{"id":590,"date":"2007-08-07T03:06:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-07T07:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/08\/07\/monday-night-armonk\/"},"modified":"2007-08-07T03:06:00","modified_gmt":"2007-08-07T07:06:00","slug":"monday-night-armonk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/08\/07\/monday-night-armonk\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday night &#8211; Armonk"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"pBlogBody_296516704\" class=\"blogContent\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">It&#8217;s Monday night and I&#8217;m at the <st1:place><st1:placename>IBM<\/st1:placename> <st1:placename>Learning<\/st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Center<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place> in <st1:place><st1:city>Armonk<\/st1:city> <st1:state>NY<\/st1:state><\/st1:place>. I drove down early this morning after about 4 hours sleep .. yawn. The drive down is nice.. spent some of it on the phone.. some of it just quietly thinking. I find that since Sam&#8217;s passing I have had trouble listing to news on the radio.. or listening to the comedy channel we get\u2026 or reading newspapers.. I don&#8217;t think I want to hear about other peoples troubles right now.. A cop out perhaps.. but good self preservation. <span style=\"\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The <st1:place><st1:placename>Learning<\/st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Center<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place> <span style=\"\">&nbsp;<\/span>where I&#8217;m staying is an IBM owned hotel\/conference center on the campus of our companies headquarters. This is one of my favorite hotels in the world. Not sure why. It&#8217;s sort of<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>part monastery, part luxury hotel and part penal colony. The dorms are all in beautiful stone buildings set in a heavily wooded park with trails crisscrossing every which way. I&#8217;ve been coming here frequently for the last 10 years.. each dorm is attached to some memory of some business deal or some corporate task force I was part of.. not all good memories.. but not all bad either. As peaceful and beautiful as this place is.. it can also be a little eerie Nearly everyone here is an IBM employee.. it&#8217;s like invasion of the body snatchers but with briefcases !<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span>I&#8217;m really glad I came down here .. I have a series of meetings today and tomorrow related to my day job and my outreach stuff.. I&#8217;m also trying to attend a conference held for some of our best college interns.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>I say &#8216;trying&#8217; because I have some hot day job stuff that&#8217;s keeping me on the phone most of the day. but I was able to here a few of the talks and hang out at dinner. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p>&nbsp;Our dinner table&nbsp; &#8211; great conversation&nbsp; !<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/aug07e\/aug0607013.jpg\" \/><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"\">&nbsp;<\/span>It&#8217;s so very energizing hanging out with all these 20-somethings who are still in college. They&#8217;re all so cute in their business suits. They are a very sharp bunch of folks to be sure. This kind of stuff recharges me so much. When I&#8217;m around &#8216;kids&#8217; like this, I end up trying to see myself through their eyes.. to them I&#8217;m a grown-up .. it sort of freaks me out. I love talking to them about their intern projects, their schools and their backgrounds. I tell them about what I do.. and do as much meddling with their careers as one can safely do in a 5 minute conversation. I did a bunch of talking about my family tonight too\u2026 many folks asked me about my Sam button. I like talking about all of my family<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span>Speaking of family.. this place really does feel like an extended family to me..<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>Quite a few execs attend this particular event because they too get a charge out of it.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>Once again.. I got hugged by many of them.. At the very least I get the tow arm hand shake (you know when you also grab the other guy&#8217;s elbow) I don&#8217;t think I get many regular<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>handshakes from folks I know well anymore.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>Here are a few of the friends I ran into. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p>&nbsp;My good friend Jane.. We finnaly had a chance to sit down and have a good, long talk. It was so good to reconnect with her<br \/><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p><center><br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/aug07e\/aug0607015.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>John I..&nbsp; I once hooked his daughter up to&nbsp; a 400,000 volt generator<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/aug07e\/aug0607012.jpg\" \/><br \/>My hero Irving.. now a Visiting prof at MIT<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/aug07e\/aug0607006.jpg\" \/><br \/>Nick &#8211; the godfather of IBM.. all of our hero !<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/aug07e\/aug0607005.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p>I also ran into two guys.. a father and son.. who are named Eric Larsen .. Even more trange.. John-from-Voices mom&#8217;,&nbsp; Pam, told Diane abotu a book about Marconi I might like written by another guy named Eric Larsen&#8230; Eric.. i think the world is telling me ot talk to you about something ? <br \/><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i147.photobucket.com\/albums\/r319\/johncohn\/aug07e\/aug0607014.jpg\" \/><br \/><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"\">&nbsp;<\/span>I know I&#8217;ve said it before.. but at a time like this you can see that the company has a deep and wonderful soul.<span style=\"\">&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p>&nbsp;<\/o:p><br \/>Speaking of time&#8217;s like this.. It&#8217;s <st1:time minute=\"0\" hour=\"0\">midnight<\/st1:time>.. and I&#8217;m going to friends for an early breakfast tomorrow.<span style=\"\">&nbsp; <\/span>So.. that&#8217;s it for today.. more tomorrow. Love you all.. love you Sam<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p>&nbsp;<\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">-me<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p>&nbsp;<\/o:p><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s Monday night and I&#8217;m at the IBM Learning Center in Armonk NY. I drove down early this morning after about 4 hours sleep .. yawn. The drive down is nice.. spent some of it on the phone.. some of it just quietly thinking. I find that since Sam&#8217;s passing I have had trouble listing &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/2007\/08\/07\/monday-night-armonk\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Monday night &#8211; Armonk<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johncohn.org\/base\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}