Lazy evening after a good day outside.   I have some pictures left over from yesterday. I didn’t want to post newsy stuff about my day at the same time I posted about Brandon Kilburn’s death. I realized this morning when I read his obituary that Brandon was our friend’s Wes’s brother in  law. Wes’s dad, Marvin, is a good friend of most folks in Richmond. He runs Bridge Street Cafe.. My heart goes out to all those guys.

I was thinking about Sam all day… yesterday I had to go to Advanced Music to pick up one of Sam’s guitars… His Les Paul SG.. his first good electric. . It had been broken accidentally at one of our parties. Matt from Maple Street Guitar Repair had done an amazing job at restoring the broken neck. no matter how close you look., you cannot tell that it had been broken.   Matt told me that his 18 year old nephew was killed in a car accident a few years back. We sat and tlaked about life for awhile.. He’s a great guy.

On my way home I popped into Talent to buy Gabe some shoelaces.. No sign of Hannah, Dave, Adah or Senyah.. but  found the laces. I always appreciate the signs of Sam they keep there.

Last night was pretty quiet here. Gabe was up at the mountain. Kevin came down.. He’d passed his driving test yesterday !! (as did Hannah B and Alex B)
Unbeleiveable.. (not that he passed.. that he’s old enough to drive !)

Kevin doing his ‘drivers licence face’

Kevin took Sam’s newly fixed guitar and went out to the barn to play for awhile. That made me feel good.

This morning I managed to sleep until 9.. I think that was 11 hours ! (not counting 2-3 AM when Chai woke us up by having a really good/loud tail wagging dream)  I hadn’t gotten more than 5.5 hours any of the nights I was in NY last week. I guess I was tired..

Diane and I were eager to get outside today before the really cold air showed up this evening. We called Kathy and Lou and invited them to snowshoe from their side to our side of Robbin’s Mountain .

It’s an easy climb up from the Wes White Hill side.. and a not so easy descent down to our back yard. It’s only 2047 feet.. but the descent down to our house at 300 feet made it the steepest ascent/descent on the old long trail route.. The trail has been moved down Duxbury Road to the Banforth Ridge trail..

I’d inadvertently worn socks that were too small for me.. Wonderful Diane offered to swap with me.

It was a beautiful climb up.. not too steep.. not too cold..

I asked my favorite glacial boulder to pose for me…

There used to be a really rickety fire tower at the top of Robbin mountain. You could climb up it and see for miles in all directions.. if you held on tightly enough. One time Diane and I slept underneath it.. then hiked down in time for work. Now it’s been replaced with a huge (and ugly) radio, TV and Cell tower,,

But at least the cell reception is pretty good up there…

There’s a look-out right behind the tower with a great view of Camel’s Hump and Honey Hollow

… and a great view of Diane !

We ran into tow women hiker up there.. One of them, Krista, works at the Montior Barn where we had Sam’s concert in November.

We started getting cold so we headed down the western side of Robbins. There are soem great views looking North West and East  from there.. Here’s a pview of Bolton.. Hey.. I think I can see Gabe up there 🙂

Here’s looking over at Bolton Notch road.

It’s always a little dicey finding the old trail down that side of Robbin’s. The old Long Trail blazes have been painted over.. and many of the trees that were marked have since fallen down. We were happy to find these gray blazes. Even though it’s literally our back yard, it’s easy to get off the trail and have to bushwhack.. not always easy given the steep terrain.

Sam was very  much in my mind as I slid down the hills.. I took a sec to write his name in the snow as I always do..

We loved seeing all the  signs of life out there in the woods. We saw bear scratching, critter tracks and wood pecker holes.. Here’s someone’s home neatly chewed above one of the old trail blazes.

Home looked pretty inviting as we came down the last bit over the sledding hill. As I said.. it’s not far.. but it’s steep. We went in and had a hot bowl of chili

…then took Lou and Kathy back up to their house and picked up our car. .. Now.. I’m so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open.. and it’s not even 7PM..
I’m getting pretty lazy in my old age I guess..

