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Saturday, July 07, 2012
July 4Th Parade photoblog!!
As is our tradition, we attended the town of Chelmsford Independence Day parade In attendnce was the entire Anganes crowd including Bequa, we had most all of the locally located Cromptons. (You can click on the photos for enlarged versions!)We even had a couple of Frys: The parade is preceded by a 2 mile road race and we almost always have someone from the extended family running in it. Though Mrs A. tried to pull Rosie Ruiz move and sneak in near the end, but she did not fool anyone: This year we had Chaz and Andrew legitimately representing the clan. As a sort of "Where's Waldo" thing, see if you can pick Drew out of the crowd: I only ever seem to catch Chaz as he is going away. Perhaps he is just too fast. But they both finished with respectable times and returned laden with free fruit and snacks and to a welcoming party staffed by their fan club: Even Elias was there, and was qucilky scooped by you-know-who: As parades generally are, this one was fun and included all sorts of cool stuff. There was the usual marching bands, cars, and fire engines. We had a clown, note Mrs. A averting her eyes: We even had Mr T: No idea why these guys agreed to show up, but those beaver fur hats are awesome: And someday, I want to drive a cake. I'm not sure though, why we had Adolph Hitler in the parade: Fortunately, these guys kept him on the run: I like this photo because of course I like anything with tracks, and anything with a .50 caliber machine gun on it, much less four of them. They were firing blanks out of the quad-50 as well. Cool. Extra cool points are awarded because we also learned later that the vet standing up in the cab of that halftrack was a neighbor to Mrs. A and the dad of a childhood friend of hers.I suspect that the last time he rode on something like this he was in Europe some place. And there were people shooting at him, lots of them. Lots of guys like him did not get to come home. These guys who were actually there are getting fewer and further between, and it is easy to forget what went on back then and what these men endured. They often fought in conditions that are unimaginable to us. It was not unusual to lose hundreds or sometimes thousands of men in a single days fighting. Think about that for a few minutes. Thousands. Those of us who did not live through that era are simply not capable of understanding loss and sacrifice on that scale, I think. Heroes indeed. And speaking of heroes, we of course had some of our modern day warriors represented. This HUMVEE was rolling along in the parade: They rolled to a stop, and the soldier in the drivers seat stopped the truck and jumped out. He ran up to Ray, said something to him, shook his hand, and handed him a small object that turned out to be a dog tag style medallion commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the US Army Reserves. It says "Army Reserve Warrior" on one side. I caught this photo trying to get an action shot of this unexpected event. And while it is a mildly interesting abstract photo composition of Ray and Babo I suppose, I realized that my lens was zoomed way out: Once I caught on that my lens was set all wrong, I zoomed in and blindly snapped a picture and caught this by sheer dumb luck: Whoever you are sir, you are a credit to our military and our country. We owe much to these guys. They are the reason we can enjoy parades and sleep securely at night. Ray is still wearing it around his neck.
thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 3:33 PM
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Sunday, June 10, 2012
New era
As most here know, I recently changed jobs. This is not something that I generally do too often, having been at my last job for just about 14 years. It was a job that I liked and while not the highest paying place in the market, it was a nice place to work, had great benefits, provided well for my family and suited me well. Not a bad run. It is interesting in a way how much of ourselves we wrap up in what we do for a living. While maybe you should not do that, it seems inevitable given the amount of time we all spend at whatever we define as "work." The place I left was a fascinating place, really, before the new owners messed it up with some pretty ill-advised business decisions. When I hired on there it was a smallish somewhat quirky company that was growing rapidly, riding the beginnings of the wave of the 1990's telecommunication boom. I was part of a small group within the company that was responsible for designing and building all of the equipment and infrastructure that the company used to produce our end product. We made "thin film optical filters" which is a fancy way of saying that we put layers of stuff on bits of glass. Such filters are deceptivly ordinary looking. While they did not look like much, they were often coated using million+ dollar machines that could deposit precisely controlled layers of material only a few molecules thick.We could take a 50 dollar glass plate and make it into something we could sell for $15,000 dollars. Amazing stuff. One guy there described us all as "modern day alchemists." And it was an exciting time to be there, rapid growth, tons of work to do, deadlines, long hours and a million problems to solve. The group I worked in was in interesting collection of guys. At the peak there were about 15 in all, with an impressive assortment of personalities and skill sets. All were problem-solvers by nature. There were college graduates, guys who barely finished high school, stoners, ex-druggies and a hippie or two. But all were unbelievably clever, creative and highly driven. They possessed