I spent a good part of the day organizing my shop today. I would like to prototype an idea I have been thinking about and like to start with everything in order. For some reason a box of old newspaper clippings had found its way into a corner and I came across this snippet as I was moving it out. What a blast from the past. I don’t know what I found more humorous; the amount of hair on my head or the uniformity of dishevelment with the other wrestlers.

Another massive chunk of ice slid off the roof yesterday bringing down the rest of the gutter on the back side of the house. A solid slab standing 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide and 1 foot thick, it shook the entire house as it plummeted onto the deck. Not until the snow melts will we know the full extent of the damage done.

Every so often, I get in the mood to sell items that I do not use enough to justify holding on to them. I view it as a form of recycling and an excuse to spend time in my photography studio making product shots. Pictured here is a DeWalt Impact Driver which was one of a half dozen tools I put up for sale today on Craig’s List. I freely confess to being a tool junky in need of a 12-step intervention of some kind. I currently own five DeWalt cordless drill/drivers (a big 20V hammer drill, a medium-sized 20V drill, a small 12V drill/driver, and two 20V impact drivers; not to mention my assortment of corded and pneumatic drills). Even though each tool is unique in its specialization, it is impossible, even for even me to justify keeping them all. Any time I sell some tools (or photography equipment) I feel entirely justified in using the proceeds to purchase something new. In this case a cordless grinder and cordless oscillating multi-tool.

The Old North Bridge was deserted when I stopped in after dropping Maya off at school this morning. I fought my way through waist high snow to position myself for this photo. Aesthetically speaking it is not particularly strong but as a study in shadows, it is quite interesting indeed (to photographers, at least). See if you can determine where the sun is situated (answer at the end of this post). Last night, high winds proved to be the last straw in bringing down the gutter on the back side of our house. One more spring project to add to a long list of repairs that will be needed to recover from this winter’s extreme snowfall (note the 4 foot high bank which still resides on our deck).

~The sun is coming from behind the photographer whose shadow can be seen on one of the bridge supports. The remaining shadows are created by trees and not by the bridge as might first appear to be the case~

Another couple of inches of snow last night necessitated an early morning outing with my trusty snowblower. As weary as I have grown of this task, I am looking forward to the forecasted storm for later this week. Hopefully it will produce enough snow to establish the all time record snowfall for our area. Having endured the blizzards, I would like, at the very least, a record to show for it. During a few hours of the afternoon, temperatures rose slightly above freezing for a brief respite from the cold.

Maya’s futsal season came to an end this evening on a high note as her team won in decisive fashion against a strong opponent. The coach requested a team photo and I was happy to oblige. As I was switching the settings on my camera from shooting the action to shooting the portrait, I made the image below which I actually find much more interesting.

To celebrate the first day of spring, I decided to give snowshoeing a try today. Jeanine loaned me her gear and I ventured out on a three quarter mile circuit around the inside perimeter of the field behind our house. I was under the misguided impression that snowshoes allow you to remain on top of the snow. This was true to the extent that I did not sink all the way to the bottom of our remaining 30 inch base. Instead, each step would plunge 6 to 10 inches into the powder which made the relatively short trek quite a workout especially considering that I had spent an hour in the gym earlier in the day.

Maya scored a pair of goals in her futsol game today. She has quickly learned the sport and her foot skills improve each week. She is pictured below scoring one of her goals and winning a header.

My nephew, John, and two of his friends from Babson used our kitchen this evening to prepare a traditional Russian dinner. The rest of us were the beneficiaries of this endeavor. The meal, several hours in the making, included beef stroganoff and borscht followed by a Russian cake and cookies. The extent of my involvement was the construction of a meat tenderizer (pictured above) after I refused to offer up one of my normal hammers for the job. Jeanine was consulted often but left all of the work to the kids.

