News from MN, 6/25/2006

Happy Summer Solstice+3!

A fun weekend was has here, blowing bubbles and writing chess programs.
We were going to play tennis with Nick on Sat. and go autocross racing
with Zack on Sun., but it rained, so we stayed home and enjoyed the
raindrops.

Rainy days are good for bubbles, as the high humidity lets them last
longer. We took 300+ photos trying to capture bubbles with cool
reflections (gotta love digital cameras). A few of them were in focus
(first 3 pics).

Nick took over the lead in the summer chess tournament, 19 wins to 13
losses. Yesterday he got this crazy idea that we both write programs to
play chess, then have our programs battle each other. So we each pick
our sharpest swords (programing languages, his is Lisp, mine is Perl)
and we went into battle. Happily I report my program is the current
victor, mainly because mine is finished and his is not. I cheated by
leveraging a building block I found on the net, whereas he is diligently
building his from the ground, up I think. My code is silly, fat, and
slow and will surely be sliced to bits once his learns to stand up. But
for now, I cluck about proudly with temporary victory.

Zach continues working on any car that moves. Actually, more often on
those cars that don't move. This week it was our neighbor's classic
Pontiac GTO. He tore the inside out of it, replaced a rusted floorboard
and refurbished the seats. Friday night he got a call at 11 pm from a
guy who was stuck 2 hours south of here. His car had broke down at a
race track in Iowa, so, parts and tools in hand, Zach went on a late
night rescue mission. He got back in time for his day job at 7:30 am
Saturday. He also bought himself a monster tool chest last week, on
which he resides in kingly fashion in the 4th pic.

Mom/Dad, I got my birthday package, thanks! I hid it from myself so I
won't be tempted to open it till my birthday. Zack, Jessy, and Nick
treated me to a Father's day breakfast. Some of the best food ever
invented: Baker's square Pie and Oatmeal (5th pic).

The 6th picture is of an art structure I made last weekend. Yep, Bruce
can do art, but mainly because it was more engineering than art.
Something called a tensegrity tower, which was coined by Buckminster
Fuller to describe how you can use TENSion to build a structure with
intEGRITY. You can build towers with sticks that don't touch each
other! Strong enough to withstand an attack by fridge robots and
Australian koala bears.

The hole is now at 17 feet deep, which is about the limit of my camera's
flash, as you can see by the barely viable shovel. It would likely have
been at infinite depth, but fortunately digging was slowed by rain an a
sore foot attached to Nick's right shovel leg. That last picture is of
Nick building a rope ladder. Kindof. I helped. Now anyone can climb
down the hole on the ladder, but N & Z usually stick to chiminy climbing
on the dirt walls, I think so they can keep their cloths the proper
brown color.

Bruce

News from MN, 6/11/2006

Hello with Jello,

Speaking of jello, did you know that egg yolks, when left on the counter
for 2 days, turn into yellow jello. And into something a bit less
appealing after 4+ days.

We had nice visits from both brother Mal and N/Z cousins Crystal and
Hedi Gates. Malcolm dropped by for an overnight stay on his way to a
conference and we drove and walked around some of his old haunts. C&H
hitched a ride back with Laurie the end of last week, then drove back
with her on her way to Texas early this week. On their way out, they
hit a raccoon at 1 am in the morning about 3 hours north of here. Then,
after patching up the car, they hit a deer 6 minutes later. That they
could not patch. So she is driving an insurance sponsored rental while
her Vibe gets fixed. We (mostly Zach) introduced C&H to not only Roch,
but also the mighty Mississippi, Wisconsin, paint balls, giant bubble
blowing, 1/4 mile racing, and lots of other sports car stuff.

Nick and I started jogging a couple weeks ago. Usually around the
neighborhood in the evening. Nothing monster serious, just 1/2 hour
tours of the neighborhood. I thought I'd have to wait up for him, but
seems that boy has been sprinting around campus, as it is he who waits
for me.

But for once (since junior high) the tables have turned in our chess
tournament! I am the current leader at 7 wins, 6 losses, and 2 ties.

Lots of pics this week.

Pic 1: Nick proving that you can indeed flip 2 pancakes at once. I'll
spare you the picture of me proving you can not flip 3 pancakes at once.

