Bruce Letters: March 2006

Sunday, March 26, 2006

FW: The one and only leprosy kitten monger

A new 2 page from Nick to pass along!

I'm off to Montana for Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad, I'll likely leave on
Tuesday, if not then on Wednesday, assuming no blizzards. Will let you
know for sure when I leave.

Zack had fun with his engine-less car this weekend. He rented a car trailer
Friday morning, so he and I managed to get his car pushed up onto it. It
was raining, and we ran out of momentum 1/2 way up, but we somehow went into
extra he-man mode and got it up. Then he drove the trailor and car to
work, then that night dropped the car off at Jessy's Dad's farm. But there
was a mis-communication and it got dropped off at the wrong spot, so today
he gave up on that plan and picked the car back up and brought it back here
and now has it parked beside our garage. Hopefully the neighbors won't mind
too much. So, after spending about $100 of his hard earned monnies in
rental fees, he got the car moved about 10 feet from where it was!

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Winter [mailto:Nicholas.Winter@oberlin.edu]
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2004 9:44 PM
To: bruce@misterhouse.net
Subject: The one and only leprosy kitten monger

Have you ever seen a zombie movie where the good guys are trapped inside a
building with zombies attacking them and coming through the windows and
everything, and then a few of the good guys get eaten by the zombies but the
others escape, and the zombies chase them but zombies don't go very fast so
they get away and the good guys are like, "Oh man! That was close, dude!"
but then they turn around a corner or run into a street or something and
there's just eighty-three zombies standing around, which all whip around
(well, except they're zombies and they don't really whip so much as stagger
slowly so as to be facing the other direction) when one of the characters
sneezes or steps on a twig or accidentally blows something up, and then it's
all a huge shamblefest?

Except with so many zombies, the movie people have had to get somewhat
less-than-dedicated extras, and there's always that one zombie who, instead
of shambling, rotting, and moaning, is wandering in the wrong direction,
zombiewhistling and admiring the clouds and feeding a kitten during the
shot--you know that zombie?

...

Wow, I completely forgot where I was going with this. It was going to be
such a good intro, too! I think. That, or I was trying to foreshadow my own
impending undeath/reanimation as a happy-go-lucky walking corpse. Probably
the first one, though. Fiddlesticks! I've spent ten minutes pondering,
perpending, puzzling, and puddle-praying, and I can't remember what I was
going for with the zombie metaphor! Woe.

My classes are going well, I think I'm still getting an A- in Chemistry (I
had to start studying for the quizzes though since I dreamt through some of
the lectures--but I've yet to open my $120 Chemistry textbook, which is
utterly useless except for bashing demons and enraged marmots). Computer
Science is very tantalizing, but we can't write programs that solve the
universe or have graphical interfaces or taste very good without herbs and
spices such as garlic, cinnamon, and peanut butter. I'm floating happily
through the class though. And I'm floating happily through Words that Matter
too, although I had to write a six-page paper explicating a poem, which made
me sad until I wrote in the phrase, "...and he is hoping she is really bad
at math and doesn't realize that he wants to enjoy her spleen." Bill made me
delete that part though. Poetry is going decently, except for one class when
we were workshopping someone's sesquipedalian poem and I fell asleep and
woke up right when he was reciting the thoughtful conclusion--but when I
woke up, I let out this crazy zombie moan, and it was oooooops. I don't know
how loud the moan was because I was just waking up and not hearing my own
moan except for the last part of the moan, but I'm a little worried about
how the professor is going to grade me on effective in-class discussion.

I've gone to a dozen concerts this month and some of them were okay, but
most of them were sweet. And I went to go see The Arcade Fire in Cleveland,
whom I'd never heard of before, and it was so awesome that I almost exploded
and imploded at the same time! It was like wow. Yesterday, there was this
totally awesome sarod (which is like a lute, from India) player, Rajeev
Taranath, and he was very mindblowing, too. What with the Conservatory of
Music and all, I can't believe how much music there is at Oberlin! It almost
feels like I'm the only person here who doesn't play an instrument or sing.
Ahh, how lucky for I, serenaded always. Yesterday, there was a
student-written musical that was very good; it had hipsters in it and one of
them played a very emotional cowbell and screamed.

I've been introduced to new culinary delights, too! I've discovered that I
like: at least six kinds of Chinese food; more types of shrimp than just
popcorn shrimp; orange guava juice; some supposedly ubiquitous type of Asian
peanut buttery sauce; and salads. Granted, my conception of a salad is a
plate full of little tomatoes with lots of cheese on them, but tomatoes are
kind and wise. I've also tasted tea for the first time ever, and I liked it
(chilled chai, warmer chai, and some green tea thing; I didn't like the
really spicy chai though). Mom, why didn't you tell me?!

Last night, I slept outside as part of an awareness thing about
homelessness. It was very cold and wet, and most people were unable to sleep
at all because they were freezing, but I am from Minnesota and my last name
is Winter and I am invincible! We woke up at six a.m. and the other
"sleepers" were saying, "Finally! I was looking at my watch all night and I
would so totally die right now if I was really homeless and didn't have a
dorm to go back to! Let's get out of here and go to sleep!" I was like,
"mmmmm... few more minutes... zzzzzz."

I also watched Singin' in the Rain, Magnolia, About a Boy, Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind, and The Incredibles, all of which are now among my
favorite movies, especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: sooo
good! I watched Aladdin again too; any time I want to watch basically any
movie that might seize my fancy, I can go around and someone is bound to
have the DVD for me to borrow! It's frabjous.

I think I've broken the cell phone. Was I supposed to leave it plugged in?
It turns on for a few seconds if I press the End button, but only displays
the Sprint logo. So I don't know how to make outgoing phone calls.
Telephones are too new-fangled for me; I am sorry. If you call me, though,
at 440-776-2394 and I'm actually in my room, I would be delighted to talk to
anyone, everyone, and cats. There is a cat that lives outside near my dorm,
and I fed it today; it liked my philosophies. I respond readily to e-mails
and instant-messages (I'm quartzsphinx on AIM), honest!

I've registered for classes for next semester: more intro Chemistry and
Computer Science, Discrete Mathematics, and some Developmental Psychology
class that I know nothing about, unless I get into (I'm on a waitlist) a
cinema studies class, Documentary Forms, which I also know nothing about
except that the professor is supposed to be great. Later, I will sign up for
ExCo's, possibly including capture the flag, knife throwing, or swing
dancing. For winter term, I'm probably going to sign up for Aikido: six
hours a day, five days a week, three January weeks of intensive martial arts
training and I have no idea whatsoever if I will like it! Fun. I'm staying
here for Thanksgiving weekend I guess, but they kick you out of the dorms
for winter break, which is from Friday, December 24 to Saturday, January 1;
Aikido starts on January 5th. So I think I'm going home, but maybe I will go
to somewhere else if there's somewhere else to be gone to.

Sorry for being so completely out of touch; I've been spending every one of
my free seconds being overwhelmingly in love with Emily, of whom I've
attached a picture and am keeping many secrets because I think it's
delightful to perhaps tantalize the family!

FW: Life within Oberlin

We got another letter from Nick today, complete with a couple of pictures
(his roommate has a camera)!

It was a pretty quiet week here this week. Zack and his buddies reassembled
up his Green DeSole last week, then drove back out to Hyshem for another
week of farming. He gets back tonight, then he and a crew are heading out
early tomorrow to drive down to Iowa to go tandem sky jumping! For $200,
you too can strap yourself to a stranger and jump out of a plane. It
started as a 2 year together anniversary celebration for Zack and Jessie
(she has always wanted to skydive), and has expanded out to a bit more then
10 people.

Even though Zack is not here, I get regular visits from his buddies. Got a
pair of them out in the garage now painting their caliper breaks to make
them look cool. They are all psyched about their skydiving adventure
tomorrow. Various parents are a bit nervous, but are resigned to the fact
that their children grown up and independent. At least when it comes to
jumping.

A group from my department at work took Wednesday morning off and scrapped
and re-painted a deck at the home of a local charity, as part of a IBM
community work program. Given our equivalent combined hourly pay rate, that
was one expensive paint job, but it was a fun, team building event.

Mom and Dad, I forgot when you called that I we have our 2nd semi-annual
'Geeks -vs- Docs' chess match (IBM -vs- Mayo) scheduled for next Friday. I
can try to dig up a substitute for that if you have already firmed up plans
with Charles for that night.

