News from NY, 6/30/2008

Hey peoples,

It has been a month, so here I am, dutifully recording New York happenings. Actually, not a lot of happenings to record. We have had a few weeks off from traveling, so it has been pleasantly relaxing.

Not that traveling to Seattle was not fun! (double negative, I think that means it WAS fun). I have a bunch of photos to show how much fun we had, although reporting them to mostly the people who were there seems a bit redundant. But it is such a handsome family, I must report them anyway.

This one I title:

"Family on the Beach"

And this one:

"The Crooked Family"

These photos are a bit out of order, but is the way I think sometimes. I'm titleing this one after the pretty woman on the right whom we found wondering the streets of Seattle:

"The rare straight haired Austrialian"

The flowers to help resuscitate Dad, who we figured had a pretty good chance of fainting upon seeing his other 3 missing children appear out of no where to surprise him on his 80th birthday. He didn't faint, but I hear 'Oh my Gosh!' about 5 times.

Cousin Paul and Mika took us on a lovely tour of Seattle:

"Red thing on a Needle"

This one has the grown up Paul looking at a family photo:

"Big Paul, Little Paul"

And we found some sunshine! Helen school the youngsters, but I then took a paddle and reminder her of her proper place in the ping pong kingdom.

"Outdoor Tennis on a Table"

Finally, we found some monsters:

"Little Critters"

"Big Critter"

Paul and Criag, thanks for picking us up and giving us the fun tours.

MKCM, thanks for hosting the party and great hospitalities.

We are off to NH on the 4th, then to DC the following weekend. Then I'm back to MN for the last week of July to visit the homestead.

Bruce

News from NY, 06/01/2008

HeyHi,

Got this pic from Zach last week. His car is looking great!


We did 2 graduation trips the last 2 weekends. First was to CMU in Pittsburgh for Noah's graduation from the school of music (piano). Al Gore gave a good commencement speech. You can guess the topic. He didn't mention it, but I read something interesting recently. The number 2 source of carbon emissions (behind generation of electricity) is not transportation (that is number 3), but rather cows and friends. More than all transportation (planes, ships, cars) combined! In the US alone, we consume 10 billion livestocked guys each year. Stacked head to tail, that is enough to go to the moon and back 5 times. If my meat swallowing disordered had not already turned me into a mostly vegetarian, that probably would.

Sorry, got off topic. Back to graduation, here is Noah with proud mother:


We celebrated with a trip to a famous beer place built in an old church. Here we see Helen's Mom trying to convince us that sour cream can make any beer taste good. Helen thought it did but I thought it made the sour cream taste bad.


Last weekend we went to Oberlin to visit the Nick in his natural habitat. He and his roomies have a large Fresnel lens they like to melt things with. Here Chloe is cooking marshmallows:


They also have one of those not-quite-legal-so-keep-it-a-secret green lasers. Very bright, so we make sure we only point it out into outer space so only aliens get blinded. Here Helen waves it about into some flour dust.


This next procedure is to be done only in wide open spaces without burnables nearby. We discovered burnables includes Helen's hair. Take a chunk of steel wool, wrap in onto a rope, light it on fire, then spin it around. Nick is a master burning-wool-twirler:

We also went to a lovely night time Oberlin orchestra concert in college greens with about 1000 candle lamps floating about. The conductor's mettle was tested when a dancing blue bunny hopped in and delivered him a cream pie to the face during the opening piece. He didn't miss a beat, but did say after that piece he would like to have a talk with the bunny. Something about making him eat the pie backwards.


One of Nick's hobbies is to do unusual art around the campus. In the last few years he has done enough of it that he has formed a club where he and his secret art ninjas sneak out at night and set up fun art thingies. One of their recent ones was to create a bunch of tape people, made with miles of packing tape. Take a volunteer, wrap them in tape, carefully cut the tape off and re-assemble it and dress it with cheap good will cloths.

Early one morning they set up a bunch of these tape people in the lobby of a popular school building. The tape people looked pretty realistic, so students were a little freaked out at first. When they realized they were dummies, they smiled, sat and studied with them, occasionally patted them on the head. But what they didn't realize was that one of them was Nick, well covered so you couldn't see his face. You can imagine the shrieks that ensued when someone would sit next to a dummy tape person, only to have it slowly move its head and stare at her. Or to have one grunt when patted. Nick had a good time and much discussion ensued on the local school chat board about the mysterious sometimes live manikins.