Pic 2: The Gates girls proving you can fit 2 (trim) girls in one RX8
back seat. 5 of us went to the race track in my 4 seater.

Pic 3: Zack about to set the days best time in the Rex. He got 15.5
seconds, beating my 15.6.

Pic 4: Zack trying to man handle 2 Montana cowgirls. Not possible.

Pic 5: Zack and cousins built that box to ship his DeSol engine off to
California for uber engine work.

Pic 6: This is what you get when you ignite a bunch of bubbles filled
with propane gas.

Pic 7: Chefs Z&J, making a nummy pasta dinner.

Pic 8: Nick starting to dig a hole. He digs a bit each morning before
we head to IBM.

Pic 9: Nick and I got back from jogging Friday and found the voice of
Zack coming from the hole. That boy can dig. After 1-2 hours, he was
down past 8 feet!

Don't ask me what the hole is for. I'm simply the cameraman.

Bruce

News from MN, 5/27/2006

Yo-yo to all yo-yo fiends,

And hello as well to those who don't yo to the yo.

Nick as survived his first week at the IBM. His mentor predicts it will
take a month of learning before he will be of much use. This week the
challenge was to read as many technical documents as possible without
falling asleep. Today he and the Munger brothers are rabble rousing.
The first photo shows them enjoying a computer program game that Nick
wrote last semester.

btw, I tried that experiment Nick wrote about last week, about not being
able to crush a properly held egg in your fist. Results were messy.
Definitely a deck experiment. Nick blames the failure on my egg being
brown and organic. I call him a white supremacist and then attribute
the egg failure on my superior unstoppable white muscles.

Zach has a week of vacation, starting today. He needed it. He has been
like zombie man the last few weeks, waking up early for work, staying up
late working on a zillion (for you non-math majors, that is more than a
billion) projects, usually for friends. This week he moves out of the
shop he rented for the winter. Today he and Jessy went on a bike ride.
After riding her bike one block, he concluded she needed a new one, so
they biked to a bike shop and he bought her a nice one.

Last weekend I had my long awaited visit with my 6 month pen pal Helen.
I took a couple days off of work and we drove the city in search of a
place for her to stay when she moves here the 1st of July. The 2nd
photo shows her talking to the landlord of the small 1 room house in the
background (near St Mary's Hospital), trying to bribe him into
by-passing the no-pet clause for her dog, a 10 year old border collie.
After meeting with her, the landlord and his wife were thoroughly
charmed, much like I was, and could not help but say yes.

We spent the rest of 4 days she was here having a wonderful time. Mom
and Dad, you will be proud. That 3rd photo is composed of real flowers
Helen bought for me. Neither of us are flower experts, but since both
of our parents were, we figured it was the right thing to do.

The 4th photo is Helen teaching me how to tame the wild fennel, imported
by her from New Hampshire. Turns out we found plenty of it here, right
where it should have been when I was fennel hunting. I simply didn't
have the right fennel whistle to attract it to my fennel blind. Just as
well, as I didn't have a fennel gun either, so probably would have been
tickled to death by agitated fennel fronds.

We made lots of fun food while she was here, filling the fridge with
exotic wonders. Cooked buckwheat, Greek triangles with feta cheese,
stuffed mushrooms, fried Papad, mango salad, Poha (flat rice) with
Indian sauce. After she left, Zack friends emerged and were having fun
temping each other into taste testing various things. The Pomegranate
juice nearly killed a few of them, but the Russian cookies disappeared
quickly. I forgot the name of the cookies, but I remember the recipe,
so I'm doing another batch of those tomorrow.

The last photo is what you get when you ask a rock wall to take your
picture. We were walking around Silver Lake about midnight and found
this rock that was willing to take our picture, but I think that it had
been up partying hard with the lake's wild geese and ducks, as the fuzzy
result would indicate the rock's vision was blurred. Probably drank too
much lake water.

Bruce

News from MN, 5/14/2006

Happy Day to all the Moms!

Especially to my red hat-ed Mom Mom. Sue, I talked to Mom yesterday and
told her about the red hat picture you found last week. She figures it
was an Easter Sunday outing that inspired it. Mom, Moma bear (brother
Mal) predicts that hat will come back into style. There is a popular
Linux software company called RedHat that would be delighted with such a
hat.

