With the kids all living on their own now, I had surprisingly few photos of them to select among for my favorites of the year.

Today I am looking back at my favorite landscape photos of 2019. May 2020 be as bountiful.

Two days ago a three million dollar home in our community burned to the ground. Located on 13 acres overlooking the Sudbury River, the 120-year-old home was built by descendants of presidents John and John Quincy Adams. Located in an old part of Concord with no fire hydrants, firefighters quickly exhausted the 30,000-gallon cistern supply and had to truck water in from over a mile away allowing the fire to engulf the entire structure. Ironically the Sudbury River is less than 1000 feet away but down a very steep hill. The swimming pool could have provided another 30,000 gallons but was not used for some reason. This afternoon, I flew my drone over to survey the damage. An excavator was already on the scene to begin the cleanup.

I said goodbye to my childhood home for a second time today. The first time was when I left 40 years ago to begin my career at Bell Laboratories in Indianapolis. I was filled with mixed emotions on that day; happy to have graduated to adulthood, sad to be leaving my parents and siblings and the place I grew up. Today I drove to Schenectady, NY to retrieve all remaining items of artistic and/or sentimental value and to leave it ready for the new owners who will take possession next week assuming the closing goes off without a hitch. The house was built in 1908 by Percival Lewin in what is now designated the General Electric Realty Plot Historic Neighborhood (locally known as the “GE Plot”).

The GE Plot is an area of approximately 90 acres just east of Union College. Originally an undeveloped tract owned by the college, it was sold to General Electric at the end of the 19th century to help the college pay off a debt. The company’s executives subdivided it, laid out streets according to a plan (see an updated drawing of the plan made by my mother below) inspired by New York’s Central Park and built houses on the land, with covenants requiring a minimum lot size and house value. This was done to create a neighborhood that would help attract executives and scientists to Schenectady when the company was still in its infancy.

By 1927 approximately a hundred houses had been built for some very notable residents:

• 1297 Wendell Ave. Home to Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a genius in both mathematics and electronics, he did work that earned him the nicknames “Forger of Thunderbolts” and “The Wizard of Schenectady”. Steinmetz’s equation, Steinmetz solids, Steinmetz curves, and Steinmetz equivalent circuit theory are all named after him, as are numerous honors and scholarships, including the IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award, one of the highest technical recognitions given by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers professional society. His home (pictured below), located immediately adjacent to ours was torn down in 1938 and is now Steinmetz Memorial Park.
• 67 Union Avenue. In 1900, the first home built for Edwin W. Rice, a GE executive and president of Schenectady Realty, considered one of the three fathers of General Electric.
• 1155 Avon Road. One of the first all-electric houses in the country when built in 1905.
• 6 Douglas Road. The first all-electric “Gold Medallion” house in the nation in 1901.
• Ernst Alexanderson House, 1132 Adams Road. Alexanderson, a pioneer in radio and television development, held 322 patents. The first television broadcast was received here in 1927. GE used it as a model for such houses
• Ernst Julius Berg House, 1336 Lowell Road. Home of the producer of the first two-way radio program in the U.S.
• William D. Coolidge House, 1480 Lenox Road. Home of the inventor of the modern X-ray tube. He served in his later years as GE’s director of research.
• Albert Hull House, 1435 Lowell Road. Home of the inventor of the magnetron, the later foundation for the development of radar and microwave ovens. He held 94 patents.
• Irving Langmuir House, 1176 Stratford Road. From 1919 until his death in 1957, this was the home of Irving Langmuir, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the first industrial chemist so honored.
• George R. Lunn House, 1299 Stratford Road. Lunn was the first Socialist elected mayor of a city in New York. He later served as lieutenant governor for a term under Alfred E. Smith.
• Chester Rice House, 1161 Lowell Road. One night in the 1930s, Rice, a GE engineer, directed radio beams at nearby vehicles and got them to bounce back, one of the earliest practical demonstrations of radar.

This evening we hosted a two-generation party for high school friends of our children and their parents. It started at 7pm with dinner and continued until 11pm with various games. It did not take long for the kids to migrate down to the basement where the activities included some form of beer pong and darts.

