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I’m still in Seattle.. waiting for my flight back.. It’s been an odd and strangely enjoyable couple of days out here..   My talk today went pretty well..except that all my equipment malfunctioned.. somehow… it still worked out.. more on that later..
   I still have pictures from yesterday.. so I’ll start there.. One of the things I truly love about traveling is seeing  the ‘incidental art’ that folks put in pubic spaces to cheer them up.. Chicago had a great collection of slumped glass plates.. each about 3′ x 3′ suspended from the ceiling in a busy walkway..

Then there’s my favorite public light sculpture.. in the walkway under the runway at O’Hare.. it’s a cool collection of sequenced neon, colored light panels and ambient speech.. I always go down there and hang out in it if I’m flying out of terminal C.

When I landed in SEATAC I found this very cool panel made entirely of bicycle reflectors.. very nice.

I was met by a limo driver at the baggage claim and driven into the city

I got to the hotel.. found the equipment box I’d shipped and went up to my room to work on my talk.

I had a nice corner room on the 9th floor… Not a bad view..

I took out the box and started to assemble stuff.. Thats when the trouble started.. My theremin hadn’t survived the trip somehow.. several of the wires had been broken either in transit or before.. Not sure .. that was only the start of my equipment problems it turns out.

I quickly assembled my potato canon out of the parts I shipped.. the place smelled so much like glue !

I worked on my talk for a while.. then called my friend Raye.. I was so pysched to find out that her folks  and my really good Vermont friends Homer and Mary were still in town.. i had thought that I would miss them. They came over with Raye’s friend Andreas.. It was o cool seeing them out of context like this.

We all went up to my room and did science demos together.. Here we are getting the tesla coil to hit us.. Alas.. these were to be it’s last sparks for a while..

We ordered a bottle of wine and toasted friends and family near and far.. living and spirit…

We’d been together for about 2 hours when Raye said.. ‘let me show you my rat’… and proceeded to pull a very cute and rather large girlish rat out of her dress.. She carries her around like that all day.. She was awfully cute.. …but… doesn’t that tickle ?

Raye showed me  a cell phone  picture of  a Samstone she’d placed down in Chico..

Those guys left around 9:30..

which was time for the conference chairs dinner at Etta’s down the street.. We had a great meal there..  It was nice hanging out with a few friends.. it helped calm down my nervousness about my talk this morning.

I went back and worked on my talk a bit more..blogged feebly.. ten went to bed around 1.. At 4:30 I was wide awake again.. sleepless in Seattle.. i started to meditate.. and luckily fell back asleep until 6:30.. I quickly pulled myself together and went down to meet my friend Terri for a 7AM breakfast and setup for my talk.

My talk started about 8:15.. it went by very quickly..  I was really into the message I was giving. on the need for education outreach.. it was hard to read the crowd… which was 80 percent academics.. and about 70 percent from overseas.. and my data was from a US industry perspective.   I got enough laughs to know that I wasn’t tanking badly.

. but.. when It came time to run the tesla coil.. it gave a slight spark then nothing.. oh-oh.. A piece of metal had fallen into the circuit board .  It was toast.. I was bummed but didn’t panic.

 I  recovered by frying another pickle.. and ended the talk on time..   I got a few questions after the talk.. then folks started to disperse.. I was about to start feeling bad about how the talk had ended.. but then Diane’s voice popped into my head and reminded me that I always do that after a talk… So.. I just sat there in present state for a few minutes.. then i was quickly surrounded by folks from the audience who wanted to talk about the subject .. At that point I knew it had gone pretty well..
We sat there talking for about an hour until I could break away.. by that time I felt pretty ok about the talk..  As I cleaned up I talked to the AV guy David for a while.. he and this cool guy Ludwig had been a huge help in the set up and filming of the talk.   David and I filmed a little segment explaining what had happened to the tesla coil.. and I gave him some movie footage to include to say what it should have looked like    I gave both David and Ludwig a SamStone.. .   David held his upside down and said ‘was’ ?   .. I’d never seen it.. but there it ‘was’ ..amazing.. Sam Was.. Sam is..