I finished flushing the spring cleaning bug out of my system this week.
I rented and filled up a big roll off dumpster. After the delivery
charge ($120), they charge $100 per ton, a bargain at 1/10th the prices
of flour <grin>. So I filled up the dumpster last weekend, and then it
rained, soaking all my not-so-precious junk with 5 cent per pound rain.
I haven't got the bill yet, but I watched the driveway web cam
recording of they guy picking up the dumpster on Friday, and could see a
mini-ocean of water wash out of it when he tilted it when loading it up
onto his truck. At least I can pride myself with delivering clean, not
dirty, junk to the landfill.

I didn't think to take a picture of my back deck before I cleaned it
out, but I took one when I was 1/2 way done cleaning it. The 2nd
picture is of the amazing Rex (Rx-8) toting 20 years of old paint,
circuit board acid, model airplane fuel, fiberglass resin, and whatever
other toxic substance I found when cleaning out the shop. AND 30+ 4
foot florescent bulbs, which have mercury in them, so also needed to
make a trip to the hazardous waste disposal facility. AND the back and
passenger seats had old broken amplifiers, chart recorders, and
oscilloscopes. As I was unloading all of this at the waste facility, a
big pickup pulled up behind me and watched me keep pulling stuff out of
this small little sports car. He got out and asked me what kind of car
this was. He concluded he should trade in his pickup. I got the same
sort of looks and comments with my many trips to GoodWill.

The 3rd picture is the last picture of Zach's ski ramp launching
platform, just before I hired one of my robots to dis-assembled it for
dumpster food. Many an unbroken bone were sled/ski/snowboard launched
from that platform. Mal/Kim, I don't know if you remember, but when you
moved from Roch, you gave us a long 2 x 8 foot solid Mal-constructed
wood structure that you had used to house that pack of baby wolves you
guys had in your garage for a while. That is what we used for years to
ramp up to that platform, after having used it for use as a garage table.

That 4th picture is crazy Zach man with his latest project/toy. That
car, which is small enough to drive up the nostril of a small giant, is
called a midget. Really, that is it's name. Built when I was a high
school freshman, it is now considered a collectible (side thought: why
is it that 40 year old cars, but not 40 year old people, are considered
collectible?). So Zach collected it last week. He parks it sideways
in our freshly cleaned garage, so we can fit 3 cars in it.

That last picture of Z, J, M(ia), and I playing catch with a tennis
ball, which is Mia's most favorite object in my house. On the next
toss, I inadvertently bonked Jessy on the head. In response, Zach
defended her honor by attacking me, to which I responded by standing
tall, puffing out my chest, and saying in most manly voice "Try not to
hurt yourself, Boy". After a .1 second standoff, I used my camera as a
defense, and scurried off and hid in a dark corner. I should probably
come out now, so I can go to the mailbox and send this letter.

Bruce

News from MN, 4/30/2006

Yo hi ho,

I've got another round of baby fish! 10+ black ones this time. I
doubt all 10 will decide to hang around (only 1 from my previous batch
did), but if they do, I'm gonna have to break out my fishing pole and
have a fish fry.

Speaking of cooking things, did you know you can bake an artichoke? My
friend Helen taught me that one. We will finally get a chance to met
each other in 3 weeks, after having corresponded via email for 6 months.
She will be flying here from NH for a 4 day weekend to find an
apartment. She moves here in July for a 13 month fellowship at the
clinic.

Speaking of fellowships, one of my IBM groups finished one of our
challenging chips a few weeks ago, so to celebrate, 20 of us drove up to
the cities this week and went to a Nascar simulator. I'm not a Nascar
fan, but it was fun to jump into pretty realistic full sized cars and
bump each other around on the track.

Speaking of cars, Zach got promoted to assistant manager yesterday!
More hours, more money, more happiness.

Speaking of happiness, my study is now happy. Last weekend it ran out
of shelf space, and the study is nothing but shelf space. So it
triggered a spring cleaning event. Worked all weekend on it and it is
now ready to house the library of congress. This weekend I did the same
to the shop, so it is now ready to take on Menards. Next weekend I'm
targeting the garage.