At work, we use a high-speed camera to photograph our metal printing process. At 60,000 frames per second, it is an excellent resource for understanding what is going on. Due to the extremely bright deposition zone (white-hot molten metal), the rest of the image is underexposed so much that it is not visible. To overcome this limitation, I thought I would try using one of my camera strobes to illuminate the entire scene. The idea worked perfectly allowing us to see the contact tip and deposition line for the first time albeit for just a couple of frames.

Christmas morning is the one day each year we get to enjoy Jeanine’s famous popovers. They are a very special treat and once again she made them to perfection. I was in charge of grapefruit preparation and frying of the bacon, two tasks that take more dexterity than knowledge of food. The rest of the morning we continued with our tradition of sequentially taking one item at a time from our respective Christmas stockings. This took well over two hours and netted me a pair of reindeer antlers and a red nose among many other lovely gifts. The opening of Secret Santa gifts was pushed into the afternoon. I drew Maya this year and she received a small shoulder purse, Yeti thermos bottle, and a DMM (digital multimeter) from her father.

It would not be Christmas Eve without Zeppole Balls, a tradition that dates back to my childhood and to my father’s before me. Maya prepared the dough and I was tasked with the frying. The boys, normally night owls, went to bed before we even started and will be lucky if any remain by tomorrow morning. Maya recommended setting up a time-lapse video of the process which can be viewed here. Jeanine’s sister Susan is spending the holiday with us and we will be joined later in the week by her friend, Jean.

Before taking delivery of my Audi e-tron, I moved the EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment; white box in background) to the front left of my parking bay. It had been located at the right rear position for my BMW i3 which had its charging port in that location. Today, I extended the charging cable to a support column in the garage to make it even easier to plug and unplug the car. It is a micro-optimization but will make the daily connection and disconnection process just a little bit faster. I estimate this will shave 40 seconds off my daily commute.

The entire family was home today and made short work of obtaining and decorating our Christmas tree. There were only 4 or 5 trees left at our local farm stand and we were surprised to find such a beautiful tree. Earlier in the day, Maya assisted me with the last task needed to complete a faucet replacement project on our Jacuzzi tub that I started last week. I needed someone small enough to enter the access hole and squirm under the tub to install the small hole cover in the foreground of the photo below. This is the same opening that I stuffed myself into for the faucet replacement work but could not maneuver my way far enough under the tub to finish the job. It is nice to have children in three sizes; small, medium, and large for various different tasks. Kyle was the perfect height to throw the Christmas tree over his shoulder as he carried it into the house while Nico was our go-to guy for high ornament placement.

The picture above represents a major technical milestone for my new company and a significant point of pride for me personally. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Formlabs, I never became deeply involved with the technology. My responsibilities were more focused on team management. At Digital Alloys, I am neck-deep in technology and frequently find myself unable to sleep because my head is bursting with new ideas. To celebrate the achievement or perhaps just because it was Friday evening, members of my team broke out an RC car and racing drone for what appeared to be a game of high-speed cat and mouse.

This week Open Table sent out their annual appeal which is appended below. If you have enjoyed good fortune this year, please consider supporting a cause that makes a dramatic difference in the lives of people in our community. Follow the link to the actual fundraising page. I enjoyed photographing Svetlana and her family for this project and being able to lend my time to something that is so important to Jeanine.

Nicolai shared the news that he will be teaching History at Concord Carlisle High School come January. This is a big increase in responsibility and a major milestone for him. We are all extremely proud of him. He is pictured above practicing classroom discipline or perhaps this is the only photo of him that I could work into this blog posting.

When I decided to leave Formlabs, I gave two months’ notice to facilitate a smooth transition. During that time, my boss allowed me to work at Digital Alloys for two days in exchange for two make up days to be “paid back” after my start date. Today I spent the first of these IOU days back in Somerville on a day featuring relentless snow and sleet. Pictured above is a picture I took back in August when we had just started shipping the Form3 printer. Since then the company has shipped many thousands of printers that have been well received in the market. My day was consumed in back to back meetings and I very much enjoyed spending time with my former teammates. Over the lunch hour, I met with the COO at Superpedstrian and learned of his plans to take a new position in NYC in January. I will truly miss our sporadic lunch dates.