Bruce

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Winter [mailto:Nicholas.Winter@oberlin.edu]
Sent: Saturday, September 25, 2004 11:08 AM
To: Laurel Winter
Cc: bruce@misterhouse.net
Subject: Life within Oberlin

Lo.

College is like the best ever, I'm more happy now than I've been since I was
a woodpecker, and I have the luck of a creamless bagel: not only did I get a
corner room, but I pretty much got the sweetest floor in the sweetest dorm
(all first-years). Everyone is interesting and hangs out all the time and
random conversations between lounge denizens about whatever frequently last
until five and everyone has sooo much music and there's frequent
table-rolling through the halls (and down the stairs where you jump over
them like in Donkey Kong)! But like on 2nd floor, I've heard, no one leaves
their rooms and when they do, there's just mad drama all the time. Plus
there are ghosts down there.

Also, somehow I managed to score 16 credit hours' worth of classes but not
have to spend more than a few hours per week doing homework. All the other
people are always moaning, "Ohhh, I should be doing my hoooomewoooork," and
I figure they just have a lot of homework that day, but then they'll have to
do even more the next day, and the next week, and so on forever. Whereas I
seem to have none: chemistry is all review for me at this point so I don't
need to do problems, computer science is easy to grasp with no problems to
do outside of lab, poetry is just reading a few poems each week and writing
one poem (which takes a long time but that's not really work), and Go class
is further from work than chunky peanut butter from a red balloon. The only
class I have to really do anything for is Words that Matter, reading a
miniscule amount and writing two two-page essays a week (or one five page
essay), but I figured out how to do those swiftly instead of laboriously.
The secret is kung-fu. Seriously, the last paper practically wrote itself
because it had Jet Li in it (it was about the excellent film Hero (and the
use of language in it or something silly like that)).

So when everyone else is too busy working to play Soul Calibur II or throw
the spikeball around, I borrow DVDs from other halldudes. So far I've
watched: Bottle Rocket (lame), Get Shorty (okay), Monty Python's The Meaning
of Life (not as funny as the other ones), Amadeus (aurally pleasurable),
Koyaanisqatsi (visually pleasurable and sleep-inducing), Dark City (sweet),
and Waking Life (undeniably, unmitigatedly, undulatingly awesome). I'll like
raid Bill and Nick1's room for a DVD and they'll be working, and then I'll
watch it and come back for another one and they'll still be working, and so
on, and each time they'll be like, "You seriously don't have any work to do?
I hate you." And then I went and wrote the same paper they'd been working on
the whole time (they're in my Words that Matter class) and came back and
they were still doing theirs. Poor dudes tried to write their papers on
Beowulf instead of Hero.

I've also watched Amelie, 10 Things I Hate About You, When Harry Met Sally,
Labyrinth, Sweet November, Return of the Jedi, The Lord of the Rings: The
Two Towers, and Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro just from wandering into
the lounge or scoring free movies shown in a lecture hall. And in the local
movie theater, I've seen The Manchurian Candidate, Without a Paddle,
Fahrenheit 9/11, and Hero (twice; it's the most beautiful movie ever!), all
for $8 total. Life is good and movies are cheap, so I have extra money to
buy stuff with. I went to the store and bought a 5 1/2" styrofoam ball, a
12-pack of rubber bands, a 100-pack of wooden skewers, a 20-pack of tacks,
and a deck of cards. I left the cards in the lounge, stabbed some cardboard
to the tackboard with the tacks, wrapped the rubber bands geometrically
around the ball, and then stabbed it with a bunch of the skewers, creating
an awesome spike ball which the RA made me take down from the ceiling
because it would set the building on fire or something.

I'm eating well, eggs, apples, bagels, and powdered-sugared, cream-filled
long johns forming the majority of my diet (guess which one I eat the most
of!). Working in the dining hall is cool because I wash dishes during
breakfast, and almost no one gets up early enough to eat breakfast, so it's
whistling time. Except for last Thursday, something smelled extremely foul
by the incoming dishes area so I had to watch from afar until someone
deposited a tray, then take a deep breath and rush in to wash it and run out
before I ran out of air. I got a paycheck for $35.86, I'm gonna be lazy and
not deposit it until forever though.

The recharging power cord thing for my razor is lost, I think it traveled
with me not. My razor is out of bloodlust and rarely works, so I'm getting
like beardified. Oh, woe.

I'm trying to convert my friends to the ways of the shoeless, but they are
mostly stuck in their ways and will not walk without wearing woeful
wrappings on their feet. My feet are free and joyful, though. The only time
I have to wear shoes is working in the cafeteria and when blowing stuff up
in the chemistry lab.

I've attached two pictures: one is my glorious ball of spike and the other
is my roommate (he is sick and just got up, plus he's undead).

-----------------------

Bruce here again. Fear no longer the beardified Nick. I mailed him his
razor power cord earlier this week, along with the last few episodes of ER
that he has not seen. Some parents send their children care packages of
home baked cookies. I send razor cords and home burned ER DVD's :)

FW: News from MN, 7/11/2004

Hi all,

Still very wet here. Have not had that hot sticky weather yet ... not
complaining! Saving it for when the Pages come visit.

Laurie's parents have pictures of their various grandchildren on their photo
wall. The pictures of Nick and Zack, who are the oldest of the bunch, are
now younger than most of their other grandchildren, so they put in a request
for updates. Laurie got the boys over to the Walmart photo studio a few
weeks ago. You can see previews here:

http://www.photoreflect.com/scripts/prsm.dll?eventframe?event=Y500161X&start
=15

Password is 6429

Nick and Laurie had a nice trip out to Montana last week. Laurie went for
her Cousin Tim's wedding, Nick went for the adventure. So I was Nick-a-less
for a week, a preview of life starting this fall.

I kept myself busy not doing plumbing projects. Instead I did a funner
project, interfacing my new toy robot to MisterHouse. I now have him wired
in so the house can speak through him. He waves his arms and body around
while he is speaking. In theory his feet don't move in this mode, since I
have him sitting on top of a bookshelf. But I had a bug in the code and he
crashed off, fortunately on the couch side, so no harm done. I've tethered
his feet now :)

Zack went camping with Jessie and her brothers this weekend. They used the
van and van tent. I love it when Zack asks to use the van, as he usually
hates to drive it (vans aren't that sexy). I made a deal with Zack ... he
cleans out the garage and I baby sit Jessie's dog for the weekend. Our
garage is squeaky clean (for at least a few days), and the dog and I weeded
our yard this weekend.

At one point, Mia (the dog) got 100 feet from our house and picked up the
trail to Jessie's apartment, about 4 blocks from here. She bolted, with me
screaming after her. After about 2 blocks I managed to catch up with here
and she paused when I yelled something about a
super-duper-extra-fancy-nummy-dog-treat. I got about 2 feet from here when
her super smart dog sense sensed that the treat was really a leaf, then the
chase was on again. She didn't slow down till she got to Jessie's house.
I carried her home ... then introduced her to a leash :)

Bruce

FW: News from MN, 6/27/2004

Yeeppi-i Hi,

Been a month since I last wrote. We had another graduation, Nick's this
time, complete with a fun visit from both Grandparents.

Zack has still only had the one probably (unwitnessed) seizure. We (mostly
Zack) have decided not to start the Tegretol drug. Fingers crossed.

Zack quit his pawn shop job a few weeks ago. He was going to start a
roofing job, but decided against it. He has instead been working on various
car projects. On Friday night, he started a project on a car stereo that
was designed to enter a contest on today. He and the owner worked on it
through the night and finished mid-afternoon on Saturday. They were a
couple of zombies by the time it was done. They stuffed 4 LARGE bass
speakers, along with 4 big amps and 6 car batteries into the back of a small
Honda. Figured it could hit 150 db. They test these systems with
microphones only. 150 dB is enough volume to liquefy a cockroach!

Last weekend I painted all our external doors. Biloxi Blue. Kind of hard
to get used to a new color, but I think it looks ok. While I was painting,
Nick decided to go for a walk. Turns out he walked to 2 different
graduation parties (such a party animal!), in different directions from our
house. The 2nd one was 5+ miles from here, and he got a bit lost, so ended
up walking all afternoon (3 hours) and ended up late to the 2nd party. The
party host felt bad Nick missed it so she took him to a movie instead.
"Dodge Ball", Nick recommended, Father approved.