Speaking of garage, that first picture is of a pack of vulgar roof
dwellers on the roof attached to my garage, known as my house roof.
Zach is about to launch my 35 lb barbell past my deck, 30+ feet down to
my poor back yard lawn. The 2nd photo is Mike and Lee trying to extract
the weight from my lawn. This took a while, as it was fully embedded.
The dull thud of a 35 lb weight in bunker busting mode is fun, but not
loud. And roof dwellers like loud, so they found a dead Subaru hood in
the garage surplus yard (the one going bye bye next weekend) and placed
it strategically in the weight landing zone (3rd pic). It was loud.

Speaking of loud, that was my reaction when a rainstorm once again
eroded out a big hole at the end of my deck. Every year for the last 20
years, the spring rain from my big roof comes down and rather than going
down the hill like it should, those scheming rain drops manage to unite
and redirect their efforts into washing out a hole behind my retaining
wall (4th pic). So every year, my trusty wheelbarrow and I gather up
all that washed out dirt and push it back up the hill and back into the
hole. Packing it down harder every year with the confidence that this
year it will be un-erodible. But this year, as I was talking to the
same dirt that I have moved every year for 20 years (we have a bond,
that dirt and I), I got this crazy idea that maybe I should try
redirecting the roof runoff better. So I redirected the gutter. Took
all of about an hour. So next year, there will be NO MORE HOLES!

Speaking of holes, our neighborhood is infested with 1 billion hole
making rabbits. Nobody is too fond of them, as exemplified by the
native blow dart bush hunter in that last photo. Now these rabbits are
extremely fast (faster than even Jessy's lightning fast Rat terrier Mia)
and they are very wary of us human types, so normally all we see is
fuzzy blurs. So I was not too concerned about Zach trying out his blow
dart on one. But Zach is really good with that thing! He is now short
a couple of darts, and some bunny is now sporting a couple of bright red
plastic feathers. Probably will become something of a style fad in
bunny circles and I'll wake up some morning with a long line of bunnies
outside my door willing to buy some darts with their little bunny monies.

Speaking of long line of bunnies, this letter has gone on long enough.

Bruce

News from MN, 4/15/2006

Hellos,

Spring is springing here. 70s and greening up nicely. I washed and
waxed the white one (obligatory photo attached) to the beautiful
tweeting of red robins. Real robins this time <grin>.

From what I have heard, it sounds like most (all?) of you bought my
April 1st red robin story. To be fair, I should have added a few more
bird antics to give you guys a more of a chance to see through it.
Something like 'then the robin hopped over to the fridge and made
himself PB&W sandwich'. I suspect robins like worms better then jelly,
but since they are a close relative to the squirrel (both belonging to
the those-that-live-outsidess genus), I'm sure they like peanut butter.

I've re-discovered my wok recently. I've been cooking just about
anything that fits in it, and it is a big wok. My email friend Helen
(you Maui-ans might remember her as the one who's email you caught me
reading) has turned me on to a bunch of new food groups:

Olive Oil. More specifically, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO), which
can be use in just about anything, including I suspect, Zach's high end
racing engines. My wok especially likes EVOO.

Irish Oatmeal. Grandpa Tate would be proud. McCanns cooks in minutes.

Forbidden rice. A black rice that used to be reserved for Chinese
Emperors. The Greeks banned because it they thought it was powerful
and feared it would aid their enemies in battle.

Yellow squash. Not at all like Orange squash which I suspect is
still yucky, although Helen is trying to convince me otherwise, even
though I have explained that my Mom has already tried, unsuccessfully,
to disguise Orange squash in various recipes. Yellow squash, though,
is not at all nasty. Pleasant even.

Kohlrabi. This veggy comes with 2-3" root bulbs, attached to massive
green leafs. When handed to a grocery cashier, be prepared for a
puzzled, maybe even scared, look. And it helps to remember the name
Kohlrabi, so they can look up the price, or otherwise, they will
continue looking at it, at a full arms length distance, hoping and
fearing it will spring to life and announce its name. Like most
veggies, the root can be boiled, baked, or sliced and wok-ed.

Still on the hunt for Helen recommended Fennel. I've printed out
addresses of all the grocery stores and town and am visiting them a few
at a time to see whats for cooking. I found a food coop the other day
with a back room labeled 'bulk' which was full of all kinds of unknown,
but likely edible, food things.

