Monday night – Days of Awwwwwww

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Tomorrow night marks the end of the days of Awe.. the 10 days between Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur.. its supposed TO be a time of reflection about the past year and intention setting for the coming year. I guess I have been reflecting.. mostly about how much busier i let myself be than I want to be.. I do it at the cost of health, happiness, well being, friendship, love.. peace.. I’m trying to refine my resolve to be less mindlessly busy in the coming year.. I hope I can make it happen..

I’m writing from Maxs boat. but max just had to leave for work.. he’s practicing being overly busy too.. i think i taught him that.. unfortunately.. It is wonderful seeing him and Jak ..

Not much else to report for the day other than I had the pleasure of dropping in briefly to a workshop given by Dave Cuartielles, one of the 4 founders of the arduino project.. I wish I could have stayed longer.. but work has me too busy to play..

It was nice bring on the Pratt campus briefly .. brought back good memories.. and a few sad ones.. heres the room I stayed in stayed bringing max back to school a few weeks after sams passing.. That was one of the loneliest and saddest nights of my life there.

it was fun seeing the Yid culture around this part of the city. Rebbi Simcha here is a friend of Max’s

This was the workshi that David C was teaching with Evrem, an Urban studies prof visiting here from Turkey.

back at the boat, max was taking some underwater photos  for a project with a (hopefully) waterproof Ipad case

Jak and I went to Home Debot for lumber.. it was full of Chassids !

OK.. too tires to stay up any more.. talk tomorrow..

nite all. note sam

-me

 

ps. Here’s a picture of me and bruce from last night.. he’s such a great guy !

Sunday night – Seeing Jim

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Hello from somewhere in NY.. I just made an executive decision and decided to get a cheap (but nice !) hotel and sleep instead of making the 90 min or so drive down to NYC to the boat. I’ll head down there mid day tomorrow. I’m pretty beat and didn’t want to push it. I’m down here for a number of reasons.. but most of all, I’m down to see my buddy Jim. Jim was in a very bad car accident 2 weeks ago tomorrow . He’s been in a coma ever since.. though now he’s more in a semi-coma. He has periods of wakefulness and periods of rest. He’s been able to respond to questions with thumbs up signs, etc.. but not today. He was quiet.. I  have to admit that it was hard to see him lying there like that.. i was somehow expecting him to be able to respond..  His eyes followed me and I knew he knew I was there.. but aside from that he was quite still . He looks great and fit.. and all signs are that he will recover.. I guess the fact that he can respond to spoken  commands when he’s awake is a very good sign that he’ll come back. I

My very good friend Bruce and I went and stayed with Jim and his wife Lee Ann for an our or so tonight.. it was good being with him. I showed him pictures of my kids.. Bruce and I talked about some of the good old times the three of us have  had.. Jim’s eyes followed us..I knew he knew we were there..

It was good catching up with Lee Ann. I hadn’t seen her in years.. she was calm an settled in there.. she spends hours each day holding Jim’s hand.. Sometimes he squeezes her hand so hard that they have to give him something else to squeeze. Tonight he had a rubber ducky to squeeze.

In a few days Jim will be transferred to a long time recovery place down in Rockland county.  I hope to be able to get down there pretty often because its near the City. I’m guessing he has a long recovery.. He’ll need friends to drop in.. It’s hard to know exactly what he’s looking at over the next few months .. maybe even years..   I know it will be hard.. My hope for Jim.. who has the a scientists mind.. that he’ll find some of the rewiring time ‘interesting’ as well.

Bruce and I gave Jim and Lee Ann a hug and went out for a quick bite.. It was very good catching up with Bruce. he is one of my really . really good friends.. He Jim and I  worked together closely for a couple of year in the early 2000’s and have stayed close since.  We talked about family and work..  but mostly we talked about Jim..  I got to see Bruce’s wife Mary Beth for a few minutes before we went to see Jim which was nice too..