For Father's day, they boys approved the purchase (I mention them, they say
good idea, then I go buy them) of 2 new Father toys: a new robot toy from
Best Buy called Robosapien and a large 30" LED sign. I'm in the process of
integrating both of them into MisterHouse. Our living room is getting
stranger every day ;)

The project this weekend was to replace our kitchen and bathroom faucets.
The old ones were 20 years old, leaking and corroded. Sounds like a simple
enough process, but it turned into quite the comedy. At least thats how I
hope I'll see it in about 10 years. Lots of leaks, mis-sized connectors,
missing or faulty parts, and 7+ trips to Menards. Every few years I do
something like this and remember why I choose not to be a plumber. The
worst problem was the big valve that controls the water coming into our
house sprung a serious leak. That's the sort of thing a weekend plumber can
not fix, but I by using a bunch of plumbers putty, 1 pair of old underwear,
10 feet of duct tape, an old plastic garbage can, and 10 feet of garden
hose, I was able to contain and divert the leak well enough to get us
through the weekend. At least so far! I'm calling a real plumber first
thing in the morning ;)

Bruce

FW: News from MN, 5/02/2004

Yo to the O,

O for, hmmmm, Others? It just rhymed so well, had to use it.

Nick made his college decision last week ... Oberlin, Ohio. He spent the
day deciding by reading their course catalogs. He said it was a close call,
but he made the decision with authority, like a true executive. I think it
involved a coin. The day after he had mailed in his decision, his second
choice, Knox College in Illinois, called and told him they would raise his
scholarship by $1500. A bit silly of them to wait till the last week, but
Laurie was glad they waited, as she feels Oberlin is the best choice. From
what I've seen, it does seem like a great school. I've gradually come to
terms with its cost. I talked to various co-workers and got a wide range
of opinions. One guy has just finished financing both of his boys through
Harvard, one onto a law degree. Harvard has similar costs, but don't offer
merit based scholarship, so he ended up with a $300k bill! That helped me
feel a bit better about a $100k bill ;)

Zack bought a 2nd motorcycle last week! This time, instead of a 500 cc
crotch rocket, he bought a 50 cc 'pocket rocket'. Its a silly $400 thing.
About 3 feet long, perfect size for a 10 year old, except 10 year olds are
not supposed to drive around at 30 mph. So grownups crouch down on these
things and look goofy and try not to crash. Zack has managed not to crash
too often, and wears his pocket rocket scabs with pride.

Nick has been going on extended walks between his classes, since he has a
few free hours off around lunch. Sometimes off into the country, sometimes
to downtown. Usually he has no idea where he is, but manages to get back in
time, sometimes with a sunburn. We also went for a bike ride recently,
although he was less enchanted with that. Biking muscles are different than
walking muscles.

A group of 8 of us IBMers played a chess match against 8 guys from the Mayo
Clinc last week. We called the match 'The Docs -vs- The Geeks'. The
Clinic has a bigger gene pool (20k employess -vs- 7k for IBM), and they have
all those clever med students, so Nick figured us IBMers were toast, but we
came up even at 4 wins and 4 losses. I was indeed toast, as I played a med
student who was a state champ in his younger years. But it was fun toast,
as I didn't loose to badly :)

Bruce

!DSPAM:409550e7182571977840816!

FW: News from MN, 4/4/2004

Hi all,

Looks like I missed my every other week email last weekend, but I had an
excuse. Nick and I spent last weekend up in the cities at the state high
school chess tournament. He won his first 3 games on Saturday, but didn't
fair so well on Sunday. They had some good players up there! His school
did well as a team, placing 5th. The chess tournament was across the street
from the Mall of America, so during one of Nick's games, I took on the
challenge of walking the mall. All 3 floors, every inch, all in 2 hours.
I even found 3 stores worth stopping in!

Nick is down to deciding between 3 colleges. Morris MN, Oberlin Ohio (south
of Cleveland) and Knox IL (Gathers berg). It is his spring break this
week, so today he and Laurie took off on a road trip to visit Oberlin on
Tuesday and Knox on Thursday. He has been accepted at both, with similar
scholarship's offered at each of $15k per year, which covers about 50% of
Knox and 40% of Oberlin's fees. Probably take another trip up to Morris
then decide sometime before the end of the month.

Zack has entered a new stage of independence. Despite our objections, he
found a way to buy a motorcycle. A 'crotch rocket', 2002 Suzuki something
or other (I try not to look at it too closely), for $6500. He tried to get
a loan from several places, but his credit was not good enough. Thought we
were safe, but then he found a crazy friend who was willing to give him an
interest free loan. His paycheck gets pretty well absorbed by his loan and
insurance payments (insurance is $200+ per month!), and he also no longer is
getting gas or lunch money from me, but he is pretty happy with it. He also
bought quality helmets and jackets (aka lid and skin) ... been a week and no
accident so far.

Laurie gave her big keynote speech last night, for the Loft grant that she
got for the past year. She said it went well.

I got myself a flu Thurs/Friday/Saturday. Apparently not the one covered
by this year's flu shot. Bonded with our toilet in a way I have not done
since when Sue and Brad vistied and all 4 of us got sick. Such fond
memories ;)

Bruce

!DSPAM:4070dc59267622023915294!

FW: News from MN, 3/14/2004

Whatsup!

Nick and I just watched 'O', and recent movie about a high school basketball
start, following the Shakespeare Othello theme. A classic and effective
tragedy. One of the extras on the DVD was a 1922 version, which we also
watched. It is a silent movie, where they display text on the screen way
too long for us modern day speed readers. So we cranked it up to 2x speed
and replaced the orchestra music with modern hip-hop. The music fit in
surprisingly well.

Zack is working on a variety of cars in the garage today. If you listen
closely, you may be able to hear the occasional thumping of his sound tests.
He keeps getting referrals from friends of friends of acquaintances of
people who happen to live in the same town as we do. The local Saturn
dealership called him in one lunch to replace a stereo system, and a few
weeks ago a guy with one of those big new monster SUV's dropped by the pawn
shop looking for the stereo kid, looking for someone to do a big install.

Nick's school had the last game in the local school tournement last week.
His team was neck and neck with one other team for first place, leading or
trailing by one game. Nick one his games, and in the end, the score was
tied with one game still in progress on board 2. A very close came, in both
time and position, but his team eventually one. He has 3 tournaments left
this season, including a couple of road trips.

I was invited by a co-worker to go to the Passion for Christ movie last
week. His church had rented out a theater and had some seats left so they
invited guests. That is one graphic movie. Not word in English either,
but they did have subtitles. My co-worker and his wife confessed they
didn't keep their eyes open for parts of it ... not a good way to watch a
movie with subtitles ;)

Bruce

!DSPAM:4054e289149121389620002!

FW: News from MN, 2/29/2004

Yo,

Happy Leap day. Made it by 5 minutes!

We just finished our taxes today. Laurie and I filed joint in '03 and she
has been working all week to get her tax data gathered. We needed to get
them done early so we could finish applying for financial aid at the schools
Nick applied to. Last week Nick got his first acceptance, to Knox
(Illinois), along with a $14k per year scholarship. Not exactly a full
ride like some of the large public state schools have been offering, but it
does knock the $33k per year fee down a bit.

Two paychecks ago, Zack finished paying off his various debts, including
what he owed me for gas money for his xmas vacation to Montana. So now he
has started saving, once again, for a motorcycle. He tried this once
before, with a big jar that was easy to put money into, but hard to get out,
but he managed to get it out with vigorous shaking. This time, it will
probably build up quicker because of the steady income he has coming from
his pawn shop job. I'm not helping him in any way on this one. No
insurance, no loans, no credit co-signing. But he is determined, so I'm
not optimistic. If he does manage to get one, I might have to help him
with a helmet.

Laurie took Nick up to the National finals of the American Inn chess
tournament in Minneapolis last week. He and 2 other guys won the city
match a few months ago, so earned the right to go. He won 4 of his 5
matches, but there were 200 players in his group. The top 3 were 5 and 0.
Between a set of matches, he fell asleep on some stairs. He woke up in time
for his next match, but his leg had fallen asleep, so when he stood up, he
fell down. He did this numerous times for about a minute. He really was
having a fun time with it, in his classic Nick 'wow this is something fun
that I've never really done before' sort of way. It would have been fun to
watch ... who said chess was not a spectator sport ;)

Bruce

!DSPAM:4042d4bb231731583273244!