Eventually the students took the tape people and distributed them to various places. We found the bottom half of one of this one thrown up high onto a stairway overhang:



We also played guitar hero, ate Indian food, met with professors from Nick's majors (Math, CS, and Eastern Studies). Oh yeah, we also found Nick at a graduation thingy. This amusing photo shows me admiring Nick's diploma, perched on his head, Nick looking like he needs to pee, and Chloe being the only one who knows how to give a proper smile for the camera.


Yes, Nick did go barefoot thru the whole proceedings. I think he was the only one, but graduation these days is a bit less formal. One guy walked onstage while smoking a cigarette, another while holding a (well behaved) dog, and a woman proudly carried her baby.

News from NY, 05/15/2008

Nick's grant got interneted:

http://www.oberlin.edu/news-info/08apr/CLFellowship.html

He gets graduated weekend after next (Memorial day). Helen's son Noah gets his hat from CMU music school next weekend. He is off to grad school in Bolder this fall.

Those how don't like daring car stories will want to skip the next 5 paragraphs.

Zach found a great 2000 Honda civic. Affordable, nice performance parts, nice body/paint, working airbags, and no screwdrivers required to start it or run the windshield wipers. Unlike his previous $400 car, this one would pass California emissions and safety checks. The only problem was it was in Florida.

Soooo, he hatched a plan. He didn't have enough vacation to fly down and drive back, so his plan was to have a buddy in Arizona fly down to Florida, verify the car was ok, buy it and drive it Chicago. Zach would drive out after work with another buddy then buddy 1 flies back to Arizona and Z and buddy 2 drive both cars back to Rochester.

A simple plan. Except the car owner will only take cash ($8.5k!), and will not leave the plates on the car for transport. So buddy 1 makes it to Florida with pockets full of cash and a freshly emailed insurance card. No mugging occured and and the car checks out, so he makes a plateless run for the border. That lasts about 5 minutes, then he get major busted. They figured he was a criminal, so had lots of police, handcuffs, and drug dogs.

He finally gets out of there with a $150 fine, but then DMV lady will not give him temp plates, since he is not the owner of the car. Much pleading ensues and he gets temp plates that will be valid only to Chicago. The drive to Chicago works and he mets up with Zach and buddy 2 early Sunday morning. Buddy 1 flies back, mumbling something about not doing that again. Zach drives back carefully to not attract attention to his invalid plates, makes it to Madison, then the car quits.

The quick fixes don't work, so a call goes out to buddy 3, who knows a buddy 4 with a truck and a car trailer. Those arrive about midnight and he makes it back to Rochester before sunup. A little sleep later, he throws a few tools and parts at the engine and it comes back to life and Zach is happy. Tired, but happy.

Turns out Helen and I were also in Chicago last weekend (Helen had a meeting there). I was going to show Zack the town, but the weather was bad on Sunday, which was good since it took him longer to get home then expected.

But I had a nice sunny day on Monday, so I took the afternoon off (was tele-commuting from the hotel room) and ran/walked the city and lake shore. This was the famous Hilton Chicago we stayed at:


It was the worlds biggest hotel when built in 1927 at 3000 rooms. It has visited all of the last 20 last presidents, filmed 5+ big movies, and the roof is the set of the ER tv show helicopter pad.

Many trees were in bloom:


As were 1 millions tulips:


As was the fun, shiny sculpture in Millenium park:


And the beautiful video fountains:


I ran out to the tip of the Navy Pier, then back along the shore and out to the tip of the planetarium peninsula, where the magic camera caught me in a photo:


I also visited the future home of the 150 floor, 2000 foot Chicago Spire. Will be the worlds 2nd tallest building when finished in 2011: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire



You think that was big, check out this skyscraper sized seagull I found:



This happy woman was freshly fed a big steak at the 'number one in the world steak house', the Chicago Chop House:


I'm told the steak was delicious, but I'm sure my shrimp were better.

B

HiAll,

Life is good, the world still exists. At least till we all implode when they turn on the supercolider in Europe this summer and we all become a black hole.

Helen's parents came for a visit a few weeks ago. Here I am showing them something I forgot about on the internets ... probably porn.


Last week I got back from my 2nd trip back to visit Rochester. Zach is doing well. This is his he in his current 'beater' car. 200k miles, but 'runs like a champ'. Notice the 2 screwdrivers. The top one controls the windshield wiper, the bottom the ignition.




He lent me the car a few times ("dad take the car, the 'key' (aka screwdriver) is in the ignition"). I was ok until it rained. At that time I didn't know there was a 2nd screwdriver needed for the windshield wipers.

