A storm this evening left vegetation covered in thick ice at higher elevations.

At work, our 3D metal printers require an inert atmosphere in order to prevent oxidation. This is achieved by filling our hermetically sealed printing chamber with argon gas. We use so much of it that we have a large tank behind our facility which is replenished every time it runs low. This evening, I had a chance to watch as the “argon man” refilled the tank within the foggy mist created by the process.

I recently depleted my supply of epoxy hardener and resin while completing a project for work. The replacements I ordered online arrived in a partially crushed condition. Needless to say, I was not too pleased with this situation and have contacted the company which shipped them to me. Based on these photos, they have agreed to a partial refund.

Also discovered in my mother’s photography collection is this picture of my aunt Barbara, the second wife of my father’s brother, Ernie. The two also enjoyed a professional relationship as Barbara and Ernie, a musical duet who produced an album of the same name. My uncle was a childhood friend of and occasional guitarist for Tony Bennett who sang at his funeral. He played on numerous albums, most notably for Harry Belafonte.

My grandmother on my mother’s side was a shrewd businesswoman. Born in Ecuador, she started a transportation business with a single bus and eventually grew it into a small fleet. She then sold the buses to invest in real estate, starting with one apartment building and eventually purchased more. She then sold these to finance the move of the family to the United States where she started again with a single apartment building. There is little doubt that my business sense comes from my Abuelita. I found this picture of her in my mother’s collection.

Two is my favorite number, no doubt in part due to my training in logic design whose language of expression is binary numbers. Today, therefore, represents an unusually pleasing date for me. I assisted Jeanine on her mission to clean out the freezer by eating long ago purchased frozen pancakes for breakfast. This pushed my standard weekend fried eggs to the lunch slot and the day ended with chili, a SuperBowl Sunday standard. I spent the rest of the day organizing my shop and office with a small excursion to get my car washed and find a remotely interesting photo given the dreary grey sky.

This morning I took Jeanine to the MIT Museum for mystery date night despite the incorrect time of day. Despite working a few blocks away while at Superpedestrian, I never had an opportunity to visit. Featured for the next few months is an exhibit chronicling the history of the Polaroid camera from both the technical and artistic perspectives. We both enjoyed the visit and thought that Maya would be really interested as well. Later we enjoyed grilled cheese sandwiches at Roxy’s.

Less than two weeks after installing our new Okuma CNC lathe at work, our machinist turned out a newly designed contact tip for our printer. The lathe allows us to hold the tolerances needed to refine our printing process and to make subtle adjustments to the geometry with turnaround time measured in minutes rather than weeks. We immediately put the new contact tip into use and it performed perfectly.

Digital Alloys is located in a rather developed part of Burlington. Even so, the Vine Brook Wellfields can be found less than a half-mile from the office. My current morning routine involves arriving at the office at about 6:30 AM and setting off on a 2.5-mile round trip walk to get breakfast. That walk takes me past Vine Brook which I paused this morning to photograph.

We received this photo of Maya in a text with no explanation. She appears to be inside a large toroidal shaped beach ball and to have lost one leg. We suspect this has something to do with her term abroad orientation.

An image of me and my mom that I have never seen before. It was one of many that I discovered after digitizing negatives from my mother’s photography collection.

Maya let us know that she arrived in Amsterdam safely with a message that included this photo and a hypothesis that the Dutch must be very tall people.

Maya left today for Amsterdam where she will spend the next four months studying on a term abroad. Jeanine organized a family send-off which took place at Time Out. There, we were joined by cousin John Quinn and enjoyed delightful food, procured from no less than six of the more than a dozen food establishments housed within. In front of the food court was an ice rink (featuring one foxy skater) and an antique 1960 International Metro Short Van converted into a food truck. Maya requested that special notice be given to her packing efficiency given the 1/3 of a year stay.

Earlier this week I started scanning film negatives that were part of the collection of photographs that I recently retrieved from my mother’s home in advance of its sale. Had I completed the task using my flatbed scanner, it would have taken me weeks to get through the collection. Instead, I purchase a $20 LED light table and placed my camera with a macro lens on my camera stand. I used heavy tools from my shop to hold down the curled edges of the film. I thought about using a glass plate for this but then remembered how a prism works. Using this technique, I was able to plow through several hundred negatives in about 6 hours. Expect to see some newly discovered photos over the coming days.