FW: News from MN, 1/15/2004

Hi Ho,

Happy Valentines to all. I spent the part of this weekend moving our
little radio station ( http://misterhouse.net:8000 ) to the same Linux box
our web server is on so I could free up a computer to give to our friends
(Coreliee and Ray) who have struck a deal with the local utility company to
install a pilot project active solar panel system on their house and need a
system to monitor things like temperature, sunlight, and power to/from the
house, so they buddied up with their friendly engineer who knows how to do
such things and viola ... a computer system that can monitor energy data and
send it on to the power company, all in less than one massive one illegally
long and totally unreadable sentence ;)

On Friday I was a science fair judge, all in one totally short an
detail-less sentence.

The rest of this weekend I have spent with Nick watching a batch of DVD's.
When Nick and I go to rent DVD's, I usually don't get out of the store with
less than 5 DVDs, sometimes 6. It is the deal I make with Nick. He
drives, I rent. Nick hates to drive, but he likes to watch movies, so
gradually he is learning to drive better. At least to and from the video
store. So instead of paying a driving instructor, we get to watch DVDs.
And sometimes we learn stuff from them. If you watch enough movies, you
are pretty much guaranteed to learn something useful. Take for example the
latest Star Trek movie, Nemesis. We learned just how much Nick really
dislikes Star Trek movies.

Speaking of Nick, shortly after Christmas, we started seeing more and more
of Nick, who instead of nightly raids on Everquest (an online computer game
that he has played for several years), was often seen reading a book or
wandering off to explore unknown snow banks in far away neighborhoods.
When I asked him 'whatsup with Everquest', he simply replied 'I retired'.
He just up and quit. At least he has stayed quit for over a month so far.
He figured it was time to try something different. Us parents were most
happy for him, so I offered him to buy him a car as a reward. Fortunately,
as expected, he declined ;-)

Bruce

FW: News from MN, 2/01/2004

Hi all,

Sitting about 15 feet from my letter typing fingers sits a 3 day old big
screen TV. Our belated family xmas present. Zach and his friend Derek
talked me into buying a bigger than planned tv, a 61 inch RCA dlp. Nice
TV, a bit better than the 20" one it replaced. Bright enough even during
a sunlight day in our living room. Zach tried his best to get it placed in
the family room downstairs, which just happens to be next to his bedroom,
but that's not happening.

Since we have the new tv, we are hosting the obligatory Super Bowl party.
10 or so of Zacks buddies. Hard to keep count as they are wondering in and
out between here, the garage (Zack is doing some car audio work on his
girlfriends newly acquired Saturn), and various snow banks. We also have
this fun xmas helicopter toy ( Vectron Blackhawk Flying Saucer ) that is
getting a good workout with various new pilots giving it a spin. It has
knocked over several drinks and give 3 free hair cuts so far, but it is lots
of fun.

Interesting ... we just saw Janet Jackson's breast pop out in the the Super
Bowl 1/2 time show. Zack and the boys used our Replay TV replay feature to
check that scene out ... several times :) And now a streaker before the
kickoff! Ah, American entertainment can be interesting.

On a more scholarly note, Nick was picked as a candidate for the
Presidential Scholars program: http://www.ed.gov/programs/psp/index.html

We had never heard of it before last week, when they sent him a letter.
They pick 20 boys/girls from each state, based on ACT or SAT test scores
(not sure which). We had thought that Nick had classmates with equal or
better scores, so we were surprised to see Nick was the only one picked from
Rochester: http://www.ed.gov/programs/psp/2004/candidates.html

Candidates can send in forms, recommendations, and essays, then in a few
months they pick one boy/girl from each state and send them on a site seeing
trip to Washington, including the White House. Nick is not likely to
apply, since he thinks his chances are pretty slim (not much
extra-curricular or leadership activities to cite), and if he did win, he
would have to go on a site seeing trip. He is not a big travel guy ... not
sure where he got that trait from ;-)

Bruce

FW: News from MN, 1/11/2004

Hi all,

Lets see ... looks like last letter was 12/07. In one month we:

- Blew the transmit on on our van, 2nd time in 1 year. This one was
warranted, but the dealer said Zack gets to pay for the next one ;)

- Slid the White car into a ditch one icy evening. Zack repaired that one
on his own, as we didn't want to tempt our insurance guys into dropping us.

- Our insurance guys dropped us anyway. In the last year, Laurie and Zack
each had an accident, and Zack had 2 speeding tickets. Since Laurie is
switching to her own policy this month, we might be able to get them not to
drop us. That would be good, as otherwise our 6 months premiums would go
from $1600 to $4500 for 3 three of us. That would be a pretty sad rate
considering Nick hardly ever drives and I drive about 5 miles a day.

- I vacationed in Montana over Xmas. Had a nice visit with Mom/Dad, Sue &
family and some old friends. I got back to the 'bachelor pad' to find 1
week of accumulated boy droppings scattered about the house. Especially the
kitchen. First thing I did was to teach they boys the art of garbage
collection and disposal.

- Zack then took off on his Montana ski board vacation. He just got back
yesterday. Good time, lots of new snow, and no broken bones or speeding
tickets :)

- Today Nick and I finished his applications to the 9 colleges he picked
earlier. Will find out in a few months which accept him and what kind of
scholarships he gets.

- Laurie traveled to Oregon after Xmas and took Minnesota's snow with her.
Her flights were canceled due to snow and ice several times, so instead of
getting back Wednesday, she is just getting back tonight. I think Oregon
is glad to get rid of their Minnesota Winter ;)

Bruce

FW: News from MN, 12/07/2003

Strange how you don't miss people until they are gone. I miss cousin Tim
Dierenfield (for those who did not hear, he died in a fire on Friday). I
saw Tim last summer for the first time in 30 years. I had not thought
about him too much before or since then. I have thought much about him this
weekend though. Today 2 different pictures of him showed up on one of our
computers that was randomly displaying pictures. I guess my computers are
thinking about him also.

Nick spent much of this weekend studying colleges and starting the
application process. He narrowed it down to 9 schools. In no order:
University of Chicago, Williams (Mass.), Oberlin (Ohio), Reed (Oregon),
Carleton (MN), Macalister (MN), Grinnell (Iowa), Knox (Illinois), and Morris
(MN). Mostly private liberal arts colleges. No engineering schools,
but he can always do that for an advanced degree ;)

We had an ice storm here a few weeks ago. The highways were really slippery
for a few hours. Just our luck Zack was out driving then. He avoided
sliding into a highway intersection with a speeding semi in his path by
driving off the shoulder, but a few hours later on the return trip, we slid
off a different frontage road into a few rocks. Not a big disaster, but it
did take out the bumper and the inter-cooler, so the car no longer works.
So we have been sharing the van for the past few weeks while Zack tracks
down parts for a new intercooler.

My bosses boss took 3 of us out to lunch last week and gave us awards for a
set of programs we have worked on for the last few years. It was a pretty
big, long term project which took a toolset we had developed in Rochester
and made it better so all IBM sites could use it. Other engineers and
programmers at other sites played bigger rolls than I did, but they were
getting similar awards there also. It is my third "Outstanding Technical
Achievement Award" at IBM. A nice $5k Christmas bonus. We might have to
get a bigger TV :)

That Blue Gene supercomputer we designed CPU for has been in the news
recently. Lots of buzz at the yearly Supercomputer trade show a few weeks
ago, mainly because it 10x the speed in 1/10th the power/area. Here are a
few links with photos in and info:

http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/news/20031114_bluegene.shtml

http://domino.research.ibm.com/Comm/bios.nsf/pages/bluegene2003.html

There is a plot of our chip you can barely seen behind the engineer on the
right in the first photo. It is the same plot that I brought home to show
you, Mom and Dad, that the cat later had fun with. No cats allowed in that
computer lab ;)

Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 11/23/2003

Hello-ee,

Got just a skif of snow today, not the 6 inches predicted. The boys would
like more, but might be just as well, as Nick has his first driving test
coming up on Wednesday. Probably easier without having to doge the snow
plows.

Zack got the job at the pawn shop! His first day was Wednesday. So far he
is so far very excited and happy. On his first day, he got to disasemble,
clean, and reassemble 'a glock' (some sort of gun). There are only 4 or 5
employees at this store, so Zack can get in quite a few hours. After school
3:30 -> 7 (except Friday), most of Saturday, then Sunday off.