Oh… one cool thing..While I was taking a bath to warm up my stiff and tired bones,  I was reading Dava Sobel’s excellent book ‘The Planets’ that came out in 2005. The book has some interesting stories, histories and poettry about each of the planets. Tonight I was reading about Mercury. She mentioioned the MESSENGER spacecraft whhich was headed towards Mercury. MESSENGER,which stands for Mercury Surface Space Environment GEochemestr and Ranging. was launched in 2004.   The book mentioned that it was scheduled to approach Mercury in Jan of 2008. Well. .. I checked.. it had it’s first good look at the planet 4 days ago.. and the first good pictures came back today…. Pretty cool coincidence.. no ?  Here are a picture that MESSENGER took of Mercury earlier this afternoon

Well.. that’s all for now.. have a good night folks.. Good night Sam..
-me

Ahhhhh – home again after a very succesful and fun trip down to NYC and Fishkill I got home around 10:30.. Gabe Diane and Chai were all still up so I got to see them. I miss them so mch when I’m gone. It’s back to the three of us at home. I wonder what it feels like when I’m not here… guess I won’t know

Woke up late today with just enough time to get to my meeting.. I almost forgot to leave a tip in the room .. but I remembered at the last sec.. I always try to leave some thing funny with it to brighten the receivers day a but. . Here’s the best I could do today.

We had a good few hours of TC meeting until I had to leave around 2:30 I had a meeting with my boss John. I had to walk across the site to get to John’s building. Fishkill really is a concrete jungle. This sign says it all.

One treat was a chance to stop in and say hi to some old friends.. including Ang..my friend Kevin’s extra special helper… She’s a good friend..

I had a really good meeting with John… It was good catching up with him. He’s been so great to me through this past year.  I told him about how my assignment was going and we talked about my return to the real world.I am actually getting more and more psyched to get back to technical work.

After seeing John.. I went back to the TC meeting… which was just ending, said goodbye to my friends there .. then made a quick run over to Dave and Jeans in Holmes NY to return Dave’s potato guns / He’d lent them to me for a demo for a talk I was giving. I ended up not using them in the talk because the setting wasn’t all that conducive to indoor firearms.. but it was fun having them just the same..

There was something ‘American Gothic’ about the scene as I handed Dave back his musket.

I only had a few minutes at Dave and Jeans.. but I got a picture of the cool Nixie clock that we got him as a going away gift from the TC. I love this clock !

.. as well as a picture of his lock picking paraphernalia.. It was a funny surprise during my last visit that both Dave and I picked locks for fun.. Come to think of it.. it’s not that surprising.. We have many similar impractical hobbies.

Jean even warmed up soem of the left over Thai food I brought and sat me down to eat it..

I ate and ran.. I don’t think I was there for more than 15 minutes. I zoomed back to Beacon to meet Mason’s train. He’d been down in NYC visiting Max and his friends.. It was so great driving back with Mason. Not only did he keep me awake as I drove.. but we had the best conversation. We talked about so much stuff on the way back. He’s such a good kid. .. One of the things we tlaked about was my ‘kids these days….’ rant.. that’s my observations about how Gen-y folks and old timers (like me) have such different work styles, priorities and attitudes in the work place. It’s really interesting to see this generations Idon’tbuyyourstudyhardinschoolsoyoucangetintoagoodcollegesoyoucangetagoodjob life template… or the older generations whydontthesekidswantoworkharderandgetaheadlikeme attitude.. I can understand both sides.. but the difference sure causes some miss communications at work and in life.   I wonder how we can get better understanding across the generations ?

  Anyway, we were talking about that when we stopped in briefly to see Homer and Mary as we came through Monkton on the way home

Coincidentally.. Homer had out the Cat Stevens album with ‘Father and Son’ which is the song that the aforementioned old guy/young guy conversation had me singing in my head.

It’s a great song.. take a listen.

hood, gloves, bunny suit…

Here’s Jane (China)

… and Joanne (US)

and .. me.. I think ?

and Hugh (UK)  I think

This must be Carolyn (australia/US)

and John (Canada)

Trust me, we are smiling !

I’m pretty sure this is me also …

Our tour lasted an hour. It was truly awe inspiring that that many different machines could be hooked together to work that efficiently.. The high point was seeing the $50 million dollar deep UV  immersion stepper.. what a cool piece of machinery !

