Not easy to do in a pinch.. and not that easy in my current mood.. But I tried.. The rest of the afternoon passed too  quickly. I spent the time in conference calls as I feverishly tried to figure out how to  ‘lighten’ the tone of the talk…

Around 5 I started the toughest  task of all.. deciding which shirt and tie to wear.. I tried all combinations… and finally went with red shirt, red tie.. Here are the choices.. what would you have chosen ?

  I drifted downstairs around 5:30 and started mingling with the students and professors at the conference. I felt very much at home.. I knew so many of the folks here.. it immediately put me at ease.  There was a small reception, then we were called in to dinner. I got to sit at the grown-up table… it was pretty exciting. 18 years ago I was one of  students in this conference.. and now I was the dinner speaker.. is that progress ? I guess so. My good friends Bill and Mary Brenda were at the table as well as my friend Tak and several of the execs from the SRC.

Bill and Mary Brenda

Here I am right before my talk with a SamStone for good luck

. I enjoyed talking to all of them  which put my a little bit at ease… then came time for my talk The head of the SRC gave me a really nice welcome then…  Eeeeeeeeek.. It was time to go. I came up on stage in front of the 420 folks in the room and for about a half of a second.. I had no idea what to say..   Then someone  inside me started talking… and the next thing I knew I was done.. I do remember a point in the middle of the talk where I drifted out of my head and into the audience and thought to my self… ugh.. this middle part is boring… but  I managed to get through it. I ended with one of my favorite  demos: the frying pickle . I know folks liked that. I ended then went sat back down. I sat there trying to figure out if the talk had gone well or not. I always think I suck when I give a talk like this.. this time.. I was pretty sure I had sucked.. but the audience reaction seemed to lean against suckage… who knows.. who cares.. the one thing I know is that I was done.. Whew…

The Bio they had for me on the program

After my talk came the awards part of the banquet. The biggest award by far was the Aristotle award… given to a teacher for distinguished teaching and mentoring. It ‘s a really big deal. I’ve managed to get this award once for my friend and advisor Rob one year. This year’s winner was my good friend Wojtek, a  Professor at CMU where I went to grad school.  I was so very pleased that he had won this award. He is one of the best teachers and overall mentors I have ever known.   He and I shared a wall when I was in grad school. I still remember the conversations we’d have at 3 in the morning… He’s such a wonderful guy. I felt honored to be there watching him get this award

Wojtek

The banquet broke up and then I was sort of  mobbed with folks wanting to talk to me.  that as pretty cool.. I managed to get In a few good conversations with some of my buds from IBM.. and a few Profs I’d lost touch with.. I was really glad to be here.

Before I knew it .. it was 11:30 and I was beat… I said good night and came up to my room to pack. I was just about to jump into bed when I realized that I had forgotten to blog… so.. here I am.. Now I really gotta get to sleep. More tomorrow…

Love you all.. you too Sam..

-me

Hello from Austin. It’s about midnight and I just got in to the hotel. I’m down here for just about 24 hours to give a talk at a conference as a favor for a friend. In some ways It’s kind of nice to be back in Austin again The heat and humidity out there reminds me of growing up here.. and feels much more at home  here than it did a few days ago back in Vermont.  It’s also hard for me to be here. This is where I was when Sam rook his last trip down to Florida.   Not sure why,. but I was fighting back tears the whole drive over from the airport.

    I used to come here all the time.. When I was in high school. This was the place we’d get away to for the weekends. Once I started with IBM. I started coming here for work frequently…. I think I was here 14 times in 1999 alone. I have hundreds of friends down here from those days and since.. not even counting all my buddies from high school that still live around here..   I usually love to go out and here live music whenever I’m here.. I can remember many nights staying out till 3 or 4 then starting work at 8..  Somehow though, I just don’t feel like going out.. or  visiting or calling anyone right now.  I also have about a million things I should be doing for work while I’m here.. but again.. I just can’t .. I just can’t.  If you’re in Austin and reading this.. .. I’m sorry I’m being sort of antisocial. If you want, you can call me at  802-578-0985.

This place brings so much music into my head. Whenever I’m here,  I think of Townes Van Zandt, my favorite songwriter of all time   He used to hang out here. In fact, he once stole my beer in a bar.  This song got stuck in my head today.  

High, Low & In Between

By townes van zandt

All things at our life
Are brothers in the soil
And in the sky
And I believe it
With my blood
If not my eyes
I dont know why we cant
Be brothers here
I know we should be
Answers dont seem easy
And Im wonderin
If they could be

You can listen to this and other Townes Van Zandt  songs  here

I’m going to sleep. G’nite all.. G’nite Sam

-me

10:30 Sunday night.. Peaceful and cool. I’m writing from Sam’s room just like I used to in the early days of this blog. There have been people or things piled in his room for most of the summer. It’s nice to have it back as sort of a quiet space.  