I left the spud gun for the next presenter.. since I couldn’t take it on the plane with me..

Then a funny thing happened .. a crowd of the guys  decided that we were going to try and diagnose.. and hopefully repair the tesla coil. we found some voltmeters.. and went to work.. unfortunately.. I quickly determined that it had popped one of the very expensive and hard to find IGBT i (Insulated gate bipolar transistors) in the power bridge.. The transistor switches 600V at 75A… not the kind of thing that radios hack carries.. here.. the 20 dollar transistor had blown while the 15 cent protect diode had survived intact.. go figure.

I tried some heroics calling around to electronic stores.. but no dice.. I even called Bill Beatty a famous uber geek from U Wash.. he had something close.. but not close enough.. I packed up the coil  with the help of my new friend Peter

Nice slow day. I needed that. I stayed up most of the night working on a talk for next week.. so I only got a few hours sleep. We just hung out around the house this morning enjoying the sun.   My folks and I took the dogs for a walk along the rivershore..  the ferns are now up to my waist.. .. amazing because the ground was bare just a few weeks back.

Around 1 I drove my folks to South Burlington to watch Gabe’s Lacrosse games.. They played well again. and it was wonderful just hanging out in the beautiful weather..

Gabe came over during a break between the games.. he was quite fragrant as we took this three generation shot with my dad.

The team was looking a little green.. since Iforgot to turn off the color filter in Gabe’s camera.

The games were in the field behind the South Burlington ice rink… so I went and stuck my feet in the scraped snow to cool off.

We got back to the house around 5 and have stuck here since.. My folks are here and are behaving nicely.. Aren’t they cute ?

We were sitting inside talking when we heard Satori start barking like crazy. I went out to find that she’d climbed into the old climber thing and gotten her leash completely tanlged in it. She couldn’t get out… It was cute and sad.. I felt like a jerk running in to get my camera before letting her go.. Am I a bad dad ?

Max and his friends had decided to rehabilitate the old big raft. It had been serving as a snowboard rap for the winter. The guys took it down and strapped the 4 barrels back on and hoisted the monster down to the river.. It must weigh 350 pounds. It took them 3 and a half hours for the six of them (Max, Alex, Mason. Abbott, Nate and Justin) to make it down to the green from here.. They got beached several times.. and the raft started to break apart.. but they made it !
My mom and I happened to drive by just as they were pulling the raft out of the water.

I helped them hoist the waterlogged beast up on to the van.. It took all 6 of us to lift the thing up.

I got home around 6:30 tonight after a super busy day. My folks were already at our house.. they’d driven up from Boston this afternoon. the house was also full of kids. Tonight was the surprise party that Morgan had put together for Matt and Hannah T.  The house was all decorated, the cars were hidden.

.. then around 7:30. Deb’ drove up to the house with the kids. We all ran up the fornt staircase and hid..

As they came in the front door we doused them with silly string and confetti. You could tell that they were completely surprised !

The party was really nice.. I think there were about 30-40 kids.. I found out that today was also Brit’s 18th birthday.  (I was using gabe’s camera without a flash.. sorry for the blur !)

It was a beautiful sunset outside as the kids went out to the tramp.. and messed around the campfire

We even had a pinata !

We do love fire here…

Then folks came in for icecream and cake. The kids had made a double cake for the twins.. it had two photographs  of the guys made into the icing.. very cool

Things started to quiet down around 11.. we started to clean.. but Hannah decided to lie down in the mess

Dad and Mom enjoyed the chaos too. They fit right in !…

It is really nice having all the family together

Dad and I fell asleep upstairs.. Mom caught this picture.

While the kids played sketchy songs in Sam’s room..

A really nice night ! Sam.. I sure felt you here in spirit.. you belonged OK.. Gotta go work some now..  Love you all.. Love you Sam..
-me