When I returned from a walking meeting with one of my colleagues today, I found this caterpillar crawling up the back of my neck. After recovering from the surprise, I paused to photograph this future butterfly with the camera on my phone. It is absolutely amazing to me that evolution would produce a set of fake eyes to help intimidate would be predators.

Maya started a four month internship with Kent, Washington based Blue Origin today. She will be designing systems to test and validate the sensors used on their spacecraft. When I spoke to her about her first day, she reported being somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of new things she will be required to learn in order to complete her project. I have total faith she will meet the challenge. She spent the weekend settling into her new living situation which included taking her new roommate to the hospital twice for a severe illness she contracted while driving cross country with her father.

Before leaving for home this morning, I took a few minutes to photograph portraits of Mayela and Stephen’s “children.” Peachy is seven and Banjo is three. The pair are the most delightful dogs you will ever meet. Well behaved, frisky, always ready to play or snuggle.

Earlier in the weekend, Mayela went fishing using Peachy for bait but did not catch anything.

Atop 2,690 foot Goodnow Mountain in the heart of the Adirondacks is the 60 foot tall Aermotor LS-40 tower with 7’x7’ metal cab. It was built by the NY Department of Conservation in 1922 and staffed until 1970 when fire towers were gradually phased out. It offers a spectacular 360 degree panoramic view of the Adirondack range and can be reached on a 4.5 mile roundtrip hike with an ascent of 1,100 feet. Mayela, Stephen, Jeanine and I made the hike after a 2.5 hour car/ferry ride from Vermont to Newcomb, NY.

In addition to the views from the top, there were several interesting views along the trail as well.

This morning Jeanine’s sister, Susan, joined us for a visit to the Burlington Farmer’s Market where we met up with my sister, Mayela, and her husband Stephen.

Stephen is currently doing a stint as a traveling cardiovascular access nurse. Mayela has joined him from North Carolina for the summer. They have rented a quaint water front cottage on Lake Champlain in the town of North Hero. There we spent the night after a day full of exploring, fine food, and a wonderful fire on the beach.

After work, Jeanine and I drove to Burlington, VT to visit with her sister Susan and our friend Jean. We arrived shortly after 10pm and promptly retired. It has been a very long week for both of us and we were happy to be getting away for the extended weekend holiday.

I am attending an in-house Six Sigma Green Belt training class which meets every other Thursday for the entire day. Today we covered process capability and learned about Cp and Cpk indexes. We were asked to create a data set to work from. The instructions were to build a paper plane and to launch it towards a target six feet away. The target was calibrated in distance from the floor in inches. The objective was to hit the 60 inch mark as consistently as our plane would allow, recording 30 attempts to use for our analysis. We were told there were no rules so I opted to make a pneumatically launched space capsule (a blow dart gun by another name). For the Six Sigma folks out there our “aircraft” and launcher produced a Cpk of 1.75 which is an extremely good result. Of course the purpose of the exercise was to gather and crunch the numbers, but it was fun applying a creative solution to the underlying design challenge as well.

Most Formlabs employees (~500+) generally attend our regular Town Hall meetings, either in person at our Twin City facility or by videoconference form around the world. Today’s presentation was more entertaining than usual when my colleague’s dog joined him on stage in an attempt to coax him into a game of fetch.

I am selling one of my camera lenses and a prospective buyer asked to see sample photos from it at each end of the zoom range. It was rather fun selecting my favorite shots to make good on the request. Above is the telephoto example, taken in Cuba. Below is the wide angle example taken on a winter hike to “the Wave” in Arizona.

It is bad enough that I have to avoid no less than three construction zones that are on the most direct path from home to work. Now, I need to take a detour just to pull into the parking lot at work as well. Combined with the back-to-school traffic increase that happens every fall, my commute times are reaching new records. The new Audi has made things a little more tolerable . It is a joy to drive and I look forward each day to the massage function built into the front seats.

I was up with the sun and decided to get an aerial photo of Camp Taconic. Pictured here is the lower portion of the camp which extends two fold to the right where the athletic fields, dining hall, tent city, and remaining camp buildings are located. Jeanine and I opted to sleep in our tent rather than in the cabins. We both had a great night’s sleep after a full day of activities. Our only regret was that we did not bring the kids who would have seriously enjoyed the weekend. On the way back to Concord we stopped to look at a number of properties for sale. At a minimum we need to find a parcel of land for Maya’s tiny house. In the limit, we might consider building a retirement home in the Berkshires.

A Formlabs tradition since inception is Summer Camp. Held this year at Camp Taconic in the Berkshires, it is a weekend family retreat that is filled with activities for everyone. Included here are a few sample photographs with a complete collection to be found here.

I was invited to the home of a colleague last night to enjoy a lamb kabob barbecue and dine with fellow Formlings (official name for Formlabs employees) visiting from our office in Budapest. I met his delightful family including their pet hedgehog. As should be clear from the photo, dad was really the main proponent for adding this little fellow to the family.

This is Nicolai’s first day on the job as Concord Carlisle High School’s Junior Varsity soccer coach. He will be running tryouts for the fall season today. Nine years ago he was on the other side of the whistle hoping to make the JV squad. Below is my post from that day.

Nicolai spent the weekend in tryouts for his high school junior varsity soccer team. There are many kids vying for a small number of remaining openings. For the first time, Nico’s skill and determination may not be enough to compensate for his inability to run as fast as others. Of two things I am sure, however. First, Nico is putting every ounce of his strength into these tryouts. Second, that the decision of his coach will look past his disability and only consider his effectiveness on the field. For many years we struggled to work past small minded officials who could not imagine that Nicolai would be able to play or contribute to the beautiful game. He has since proven to the entire local soccer community that he has game and the question now is no longer one of discrimination or exclusion. Our fingers will remain crossed for him.

Nico did make the squad and went on to demonstrate that he could hold his own and be a real asset to the team.