He did a great job on refinishing the basement. Here is the new family room:


And Nick, probably don't recognize it, but this is your room, currently rented out to a guy named Dustin:


How did he find time to redo the basement? While working full time at Discount and working on his car and helping his multitude of friends with multitude-of-friends issues (he drove to Chicago the other week to rescue a stranded friend)? He became Borg:


Borg, for those non-trekies out there, are computerized humans who are unstoppable. Oh yeah, another Zach activity is he started running. Bought himself some fancy running shoes and a 24 hour health club membership, which he does indeed use at all hours of the day. Last Sunday he and 40ish other Discount Tire employees from around the state had a 3 mile race up in the cities. He kept right on the tail of a crazy guy runner and the 2 of them finished over a minute ahead of everyone else! About 5.5 minute miles.

Helen just bought me a new pair of running shoes yesterday. Beaut of a day today, so gonna go try them out.

B

News from ST, 03/31/2008

I found a wee bit of internet down here in the land of perpetual sunshine, so will post a few words whilst trying to not have a perpetual sunburn.

It is soooo easy to get sunburned down here, especially for pale white men from the North. The pretty fish and underwater camera distracted me the first day, and even with < 2 hours in the water, I was crispified. Have been careful since then, but still got a little burnt last night, by a close to sunseted sun that snuck past my protective towel that didn't quite cover all of my leg. But the magical aloa vera slim healed us up, and we have had a fun and relaxed time. My $100 underwater camera from Target has worked well, as long as you feed it it's daily set of batteries. I posted a bunch of photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/brucewinter/2008StThomas

That first pic is actually a 4 minute video. Is a bit chaotic, bouncing between land and water cameras, but highlights the sort of fun we had. The end of that video is of a turtle we found on a night dive. You can make him out as Nick and Helen's underwater lights pass over him. Was mystical.

Found lots of fun fish. Coming back from snorkeling with Zach, I was in shallow sandy water and I saw this funny stick coming out of the sand. I was about to grab it when I saw it was attached to a 3 foot triangular object. I hesitated long enough to resolve it into the shape of large sting ray. So rather than irritate it by grabbing it's tail, I tried taking its picture, but mostly failed. It was too big to see in the cloudy water, about 5 foot from head to tail. You can see part of it in the top of this photo:


Other fun we had:

- We rented a couple of sea kayaks and went to a more remote shore with lots of shells. The choppy sea gave us a good ride. I don't think Chloe will be coming with us next time.

- It took them a few days, but finally N&Z fullfiled their lifelong ambition of catching several of those small lizards. Those little guys are lightning fast, but my 23 year old boys are faster than lightning!

- Chloe learned to snorkel. With Nick's tutelage, she did really well by the 2nd day!

- We discovered sand flies bite worse and more often than misquitoes. Actually it is not really their bite that is irritating. Zach say the itching mostly comes from the poop they leave depostied in your skin when they are done with their business. Knowing that makes the itching seem even more imperative.

- Zach taught us a drinking game. Nick and Chloe stuck with water. Zach preferred his beers, mostly so he could use his new sandals with the built in bottle opener, although he noted his beers always seemed sandy. I had this tasty drink called Alize, a passion juice alcohol. Zack says it is what rich rappers like. When I started sounding like a rapper, Helen said I had had enough.

- We sand buried Nick. He was sure he could get out in less than the 1 minute Zach bet him. Took him 10. He could have done it in 5 if he would have left is swimsuit in the grave, but his modesty declined.

Nick and Chloe left Friday and are back at school now. Zach left Saturday to visit his NY friend is in the air now (hopefully) on his way back to Rochester Monday night. We leave tomorrow, both back to loads of work. Maybe I'll forget to set the alarm clock for tomorrows plane ride :)

Bruce

News from NY, 03/15/2008

Greets Peeps,

Been pretty quiet in SYR. Helen and I have been working way too much. But we will fix that next weekend, as we have tickets to meet up with the boys and Chloe in St Thomas! Am going with plenty of sun screen, as I am a pale white man who gets outside only once a day near sunset to go for his run. I do get out for occasional chess game, but it doesn't do much for my tan:




Quite a bit of travel coming up for us. Mid April I travel back to RST for a week. Mid May, we go to CHI for a weekend, then end of May we go to PIT for Noah's graduation and CLE for Nick's.

