Jeanine left for a much needed 10-day vacation in France today. She is joining my cousin Heather and her husband Burton for a guided cycling tour. She flew into Bordeaux and will be be biking in and around the towns of Les Eyzies, Cadouin, and St. Cybanet. Regrettably, work obligations prevented me from joining her. My team is putting the final touches on our recently announced next generation 3D printer and there is much work remaining to ensure a smooth launch. I hope to receive and post many photos from Jeanine’s adventure over the coming days.

This group of kids are either very inept paddlers or practicing how to right a capsized canoe. Although spring has arrived, I do not doubt that the water in the Sudbury River is still way too chilly for this type of activity.

This seemed like a rather creative approach for a basketball goal backboard. Probably best not to over run the baseline, however.

I tried a new route for my morning commute only to discover a missing bridge that was a rather important element of the plan. I swear it was there on Google Maps when I checked this morning. I will have to remember to check progress on construction. I would love to get a picture of a crane suspended steel beam being lowered into place while a train is passing below.

It is hard for me to believe that I have been posting daily to this blog for the last fourteen years, a total of 7236 “journal” entires (higher than 365×14=5110 because my early hosting software required separate entries for every photo). It started with the image below of Maya holding something in her hand. I thought it fitting to include another image of Maya holding something for today’s entry. Jeanine and I visited her this morning for Olin Expo where students displayed their recent engineering projects. After having breakfast on campus with her, Maya showed us three of her projects, a phase shift keyed optical transmission channel, a discrete transistor operational amplifier circuit, and a user centered design project for the roller derby.

Assuming an average of 100 words per post and an average of 250 words per page of a book (per google search) this blog is the equivalent of a 2900 page book. I estimate the blog now contains roughly 10,000 photos. If these were placed four to a page that would require an addition 2500 pages. There was a time when I was considering turning this blog into a printed family history book for each of the kids. Doing so at this point would require a 400 page book for each of the fourteen years. I think a big PDF file might make more sense at this stage.

My mom was and still is a beauty. While I am thankful for all of the characteristics my father passed along to me, there is no doubt that I am more genetically similar to my mother. She has the mind of an engineer, the eye of an artist, and a head for business. At 90 years old she goes ballroom dancing regularly (the Tango being her favorite) and can out preform women half her age. It is said that you can pick your friends but not your parents. I feel like I won the lottery when I was born and am thankful for all the gifts I received from my mother.

I invited Jeanine on a mystery date this afternoon. Last week I learned about the opening of the American Heritage Museum in Stow, MA while listening to NPR. Billed as one of the most extraordinary museums of military history in the world it was created after the massive collection of tanks, armored vehicles and military artifacts from the family of Jacques M. Littlefield were donated to the Collings Foundation. The non-profit foundation was created to organize and support “living history” events and the presentation of historical artifacts and content that enable Americans to learn more about their heritage through direct participation. When we arrived at the museum, Jeanine was less than enthusiastic about spending a beautiful spring afternoon looking at tanks and such. Instead we opted for lunch in nearby Hudson and then a short hike in the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. Pictured above is the wood fired oven at the restaurant.

Jeanine and I dined with former colleagues and friends from my iRobot days this evening. Oscar, on the left, heads up manufacturing and supply chain while Christian, on the right, is the COO. We have good friend Rob Shurtleff to thank for the wonderful evening. He sent me a nice note about a positive interaction he had with iRobot Customer Service. I forwarded his note to the CEO who passed it on to Christian which caused him to reach back and suggest the gathering. It took a couple of months to coordinate busy schedules but was well worth the wait.

I managed a brief tour of our gardens this evening. Brilliant colors can be found everywhere and would have been even more potent had the sun not been obscured by clouds.

With the sun setting later and later each day, I had time after work to travel to Stow, a nearby town, for some fresh landscapes. Pictured above is the Assabet Reservoir. Below is Elizabeth Brook located next to the Butternut Farm golf course.

For the last several years, Formlabs has presented Digital Factory, a conference for business leaders interested in the future of manufacturing. It was held in the Seaport District at the Raymond L. Flynn Black Falcon Cruise Terminal. Jeff Immelt (on the right below), former CEO and Chairman of General Electric, current Executive Chairman of AthenaHealth, and a member of Formlabs Board of Directors led the conference which included presentations by a veritable Who’s Who of executives in the field of advanced manufacturing. I attended for the entire day listening to various presentations and it was a nice departure from my daily routine at the office.

I arrived home just a few minutes late to get a picture of our house in golden light. Over the coming days I hope to get a nice “spring in bloom” photo of the house to use in our marketing materials when we list the house for sale later this year or early next.

About 80% of the area covered by water in the picture above is normally dry land. Extensive rains over the past several weeks have swollen all of our local rivers. The river is normally about three times the width of the small archway of the bridge.

In soccer action this morning my team beat Hopkinton by a margin of 6:1. My injured hamstring had sufficiently recovered to allow me to play at 90% intensity. Unfortunately I missed a shot I should have made which in the tradition of our team will cost me beer duty for a future game. The win moved us into first place in our leagues standings with roughly half the season completed. We have scored 21 goals in the last five games and given up only one.

For the first time ever, Nicolai competed in a rock climbing competition today placing first in the Adaptive Adult Male classification. He got a perfect score on each of his three climbs. He is pictured above on his second climb which looked to be the most challenging for him. Kyle and I were there to support him and we had a chance to talk a little more about the McGraw-Hill / Cengage merger of equals which was announced earlier this week. It certainly sounds like this integration, which will be led by Cengage’s current CEO, will bode well for Kyle. It makes me very proud that he would spend part of his weekend after an exhausting work week to show up for his brother.