Zack also got his grades back up, so I am back to sharing the sporty white
car with him. His school recently put up this nifty web page where all the
current grades and school work is posted, so we can do a much better job of
making sure school work is being done. Two of his classes didn't show work
he claimed was done yet (teachers with computer problems ... I think their
dogs ate them), so called me up last week from school and wander between
classes trolling for teachers that he would put on the phone to tell me that
his work was indeed getting done. At least they sure sounded like teachers
;)

Nick joined the school chess club a few weeks ago. They meet twice a week
(6:30 am on Tuesdays!). They just started a ladder tournement to pick the
top 7 for the varsety team. Nick dropped his first game (was ahead, but
lost on time), but has won all his others so far. They had their first
tournement with another school yesterday. He split his games, but he is not
sure how his team did. Not quite like a football game where the score is
posted to a big scoreboard in front of cheering crowds.

Our group at IBM re-organized last week, partly to address a big project
that we recently landed with Microsoft last month to design and build chips
for their next generation Xbox 2. The deal was anounced a few weeks ago, so
I won't get shot if I point you to a public web page like this one:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12552 I'm not in a department that
will focus solely on this project, but I expect some of the work on it will
come our way. Should be an exciting project. All of our kids now getting
a different idea of what their parents do at IBM now ... visions of game
consoles in every office :)

Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 11/01/2003

Hi Ho,

Zack has a friend named Derek who got this idea last weekend. He thought
we should clean, insulate, sheetrock, and paint our garage. He was most
enthusiastic and offered his services, so I couldn't say no. Last weekend
we rented one of those big 20 yard dumpsters and started deleting old junk
out of the garage (deleting is the engineering term for disposing). Much
of the junk was from Zack and Derek's SUV project last year (disassemble a
rolled Blazer and sell the parts on the Internet ... they sold a few things,
but we had plenty of parts left). Many trips to Menards and Home Depot
later, we now have a spiffy new garage.

It looks pretty cool. Bright white paint on walls and ceiling and a still
wet coat of fancy dark blue epoxy garage floor paint. Instructions say we
can walk on it in a day, move stuff back in in 3 days, then allow the cars
back in in a week. I'm composing this in our living room surrounded by
heaps of garage stuff, with the sweet smell of toxic fresh paint and the
sound of a massive jet-engine type heater keeping the garage warm. We have
a bunch of stuff semi-tarped on the driveway, so as long as it doesn't rain
too hard or the Halloween pranksters don't visit us, we can probably last a
few more days.

Zack got his friend at the local sign store to print up some large stencils
of his 'Winter Systems' logo (what he calls his car audio work), so he can
paint that in silver on the garage floor. He also got a stencil with the
work 'Supra', which is his current dream car (they don't make them anymore,
but it is just a bit more affordable then a McLaren F1). Seems goofy to put
the name of a car we don't have on our garage floor, but sometimes dreams
can be a bit goofy. He puts his 'Winter Systems' logo on most of the cars
he works on, and is now starting to print it on shirts. We have a big one
on the back window of our white car. The guys at work think I'm about to
retire from IBM and start some sort of new secret 'Winter Systems' business.

Nick is getting to be a better driver. Laurie and I share the duties of
getting up with him at 6:30 am, to get to his 7 am calculus class. He gets
to drive. It is a good time for beginner drivers since you aren't that
many people driving that time of day. He and I practiced parallel parking
a few days ago. We hope to get him to take the drivers test sometime
before he turns 30.

Since we had the dumpster, we decided to also delete the basketball pole and
backboard. Various large boys have hung off of it in a manly fashion, so
it doesn't stand up very straight anymore. Not many players in our house
anyway, so it was time to come down. We put it up when Donna and Johnny
were vising us for the boys x-th birthday (x is somewhere between 3 and 10).
We wanted to surprised them, so Johnny and I pretended to put up a light
pole, then on their birthday, we surprised them and turned it into a
basketball hoop. When Johnny builds something, he builds it very sturdy.
I had forgotten this until I took a afternoon off and started trying to dig
the cement footing for this pole out of the ground. Hours later I got to
the bottom of it and tilted it over, then was faced with the challenge of
getting a 2 foot by 2.5 foot chunk of cement out of this 3 foot hole and
into the dumpster. It was the sort of challenge we engineers live for!
By the time the boys got home from school, I had it out of the ground and
next to the dumpster. I might have engineered a way to get it up into the
dumpster by myself also, but sometimes things go a bit quick with a little
brute (twin 18 year old) force ;)

Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 10/18/2003

Yip ya hi,

Bruce here. There's a surprise eh :) Beaut of a fall day here. Did my
yearly window washing today. All visitors were warned of the invisible
windows, lest they accidently walk trough them. So naturally, all of Zack's
friends try to walk through them. They were the cleanest windows in town
for about 5 minutes. Now they have a bunch of nose prints on them.

Zack and friends just got back from taking his senior photo. At his arts
school, they have a more liberal view on senior photos. The kids can do
whatever they want, as long as it includes a photo of them. So Z polished
up the white card to a ultra-white sunglasses required shine, and parked it
on the grass by the church down the street. Then he filled up the van with
the 1.2 million empty stereo boxes from past car audio projects (the ones
that line our garage walls with pride), drove it down there and unloaded
them by the car. So his photo will be of the 3 things that he currently is
most passionate about: Cars, Stereos, and his Girlfriend.

Nick has resisted getting a Senior photo taken, as he thinks we can do a
good enough one with our camera. If we don't get a good enough one, we have
a backup photo Dad took summer before last (thanks Dad!). Would probably be
the only senior photo taken of a Sophomore :)

Work at IBM should be returning to a more normal pace. We have finished
with 3 of the most difficult chips, so only have 4 less difficult ones left
to go. My fellow workers are finally relieved to be taking a weekend off
this weekend, and I'm only worked 4 hours from home today, with fewer
planned for tomorrow.

Zack applied for a job at Best Buy a few weeks ago and got called into for
interview last week. We printed out pictures of some of his work and they
guy was impressed, so he will likely get a job there! Should know in a week
or 2.

Nick rode up with Janet and Rachel Munger yesterday to visit the U of M
campus up in the twin cities. Clark would have gone also, but he is
visiting China with father Tom. He said it was 'big'. Much shoe plastic
lost to the university sidewalks. He also submitted his first college
application a few days ago to a smaller U of M campus at Morris Minnesota.

Nick also went up to a banquet up in the cities with Laurie this week, to
honor writers and artists. He and Zack also road up with her to a friend's
sheep farm and helped her move back a free desk to her apartment. The 2
strapping young lads man-handled that desk all on their own, with no help
needed from their wimpy old parents.

I bought a DVD recorder last week, so am dumping all 30+ of our 2 hour 8 mm
tapes to the computer. The tricky part will be to somehow clipping out just
the good clips. When we let the computer auto-clip it, it sometimes gets
1/2 a good clip, which is almost as bad as the bad clips it gets, since it
leaves you hanging wanting to see the last 1/2 of the good clip!

Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester,10/04/2003

Greets,

Big 18th birthday for a couple of boys here today! Pizza and movies for
everyone. Nick wanted to go to 2 movies today, so he picked a comedy for
Laurie ('School of Rock') and a action flick for me (some movie with 'The
Rock' ex-wrestler in it). Tomorrow Zack has invited a boatload of friends
over for a barbeque. Should be fun.

Nick is officially 18, so we will be trying the driving tests soon. It took
his friend Clark 3 tries to get it, so I suspect we might not get it on the
first spin. So the hunt for a third car here continues. Last Saturday Zack
found a 'sweet' Honda Celica on the web. More exactly, in Chicago, 300
miles away. He was really fired up about it, and it was a good price and a
good fit, so we decided to let he and some buddies drive down there to check
it out. But we didn't have a $4000 cashier's check, and the banks were
closed, so we stayed up till midnight coaxing large sums of money out of
various ATM machines with various credit cards. $500 at 11:50 pm and
another $500 at 12:01 am. Between my cards and Laurie's, we got $2500 and
wrote a check for the other $1500, hoping they would agree to that. I was
thinking it would be wiser to wait till this weekend, when we could get
things better arranged, but Zack was determined. Off he went at 5 am with a
big wad of cash in his pocket. They got 3/4 down there when the car owner
called up and confessed she had lost the title! So they went there anyway
and gave it a test drive. Still seems like a fair deal, so we might go back
down there after she gets her title replaced in a week or 2.

Last weekend Laurie had her open house at a local art studio. Her paintings
were on display there all month, and finished up with this open house and a
nice concert. Zack and his friends went up to visit and talk Laurie into
the Chicago car adventure. Nick and I went up a bit later to see the art
and attend the concert. Good music, great art. She had a good turnout and
sold a number of paintings.