Anyway.. I better get to sleep now.. usy week coming up and I want to be rested..

Please keep sending Jim good vibes.. he still needs it .

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Satuday night – Let go or be dragged

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First day of Fall !.. Satisfying day so far.. i am in great need of hands on productive work.. and I got it today.. Early (9 AM.. so.. early for me) .. I headed over to Homers to make progress on a project we really need to move forward. I love hanging out in Homer’s shop.. every tool and every material imaginable… I feel that he and I can make anything there ,. I can spend hours just reading the stuff on the walls. I was really taken by this poster on his fridge.

Homer showed me the progress he’s made on a very visible project.. these are destined to call out the name of high brow entertainment for years to come on the Flynn Theater marquis These replace the old cast aluminum letters that have all broken over the many years the theatre has been there. Think of all the acts.. all the words.. .. all the shows these new letters will call out.


Here’s a batch fresh out of the oven.. just like cookies.

Our new (.. well actually now middle aged) project is more musical. Like all thing we do.. Homer’s part is the mechanicals.. mine is the electronics.. this has lots goign on.. arduinos, Ethernet shield and touch sensors..

all in a pretty complex stack. I’m goign to do a custom PC board on this eventually


We got lots done today.. hopefully on the last run to completion.  As i was leaving Homer hit me wiht one of his.. ‘Hey John, i found this in a dump, what can we use it for.” questions.. I am posting it here so I can find this picture of the oils stained docs on the ‘type M and MQ’ transformer on Google later on. (Google indexing your blog is pretty cool !)

After Homer’s.. I spent a very satisfying several hours working with Gabe on a school project. I really enjoy working with him. .. There too.. we made very good progress.

in a n hour or so, I’m going to go meet my buddy Jared at a concert while I wait for Diane to get home from a show today. ..

I’m going to try and get an hour or so of work in now.. More tomorrow..

-nite all, nite sam

-me

Friday night – Yes what ?!

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Crazy busy week at work. Trying hard to finish a project that is actually growing more interesting the linger i work on it.. Thankful for that at least. That kept me so busy today that i barely stood up from my chair..In fact that was the case for the last 4 days.

One funny thing happened  yesterday.. I’m working with a new assistant  , U, at work. Great guy.. though I’ve never met him. He sits down in Raleigh. Hope to get to meet him some day. We’ve been working together on some coming business travel. he’s whip smart and very organized which must make it hard for him to talk to me 🙂   The one thing that trips me up is hat he sometimes slips and  calls me ‘Sir’.. Every time he does that I feel a little bit older..Same thing happens when someone calls me sir in a restaurant or something.. Unless I look in a mirror. I certainly don’t feel like a ‘sir’.  I finally asked U about it and asked him to call me ‘John’ .  He apologized and pointed out that he grew up in the South.. (as did I).. where we had to call men Sir and women Ma’am. ..  That explained it and we laughed about it..

But it reminded me..   I remember so well in school as a little kid that we had to call our teachers  “Ma’am” .. (pronounced may-yem.. .. more like mayhem !).. If they asked you a question and you said “Yes”.. they’d snap back.. “Yes-what ?!”.. you had to say “Yes-May’am””.. Or “Yes-sir”.. or actually “Yes suh”, Many of my friends had to do that to answer their parents. I was thinking about that tonight when we saw our friend E, a southern Belle form Virginia.. we laughed about “Yes what ?!!”  she reminded me of another great Southernism I grew up with .. “Well bless your heart”.. or “bless her ( or his) heart” .. It was a euphemism for ‘I can’t  believe what a (crazy, stupid, pitiful,  ridiculous, lamentable, idiotic) thing you  (or he/she)  did..

I’ve long lost these patterns of speech .. and kind of miss them.. that was untill I asked  folks on a phone call today ‘how are all y’all doin; ?”.. Now  “all y’all”… ?! i could go off on that for hours…  but not today

nite all ya’ll, nite sam

-me