Friday night – little by little

The show’s finale last week marked one of  the peaks of unnormalcy in my life.. Now Little by little, my life is getting back to some semblance of routine.  I wake up, run, go to work, come home.  eat, blog sleep in a pleasantly predictable rhythm.  Not every conversation or email is about The Colony anymore..  There are still many echos.. every day a coupe of more old friends reconnect after having seen the show, a few more folks want to hear stories.. a few new offers for talks/interviews.. but fewer of each every day.. It good to move on.. and at the same time I miss it..

A couple of echos today.. I did two work talks on my experience on the show.. one was to a group of folks in a work area near my own.. there were about 50 folks here in VT.. then others scattered all over.. india, bulgaria. texas, ny, Pennsylvania..  That was fun because I had folks in the room with me.

Later in the day, I had another strange filming thing. I’d agreed to do a talk for soem folks in another part of IBM.. this one had to be recorded.. so I gave a talk just staring at a camera… that’s SO hard to do, because without folks in the room there’s no love coming back. Once again I have to say that the worlds move to virtual events really misses out on the importance of human contact..   At least I had the two awesome camersa/sounds guys.. peter and mark.. in the room to talk to.

After work I met with a guy named Wally to sell him my old sell phone. It’s for his daughter’s birthday tomorrow.. We agreed to meet in a mostly empty grocery store parking lot..We both got out of our cars. I handed him an unmarked box, and he handed my a fistfull of money.. It looked so much liek a drug deal that I photographed it in case I have to arrest myself later.

From there we headed to Shelburn for Gabe’s soccer game.. He was playing today.. all of his team was.

Watching Gabe play was fun.. and It certainly felt like fall out there . Even the geese said so !.

Not much else to report… I have been putting some time in this evening to upgrading the ‘Father’s Forever’ website I help run in Boston. Fathers-forever is a group of dad’s that I belong to who have all had childeren that have died. We call it the worst club in the world. It is that.. but it’s also a wonderful group of guys.  We’re just starting a blog about dealing with grief after the loss of a child. I know many folks who read this blog have told me about their own losses.. If you are a member of this same terrible ‘club’… you may want to check out http://fathers_forever.org

Well.. thats all for today.. I predict an interesting day tomorrow. If it is.. I’ll let you know !
Gnite folks, Gnite Sam
-me

Post-post…   I just saw on Google that today is the birthday of

Mahatma Gandhi (whose name is so revered that it appears in Firefox’s

spell checker). Gandhi has always been one of my favorite heroes.. He

said one of the things that has guided me for many years   Literally

guided me… because it’s written on someone’s door between my office

and the front door. “… You must be the change you want to see in the world.”     Happy birthday Gandhi gee !

ps.. I just read that Gandhi also said  I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. 🙂

Thursday night – Flow

Do you know the feeling when it seems your life is being guided by something outside of yourself.. something bigger.. like you’re being pulled along by a powerful river.. You’re being pulled quickly but gently through new places… You can try to stop, you can struggle with the current… but it eventually wins and pulls you along anyway. The only thing you can do is surrender and see where it takes you.. Standing still is not an option. That’s what I feel like now..   and it’s really fun and scary..  Where am I going to end up ? (and how much do I care ? ) It’s an interesting test in ‘letting go’ for me who’s always been very

cautious and calculating about the future.. (despite appearances

sometimes, I’m sure) 

I had this river analogy in my mind for a few days.. then this morning, Diane sends me this quote

“I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
— John O’Donohue

OK,,, not a huge coincidence.. but it’s one of those small synchronicities that I see when I’m open and aligned with the current.

Very, very interesting times….

Diane also sent me this youtube video.. it’s a woman who recently won the ‘Ukraine’s got talent’ contest by doing sand painting to music.  She uses sand on glass to tell the story of the german invasion of russia in 1945.. The vid has gone way viral with more than 2million hits worldwide.  The fluid nature of what she does, the music and the story shes tellign are very cool and moving….

Just like my river….

Gnite all.. gnite Sam

-me

Wednesday evening – Oud night

Oh man.. almost 1 AM again.. so this will be short.. Tonight was an ‘Oud night’.. (note ‘Oud’ rhymes with ‘good’) We began the evening with an hour meeting of our section of Richmond to examine the town zoning restrictions.. about 6 sentences into the converstaion is was lost in legal language.. I spent most of the meeting writing our hostess’ name in red cabbage slices on a cutting board. Diane and I agree that we’re glad that there are folks who can talk through the details of zoning laws.. but we’re very appreciate  that it’s not us.

Around 8:15 we moved to ‘On The Rise’ to see my buddy Peter’s band ‘locum;.. (or ‘Turkish delight’.,, if you’re translating)They are amazingly awesome. they capture the eastern Europe/western asia’s mourning twang and crazy rhythms so much that I could swear that I was listening to klezmer music that I love so well.
In addition to seeing Peter and Dana, we were also happy to see so many of our friends working the bakery so late at night. We saw Jaquie, RJ,and Lyz

I love that Jaquie is wearing a Sam shirt !

OK.. gotta sleep now.. GNite All.. Gnite Gabe !
-me

Tuesday night – 18 minutes of battery

What can I say about my day in less than the 18 minutes of battery I have left on my laptop.. Wasn’t a bad day… actually. Today was the 2nd day that a film crew from corporate was in to make movies about how computers can make the world smarter. I’m the co-star, I guess.. I play an enthusiastic nerd intent on convincing the youth of America that engineering is a good thing. The role’s a stretch for me.. but I did my best… Actually.. it was pretty cool, once again we spent the day crawling around parts of our factory that few folks get to see and live to tell about it.

We started at the high voltage grid connect for the site.. here’s where power enters the site at 115,000 volts.. we are by far the biggest electric draw in the state .. about 65,000,000 watts on a hot day.. that’s a bit more than the whole city of burlington.
Now that’s power !

On the movie we talked abotu how IBM is getting smarter abotu using that power.. we know exactly what to shut down and when to help out the new england power grid durign peak demands.. It’s all very cool and sciency.. (sciency.. what a great word !)

I also got us invited to go tour the Green Mountain hydro power facility across the road  from our plant.. Here they have 4 2 megaway hydro generators.. These beautiful machines have been in service wince 1917 !.. They were rebuilt in the 50’s.. but most of the moving parts are still original. including the wooden bearings in between the turbines.

Filming in there was a challenge.. even with earplugs it was absolutely deafening ..   What’s funny is thta at full capacity.. tat is all four hydro generators running.. and all 4 diesel back up gennies running.. this facility only would supply an eight of IBM’s energy needs on a warm day.. that’s amazing.

We finished the day with some cool demos.. I did some experiments with liquid nitrogen.. and my tesla coil. I hope they come across ok in video

Jack at the plant was kind enough to take  to get the LN2.. It was a hoot driving through the place on his electric cart.. Check out this movie I shot as he drove indoors.. weeeeeeeeeee !

We didn’t finish the last of the filing until about 9 PM.. what a long day (first work call was 7 AM.. 14 hour day.. !) It was a real pleasure working wiht the guys on th efilming project.. Iappreciate them lying in to make this work !

OK.. Low battery warnign just hit.. Better finish up.. one last bit abotu the day. I finally got to see the new office I’ll be moving into a week from today.. It’s well located.. but loooking a bit old and shabby (I’m  one to talk 🙂   Any ideas on how to decorate this place to liven it up a bit ? Any suggestions welcome !

OK.. Battery is shutting down now.. so.. I will too…   Hope everyone’s having a great tuesday.. I am.. nite Sam !
-me