Last week Zack was being a nice brother and picked up Nick after school. He
had the white car for the day, and was traveling about 40 mph on their way
back when the hood flew up and smashed the front windshield! He handled it
well and got off to the side of the road without any other damage, but the
hood and windshield were trashed. Remember those hood pins he put in a
month or so ago? We are now both thinking those were not the best idea.
Normally would have been ok, but somehow the safety latch failed also.

So Zack was pretty mad at the car, but he tried to make the best of it and
tried to talk me into replacing the hood with a fancy black carbon fiber
mail order hood. He had a video of the hood from the net that showed guys
jumping on it with no damage and his friends were all lobbying for him,
bragging how they could jump on our car with no damage. That alone seemed
like a good reason not to get that hood (visions of hood hopping contests).
He took the car down to the body shop and had it all worked out with the
body shop guy. But a black hood on a white car??? All his friends swore
it would look uber, but I just couldn't see it. So we simply replaced the
hood with another nice metal white hood ... without hood pins :)

Love Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 9/21/2003

Yo ho all,

Another Zach-less weekend for us. Zack stayed up till 2 am Friday morning
installing systems in 2 BIG pickups (Zack's supplier shipped things late),
then tried to wake up at 5 am to catch a ride to a wedding in Iowa
(girlfriend Jessica's sister). He figured his alarm might have a hard time
waking him up, so he turned it up loud, left his overhead light on, and set
it for 1/2 hour early. Slept right through it. So his ride calls up at
5:15, he has 15 minutes to gather his stuff and get to where the rented limo
is leaving at precisely 5:30. I rode with him so I could drive the car
back. Made it with 1 minutes to spare ... we have a fast car. I just kept
my eyes closed and pretended I was asleep.

Nick and Laurie made it back from their Madison and Chicago University
tours. Nick's conclusion: 'Yep, they seem like universities'. He drove
part of the way, so got some good highway experience in.

Nick now has a 7 am college calculus class, which is 30 minutes before his
bus would get there. So Zack, Laurie, and myself have been taking turns
driving him there. Zack likes it because it earns him a 'white car' day.
We will probably end up getting a 3rd car, so Nick can drive himself. Zack
is lobbying heavily for a car with a clutch, but if we do get a 3rd car, it
will likely be a beater, so he will have to choose between driving a cool
fast automatic and a beater manual. He says a manual beats an auto in any
form. We shall see.

Zack had been saving up money for his crotch rocket (motorcycle) fund.
Putting it in a one way bottle, so money could get in, but not out. He had
a pretty good sum saved up there for a while. Made us proud that he could
save money, but scare of what he could get with it. Then some girlfriend
anniversary came up (I think the 10th month one ... they seem to happen once
a month) and a dinner and a movie deals was had. Once the money discovered
how to get out of the bottle, it disappeared pretty quick. Like letting
the genie was out of the bottle. At least we don't have to worry about a
motorcycle in the near term.

Bruce

Nick 9/25/2004: Life within Oberlin

Lo.

The recharging power cord thing for my razor is lost, I think it traveled
with me not. My razor is out of bloodlust and rarely works, so I'm getting
like beardified. Oh, woe.

I've attached two pictures: one is my glorious ball of spike and the other
is my roommate (he is sick and just got up, plus he's undead).

FW: Hi from Rochester, 9/6/2003

oH, iH,

Greets from Z and B for the Eastern Winter clan. Nick would say hi also,
but he and Laurie are on a college scouting adventure this weekend. They
left Friday after school and staid in Madison Wisconsin last night. After
wondering the campus this morning, they were off to University of Illinois
in Chicago.

Nick has very little opinion yet on where he will want to go or what to
study. He found out last week he is a National Merit Semi-Finalist. About
16k students across the country get named (10 in Nick's class of 350).
About 90% of the Semifinalist get to be Finalist (probably throw out the
murders and virus hackers), and about 1/2 of those actually get money,
depending on other stuff including like other activities, what school they
choose, and who their parents work for. IBM does not sponsor these
scholarships (they have their own Watson Scholarships), so likely Nick will
just get the fame, not the fortune.

Zack is busy working on some more car audio installs this weekend. They
guys at the local pawn shop have discovered his talents, so they have
started re-directing people who buy car audio stuff form them over to Zack
to install. So we are meeting all kinds of colorful characters in our
garage.

Speaking of garage, we installed garage and driveway net cams. You view
them from the 'Security Cameras' button here:

http://misterhouse.net:8080

Currently the username and password are both aaaa .

Zack got these a pair of keyed hood pins free from a buddy and wanted in the
worst way to install them in the white car.

Z: With hood pins you can open the hood from outside the car!

Dad: Seems inconvenient.

Z: They have a key, so no one can steal your Engine!

Dad: Seems silly.

Z: They would look cool!

Dad: Seems dorky.

And on it goes for several days. Then I propose a compromise where we take
off the massive banner on the front window, so we can once again see stop
lights, then he can put the pins in. The banner was off in a second, and
the pins were in several hours later. Unfortunately Zack now also thinks
the pins are inconvenient, silly, and dorky, but at least we can see out our
windshield ;)

Love Bruce

FW: Nick 8/31/2004

Hello from Oberlin!

I've just registered for classes: intros to chemisty, computer science,
creative writing (poetry), and a first-year seminar about Jello cubes or
pyromania or underwater accounting or something, I'm not entirely sure. I've
heard that I have the worst of the Chem 101 professors and don't know
anything about the others. I got into all of my first-choice classes (those
that didn't have schedule conflicts, anyway--I couldn't take a single math
class out of the 5 I looked at, or psychology, or ), but I'm still debating
the switching of computer science for Chinese because Chinese is probably
awesome, but computer science is potentially good and you have to start it
earlier. But Chinese! Aww, man! Now I don't know what to do! And I already
spent my lucky fifty-cent piece on a Socialist newspaper about how I should
vote for Ralphius Nader. Yeah, right.

That's 15 credit hours right now (10 min, 16 max), so maybe I can get into a
class on playing Go for one more hour. My advisor and other dudes are all
like, "That's a very... full schedule. Two labs?!" but I don't get it
because college is supposed to be easy, right? I mean, since it costs so
much and all. I figure I can just play Minesweeper and Doom 3 all the time;
those are on the computer so I wouldn't really need to go to CompSci class
much anyway.

The cafeteria isn't open yet and all the restaurants are really far away,
like 2 blocks, so I've been living entirely off of a bag of Reese's peanut
butter cups (the mini ones). I put some of them in the fridge with the
baking soda and the knife, but so far no one has eaten any. I live in an
all-freshman, co-ed hall that's right next to virtually everything
important, on the third floor in the corner (2 walls are windowy!). My
roommate is a gigantic Visigoth who likes to eat babies, perform dark
rituals, and cook Indian food. He's cool.

Sweet, I just finished downloading an episode of ER from the ReplayTV at
home and it only took 13 hours. I'm almost done watching every ER ever, oh
no. I'll write more when I actually start to learn stuff.

Bagels,

--Nick

FW: Hi from Rochester, 8/24/2003

Hi Ho,

Been hot, dry, and humid here the last few weeks. Dry AND Humid you say?
Dry plants, humid air. It can happen. I guess I shouldn't have planted
that grass seed a few weeks ago. Patching up where we had our dead front
tree mowed down earlier this year. I'm keeping it alive, usually by
watering it and my work close on my way to work.

Work continues to be nasty busy. Last Saturday someone brought pizza into
work and I saw more people emerge from the wordworks than I see on a normal
workday! We still meet with our 4th line manager daily giving him progress
reports. The last few weekends I was able to talk our computer support guys
not to reboot the 1000+ servers we have on site. They always reboot once a
week, on weekends, but given the importance of our projects, I had a big
enough excuse to talk them out of it so our work would not be delayed. I
also got permision to commendeer several of IBM's biggest baddest computers
scattered across the coperate network (each have 16 processors, with 100 GB
of memory). Other than the pressure, it is kind of fun to be in a
position to get pretty much anything you ask for :)

Zack made it home ok. Had a week of fun then started school on Wednesday.
Nick starts in a week. Nick is going have to transform from a noon
waker-uper to a 6 am waker upper.

