Hellos,
Our 2 feet of snow got warm enough to be snowmanable, so I snowmaned a
few weekends ago, cause Nick told me to. I created what I believe is
the tallest-one-man-without-a-ladder-snowman ever created. It would
have been the tallest-one-man-one-woman-snowman ever created, but Helen
had to work that day. It is not as tall as the one Nick, Zack, and I
created 10 years ago. That one captured that was a
one-man-with-2-boys-snowman record. This one lasted about 20 seconds
before it tipped over. But I got a photo at about second 18! 1st
photo is just before I set the head upright, which was a trick since the
head is 8+ feet up, and I am not even a 6 footer. 2nd photo is just
before he crashed. Surprisingly, the head remained intact, with the
caret and 2 fresh farm egg eyes unbroken, so I rebuilt him, a bit
shorter and more stable, in the 3rd photo. The baby deck snowman in the
4th photo was happy to have a friend, although they have both moved on
by now (65 degrees today).
Work is picking up, after a bit of a break end of last year. A number
of interesting chips, but stuff I can not talk about for a few years.
Here is one that we did last year that I CAN talk about:
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3667476
It is the worlds biggest chip of its kind (ASIC). Raytheon designed it,
and our group implemented it.
Zach is keeping busy as usual. He comes home every day with pretty
brown hands like those in photo 5. I counted 9 cars, 1/2 of which were
broken, in our garage/drive/street the other day. Zach has come to the
realization that he can not fix everyone's car problems, so has learned
now to say no. This is a hard thing for him to say, but it is harder to
fix a billion broken cars.
His back is giving him problems, so he has started seeing a
chiropractor, with some improvement. That is a local doctor we found in
the house, helping out in photo 5. She will claim she is of no use on
backs, but Zach's back did feel a bit better the next day.
Our local doctor also gave Jessy a tour of her work last weekend (next 2
photos), as Jessy was interested in potentially working as a EEG tech.
In that 2nd photo, she is demonstrating how to jam a EMG needle
into a leg. Zach is about to run for the elevator. He hates needles.
The next photo shows Toozie, Helen's 9 year old border collie, sporting
one of my old muscle shirts. Not because he has muscles or a beer belly
to show of, but because Helen was feeling mischievous when we were doing
laundry. If Toozie did drink beer, he would probably have a beer belly,
as he does not get enough exercise. We are not sure yet what sort of
apartment we can get near downtown Syracuse that would tolerate a dog.
If anyone in the listening audience would consider a job dog sitting a
well behaved dog for a year or 2 whilst we figure out Syracuse, we would
love to hear from you. If you had a back yard full of cell phones,
Toosie would be in heaven (he likes phones).
Zachs friend Derek turned 21 yesterday. That is a pile of friends
getting into a limo to take him out on the town last night. They had a
good time, except they forgot Derek at a bar. He found a cab, and all
are un-hung-over by this afternoon.
Mystery photo is from St Thomas. Yes, it is a creature, but what kind
of creature?
Bruce
