Pictured here on the left is Martin one of the recent additions to the Product Development team at iRobot. He is a tooling engineer based in China and the first person in my department based outside of Bedford, MA. He has been in the US for two weeks to meet the team and to attend Statistical Process Control training. He has a great sense of humor and has quickly endeared himself to the team. Picture with him are his manager Scott and his manager Doug who works for me. All three are hams and happy to play to the camera.

As I began my commute to work this morning, I spotted a mature adult Bald Eagle flying overhead. What a thrill! It was on a path from the Concord River across the Concord Country Club. As luck would have it, I had my 300-800mm zoom lens in the back of my SUV. Unfortunately, by the time I was able to get it out, mount it to a camera body and find something on which to rest this 15 pound bazooka, the eagle was beyond my range. Although I have found and photographed Bald Eagles in the wild, this is the first time one found me, and just a few hundred yards from our home. Had I been a tad faster this photo would be mine rather than an internet download.

My team recently released a new wet floor care robot into production. Despite or perhaps because of its diminutive size this is one of the most complex products I have ever been involved with. Motorized wheels, pumps, clean fluid reservoir, dirty water reservoir, brushes, battery, cliff sensors, bump sensors, anti-spill mechanism, … There is nothing like it on the market today.

Nico can spend hours at a time playing the piano and I never tire of listening to his music. He ceased taking lessons years ago and has no desire to restart. He plays for his own relaxation and pleasure. When we purchased a grand piano more than 15 years ago it was a big expenditure. Looking back, it has been an incredibly worthwhile investment.

Jeanine prepared two Aioli platters for this evening’s Open Table volunteer appreciation dinner. Open Table was founded in 1989 to provide weekly nutritious meals and a food pantry to anyone who wanted them — no questions asked. Their purpose is to address the hunger that exists in our area and to do this in a manner that respects the privacy and dignity of any guests and provides them a few moments of respite from their daily challenges. Jeanine has really enjoyed her service to this organization.

I spent the entire day bringing up this website to potentially replace my existing blog site. Problems with image uploading have persisted there for a week and Google has done nothing to address the issues. It took a few hours to select an appropriate hosting service, a few more to select and learn an appropriate web design program (WordPress), a few more to import my existing blog, a few more to settle on a design layout I liked, and a few more to test with different web browsers. It was 1:30am before I was sufficiently satisfied with this site before going live. Work will continue on the site over the comings weeks but I hope to keep the basic blog operating as it has in the past.

This winter has been one for the record books. Just when we thought it was behind us we got what is hopefully a final reminder that nature defines her own calendar. Fortunately the wet and heavy snow quickly began to melt and it was not necessary to take the snowblower out of summer storage. On the positive side, the wet snow made for beautiful snowscapes as it clung to the trees.

A large group from work gathered at the Beacon Grille to bid farewell to a 14 year veteran of iRobot who played a significant role in many of the company’s most successful products. An extremely bright, high energy and charismatic character with a flare for creative use of language, Chris is leaving us to take up a VP of Engineering role at a smaller local company and will be missed. As a member of my team he was the consummate professional and a pleasure to work with.

A rather one sided indoor soccer game this evening for Maya whose team won by a ten point margin. Team development always reaches a point where the players discover the power of passing and movement off the ball. Once they reach this point it is possible to dominate opponents who have not. Maya plays mostly in defensive roles but enjoyed scoring a goal while assigned to a striker position.

I did not get a chance to post this photo of Nico and his friends from the weekend and thought I’d start the week with it. Relatively warm weather inspired the boys to take Nala out on the large field behind our house and to play a little Frisbee. It has been a long, cold and snowy winter leaving us all with a desire to be outside as the weather improves.

Temperatures were in the mid 30s today and I spent the morning on the soccer pitch in a scrimmage match against Nashoba (one division up from Concord). My team was in fine form and we secured an 8-1 win. I had three assists and a nice goal despite my very poor state of conditioning. I can already feel my chronic patelar tendinitis starting to act up so it remains to be seen how long my season will last.  The fine weather inspired a little nature photography today.

Each year the high school holds a fund raiser featuring a professional hypnotist who brings a group of roughly twenty seniors to the stage and proceeds to hypnotize them. The ensuing antics left Jeanine and I sore from laughter. I must confess an initial degree of skepticism. After watching the enitre show, however, I found myself a believer. It was an entirely entertaining evening and capped a lovely day with Jeanine who I joined in a Zoomba (dance exercise) class earlier in the day.

Maya left for a New Hampshire ski weekend today, the guest of a friend from her soccer team. Jeanine and I were joined by the boys for dinner out at Not Your Average Joes. Kyle and Nico are rarely available on a Friday night and we distinctly enjoyed their company and adult oriented conversation. We are all starting to bemoan the approaching departure of Kyle for college even though it is still many months away. His interests are clearly leaning to business with a keen interest in psychology.

Team members had an opportunity to grade the performance of the product development leadership team in addressing challenges they identified when I first arrived. Shown here is one sheet of seven representing the issues and the grades received (Green=Good Progress, Yellow=Neutral, Red=Needs Improvement). We paused for a nice lunch and enjoyed a cocktail hour at the end of the day.