Spent the day gettign the house readyu for dianes return tonight . Finished offre-plumbing he outside tap,. took down the storm windows and vacuumed up all the dead flies.. tons of them.. one of the joys of living in a house that thinks its a barn
finished in time to meet rebar and ben for lunch to talk about our piston project and other forms of world domination . Super nice hanging out with them .
Diane’s coming home at 9:30 tonight !. Can’t wait to see my girl !
nite all, nite sam
_me
Packed day today.. Cleaned up the house a bit getting ready for dianes return from portland. Watered all of her plants.. which takes a good long time 🙂
Around 11, my friends Kasey and Ross came over to work on the vacuum tube tesla coli that we’ve been slowly working on. We’re breadboarding it now, then will build it into something pretty. I’ve not built anythign with vacuum tubes since the 1970’s !!.. so this was learnign for all of us.. .. We were following an instructables article written by a 12 year old (!) back in 2011 !.
Today was the first time we tried power this thing on !
It worked !!!.. Tiny sparks so far..
Now we need to start tuning the tesla coil to get longer sparks.. that part is both fun and tedious !
After that I headed in to Burlington for my friend Jared’s 50th birthday.
Jared and had rented out his favorite restaurant , Stone Soup. for his birthday bash. The place was packed with freinds of his from grade school to today. .. and food from all over including his favorite places in NYC, marylind and of course vt. And we all had one thing in common.. we love Jared. He is one of my favorite people.. he’s a deep thinker, great story teller, great listener.. and soooo kind. We dont get together much.. but when we do.. it’s always memorable.. We got in a habit of buying a bottle of wine, puttign it a brown paper bag and sitting somewhere… park benches, bridges, parks.. and talking for hours.. about anything and everything .. I remember having one of those brown bag sessions on tha hiking bridge over the winooski.. and we had passover food and a haggadah.. and made a little somewhat drunken seder out there over the bridge..
It was great talkign to all the people heere.. many I knew, many I didnt.. we all had fun explaining how we came to know and appreciate jared (I met him by workign on a projeject for my freind Mike.
lots of love in the room for this guy..
Happy birthday Jared !
nite all. nite sam
-me
Woke to more snow !.. getting a bit late in the year for that !
did some quick checks around the house to prepare for some house projects I’d like to get done before diiane gets back sunday.
1st on the list is to completely redo teh plumbing to the outside spigot. Not sure who plumbed it, but its a mess and it leaks
Headed out for supplies.. After that, I stopped at hackclub for lunch with all my hardware friends. We went to bark eaters next door… .. tehre were about 12 of us.. it was a great brainstorm on how we can get more hackclubbers making hardware !.. I for got to get a picture of all of us.. but did get this one pic of Alex and my-freind-whos-name-I-dont-know
Looking forward to gettign with all of them again soon !
on the way home I stopped by at Elliots to hang out. I met Kahil who’s my freind Paul Z’s nephew !. I also got to say hi tot eh fish and turtles that are hangign out in the warehouse while the Echo museum rebuild happens.
It was great meeting Halil.. super nice guy ! after he left, Elliot and I took a walk down to the water/. Its a part of town that I’d really never hung out in.. IIt’s so pretty !!!!
Then a quiet night at home .. great way to end the week
nite all, nite sam
_me
Quick run down the rivershore.. always interestign to see it in the spring. bare ground, new sand pattern and river debris that all dissapears once the ferns come up.. which will begin any week
One treat at work today is that my freind Chris from River Valley Tech center braught one of his tech ed classes to Beta. I’ve worked with Chris for many years on FIRST robotics. I’ve helped him gwet grants from VASE which i’ve organized for the past 9 years.. (luckily, i’ve found a replacement ~!) . He kindly put VASE and FIRSTinVT logos on the students shirts . He also has drone racing teams, submarine competitions and al sorts of other maker teams for his students. .. I helped my friend Sarah give a tour
The students showed us a drone project they are workign on.. Not flying yet.. but getting close !
Later after work.. and after mandolin lesson, Rusty told me about a very cool mandolin (etc) concert that was about to happen in the Congo (congregational church). which was where we were standing. ! The show was Matt Flinner and Joe Walsh. Matt is (I think) a local guy who plays banjo. mandolin and guitatr. Joe is a professor at teh Berkeley school of music in Boston and plays mandolin, mandola and mandocello. It was an amazing show with a bunch of blugrass standards, americana and jazz. They told soem fun stories..a nd did a heatfelt salute to Don.. the leader of the Valley Stage org that has organzied these events for many years. This was to be the last concert in richmond after 10 years(1) of shoes. Don is moving the shows down to middlebury for personal reasons..
lots of love for Don in the room
Lots of freinds of our also in the room (DIanes still in portland // she would have liked seeinf how full the room was with folks we know from town)
it was pretty insirign coming out of my 4th mandolin lesson to here therese guys playing in the next room. !
Nite all, nite sam
-me