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New Year’s eve this year was courtesy of Tina’s brother Bryan, who managed to get us tickets to the party at the Adams Mark hotel in Dallas. However, we did have a bit of a pre-party party at my place. I’ve posted the photos that are fit for general consumption . Also, I think these prove we all clean up rather nicely.

The cast of characters:

Jim Marlow (yours truly)
Ross Leshikar (my brother – in from Connecticut)
Tina Ruby (in from DC)
John Chamberlain (yep – eeldrop showed)
Elizabeth Chamberlain (and his better half)
Bryan Ruby (Tina’s brother – the one with the tickets)
Misha Ruby (Bryan’s wife)

I also discovered something – for some reason none of us are capable of having our pictures taken without making a funny face – none of us! I’m not sure what’s up with that. I think we all had a good time, however – and it’s nice to ring in the new year with your close friends

So, without further ado, I present New Year’s Eve 2002 (and good riddance to last year – it was a sorry SOB).

Pre-Party Party

The party starts at Chez Marlow – from left to right it’s Misha, Elizabeth and Tina.

Isn’t that a stylin’ tree in the background? Notice the bubble lights? I wanted an aluminum one, but they are made of Zaphod’s favorite food – basically tinsel.

And yes, that is a laptop screen in the lower-right part of the screen. I’m geeky enough to take my laptop to a party!

Pre-Party Party

Tina, Ross and Zaphod (the brown furry lump on the back of the chair on the right side of the picture). Ross, you really look glum here – my bartending can’t be that bad…

Pre-Party Party

More of Tina and Ross – Ross, you are saying something profound, right?

John and Elizabeth

John and Elizabeth at dinner.

What? Me? Worried???

This would be really cute except that John looks slightly startled / worried.

Trouble – Right Here in Big D

Elizabeth and Tina. This has “trouble” written all over it.

Stylin’ and Profilin’

Ross. Doesn’t he look spiffy?

Now that’s an “icky face”!

Tina and Jim. Well, at least one of us looks normal here…

Sleepy, sleepy

Jim and Ross. Ross, are you dozing off at this point?

Aaaaaaahhhhh!

John, that is just plain disturbing.

Nice Hats!

Ok – now we are getting into the Post Midnight stuff…

Tina and Jim – both looking mostly normal. Unfortunately we are missing my lovely gold hat to match the tiara.

Cheers!

Tina and Elizabeth.

More Hats!

Tina and Jim – there’s my hat!

Notice in the following photos – the hat brings out the silly expressions even more

The Three Stooges!

John, Jim and Ross.

Yep, we’re all normal – I swear!

Aaaawwww….

Misha and Bryan – surprisingly normal!

Finally – a respectable shot!

John and Elizabeth

That’s All, Folks…

Bryan, Ross (that sneak) and Tina.

Well, that’s it for New Year’s Eve 2002 – the party went on for another 4 hours but fortunately we don’t have photos of that.

Have a Happy New Year!

Jim

Spent the day skiing at Wachusset Mountain in Massachusetts. Much smaller than Mount Snow, but still nice. Didn’t take any pictures of the ski slopes because I suspected I might fall down a few times and didn’t want want a camera shaped hole in my ribs.

My suspicions were right – did a nice face-plant on the second run. However, I did take a couple of shots on the way home…

Funky Rock

Found an interesting rock on the side of the road – in the middle of some construction. The rock has something painted on it in bright orange paint…

Scenic Outlook

Yep – that’s right – it’s the “Scenic Vista” rock. Must have been painted by a construction worker with a sense of humor.

The view is not, by the way, even remotely “scenic.”

Well, that’s it for the day – I’ll try to find something tomorrow that’s a tad bit more interesting.

Today Ross and I are going to Boston with two goals in mind:

- Find the Science Museum
- Not get lost

We are men of lofty ambitions!

Boston Traffic

However, sitting in Boston traffic also allows one to take pictures of Boston skylines – if one is so inclined. Obviously, I was.

Merry Prehistoric Christmas!

The museum was actually kind of a bust – not as good as the one in Chicago. However, it was a good way to kill some time. This is one of the first sights I found – a life-sized dinosaur (don’t ask what brand – I don’t know) wearing a scarf. Kinda funny, in a twisted sort of way…

The Power!!!

The one really cool thing that they had was an electric show – featuring the two Van de Graff generators shown above. I’d tweak the photo to raise the light levels, but this is pretty much what you saw when you entered the room…

And no “balls” jokes from any of you sick puppies

A Shocking Job (ooooh)

Here’s the nut case who did the presentation. Actually, he seemed fine, but what else can you say about somebody who plays with that much voltage?

Zzzzzzzaaaaapppp

Gotta love things getting zapped. That Tesla coil in the background is about 10 feet high and a good 2.5 feet in diameter. And the spark is about 4 feet long. Now that’s some power!

Let’s Play “Fry The Museum Employee”

And our illustrious presenter demonstrating the safety of his “bird cage”. There are many good reasons why he’s not getting zapped – and if you send my brother an e-mail he will tell you – I sure can’t.

Where’s Ben Franklin?

A kite getting zapped… (it was from an earlier part of the presentation on the reasons why Ben Franklin might not have performed the “kite experiment”).

Can you say “Scuzzy”?

For you geeks, a giant SCSI card. It’s about 6 feet long!