I registered http://brucewinter.net last week. The price for domain
names is now down to $8 per year, so figured why not. Usually more if
you want to actually do anything with them, like host web pages, but I
signed up for a free beta service from google.

Zack hosted a driveway barbeque last night. A few pics attached. He
and Jessy took a borrowed motorcycle for a spin. That pickup is one
Derek picked up for $25. They cranked up the music, filled the back
with bodies, and swayed it back and forth to the beat of the music. A 3
meg video here:

http://brucewinter.net/06_04_derek_truck_dance.avi

Also posted a video from the jelly jet jars I wrote about last month:

http://brucewinter.net/06_03_jelly_jet_jar.avi

Later gaters.

Bruce

News from MN, 4/01/2006

Yo Peeps,

Today was a beautiful, warm, spring day, so I opened up a bedroom window
to flush out some of that stale 'Winter' air. About an hour later,
after I hang up no an IBM conference call in the living room, I hear
this scuffling sound coming from the bedroom. Peering in, I see this
larger than average robin hopping around on my bed! He looked at me
with this look that said 'What, you never seen a robin before? You need
more worms in this bed!'

Then he ignored me and went on hopping around in his worm hunt, with no
indication that he was going to go back out the window. So I had a
dilemma. How to get him back out the window without making him go bird
crazy. I had visions of those crazy squirrels of my childhood that we
would occasionally lure into the house with trails of peanuts, who would
then go ballistic and bounce of all the walls in the house till they
randomly bounced out a open door.

So I backed out of my bedroom, pondering what it would take to make a
trail of worms to guide this bird back outside. But before I could grab
my worm digging shovel, this fearless bird hops right on into the living
room! For fear of getting in his way and getting bird hopped, I got
out of his way and sat down. With his keen bird vision, he spies some
worm like things swimming around in my fish tank and flaps his wings 3
times and lands on the desk next to the fish tank, sliding to a stop
with his bird beak banging into the aquarium glass.

He then regains his bird composure, then longingly peers into the tank.
The fish, who were startled at first (I really think at that point
they had never seen a Robin before), quickly regained their fish normal
fish composure and inquisitiveness, swam over to within microns of the
Robin's beak. They then peered back into that Robin's eyes and said in
unison, in their cute little bubbly fish voices, 'Do you know what day
it is today?'

At which point the impossibly brave Robin poofed out of existence, and I
sat down to write this letter.

First picture is of Zack and his glorious $4k pile of delicious car
parts. Yes, that is 9 different gages, not counting the ones he
already had. And no, that is not a bottle for Nitrous gas. At least
that is what we would tell the insurance company if they asked. I think
the plan is to say it is a bottle Milk (the N is close to M, and at
least it is colored white).

I sent my hard drive that died last month off to a hard drive recovery
service, but it came back as a unrecoverable. The head that crashed
scoured the disk. Between various computers here, and the replay tv
box that I had some photos copied to, I recovered most photos up to
2004. But lost all the music and '04 and '05 photos.

So to protect against this happening again, I bought a new external
storage box, with built in redundancy, so any drive can fail and I do
not loose data any. It is the little box on the left in the 2nd
picture, can hold 4 drives for 2 TBytes of data! And to lift my
spirits, I took the money I was prepared to spend to recover that dead
drive and bought a new computer. A dual AMD Athlon X2 2 ghz with 2 gig
of memory! Amazing what $800 can buy these days.

I also spent $800 on a new tooth. When I was a silly little boy, I
impressed my friend Bill Abel by turning off his basement light hands
free. I jumped up and grabbed the sting to the light with my teeth.
The light went off, and I almost yanked it out of the ceiling. It hurt
for a while, but the tooth (front top incisor) didn't die till college.
Recently it got brittle, as dead things sometimes do, so needed to be
capped. I'm currently sporting a fine looking temporary plastic tooth
while the porcelain one gets hand crafted by the porcelain elves.

The last picture is a animetronic head I got recently. I hope to hack
it to give it a Robby McDowell like British voice, then use him as a
house greeter. Figure if guests don't get scared away by this guy,
then they will probably survive the rest of the house.

Birdman Bruce

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