Another greta day in portland. I spent much of it doing small projects around Gabes hose… Anything that can lighten his load as he finishes up hi these. 

Jobs included repairing a bairly reparabe silverware drawer,  replacing all the light bulbs in teh kitchen, living room, ceiling fans and installing a new dimmer, adding a new toilet paper roll

Its nice to feel useful  

We had a great dinner at Norah.. a vegan thai place in the next block from gabe (there are at least 4 thai restaurants in just a few blocks from gabe).. Gabe ran into two peple from his graduate program t dinner.. you know he’s grown roots here .. 

after. dinner we came hpew to this image on the camera we have on our house.   Check out that moon .lThe  boys each have a screen that shows thenm the house 24 hours a day so they dont get homesick 🙂 

More tomorrow,

nite all, nite sam
-me

Great to be in portland with Gabe. I worked much of the day with a few meetings and some  code collaboration. 

Diane and I took Nova to Laurelhurst for a run and some ball fetching.
We really need this doggy dose ! We love both our grand doggies

nice to get an early dose of spring as well !

After work, we had some of gabes friends over for dinner. Mel , shawn  and Pip, Henry, and Gabes very awesome mandolin friend Parmis. Dinner was pasta primavera, salad, carrot cakes (!!!!) 

one treat from tonight was gettign to hear gabe and parmis play .. gabes been playign for a year.. parmis has only been playing mandolin for 2 months (!!!!) .. though she plays violin.. which is almost the same instrument plus or minus frets. 

Another treat was today was my nephew Jakes 18th birthday.. My seeeeester mary got both sides of the family on the phone to sing happy birthday.. we were all over the place.. I was in portland. max in santa fe, mom jake and his fam were in minneapolis, shawn was in chattanooga, chris and berto were at a mcdonalds, billy was in melbourne australia.. all the liddicoats were spread out too.  It was a very happy chaos . Jake made a nice short speach thanking weveryone for being part of the call and part of his life 

Happy birthday Jake.. you’re an amazing guy.. super glad to be your uncle hoho. 

The night finished strong with a total lunar eclipse..! .. we’d hear d about it.. but it wasnt until gabe came back in the house and told us all to come outside.. It was amazing !!! Its’ called the blood moon because of its crazy red color !

Super fun day !!!!!!   Very glad to be here !

nite all. nite sam
0me 

Today we’d hoped to get everyone in the class through the pcb submission process.. Unfortunately, i’d miscalculated the travel time to the airport, that coupled with the later class times than last year only allowed us to stay abotu 25 minutes in to the class .. In that time we were able to take about half the class through the PCB submission to manufacturing. They learned enough to get the rest of their classmates to that point. Next wednesday I’ll joing the class by Zoom to walk them through the grants process. 

All in all it’s been a very successful and pretty smooth class. I learned lots that I can still improve…

I relaly appreicate the help fo Hackclub. The IEEE SSCS and the students and staff at Canyon Crest for making this such a fun project. 

At about 1:35 we said goodbye to everyone, took soem pics (I dint have them yet).. and ran for the car.. luckily the traffice was so much better than yesterday and we made the airport on time.. 

Our  flight up to San Franscisco  was delayed at the gate due to fog at SFO.. they started to board our plane, then made us off board for another hour

r connection from SFO to PDX by about 5 minutes !.. 

Gabe picked us up and brought us right back to the house for our Nova fix.. 

Its really niice to be here.  We’re doign anythign we can do to help lighten gabes load as he finishes up his phd. I’m coming back SUnday. .dianes goign to stay and extra week to take care of nova while gabe writes.. 

more from portland tomorrow 
nite all. nite sam
_me

THis morning DIane and I woke early and headed out for a run. At the suggestion of our hosts, we hopped a low fence and took a gentle run along the streets of a gated community just across from their house. there were beautifully landscaped yards, huge houses and a golf course. not our style at all. but we did love the gardens. They were amazing !

THe class today went very well. Most of the class got most of their PCB layout done. Even though the circuit was proscribed, there was plenty of room for personalization  in the layout , shape,  decoration, colors etc of the board. We were so  impressed with the students technical ability and creativity . Again. sorry no pictures here.. but I will show pictures of the baords when they are all submitted. 

One thing that did make today differnt is that it was raining !.. San Diego only gets abotu 12 inches off rain a year (compared to .. say.. 50 for houston)   . The trouble is that San Diegoins  (?)  dont know how to drive in the rain. After class diane and I had a half baked plan to drive in to san diego to see the zoo.  If we were  able to leave at 2 PM.. and take 25 minutes to get to the zoo.. we’d still have like 2 and a half hours to look around.  The trouble was, the highways were down to a crawl because of the rain. waht was supposed to be a 25 minute drive turned into an hour and twenty minutes.. no fun ! 

The San DIego Zoo is famous for all sorts of things.. one thing I didnt know it was famous for was being so expensive.. it’s $75 / person.. so $75 per person , only an hour and a half to see the zoo and pouring rain all conspired to change out mind. No zoo for us, instead we headed to one of the many museams that are near the zoo in Balboa park. We chose the Fleet sceince museum.. Also pricey.. $25 / person.. ($22 for me since im older than 65).. the museum was cute.. but nothing to amazing. It was defintely geared towards younger kids.. many of the exhibits liek the electrical stuff were pretty dated. still it was fun to be out of the rain !   Here’s their poor tesla coil stuck in a cage and not operating.. 

Our tix included entry to the IMAX theatre where we saw a good peice on the resurgence of blue whales. .. I leanred lots abotu whales in the film…. did you knwo tha blue whales poop about 55 gallons of brigh orange krill leftovers that help fertilize the ocean.. I didnt know  that.

I also didnt knwo that this museum had one of the longest operating Imax projectors in the world. THye had the old one out on display. WHo knew they were this complicated ? 

We drove back on the rainy freways.. lucily the traffic had let up. We had good mexican food at a place right across from the high school.. then went home to sleep

more tomorrow..

Nite all nite sam
-me