Scottish musician Caitlin McNeill posted an image of a dress on Tumblr with the question, “guys please help me – is this dress white and gold, or blue and black?  Given the virtual explosion of interest that resulted (answer is blue and black, BTW), I thought I would share this famous illustration designed to demonstrate how easily the the human visual system can be fooled. Which is darker? Square A or square B. The answer is that they are both the same color and brightness. Cut two holes in a piece of paper so you can compare the two squares while obscuring the background if you do not believe me.

I received this photo from good friend and mentor Bill Warner, founder of Avid Technology. It was taken at the studios of Boston PBS TV station WGBH with their Senior Director of Production Technology on the right. WGBH-TV produces more than two-thirds of the nationally distributed programs broadcast by PBS including Nova, Frontline, Masterpiece, American Experience, The Victory Garden and This Old House. On a tour of the facility he noticed they were using an ISIS storage server that was my signature project during my Avid days (see flash back below). The WGBH installation can store 1.3 petabytes of information (1 petabyte = 1 million gigabytes = 1 quadrillion bytes). It is extremely satisfying to know that so much of the TV I enjoy is being produced with the aid of products I helped to bring to market.

It has never been clear to me if the HVAC subcontractors who installed the system in our home understood the basic concept of a feedback loop. We have a four zone heating system (first floor, basement, master bedroom, rest of the second floor). The thermostat for the second floor was located in the upstairs hallway where it was influenced by air coming up the open foyer from the first floor rather than the second floor air in the bedrooms (whose doors remain closed for most of the day). Today I moved the second floor thermostat into Maya’s bedroom where it will ensure a closed feedback loop for at least one of the rooms. I believe the other bedrooms will be more comfortable as well.

In 1967, at age four, Jeanine pressed her cute little hands into a plaster of Paris mixture. After it hardened, she applied silver paint to create the keepsake shown here. Jeanine suggested that I photograph it before it got relegated to the attic or basement storage. Amazing that something so fragile has survived for 48 years without damage.

This session of my indoor soccer session came to a close this evening with playoffs. We won our first match by a score of 2-1 but were eliminated in the next round by a score of 2-4. I really need to improve my conditioning and plan to do so before the spring outdoor season begins. It gets harder each year to remain competitive. Playing in an over 40 league with many opponents 16 years my junior does not make the challenge any easier.

Jeanine braved the frigid temperatures for a cross-country ski outing today. She started with her friend Eliza but had to return home for warmer gloves. She continued solo across the field behind our house. Nala has taken immediate advantage of the path she created to venture further from the house than was possible for her before. I drove into Boston to meet with a lawyer who seems like a perfect fit to assist me with the legal details of setting up a new company, one of the options I am exploring at the moment. Maya coaxed me into joining her for a workout at the Thoreau Club and I am hoping this is something we can do more of in the future.

My niece Rachel is in town to visit Babson, one of the colleges she is considering, for a leadership conference. Quite the fashionista she looked the part of a CEO as she left the house for the overnight program.

I spent a good portion of the day clearing an ice dam on the roof which formed while we were away and has resulted in some damage to the ceilings of our master bathroom and breakfast nook. After removing large chunks of ice with a pry bar, I used a butane torch to melt a valley through the remaining ice so that melting snow would have a channel of evacuation.dam

Maya continues to investigate new techniques for rendering photos of her undesirable for publishing on this blog. It is a pointless exercise that has served only to generate a catalog of very funny images. Sleeping over this evening are my sister Alissa and her daughter Rachel (on the right) as well as Maya’s best friend Sarinnagh. While Jeanine and I were in New Orleans, Maya was visiting Nicolai at college in Colorado Springs. By all accounts she had a great time and was well protected (Maya can be quite a cutie when her hand in not plastered to her face) by her brother while socializing on campus.

For the second day in a row we indulged in beignets at the Cafe Beignet and are now prepared to declare them better than those of the world renowned Cafe du Monde. Heresy some will say, but we stand by our findings. The flight back to Boston was uneventful but we were not happy when our car service failed to meet us on arrival. The car had become stuck in the snow, a vivid reminder that we were back in New England. Fortunately, we bumped into friends returning from Mexico and they were able to drive us home.