Folks
   Not much to report today.. I had a productive morning at Champlain. working with Iain, Allison and Mike.. then a packed.. if not productive afternoon at work. About the only noteworthy thing I remember about the stretch in my office  is that I uncovered a bag of peanuts that was more than one and less than 10 years old. I bet on closer to one and ate them for lunch. So far.. so good.

The high point of my day was dinner with my friend Sharon who’s visiting from NY.   We had a great dinner.. and even better talk at the Inn at Essex this evening.  We did a bunch of catching up… talked about families, jobs and mutual friends. We also discussed Sharon’s cool new job. She’s running IBM’s focus on all things ‘Green’. Her area includes work on photovoltaics and water conservation. It’s really cool to see how the company is committed to working on those big problems.. and making them pay off at the same time. It’s going to be very cool to see how the company does in this arena. We have so much excellent technology .. and even more excellent smart people.

The food was very interesting.. and artistic. It started with a spoon of… something buttery and artichoky.

Then came a great soup  of Jerusalem artichokes !.

The chef made up a spicy dish for me.. it was stuffed cabbage with hot sauce.. pretty good !

Then lavender sorbet (no joke) for desert !

Sharon and I had talked for nearly 4 hours.. before I realized what time it was.. I checked with eh Champlain guys by phone.. I wasn’t needed there.. so I came home.

When I got home, there was a sheet of glittering ice covering the walk from the house to the driveway.. It was beautiful and treacherous… !

OK.. that’s it.. I can’t keep my eyes open anther sec.. Tomorrow is a busy day.. Talk to you zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Gnite Sam.. we love you
-me

Friends…
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You know..sometimes.. there are no words to desribe your day.. and you just have to make stuff up. I love you all.. Love you Sam..
-me

I’m just sitting down at 6PM after getting home from another full day of working at Champlain. We have our first review of our Good Games project tomorrow. I’m pretty nervous about it.. But I’ll tell you … I really can’t remember a project that didn’t involve blowing stuff up that was this much fun…

Oooops.. Gotta take a break.. Susan and Sumner just showed up!.. More later !

Ahh.. just back, It was great visiting with Sumner and Susan.. Sumner is in the Stowe Ski and Snowboard academy this year.. so he spends his weeks at a dorm in Stowe. We miss seeing him up at Bolotn. Sounds like he’s having a great time, though…   He’s such a cool guy.   

Where was I.. oh… I as talking about my day…    I stayed up ’till two again last night hunting down pictures and movies that we can use in the Good Games media package .. I was pretty sleepy when I went to bed.. but somehow I ended up dreaming about the project.. My dreams were all mixes of Flash code, Maya animations and JPG’s… not too restful. When Chai jumped in our bed at 7:30 I just wasn’t ready to get up. I had to get up though, the team was showing up at the EMC at 9 AM again. I went down stairs and started cleaning the kitchen.. I was thinking hard about Max for some reason.. as I was thinking of him, the phone rang… and it was Max.. and this is 8AM … so I was a bit freaked.. why would Max be up at 8AM.. well.. evidently my goofy cell phone had called him from my pocket.. I had a nice short talk with him then he fell back asleep. I know it may not sound like much, but the fact that my phone would come out of it’s locked mode, find Max’s number and call it from my pocket just as I was thinking about him is pretty cool. Blood is thicker than radio waves….

Anyway.. I left home and stopped at the Duncan donuts again and grabbed another day’s worth of fuel for the programmers and artists..  I figure you get about half a page of code per donut .. and 2 pages of code per quart of Mountain Dew. You can get 2 pages of code fro a Red Bull.. but the code will have more mistakes in it. I think I should write a paper on this.   I showed up and the room was full again.. I’m hoping that the team went home last night.. since they were all sitting in their same places.. I couldn’t quite tell..

There was some signs of activity.. there was broken glass everywhere and this sign.. I’m still not sure what happened.. but no one would tell me the gory details

We got rght to work,. One team (Laren and Bryan) worked on the interface in Flash.. they were writing tons of code.   Another team (Mike and Tony) were working on the artwork and design will another team (Max and Awesome) were working on the content.  Ray worked on some of the documentation while I bounced from team to team trying to help.. but mostly got in the way. I was looking pictures and videos, drawing some others..

Here’s our storyboard

Here’s a cool video of the PS3 processor helping do real time MRI processing

Here’s a dated picture of the new IBM video game that’s about to come out for Engineering week.

Here’s a stylaized picture of the dreaded BSOD (blue screen of death)  we’re using to illustrate a point on Game testing

And.. here’s a simulated picutre of a frerari done on one of the new game consoles.   Looks lamost real.. or is this real.. I forget..

Our freind Wes showed up for a while to heckle us.. He’s one of our Maya programmers.. Tomorrow he has a job interview at the CIA…. (but don’t tell anyone). I told him not to tell them he knows me since I  have an FBI record… but that’s annother funny (and true) story.