I've spent much of the last few weekends (when not at work) cleanout out the
study. Much dust and old computer manual have met our garbage cans. Also
re-arranged the living room and our bedroom over the last month, so the
place has take on a bit of a new look. Finally got 4 new chairs for the
living room to replace our folding chairs. I almost got those chairs we
looked at when Mom and Dad were here, but at the last second rememered a key
chair test (no, not the lean back ablity, that was the first test).
Shirtless comfort. Very important with us 1/2 naked boys sitting around.
With their metal backs, they failed misbadly. So I found a black metal
chair, this one with a cloth back. Looks nice, I think.

Mom, glad you got that sugery out of the way. Hope you bounce back quickly.

Love, Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 8/10/2003

Hi Ho,

A very quiet and peaceful week here. Nick and I have been hanging out
having wild parties, as we so often do. Usually involving Nick, myself, a
stack of chocolate chip pancakes, and a chessboard. I've been playing a
fair amount of chess with some really good players at work during lunch.
In theory, I should be getting better to the point where I beat Nick more
than he beats me, but somehow I'm still only wining 10% of our games.
Either I'm not getting better, or Nick is getting better also, simply by
playing me.

Work has been crazy the last few weeks and will be the next few months. A
couple of very high profile chips are way behind schedule, so we are having
multiple daily meetings reviewing schedules and current progress to see if
we can get things back on track. 2 hours of meetings every day not doing
real work trying to figure out how to not get behind on real work. Classic
Dilbert scenario ;)

Zack will be heading home sometime this week. Sounds like he is doing well.
A few days ago, he and the girls took the white car to Billings to get a
small part for the combine. Tracy made him promise he would not speed, so
when our GPS unit picked him up near Billings, I reported in to her that he
was indeed obeying the speed limit.

I came home on Friday and found Nick holding an empty back of white bread.
He said it was time for grocery shopping, as he had been eating nothing but
white bread that day (1/2 a loaf!). So we saddled up our horses and made
the long trek to the grocery store (.5 mile). Nick took his cart to the
grocery aisle while I went to get some Ethernet cable (this is one of those
fancy grocery stores). When I found him, his cart was full, so he
commandeered my cart and filled that up too! He made be proud and bought
some healthy stuff. Might have been a few less healthy items in there also.
Ended up with $300+ of groceries. Good thing he only shops once a summer.
Our record, when Nick and Zack ganged up on me last year (I couldn't watch
both of them at the same time), was $500.02. Hopefully that record will
stand.

Love Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 8/03/2003

Yo to all,

Looks like it has been a month since I last wrote. Here is the scoop on
happenings around here in the last month:

- Zack and Jessica got back from the 5 day Montana visit. Too short, but
they had a good time. They brought back 4 baby kittens from the farm. Very
cute, but also very not keepable.

- As soon as Zack got back, I went on my vacation to Montana. Had a good
time visiting parents and Mal & Kim's family. Mom and Kim did very well on
a 16 mile hike up to a Spanish peak lake near Bozeman. The next week Luke,
Cassy, Mal and I hiked up Froze to Death mountain up past Mystic Lake. Very
pretty. Did some work at the cave (ran over a rattler snake ... everyone
took a taste of snake meat!) and got the Winter House West control center
computers all tuned up.

- Donna (Laurie's Mom) road back with me (in our 'hot' little Eclipse ...
no air conditioning on 100+ degree roads). She split her time between our
house and Laurie's apartment.

- Donna and I came back to a house that looked like it had been lived in by
a passel of boys for a couple of weeks with no concept of garbage cans or
garbage collection days. They did manage to run the dishwasher a couple of
times. They said 'you should have seen it before we cleaned up the dishes'.
We got it whipped into shape pretty quick. Whenever Donna visits, we
somehow magically get new stoves and ovens. At least they all look new by
the time she leaves (cleaning pads are somehow magically attracted to her).

- While I was gone, they had 5 cats in the house (the older non-name brown
cat, and the 4 cute new little ones ... the 2 Jessican had didn't get to
stay at her house for very long). For a while, they were roaming, till
they started leaking in spots I'm still discovering. Then Zack quarantined
them to the basement, where he sleeps. Then he decided that was a bit
much, so he talked some friends into taking all but 2 of them.

- Donna and Laurie left back for Montana last Sunday. Laurie visited
various folk and is now on her way to Taos, New Mexico where she will have a
week long poet conference with the national Poet Laurie-t Billy Collins.
Then she visits friends in Oregon and elsewhere then heads home end of
August.

- Last Monday, Zack and the last 2 cats headed back to Montana for a few
weeks of work on Mike and Tracey's ranch/farm. Since it was work related,
I agreed to let him take the Eclipse, which he spent days on fixing up. He
also took our power washer out with him so he could wash it whenever it got
dirty. I had visions of him stopping at rest stops every 100 miles and
firing it up, but I think he resisted till he got out there.

So the last week have been pretty quiet again with just Nick and myself
lurking about. Happily cat free :)

Love Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 7/05/2003

Hi all,

Zack had a great time in Belize. Many beautiful dives and hikes. He came
back with a backpack full of many zip locked baks full of mildewing cloths.
It never gets dry down their in that jungle humidity, so the solution is zip
lock bags. Nothing our washer couldn't handle. He was covered with
little fly bytes (the slept outside their last night), but has recovered
well. But first he stayed up for 48 hours to visit with friends when he got
back. Then he slept for 20.

Now Zack and Jessica are off on their quick Montana tour. Left Thursday
evening and will be back Monday evening. Jessica didn't have many vacation
days left from her job, but Zach really wanted to show here the sites, so
off they went. He really wanted to take our sporty Eclipse, but his grades
were not up to par. Laurie lent them here Vibe, since it gets better gas
mileage than the van. Zack had not yet earned the money he needed for this
trip, so he and Nick worked out a Nick loan (Nick is Zack's favorite
banker). Nick gets $20 interest, and if he is not paid back within 20 days,
he gets Zack's 1/2 of the xBox game console they bought together.

Nick went up to a Sci-fi convention in the cities with Laurie yesterday.
His first convention since he was knee high. He reports back they went to
couple of interesting panels (talks) and a couple of bad ones. It was one
of the bigger conventions, but he said Laurie knew just about everyone
there.

Zack is less enchanted with the brown cat since he got back. It had
urinated on his bed and his paintball gear. A few days ago he borrowed
Panther back from Laurie so the 2 cats could play together for a bit. The
cats wrestle in a usually playful but sometimes out of control fashion, kind
of like 10 year old boys. Zack and his friends were conjuring up some
unique fireworks by combining many different powders into various
mega-bombs. I had nothing to do with it, since we are not exactly outside
of city limits, and I had to at least to pretend to be legally responsible.
During the firework activities, the sliding glass door got left open and out
the cats went. When we noticed, we pretty quickly found Panther not too
far from the house, but the brown cat had vanished. After circling the
house and yard 3 times, we officially declared he was MIA, and we somehow
managed to emotionally pull ourselves together and get on with our lives.
Zack managed to not shed a tear. But a few hours later, one of Zack's
friends, Reid, found the cat who had wandered back from the hidden cat land
and let him back in the house. We now call Reid our anti-hero.

Nick got his ACT scores yesterday. 99% in all categories (that is the
highest score). When Laurie came over, we told here he had scores in the
mid 70%. She was surprised and tried to cheer him up, then glared at us
when she reviewed the report.

I'm leaving on my trip to Montana on Tuesday, and be out there for 1->2
weeks. Looks like Zack will not be coming with, as he jobs lined up as soon
as he gets back tomorrow. Fortunately, Laurie will be around to keep an eye
on the house and the party prone boys. Will be interesting to see if we
still have a brown cat (or a house for that matter) when I get back :)

Love Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 6/22/2003

It has been a very quiet week here without Zack and his active crew around
to stir things up. I got the house vacumed and mopped and it actually
stayed clean this week :)

Laurie picked up Panther (a black cat) a few days ago and says he is
adapting well to her apartment (except for the first night). This is the
cat Zack sneakily brought home from Mike & Tracy's last summer. He figured
he could get away with an un-announced pet since we were so glad to see him
(he was right). In one of (his many) fits of cash shortages, he sold
Panther to Laurie last Fall, figuring he could still enjoy the cat, but not
be as responsible for him. He couldn't really afford him anyway, not and
play an occasional game of paintball at the same time. Nick and I are not
real cat fans, so were not sad to see him go.

So last month he cons us into hosting ANOTHER cat, but just for the summer,
hereby know as the brown cat. This was to give Panther a playmate. Now
it looks like the original owner will not want brown cat back, so now Zach
gets to find it a new home. If he hasn't found one by the end of the summer
I figure the cat can have his room and he can sleep in the back yard.

