Diane woke us at 5AM to get on the road down to NYC. Our mission today was to drop Max off at his new apartment in Brooklyn. We managed to get out of the house by 6.. which beat our goal.. I was pretty sleepy, though..

The drive down was really easy.. Diane began the drive while Max and I slept…. then I took over in Connecticut. Our satellite wasn’t workig.. so we passed the time talking like they used to do.. and checking out passing bumper stickers like these !

We had to stop from 11-12 to allow me to give a presentation by phone. It was a talk to a fairly large group of people.. We parked in a Barnes and Noble parking lot in Stamford. I made the call in the car while Diane and Max wandered around the strip malls. The talk was pretty high level and light hearted .. it works great in person.. but I don’t think it went over that well by phone..

We got to NYC around 1…. we could tell that Max was feeling good about being ‘home’

We pulled into Brooklyn and drove down to Max’s new apartment.. It’s in a funky cool neighborhood about 10 minutes walk from the Pratt Campus.. There are lots of small shops and restaurants.

At last we were at the door.

Diane added Max’s name to the mailbox.

And up we went. It’s a GREAT place.. recently renovated and bright.. Here’s Max’s room

Here’s a quick visual tour.. Her’s the hall.

The bathroom

The brand new kitchen

Ewwwwwww !

The living room

And Frylock guards the front door.

There’s even roof accesds that they can use… !

We got Max all set there then walked back to campus.. then to teh Red Bamboo.. Max and my favorite veggie resturant..

It’s a great, funky and varied neigborhood.. every ethnic.. every type of resturant.. every language !

Red Bamboo was amazing..

We got back to the apartemnt.. hugged max… then off Diane and I went . I feel good about Mmaxs living situation.. I/’m so proud of the guy he is !.

We got to Ruchir and Rashi’s about 8PM.. My good friend Wolfgang was also visting there.. Rashis’ parents are also still in town.. So we all had a great dinner. (Sorry.. I forgot to take a picture !!!!) .. As always it was great seeing Ruchir, Rashi and their kids. It was also great catching up with Wolfgang.. and with Rashi’s folks.. they head out day after tomorrow.
One thing that came up during our much varied dinner time conversation was the nature of fruits and vegatables.. Wikipedia solved the big debate: yes.. Okra is a Fruit !!!!!

After dinner Diane played with Isha and Anika.. Ruchir, Wolfgang and I talked about work..

It’s been a long day.. but a good one. Time to sleep now.. we have another long drive home in the morning.. Good night everyon.e. Goodnight Sam !
-me

ps. This video has been circulating on Youtube.. I thinkk it’s cute.. and appropriate when I think of dropping my kid of at school

Today things worked out.. … at least in a gadget sense… i made small progress on many fronts and it felt pretty good..

I woke to the aftermath of a 4AM cooking spree by Gabe and his friends.. yummmy…

It was the first mornng I noticed it being in the 40’s.. it’s definitly getting fall like outside..

I had a really full day of meetings.. first one at 7:30.. last one at 11PM… A few short breaks including this one when my friend Narayan came by to tell me that he and his wife are expecting their first child !

My day was spent mostly on the phone in meetings.. mostly good meetings today .. I did manage to do a little programming during lucnh while I was on the phone.. I finally got the spirometer interfaced to FLASH for my friend Peter’s NSF grant. He’s trying to see if video games can help kids with Cystic Fibrosis keep to their breathing exercise regiment. My job is to write the low levl interface code that translates the devices raw flow inout into a stream of XML data that the flash environment can read.. here it is working…

Around 6:30 I headed over to Homers with Seth and brenden.. We all worked on integrating the arms together and interfacing them to solenoid valves that we could control with our micro controller..

Here’s the assembled arm under computer control.. yee-ha

..

Tonight was Brenden’s last nght working with us.. he heads back to school tomorrow. He’s been great to work with .. as have been all of the kids.

Well.. gotta get to bed. we leave at 5 tomorrow to take max back to college.. It’s ben a good summer having him hear.. I’ll really miss him…

Gnite all.. gnite Sam
-m

Quiet day.. one of the high points was getting the following pictures from my good friend Hugh in England. He made the trek up to Winchester to place a SamStone at our old house at 75 Canon street. My friend Joanne had just visited out old house and taken pictures.. but she didn’t have a SamStone.. Now there’s one there !

Here’s our ‘local’ down the street. The Wykham Arms.. The Publican’s name was Graham.. I wonder if hes’ till there.. I have many happy memories from Canon St. and the Wykham…

Beleive it or not.. that was the only newsworthy thing from my dayl. Maybe that’s good !
Well.. I’ll try to have a more exciteing day tomorrow.. More then.. Nite all. Nte Sam
-me

Today was tough. I felt really overwhelmed.. everything I tried to do was hurried and incomplete.
I felt like I was running on fumes.. both cars had the same problem.

We were talking to Larry and Leah’s daughter Hannah just befre dinner.. she’d seen the picture of the picture of her that I posted of her the other night.. I asked her to take a picture of the pictue of the picture and send it back to me… So here it is.. round trip…

Ans here’s a picture of the picture of the picture of the picture just for good measure..
(How long can we keep this up, Hannah ? )

I have another set of friends in town as well. Murali, Anand and Mohit (not in this picture) are visiting from Bangalore to work with my firend Ed. We tried to meet up fo lunch.. but they unfortunalty got a bit delayed.. and I had a meeting to go to .. so our meeting was all of 10 minutes… They grabbed my lucnh for me and broght it to IBM.. We were able to get toghether for another 20 minutes later in th day.. and I was able to drink my Thai soup with them afterall.
hese guys are so bright and motivated.. it was inspiring to talk with them !

Here’s Ed looking wise.

I got home too late for Yoga.. LLeah called and asked us out to dinner again.. so as soon as Diane was done, out we went.. there were soem cool storm clouds gathering as we headed out.. We’ve been havign a huge sotrm for the last hour.

We got back around 10:30 to find Gabe playing Spin-art with a fan in his room. That kid is crazy creative.. look at this.. I love it !

Seconds after this shot the pen fell in the spinning fan.. that was pretty cool, too !

Last night Gabe showed me another funny thing. He was sitting there witht he dogs.. and they and him made a perfect valentine heart.. accidentaly .. and he noticed..

OK.. that’s all that’s goign on here.. Hope tomorrow I feel better and more at ease.. I hate being this busy.. Nite all.. nite Sam !

-me

ps. Saw this bumbersticker today.. wierd wording.. great message..