We finally had eaten all the food by about 5PM.. After two weekend days of working all day we decided to take a break.. though I know some of the students will be working more tonight. We all headed for home….tired but happy with what we’d accomplished so far… it really has been an amazing time working with these guys.. I’m looking forward to dong more projects with them in the future !

When I got home. Diane met me at the door and sat me down at the computer to listen to something. She’d just heard a radio program all about Nikola Tesla .. one of my big  science heroes.  Tesla was an amazing inventor in the early part of the late 19th and early twentieth centuries. H invented may of the worlds most important electrical  gizmoz including the AC generator, the AC motor, the florescent light, radio  and the tesla coil.   etc.. but somehow, history has given him a fair shake..Every school age kids know Edison or Ben Franklin.. few have heard of Tesla..  He was certainly a genius, but also an eccentric and complicated person.. Somehow his personality interfered with his rightful legacy. I’ve been so taken by his story that I do a traveling talk/show on him called “High Tension: the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla;

I’ve only had a chance to hear one of the sections. fro the Studio 360 piece… but it’s really great .. Check it out..

I’ll listen to the rest and pick out some choice nuggets to share.

OK.. Now I’m going to try and relax.. I’ve bee  working something like 16 hour days for the past several days and I’m beat…  

TTYL folks.. ttyl Sam…
-me

-jc

Friends…
    It’s very late.. and I need to be up early to go back to Champlain early tomorrow morning. We’re getting down to the wire in our Good Games project and we’re working through the weekend to get it finished in time.

I headed over to Champlain this morning at about 8:30 AM to see if any of the students would be working. I stopped on the way to stock up on caffeine products and sugar.. the two things that make programmers productive.. Stop one was the Richmond Corner Market for soda and candy bars. When I went to pick up the soda, my neighbor Pat.. the butcher there, told me that I was in the paper this morning because of the Champlain project.. That was kinda cool and unexpected. I’m not sure who put that in there.

I also stopped at Duncan doughnuts and got a dozen dougnuts and bagels.. and a box of coffee. I got to the EMC (Emergent Media Center) expecting one or two of the folks to be there. I was so happy to find a pretty biug crowd. Ann had actually invited soem more folks.. and lots of them showed up.

There was Tony-the-perfectionist-artist

Bryan-the crazed-programmer

Ray-the-bossman

Laura-queen-off-the-Flash

Max-who-is-not-a-dog

Mike-the-sleep-deprived-artist-and-techno-DJ

Alex-the-profeesor (I think he looks liek a wise professor.. don’t you ?)

Awesome-the-kendo-fighting-producer (Actually Allison.. but I thought she said her name was awesome and it stuck)

Iain-the-pizza-guy

We geared up and worked all day.. It was really, really, really wonderful teamwork. These kids are so incredibly talented and creative. It’s a real pleasure to be workign with them. I’m leanring so much. The atmosphere was great.. actually the atmosphere was hot and steamy.. we were working so hard it started to get really stuffy in there. At one point this morning I walked into the room and announced that I was having more fun at that moment than I’d had at work since….  uh.. since…. maybe forever.. I really meant it.. now I should  really think about what that means.  

By noon everything I’d brought to eat was gone. I snuck out for pizzas and more caffeine..   We got a break on the Pizza since Iain works for Dominos.. Thanks Iain, thanks Dominos!

By about 5:30 we were all getting pretty tired.. I had to leave.. but soem of the team stayed and kept working.. It looks by therei upload logs that some of them were there past 8 !. They are so friggin amazing to work with. We got a ton done today.. any we start again at 9 AM tomorrow !

I got home just in time to feed Chai meet up with Diane and head off to our friends Tom and Beth’s house. We were meeting our other freinds Rona, Paula and their son Pat  there for a potluck. It was great hanging out with all of those guys. We did a bunch of tlaking about our lives… It’s been only a month since Tom and Beth’s daugheter Kate died. I remember so clearly where my head was a month after Sam’s deth. I know how good it was to have folks to tlak to.. It was a great evening.

I found a goofy picutre of Tom from a few years back. I love it.

Here’s beth with an article in the Essex newspaper about Kate..

It was 11:30ish when we started for home.. Diane found this poster near their back door.. Hey.. maybe it’s not too late !

Gabe was home waiting for us with 4 friends over for a sleep over. They all want to get up on the mountain around 8L30…. We’ll soo how that goes.. they were still eating dinner at midnight 🙂

Oh.. one cool thing I found waiting for us were these pictures from freind Jena’s Mother’s friends who’d just visited Antarctica.. They put a SamStone on Shackleton’s grave in South Georgia Island

Here’s where South Georgia Island is.

OK.. now to sleep !
Love you guys.. Love you Sam
-me