talents that relatively few people can understand or even appreciate. As a team, we helped to more than triple the size of the company in just a few years, making it the largest privately held company of its type in the world at the time. Like I said, exciting times. All of these guys clearly fell to the alpha-male end of the spectrum, no shrinking violets or pacifists. Every one capable of instantly switching to "obnoxious jerk" mode at a moments notice (well, except for me, I'm always nice) sometimes for no apparent reason. These were people who made stuff happen. Many group decisions were arrived at by yelling, tool throwing, name calling, and fist pounding. Threats were very common. A few times some of guys all but came to blows. We somewhat marched to a different drummer, which annoyed the management, but the jobs always got done and done well so we tended to get left to our own devices. Most of what we built is still there and still working. One time one of the guys brought in a gas grill so we could have BBQ lunches on the roof of the building when the weather was nice. Realizing that he had forgotten to bring a spatula to flip burgers after putting them on the grill, two guys ran off to the machine shop scrap bin and returned with a nicely fabricated, welded up, all stainless steel burger flipper. I wish I had a picture of it, it had a distinctly cool Klingon warrior weapon style to it. All fabbed up before the burgers burned. At one point owner hired a new chief operating officer for the company, a Harvard MBA and former VP at Goldman-Sachs. This guy wanted to meet with all of the groups in the company to get to know folks and how things generally worked. He said he liked to hold "lunch meetings" as the informal atmosphere encouraged dialogue. So we put on a BBQ and had him climb through the hatch onto the roof to have lunch with us, which to his credit, he did. While he never did quite "get" us as a group, he did seem to always leave us alone to do what we needed to do. We were never quite sure if he respected our skills or was just afraid of us, but the relationship worked well enough. I do miss that crew and rush of the job there. Things had calmed down considerably as time went on of course, but that was likely true of all of us as well. A few of these guys I consider real friends, as differentiated from friends-from-work, people whose opinions I sought and respected. I can of course keep in touch with them, which so easy in the connected world we now all live in. Interesting that we all made some miniscule contribution to building that world. But I suppose I can't help but miss the day-to-day, hour-by-hour interaction that had gotten so well honed over those years. It'd be hard not to.
thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 4:47 PM
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Thursday, January 12, 2012
Big decisions
I have not posted here for way too long, so I thought I would share a big upcoming decision in my existence for some input from the vast Fetafilter audience. The background story: Raymond finally wore his computer mouse out slaying thousands of computer generated foes of all sorts. As he could not be without a computer for much more than a few minutes before turning into a jellyfish, I gave him the mouse from my desktop compy. It's a reasonably nice if somewhat pedestrian Microsoft wireless optical mouse with back buttons and side scroll. Ray likes it. That of course left me with no mouse, so I dug up an old Logitech MarbleMouse (TM) trackball that I had and put it on my desktop computer. Now don't get me wrong, I like the MarbleMouse quite a lot and used it for years. It has lots to recommend it. However I now often tend to use my desktop computer for CAD type stuff, and find a trackball a bit tedious and limiting for my style of work. So now I am faced with choosing a new mouse for my computer. This is a big deal. I am sort of particular about computer mice and have had lots of them. On my laptop I use a Logitech wireless Anywhere Vx mouse with Laser Darkfield technology. I have grown to consider this the current pinnacle of mouse development. Awesome tracking, even on a clear glass surface, thanks to the Laser Darkfield technology. Great (selectable!)feel to the scroll wheel and a decent, thought not overdone, number of assignable auxiliary buttons. The battery life is very long and you can turn it off by closing a little door on the bottom that covers the laser window. It has a nice solid feel and is well constructed. Add in the tiny USB receiver and this is a winner. By far the nicest mouse I've ever had. A tad pricey but worth every cent. Sort of sleek looking to boot. So the obvious thing would be to just get another Anywhere Vx with Laser Darkfield technology and put that on my desktop. And that was what I was initially thinking to do. Then I get this email from Logitech. It is offering me the chance pre-order the new logitech Cube(TM) portable mouse/presenter mouse. More about it here: CUBE MOUSE!!! Hmmm, small lightweight, rechargeable, touch scroll and lift it off the table and it becomes a wireless presenter for controlling power points and the like. This is most interesting. I could get one of those for my laptop and transfer my current Anywhere Vx with Laser Darkfield technology to my desktop. This looks so cool. But it this what I actually want? I don't know! What to do? Such a conundrum. I am a bit hesitant to order without actually handling it, but they DO offer a money-back, no questions asked guarantee. The smallness is a bit of a concern as my hands are not real small. But the new-and-coolness, along with the clever multi-functionality sort of call out to me. Oh how to decide?