Speaking of Nick, Laurie sweet talked Chloe into sending a few pics of the reclusive guy:

Apparently his hair got cut in Jan. And the suit was affordably tailor made when they were in China. He and his 2 roommates/business partners wowed the Ohio small business grant committee with their business proposal and were just granted $30k! They are moving to a different apartment after graduation and will give the small business business a try.

Zach got inspired to renovate. He has been working tirelessly nights/weekends on the basement rooms. He ripped out the family room closet to make that room bigger, wired it for tv and sound, replaced the suspended ceiling with sheetrock, put in recessed lighting, and has new carpet coming next week or the week after he gets back from St Thomas.





And in while not sleeping doing the above work, he is still working on his car. He sent me this picture of his manifold/turbo today:


He goes on a round the US trip starting next Saturday. First to Oakland, CA, where Uncle Ben will show him around a bit so he can see if he wants to move down there this summer (thanks Ben!), then to join us for some sun fun for mid-week, then to NY for a few days with his car buddy Surja.

I just bought a new camera (brand new just shipped Nikon S600), so should have a few pics to share in 3 weeks or so, after we get back.

Bruce

News from NY, 02/19/2008

Hihi,

We traveled to Pittsburgh weekend before last. Noah did a fine job on his senior recital. This is he with his instructor, at the post-show reception, catered by the amazing H&B caterers:

I explored the CMU and PITs campuses and captured the not-so-elusive flu bug. Brought it home and cultivated it for about a week. Next time I run into a bug like that, I intend to slay it quickly with this nifty new old sword that Helen's friend Z sent us last week:



This is Helen skating with Z at the downtown rink when he came for a weekend visit a few weeks ago:



And this is our resident master chief having fun with a sea monster:



And here we have the same sea monster, cooked and ready for .... well, ready to have it's picture taken


Boy news. Zach is adapting to bachelorhood. He now has 2 friends staying with him in the house, in a paint for rent deal, free rent in exchange for some badly needed room re-painting. He had a fun weekend snowboarding in Utah with cousin Abby. Amazing powder on the slopes. He is considering a move to California this summer, doing a lateral transfer to a Discount Tires down there.

Nick took the graduate school exam, doing very well, but will probably give his company idea a go instead. He and his roomates finished their presentation to get funding for their startup. They will hear from that in about 2 weeks. If they get it, they plan on staying in their same place for a year, working on the program they would sell to help people learn Kanji.

News from NY, 01/15/2008

Greets,

Happy x&n years to all. We had a relaxed and quiet xmas here. Except for when Aya visitied us and came back from her Salsa dances all excited, at midnight, and would start demonstrating the new moves she learned in our kitchen, including loud floor stomping and entertaining body contortions, as picture here:

As is my habit, I bought myself a Dyson vacuum for xmas. This time a space age shooter hand vac:



We drove to NH for New Years. And found lots of snow! This is Helen just before she dives into the snow to make angels:

And this is A&I making the doorman snowman:

Here it may look like we are juggling snowballs, but in truth, we are pleading the invisible tree monkeys that nobody else sees not to poop on us:

Noah received a 3 inch Bach for New Years. That little Bach guy, famous for fathering 19 children, apparently also likes to drink the champaign bubbly:

Next we have random couple we found. They look happy. Don't worry, he does not rip her ear off, as it looks like he is about to here:

And I put on skates, I think for the first time since failing badly to skate with some oversized skates in the 'Bowl' skating ring when I must have been 3 or so:

We made it back to Syracuse after a knuckle whitening 10 your snowstorm drive. Last weekend we went to Helen's delayed department xmas party at a fancy English mansion that does parties. After MUCH cajoling, her co-workers got here to shoot a few rounds of pool in the billards room. This picture is just before she misses the white ball with the stick and gives up in a cuestick waving fury, I fear never to shoot again:

Nick spent xmas with roomy George and New Years with Chloe and is now in China for a few weeks, in Shang-Hi, I think, visiting relatives with Chloe. Zach has started running, with plans to run a Marathon later this year.

Helen passed the Neurology boards she took a few months ago. Also forgot to post this radio show she did last fall .

I got a couple of awards from IBM, one in Dec and one last week. The one last week was for the work I did on the 2nd generation chip we put into the BlueGene supercomputer last year, making it 3x faster at 1/2 the power of the previous chip, which already had 1/10 the mips/watt of other supercomputers. I'm gonna use the awards monies on a vacation with Nick, Zach, and their girls down in Saint Thomas during Nick's spring break end of March.

I'm out of news. I'll post again when I get good photos of the invisible tree monkeys.

Bruce