Fake Ficus

The obligatory fake plant. I have know idea why it was stuck in the corner of a dark exhibit on electricity, nor do I know why the label on the pot was not removed (the label says “museum of science”). In fact, this has to be one of the most fake-looking ficus trees I’ve ever seen.

Hard Core

The core memory stack of the Whirlwind 1 computer. This doesn’t exactly hold a lot of information – a whopping 16 kilobytes to be exact. However, the computer used two of these 6-foot-high memory modules.

I just love old computer technology – it’s so, well, approachable. It would also hurt like hell if it fell on you – something you can’t exactly say about much of today’s technology.

Hard Core – Close Up!

And here is one of the memory planes. This is actually quite big – maybe 10 inches square for the framwork holding the core plane. I actually have a couple of planes of core memory that I bought on eBay, but they are newer and quite a bit smaller. In fact, you can’t really even see the “donuts” like you can on this one.

Aren’t you glad you know this? I can give you a longer lecture if you want – just buy me a beer and stand back

UNIVAC

More old computers – here’s the control console of a UNIVAC. Note tht this is just the console – the computer itself filled up another room.

A note on the display explained that the computer generated a lot of heat and had to be refrigerated (one problem we haven’t really escaped). The programmers quickly discovered that the refrigeration system also did a wonderful job of cooling lunches, cokes and beer. Would you have expected less from a bunch of geeks?

It’s All Kinetics

A very cool kinetic sculpture in the lobby of the museum. What you can’t see is that this is a collection of mechanical bits with balls moving through it – turning things, bouncing off of other things, and generally making a pretty good racket. I need one of these for my living room.

Monkeys

This was some kind of experiment involving monkeys – funky monkeys from the looks of this one. I have no idea what this was supposed to be about as I read the notes and then promptly forgot what I read (no comments anybody). It’s a cool looking monkey, though.

Steam Engine

Hah – you just thought you would escape without a picture of a steam engine. However, I’m damn good at finding these – this one even works! Unfortunately, they weren’t running it when I took this shot, but it was quite obvious (tools, oil, steam connections, general greasiness) that this thing really does work. Now if they would just let me at the boiler…

Ewww – Math!

Cool exhibit, but it made my head hurt a bit – and brought back some rather bad memories of Calculus (ugh!).

Boston Skyline

And, finally, a couple cool shots of the Boston skyline. Click on the image for a more detailed view.

Boston Skyline

Last shot of Boston.

Well, there probably won’t be many shots tomorrow – I’m going skiing again.

There wasn’t much planned for today – recover from skiing, eat a good seafood lunch and then go see The Two Towers. Lunch was quite tasty (The Fisherman Restaurant in Noank, CT is highly recommended) and the movie was great (go see it – well worth the money).

I took just a few pictures…

New Photo

Continuing the theme from earlier trips, here is a gen-u-ine Connecticut Traffic Jam!

More Police (And I don’t mean the band)

And here is the obligatory shot of the Police! (Heidi now thinks I’m really strange – as if she didn’t know previously).

Notice the relative lack of markings on the cop car – he’s apparently in semi-stealth mode.

Bitchin’ Camaro

And, finally, the apparent cause of the traffic jam. Yes, all we found was a single Camaro parked at the side of the road with the hood up.

Merry Carwash

And, finally, this shot of a gull sitting on top of a pickup truck. We were waiting for Heidi to drop off something for her boss and were just sitting in a parking lot. All of a sudden this really big gull came circling in and landed on the truck. He sat there for a few minutes, didn’t even leave a “deposit” (we were betting on whether or not he would) and then took off. Boring, yet somehow interesting at the same time.

Well, that’s it for the day. There won’t be many pictures for Christmas, either, so you’ll have to wait for a day or two.

MerryChristmas!

Jim

Spent today skiing at Mount Snow in Vermont. This prompted a number of observations:

1. I knew that there was skiing in the Northeast, but I never knew the slopes were so, well, good. It may not be a match for Vail, Aspen or Telluride, but Mount Snow gave Breckenfridge a run for it’s money!
2. I also didn’t realize you could get enough snow at 3500 feet to make it worth skiing. Ross told me that the slop was at “around 3200 feet” but I thought maybe he meant meters. He didn’t!
3. At 3500 feet you don’t worry about oxygen deprivation, altitude sickness or all of those other things that high elevations bring.
4. Skiing without running out of breath is quite a novel concept, but one that I enjoyed.
5. Your car isn’t gutless either – you can do important things like burn rubber in the ski slope parking lot!
6. And, finally, the cost of the lift tickets has absolutely no correlation to the altitude of the slope – we still got hosed!

All in all, however, I would recommend Mount Snow if you are up in the New England area – the skiing is better than Ruidoso, it’s easy to get to and I had a great time. Good call, Ross!

Oh – one other thing. The pictures below were taken by all three of us – with two different cameras. I’ll give credit where credit is due.

Schweet!

I’m taking serious poetic license here – this shot was actually taken 2/3 of the way through the day. However, I do want to gloat a bit about the parking space we scored. You see, the big white whale of a Buick (aka The Barge) in the middle of the photo is my rental car. And just beyond it is one of the main ski lifts, as well as a bit of the main lodge off to the left.

How’s that for scoring a parking place!

Yep – Car and Skiiers in the Same Photo!

The guy waving his arms in in the middle of the photo is my brother, Ross…

Ross

He looks pretty respectable here.

Ross and Jim (