We got Zach's grades, but we promised not to open them till he gets back.
On Zach's last day here last week I lent him the use of the white car on the
condition that he drop us a post card. He did even beter ... got this email
from him last night:

----
DAD,

How are you I'm good sorry it is not a postcard postcard but i have bought
them i just haven't filled then out or found a place to mail them you cant
mail me back but thanks for probably thinking of it.
Belize is AWESOME so far I've gone
Spulinking
cave Swimming
Ethnobotany
farm demo
igwannna hunting
monky hiking
MOUNTIAN HIKING (2 miles straight up none of the pussy switch back stuff
like in Montana) :)
learned how to make tortillas from scratch
the list goes on but i am timed so ill have to go but ill see you the 27 at
about LAte o'clock
----

Not sure how he did email from the middle of a tropical rain forest.
Probably setup by those well funded jungle monkies that I see on TV that got
their hands on someones lost credit card.

Love Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 6/16/2003

Happy Fathers day father. Didn't get you called yesterday, so thought I'd
better keep up my weekly letter to make up for my missed call.

Zach and Jessica (aka Peaty) were up till the wee hours of the morning this
morning packing for their big Belize scuba diving adventure. They left
for the airport up in the cities at 4 am, so I don't think they got much
sleep. They had a crew of about 6 other people here last night 'helping'.
I'm not sure where the normal crew of Zach buddies who normally hang out
here are going to hang out for the next 2 weeks. One of them, Shane, was
been 'crashing' here due to problems at home, so we may still see him
occasionally. Shane is one of our ex-smokers. At least so far. We
bought him a set of stop smoking patches a few months ago and so far he
seems ok. The deal was the patches were free unless he started smoking
again. Zach is a good influence on these guys.

Zach finished his scuba training and got his license earlier this week.
Went out to the lovely not-so-crystal-clear Foster Airnes Lake (an old
quarry, with about 1 foot visibility) to do his final dives. He has 8
dives (1/2 day each) planed for his 2 weeks down there. The other days
will be visitng rain forest, caves, and other pretty stuff. Gets back
Friday the 27th.

Donna & Johny, thanks for the phone message. I think we were over at
Laurie's having some Father's day pie. The boys each prefer different
kinds of pie (Strawberry and French Silk), and I happen to like both, so I
have to suffer through 2 pies :)

We spent the weekend and much of last week trimming our trees. Our front
river birch tree died (I guess they only live 20 years on average), so we
thought we would send it out with some company. I have a wall of branches
5 feet tall surrounding our front yard. Visitors were calling it Bruce's
fortress. Or maybe Bruce's forestress. I couldn't hear them cause my ears
were full of sawdust.

The quaking aspen out back was another tree we added to the pile. Every
spring, it would tip over about 30->40 degrees, and we would rope it back up
(usually in the middle of a windy rainstorm). This year it tipped a bit
too far and must have snapped an important root. So we had about 5 guys
out there this weekend trying to tip it all the way down and it got real
stubborn. Pretty funny watching kids bounce of the tree in ineffective
karate moves. Zach wanted to drive our car into the back yard in the worst
way. Eventually we walked enough weight up it and it went down. Then Zach
single handedly pulled it up to the front yard by himself. I think he was
trying to get his he-man confidence back up because earlier in the day I
beat him in arm wrestling. He says it was a fathers day gift (he has been
beating me quit a bit recently), but I think he just wasn't awake yet.

The tree guy will be coming later this week to take the pile and chop down
that tree and an out of control Russian olive. Cost $400 to take out each
tree! I think we only paid $40 for the trees new. If it cost that much
to remove old computers, I'd be in big trouble :)

Love Bruce

FW: Hi from Rochester, 6/8/2003

Hi all,

Thought since we were moving into a different lifestyle mode, I'd try to get
back to follow my Father's example and try a weekly letter. Should be able
to keep it up for at least a couple weeks :)

For those of you I haven't talked to or have not heard via the network,
Laurie and I have separated. Laurie moved into an apartment in town last
weekend and we are both doing well and are still good buddies. If you want
more details, feel free to call or email.

We went to Jessica's (Zack's girlfriend) graduation party today. Her father
had all her basketball trophies and medals proudly displayed. I didn't know
she was such the basketball star. She is planning on going to the local
community college next year.

Yesterday Zack and Jessica and her brothers went out shooting shotguns.
They had a good time and Zach won many of the contests they had, but
Jessica's little rat terrier dog ran off and got lost. They looked for her
for 6 hours but no luck. She kept up her spirits throughout the day and her
party, but still no dog. Zack was just 5 seconds away from spending $20 to
print out 100 color copies of a 'lost dog' poster when her mom called to say
the dog was found, 10 miles from her father's farm in the country, heading
the wrong way.

Nick and I went to a movie yesterday and rented a few more movies. This is
how Nick gets his driving practice in. He drives o/from the movie theater
and/or Hollywood video. Cheaper than drivers education :) Today he helped
me saw off a few branches from some trees in our yard. Our front yard river
birch has died so I figured I'd collect a few more
branches for the dead tree guys to collect.

Laurie is off at the national poetry convetion in Sioux Falls this weekend.
She really likes her apartment, but needs to get a bed. Currently is on a
blow up mattress. Not too comfortable, but better than sleeping on our
massage table.

Nick has one more final tomorrow then he is done with school. Zack has been
done for a week. We have not seen his grades yet. If he gets good grades,
he gets white (fancy sport) car driving privileges. If not, he gets the
van. He is always the first one out to the mail box :)

Nick built a water bottle rocket for Physics. He glued a spring loaded
plastic chess pawn onto the nose cone, but the spring didn't help the pawn
much when it landed. Flys straight for 100+ meters, only veering off by a
few meters.

Last weekend Zack had a bunch of his buddies over for a grill out on our
deck. While Zack was grilling, the others started up a couple of chess
games. Those that didn't know chess got taught. Nothing beats a good
chess game with and burgers :)

Love Bruce

FW: Bruce & Laurie: 05/18/97

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce and Laurie Winter [mailto:winter@isl.net]
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 1997 5:49 PM
To: 'Annie Tate'; 'Brad and Sue Page'; Lynette Schwend (E-mail); 'Mal &
Kim Winter'; Mal and Beth Winter (E-mail); 'Mike and Becky Hjelvik';
'Paul Kitamura'
Subject: Bruce & Laurie: 05/18/97

Happy B-day Mom! We will be giving you a call later today after Zack and
Laurie get back. Zack has spent the weekend camping with a friend and
Laurie is hot-tubbing with Janet.

Nick and I have been doing his Science homework this weekend. We have been
timing and graphing how long it takes various sized marbles to travel down
various places. We currently have the living room populated with all sorts
of planks, tubes, vacume hoses, and water hoses. The trip down the water
hose from the entry way to the basement was our longest (3.5 seconds) until
we got the idea of having the marbles "swim" down a bottle of Karo Syrup.
The 'bb' set our current world record: 9.45 seconds!

A few weekends ago, Zack and a buddy (David) spent a few hours attaching a
large (D size) Estes Rocket engine to the back of a 4 inch metal dump truck,
with the intent of setting a new land speed record in the 4 inch metal dump
truck category. These hard-full rocket engines are designed to propell
rockest UP, so I was a little unsure of the safety of this. But they
convinced me they would stand well back, so we all went out to our
cul-de-sack and set up a horizontal launch platform.

We had about 7 misfires, due to various problems with the electronic
ignition system. The electronic fuse just would not ignite, even after
dis-assembly, re-assembly, and re-engineering of the whole thing. Finially,
Zack gave up and designed his own ignition system, using 40 feet of wire
from somewhere (... I got to check on where that came from ...) and a large,
high-powered battery from one of his remote controled something-or-others.

After each misfire, the "we will stand WAY back" rule was violated just a
little bit more, so by the 8th attempt, the boys in charge were probably
just a bit too close. Also, we had most of the neighboorhood had joined in
by now. So when the thing actually ignited, we were caught a bit by
surprise. The Engine blasted the Truck about 10 feet before it broke away
and went airborn, putting on quite a show. Then it landed about 5 feet from
David (whos Mom had just driven up to witness what our safety technique),
sat there a few seconds, then exploded the "parachute charge" and died.

The reaction from the boys at this near-death experince: "COOL!!!!"

Love to all.

Bruce

Greetings

Gonna try to archive past family letters here, via email.

If you are not family or friend, this stuff will not be of interest to you.