After the tour, we had to quickly dash to teh cafeteria to do a round table with the Fishkill employees.. I met these guys   Orazio and Donato Forlenza  .. They were a riot. they’re acutally brothers working in the same department.. (Let’s see Forlenza .. is that an Irish name ? ) Donato is going to a wedding in India .. I showed him some pictures from our trip.. He’s going to let me know how his trips go.. He’s not sure he likes Indian food.. I told him to pack a lunch.

Here’s all the Academy TC and the Fishkill TVC before the panel

Here are some of the folks who showed up for the panel..

And here’s a quick shot of my fellow panelists.

I had many freinds in the crowd including Bhavna.. in profile you can almost tell that she’s expecting her first baby in April !

The rest of the day was very good discussions with the TC. … Not much I can report on here.. but there’s a very good ernegy abotu the group now. We worked until about 6.. then I zoomed off for dinner wit my old boss and very good freind Kevin. We had a really great dinner.. at a Thai place in Beacon.. I absolutely love talkign with Kevin he is such a cool and interesting guy.. we talked families, work, music, hiking.. I never get tired of listening to him

which is not to say that I never get tired… I’m about to fall asleep .. so time to sign off…  Sleep tight all.. sleep tight Sam..
-me

We have a very early day tomorrow (starts at 7 AM .. ugh) .. so I’m going to make this quick…  We had a good productive day full of brainstorming.. I wish all my days could be this full of thinking… I didn’t get much sleep last night, so it was tough to pry myself out of bed today to run.. I do enjoy running here for some strange reason.. I run around the parking lots of all these half empty malls and offices… I think what makes it fun is that I’ve been doing these same runs for about 20 years.. It’s ugly.. but it’s my ugly.   Actually the scenery is not that bad.. once you get out of the city it looks very much like Vermont.   The hotels pretty nice..  I think it might be my favorite of the 7 in this black.. ( why Fishkill needs 7 big chain hotels I can’t understand)

Funny thing.. as I ran by the restaurant this morning the alarm went off…
 

What do you think made that happen ?

THough I was in meetings all day, I did get a chance to see quite a few freinds in the halls of Fishkill. here’s my good friend Bhavna who’s just moved back from 3 years in Switzerland.

And here’s my friend Jeff… … his brain is wired in an interesting way.. I think he may be the person I know who’s best at coming up with counter examples.. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of some of the code my area creates.  If you give him an idea.. he’ll either say  ‘that will ‘t work’.. or he’ll give you exactly what won’t work about your idea.. He’s also a pretty interesting unit. He wears a medic alert bracelet that says in the event of his imminent demise you should remove his head and put it in liquid nitrogen.. in the hopes that they can revive him many hundreds of years later… Pretty interesting !

I managed to catch a quick beer after work with my friend Sarala… a manager in my old area.. It was good to catch up on the technical and people stories of he area…

Then it was off to dinner at Cafe Aroma.. one of the best restaurants down here.. It was a great time there tonight.. good Italian food and my good friends from the Academy for company. I feel very fortunate to be able to attend events like this.

One interesting interlude tonight was a very spirited conversation between our two interns Chris and Marshea and some of us older folks.. They had some good insights about how to enable new hires to participate in setting strategy. I always think it’s interesting talking across generations I can see myself so clearly in their spot when I was in my early 20’s at IBM.. some things are so different now.. and some things never change. I can tell you one thing. it it’s really freaky to be treated as the ‘old guy’ now..

One bonus tonight was a visit from my good friend Dave. at dinner.. Dave used to be president of the Academy.. now he’s retired. I’ve stayed with Dave and his wife Jean several times in the past year.  Tonight, he was kind enough to bring me a few potato guns that I may  use  as props in a talk I’m giving tomorrow.

After dinner, I had a great call with my dear friend Ruchir.. then went to the grocery store to by pickles for a demo tomorrow.. It’s weird walking around a grocery store at night.. reading the magazine racks… This one reminded me of Sam….

Ahh.. now time for a bath then sleep….

We’re getting to go on a tour of the manufacturing line at 7ish . I’m really excited because I’ve never been through this facility. Hopefully I can get a picture of us in the ‘bunny suits’

OK.. time for sleep.. Hope you all had a good day.. I did . Gnite all.. Gnite Sam, I love you

-me