Hi friends,
It’s 5ish on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m blogging now because Diane and I are heading to the Fair to see Prairie Home Companion . I wanted to blog now while the following story was fresh in my mind

I’ve had a pretty low key day which is just what I needed.. Diane went walking with Kathy so I took the dogs on a run up Honey Hollow. When I got back I was thinking of all the things I to do .. and feeling kind of weighted down by that.. So I asked myself what I wanted to do. I felt like doing something Sam related.. so I wandered into my lab. There on my work surface was the tree of iron SamStones that I’d cast at the iron pour back in July. When you cast something there are lots of extra bits of iron that represent the channels where the hot metal poured in and flowed through.. (Think about the plastic models you may have built as a kid..) these chases need to be cut apart and ground down to make a finished piece.. ..

I figured that would be good project to fit my mood.. so.. I started to cut the thing apart. Easier said than done.. I tried a hack saw.. that would have taken a day !.. I tried a cut off wheel.. even that was slow going..

so I broke out my Uzi.. ie. my diomnd bladed cut off tool.. That did it.. it went through the hard metal like butter. In a few minutes I’d cut all the cast iron SamStones apart.

The next step was to grind off the remains of the chaces and sprue..
and remove the ‘flashing’ that sometimes sticks out where the two
halves of the mold come together. I was about to move my stuff up to the grinder when the follwoing small miracle occured. I gatherd up all the rough iron ‘stones’ into my right gloved hands.. they were still hot from the cutting.. then I decided that I needed a picture of this step.. (everthing in my life is blog fodder).. I dropped the pile of stones where I was as I stood up..I didn’t even look at them . went to my work table.. picked up my camera and put in the battery that was charging. I turned on the camer and walked the 3 feed back to where I’d been cutting the stones apart. As iframed the shot.. I notices it looked funny.. This is what I saw through the viewfinder

I swear… it happened exactly like that.. I was stunned for a second.. then said the only thing I could think of.. “Hi Sam”… Then I ran and got Dianea and Gabe.. We took a few more pictures…

Then I picked the stones up and did the final cutting and grinding. As I worked I was thinking of Sam.. and how little we really know about how the unverse is put together..

That boy has a powerful spirit..

THat’s all for now.. We love you Sam.
-me

We left Ruchir and Rashi this morning at about 5:30AM . We were sad to leave without seeing those guys some more, but we both had stuff we needed to do around noon back here in Vermont. It wasgreat seeign them as always. Diane really enjoyed getting to visit them, too.

It was nice watching the sun come up.. it used to be the only way I saw that was when I’d stayed up working all night. I don’t do that much anymore.

The drive back was nice and uneventful.. Diane and I enjoyed the quite time talking.. I only saw one good bumper sticker.

We got home to find Gabe mischuef in full swing. He’d booby-ttrapped the doors to the bathroom and the room that Jessie was sleeping in . He’d taped party poppers to the door and riggeged them with pull strings.

When Trevor came out of the bathroom .. ‘BOOM’.. it was pretty cool and funny.. (not sure Trevor thought so, though )

Jessie had been here with Gabe last night. She showed us the weapons she had to confiscate,.. a stapler ?!>!

My 12:30 meeting was with Julie C… she’s been helpign me with time management for the last few years. She’s really helped me over the last few years.. Today she had some cool news. She and her husband Kevin just adopted month old twins.. a boy and a girl.. (Xander and Neliah (I think)…) They now have 4 kids under 4 ! She’ was so happy.. !

Here is a picture of the newborns. So cute !

I had to leave work a little early to get home by 5:L30.. our friends Anne Marie, Steve, Jen. Tim K, Tim F, Vivien and Deb were coming over for a quick potluck before our big night at the opera.

Tonight, our good friend Wendy was singing the role of Musetta in the Middlebury Opera Company’s production of ‘La Boheme’ .We all carpooled the hour drive down to Middlebury.. The show was in the newly redone Mibblebury Town Hall Theatre.. it was a beutiful venue.. and it was completely packed !

The production was really wonderful.. As good as I’ve seen anywhere.. and in such a cool small venue.. !

Wendy was great !.. She has an amazng voice and a great stage presense. It was so cool watching her perform. The entire cast and the musicaians were all wonderful..

The company got a standing ovation. It was really, really good..

We drove Anne Marie and Steve back to their car in Hinesburg.. then Diane drove us home. I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.. 2 nights of 4 hours sleep hasn’t been enough.. I’m fallign asleep now.. so that’s all for tonight.. Good night friends.. Good nigt Sam

-me

ps. y firend Paul and his family just got back from a 3 week vacation in Europe. Paul put a SamStone on Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris.. How cool is that !?! Sam would dig it.

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