In preparation for my travels to Brazil and Argentina next week, I did a high altitude test with my drone.  Pictured above is a portion of the Concord Country Club golf course which is across the street from our home.  I wanted to determine the amount of battery needed to reach and return from max altitude so I can estimate how many flights I can get on a single battery.   I will be returning to Mount Fitz Roy with Nico and one of my soccer teammates. On my last visit, I did not come away with a single clean image as the peaks are shrouded in clouds more often than not.  If I see an opening in the clouds I plan to stop, no matter where we are on the climb, and put the drone up immediately.  Check back in two weeks to see if I was successful in capturing a decent image.

IMAGINE (aka Sneha Shrestha) is a Nepali artist who paints mindful mantras in her native language and meshes the aesthetics of Sanskrit scriptures with graffiti influences. Being the first to mesh Nepali Alphabets with American graffiti, she has shown her work in several exhibitions, commissioned works, and public walls around the world including Boston, San Francisco, Bali, Istanbul, Geneva, and Copenhagen. Her mural on the side of this building in Central Square was not there when I was working at Superpedestrian.  It is really quite amazing and I will need to return for a better photograph.

Today the lock out on selling my Sonos stock expired and I decided to sell my remaining shares.  I exercised my options in 2010 and have sold them in three tranches since then.  Had I held them all until today, I would have been looking at a high seven-digit payday.  Even with my conservative diversification schedule, this has proven to be one of my most successful equity plays to date.  I learned a long time ago not to try and time the perfect sale.  Better to spread things out and take a bunch of singles rather than looking for one home run.

Members of my team recently completed installation of a Form Cell.  It is an array of eight Form 2 printers and a robotic automation system that handles the movement of build platforms from input tray, to printer, to wash station, and finally to an output collection area.  The Form Cell reduces manual labor, speeds production, and reduces the cost per printed part.  It is only offered to select strategic partners and is not available for general sale. 

Jeanine took Nico on a shopping spree yesterday to celebrate his new job.  This evening she tailored all the pants they purchased and I asked her to save the off-cut legs for this photograph.  Nico already has a quilt made exclusively of such material.  Earlier in the day I made a run to REI to stock up on dehydrated food and trail snacks for an upcoming trip to Brazil and Argentina with Nico.  

Recent heavy snow and rain have left our Iocal rivers quite high.  I decided to pay a visit to the Old North Bridge while running errands this morning to investigate.  I find the scene far more inspiring with water levels this high as opposed to the view when we are experiencing drought.

This evening, Jeanine and I joined Maya and cousin Rachel for dinner at The Local in Wellesley.  Although they attend different colleges, Maya is at Olin and Rachel is at Babson, their dorm rooms are only a couple of hundred yards apart.  It was nice catching up with Rachel, now a senior, whom we have not seen recently, and also learning about Maya’s schedule for this term (overbooked as usual).

Since returning from Colorado for the holidays, Nicolai has been working part time as the Assistant Wrestling Coach at Concord Academy.  Last week he was offered and accepted a full-time entry-level teaching position at Concord Carlisle High School.  He is pictured here departing for his first day on the job this morning.  He has also been offered the position of Head Coach of the Men’s Junior Varsity Soccer Team beginning in the fall.  As it stands today, he is planning to permanently relocate to the Boston area and do his Master’s Degree locally rather than at Colorado College where he has been accepted into their program.  We are thrilled to have all three kids within a stone’s throw.

I rarely use my iPhone as a camera but have been doing so increasingly with the Xs model I recently purchased.  Today I experimented with the portrait mode while waiting with colleagues for our monthly town hall meeting to start.  One day phones will replace cameras entirely but not yet.

The combination of wind, ice, and fluffy snow made for some interesting patterns on the field and utility lines behind our house.  Temps yesterday were in the single digits. Two days from now they are forecasted to be in the high 50s.  Is anyone still doubting that global climate change is real?

For the second time in as many weeks, I arrived home with 1 mile of range left on my BMW i3.  The last time it was anticipated because I did some additional driving beyond my normal roundtrip to Somerville.  Today it was a function of the brutally cold temperatures that affected my normal commute.  My round trip distance is 38 miles which meant that my range today was 39 miles.  The car is rated for a range of 81 miles. When I left this morning at 6:20AM the temperature was 1 degree F and when I returned at 8PM it was 3 degrees F.  I am not at all pleased with this situation and have contacted BMW and will be insisting they replace the battery.  Loss of capacity over time is to be expected.  Reduced capacity at low temperatures is to be expected.  But getting less than half the advertised range in any scenario is simply not acceptable.

We received our first snowfall of the season today.  The base was light and fluffy with an icy top coat.  I opted to wait for the lowest winds of the afternoon to start clearing the drive.  Blowing fluffy snow in high winds is generally an exercise in futility.  The denser top layer required me to advance rather slowly which stretched the job to nearly two hours.  Later I put the drone up for an aerial view of my handy work.

With a major storm set to hit later this evening, I spent several hours doing maintenance on our snowblower.  Always best to have it ready to start on the first pull.  The afternoon was devoted to building a platform for our newly resized queen bed.  The box springs I adapted last week were a placeholder.  The new platform will allow for better air circulation and a firmer base.  Hopefully, it will also be less “squeaky” when placed into harmonic motion.

As I approached a flock of birds feeding on the grounds of Paul Revere Park, they all took off at the same time making for an interesting foreground to the Zakim Bridge.