thus voiced The A, Mistah @ 10:28 PM
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Shakespeare- Macbeth, Chaz Style
Homeschooling is a bit different when the college students are on winter break...
thus voiced Mrs A @ 1:28 PM
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Saturday, December 24, 2011
Καλά Χριστούγεννα
Merry Christmas.
thus voiced Mrs A @ 9:27 AM
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Saturday, December 17, 2011
Trip to the Higgins Armory
A hidden treasure in central Massachusetts is the Higgins Armory. We've made a few trips to the museum and renewed our membership again today. They have renovated a room into interactive space for kids. The boys tried out their strength at archery. This is only one of numerous stained glass windows. This one depicted "David slaying eight-hundred". The highlight of my day was a gingerbread castle competition. After I get my photos off of Alan's camera, I'll post some of those. All these pictures were taken from my iTouch so the quality is poor.
thus voiced Mrs A @ 8:40 PM
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Saturday, December 10, 2011
Decorating for Christmas

thus voiced Mrs A @ 9:44 AM
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Thursday, December 08, 2011
Blogging is now my Job
I was recently selected to be a blogger for Lowell General Hospital in conjunction with the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. I have just started this fall and am finding it fun and interesting. I have met some new moms in the area and have made some new friends on Facebook. I receive a stipend which isn't bad either (everyone knows I haven't earned a paycheck since the early 90's). Here's the blog- please check it out and don't be afraid to comment. We're trying to get things rolling and the public interested! Merrimack Valley Moms
thus voiced Mrs A @ 12:22 PM
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Monday, December 05, 2011
Indian Summer
It was too nice out to stay indoors. Teds and I headed to Veteran's Park. The day was 65 degrees and spectacular. My poor Black-eyed Susans are confused. They think it's time to bloom...
thus voiced Mrs A @ 2:54 PM
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
Thanksgiving Turkey 2011

thus voiced Mrs A @ 10:30 PM
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

I just took all the pictures off of my memory card in my camera. Teddy has been using it for the past few weeks creating Lego Bionicle videos that he wants to post on YouTube and become famous by. I haven't taken much notice as to what I took off the cards - 4 gigs each time and I've done it four times (that's 16 gigs of hard drive space GONE on my computer), but this morning I noticed this gem that Teddy took. I know my kids always looked like this; somewhat disheveled, oddly matched outfit, and toting the most ragged of stuffed animals, but I didn't think it would pass down to the next generation! We don't call Amelia "The Ham" for nothing.
thus voiced Mrs A @ 8:53 AM
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Monday, November 21, 2011

I just realized, thirty years ago today Alan put an engagement ring on my finger.
thus voiced Mrs A @ 9:59 PM
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Wood pile
Amelia scrambled to the wood pile and said, "Say cheese, Daddy, say cheese!". She wanted Mark to take her picture. Mark captured this wonderful picture. In case anyone is wondering, that pile is two cords of wood, which will be added to the three already in the wood shed. Winter, you don't scare us!
thus voiced Mrs A @ 7:36 AM
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Sunday, November 13, 2011
Amelia Stays at Yiayia's House
In years past, PlayDoh was the bane of my existence. This week I am enjoying tiny lumps of hardened blue Playdoh scattered around the house by Amelia. It's different being the yiayia'. When Amelia insisted on using the plastic utensils that she had been cutting up Playdoh with to eat her lunch, I said,"okay!". It's different being the yiayia'.
thus voiced Mrs A @ 8:15 AM
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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Elias Carroll Van Der Hyde Born 11/09/11 at 10:45 am 9 lbs. 9 oz. 22" A miracle blessing.
thus voiced Mrs A @ 10:23 AM
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