Roughly once a month, Formlabs has a Town Hall meeting during which the entire company (close to 500 employees now) assembles in person and by video conference for an update on varying topics of general interest. Today the meeting focused on our 2018 financial performance and a new printing material for the dentistry market. I was also introduced and spoke briefly about my background and objectives. One of my slides included a collection of the logos of the companies I have worked for (not including Formlabs). This is my 38th year working in high tech and my 32nd managing engineering teams. I started my career wearing a lab coat over a suit, using a slide ruler for calculations. Today I am dressed ready to climb a mountain, wearing a watch that will answer any question I ask of it including what is a slide ruler. When I pause to think about all the technical and cultural changes that have occurred during my working life it is almost incomprehensible. I feel fortunate to have lived at this time in history and am proud of my journey.

I found this Concord Journal clipping today on the kitchen counter. I must have missed it when first published.

After being posted for 4 months on Craig’s List, our grand piano finally sold today.  The market for large pianos has really collapsed in recent years. Even so, we got one-third of the price we paid nearly 25 years ago.  Not bad.  The buyers drove up from Mystic, CT, and were joined here by a piano technician they hired.  He did a thorough inspection before declaring the piano “as good as new”.  Pictured above is the entire keyboard assembly removed from the piano for closer scrutiny.  Jeanine and I were very sad it will not be here for Nico to play, something we look forward to every time he visits.  Professional piano movers will arrive next week to pack it up and ship it to its new home.

Nearly 25 years ago, Jeanine and I commissioned this bed, designed by her sister and built by an Indianapolis woodworker.  I was too busy with work at the time to do it myself although I later constructed the canopy section.  As part of our year-long preparation for downsizing, I have been selling off items that don’t make sense in a more compact footprint.  With the kids out of the house, we are looking forward to finding a smaller home located nearer to Boston to shorten my commute. This evening I shot the photos that will accompany the listing on Craig’s List.

Nicolai and Karuna have taken up rock climbing, a very popular activity where they live in Colorado.  I believe she was responsible for capturing this video recording that was posted to his Instagram account.  Karuna’s strength-to-weight ratio is probably higher than any human I know and Nico’s upper body strength makes them both naturals for the sport.  

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I reached my one-month anniversary at Formlabs today.  I have been working an average of 14 hours a day plus another 90 minutes of commuting.  As is always the case with a new job, there are a million things to learn and hundreds of people to meet.  This initial push has allowed me to come up to speed fairly quickly and I believe I am now in a position to begin scaling back to a more sustainable work rate.  What has suffered the most is my fitness.  Starting today, my plan is to get an hour of exercise every morning.  If I leave at 6 am I can beat the traffic into the city, get my workout in, and arrive at the office before 8 am.  This morning, despite the sub-zero temperature, I enjoyed being out in the sun during an easy 3-mile walk that took me to the Lynch Family Skatepark where I photographed one of the swimming pool-like features with a “Tee” train and the Boston Sand & Gravel Company in the background.

This year’s Calabria holiday card features both boys on the front side.  Maya, Jeanine, and I can be found on the back.  Past cards have more often than not featured Maya on the front and it was time to balance the scales.  The card should be reaching many of you shortly.  I like posting a copy on the blog as well so that we can look back upon it years from now when the physical cards have long since been recycled.

I am often amazed by the patterns I find in nature. Something very interesting must have been happening as this water turned to ice. Find the feather in the photo for a sense of scale.

It is often said that teachers do not join the profession for the money.  After hearing what her colleagues and students had to say about my sister-in-law during her retirement party from UVM, it is easy to understand what motivates them.  Susan has enriched the lives of all she has touched and the gratitude in the room was overwhelming.  Speaker after speaker, young and old, had nothing but the most amazing things to say about her and the impact she has had on their lives.  I took hundreds of photos at the event (celebrated as a “graduation party”) which can be found here.

Jeanine and I traveled to Burlington, VT this morning.  Her sister Susan will be having a retirement party tomorrow and the family is converging for the celebration.   A 27-year veteran of the University of Vermont, she is the Chairperson for the Department of Social Work and has served as an Associate Professor in the department. 

We are looking forward to her party tomorrow and got the celebration started with a family outing this evening which included all three sisters and close friend Jean.

Pictured here, from last night’s holiday party are a couple of the people I work with at Formlabs.  The entire team is extremely talented and a real pleasure to work with.  Ridiculously dim lighting limited the quality of the shots I could get but these certainly captured the mood.

Jeanine and I enjoyed the Formlabs Holiday Party held at Lucky Strikes on Assembly Row this evening.  She met me at the office for a tour of the facility before we made our way to the festivities.  We rented out the entire venue to accommodate our nearly 500 employees and their plus ones.  Jeanine and I are more than twice the age of the average Formling.  As we were being checked through the door, the attendant asked to make sure we were attending the right party.  It was as sobering as it was funny.

Always nice to get a little local coverage by the Concord Journal. 

For the first time since joining Formlabs, I enjoyed a post-dawn walk that took me down to the Charles River. For the last three weeks, I have been arriving at the office before sunrise and leaving after dusk to beat the traffic and to get ahead of the curve at work.  It was my first dose of weekday sunshine since starting and it felt great despite the below-freezing temperatures.  I plan to join a nearby gym, hopefully, this week, where I will workout each morning before coming into the office.  I need to get in shape for a couple of soccer games coming up in February.  My team will travel to Argentina for the matches and I plan to do some mountain climbing with Nico in Patagonia ahead of the competition.  I am in shape for neither activity and need to get into a more healthy exercise regime. Pictured above in the foreground is the Longfellow Bridge with the Esplanade in the background..