Today was one of those rainy fall days where you just don’t feel like going outside I did manage to get out for a run, but that was it. I spent the entire day trying to clean out my closet and dresser..

t was a major undertaking. I’d been  accumulating stuff for years.. and was running out of places to stack my clothes. I knew that going through all that stuff was bound to stir up memories.. and it did.. but it was still nice to do.. I’m amazed at some of the stuff I dug out of there…  tons of old clothes that I never wear that I’ll be donating somewhere.. and tons of clothes I’d forgotten I had…not much variety but 20 pairs of blue jeans, 20 pairs of khakis. .  the nice thing is that everything I own still fits !…

The big finds in there were pictures and stuff from the kids: lots of school artwork. thing they made for me, knickknacks they bought me at garage sales, etc.    There were several things I found from Sam.. each time I found one I had to stop for a few minutes…  Each piece I could feel in my heart.. handling each piece was a little more mouring and a little more healing. The process of my life now.  Here are a few things I found..

 Sams 4th Grade Music Certificate

A Present he made Diane and me. All the boys make us stuff

Thank you Sam.. I love you forever !

A stack of last years school papers

I also found the 21 year old receipt for Diane’s wedding ring.. which is a good thing, because I need to  go and get it repaired.

By the time I was through, my closet was neat.. if not sparkling, my dresser was empty and I was a wreck.. Luckily Diane showed up with Deb in tow and started to make a spontaneous middle eastern feast ! Hummus, babganoush,  falafel. Tzaziki, stir fried eggplant, olives, feta, beets.. yum !!!. I made Zatar bread. is this green spice that you can buy in the middle east that’s a mix of thyme, sesame seeds, sumac (usually) and salt. You sprinkle it on pits, drizzle it with olive oil and broil it.. it’s delicious. Zatar is also the name I use when I’m doing my Electricity magic shows. I’m not sure how I chose that name.. it just sounds much cooler and science-ier (science-ier ? ) than ‘John’ It’s even on my license plate !  . Luckily there were a bunch of kids around to help us eat all that food..

I got to talk to Max on the phone tonight…  It was so good talking to him even for a short bit. . I miss him so much sometimes. I know he’ll be OK down there… it’s just hard letting go sometimes for me.  Right now.. I need to  get some sleep. I’m traveling some this week and need to get my beauty rest..   Goodnight to you all.. Good night Sam.

-me

I just repaired one of my lasers…. it loocked cool out in the mist

Another slow hot day… not much happened…  and that was very nice. I spent the morning puttering around the house.   I did manage to finish off booking our India reservations which is very exciting. Thanks to frequent flyer miles, Diane and Gabe are flying completely around the world for 85 dollars each… not bad. It’s cool having the travel booked, we now get to switch into that planning part of a trip which is fun.. where to stay, what to see.. etc.  I’m already wondering how I’ll manage to blog in some of the places we’re going.. we’ll see. It never pays too much to worry about the future.

 Gabe seemed to be the only one un-phased by the heat.. He was out running around, swimming and jumping on the tramp with his friend Jack. Gabe’s been on a spray painting kick the last few days. He’s got a good touch with those cans.. everything is getting a multi-color rasta treatment. Diane and I are worried that if we stand still too long we’ll wake up red yellow and green. Today’s canvas was the mailbox.  Gabe and Jack chose a more modern pink with polka-dots motif.. Looks good with the house. I really like it.. It’ll make our house easier to find. As in   ” Ohhhhh.  You mean  that  funky old schoolhouse with the pink and polka dot mailbox !”

As Gabe exercised his color-eye outside, I was trying to figure out some of the color LED ribbon stuff that my friend Hua-Pin bought for me in Shanghai. I have about 10 meters of this stuff now.. It’s the same thing I made my rainbow headband out of.

I’m trying to reverse engineer the control signals so I can program my own color sequences .  The company says it’s a secret so they don’t document the inputs. I’ve been staring at it on an oscilloscope for about a week now and It’s proving much harder than I thought to figure out… There’s a whole series of serial commands controlling the color of each light, the timing, the sequence, etc…   They also managed to erase the markings on many  of the components to make It hard to figure out. I managed to find one of the chips that still had some markings on it. It’s an HL1606S whatever that is (any info appreciated)… It’s still the best clue I have.

It’s not a common chip.. It’s made  by a company in the Chinese city of Wuxi in Jiangsu  Province..  There does appear to be any English language documentation on it. I spent a few hours this morning combing through Chinese web sites with a web site translation site looking for clues . It’s like playing detective.. I love how bad the automatic translation is… Ie This

Becomes this

Diane and I had been tlaking about India all day so we were jonesing pretty bad for Indian food so we went out to eat at the Indian place next to Radio Bean.. it was a great training exercise for our trip.. Yum !  On the way home.. movie store gas station., and grocery store.. where I found the blood pressure machine.. The machine confirmed what I already knew.. I was having a laid back day..

The heats finally broken..  I can stand to be in my own skin again.. I think I’m going to go find Diane and watch a movie now.

G’nite all.. g’nite Sam

-me