At my request, Maya shared this photo which I find quite humorous. She is pictured here carrying a “crash pad” to an outdoor rock climbing location. She left for California today where she will be doing some climbing during the coming week while on spring break. I appreciate it when she takes the appropriate safety precautions while she pursues her passions.

At Nicolai’s invitation, we gathered at his apartment this afternoon for a send-off party. He leaves for Mexico tomorrow morning with the hopes of helping the US qualify for the Amputee Soccer World Cup. Maya prepared a mushroom/tofu/egg drop soup and pan-fried potstickers. Jeanine did a Thai chicken dish. After the meal, we walked to nearby Davis Square for bubble tea and ice cream desserts. Maya leaves for a spring break vacation in California tomorrow and I will follow Nico to Mexico on Tuesday.

I spent the better part of the day working with Kyle on his basement renovation project. Today we focused on framing. The future kitchen area posed the greatest challenge as we had to work around existing plumbing and drain lines. Almost every stud required special treatment and took much longer than building a typical wall. The results, however, were very satisfying and you can almost see the kitchen layout starting to take shape. Kyle has been a terrific apprentice and I would venture to say that he has graduated to an entry-level journeyman. He certainly looks the part with his tool belt and chop saw. We enjoyed delicious roast sandwiches during an extended lunch run to Mikey’s Famous Roastbeef. As we were wrapping up for the day, Kyle observed that we could expand the size of the new living room considerably by shrinking the mechanical room which will be possible with the new much more compact equipment.

Maya shared this photo of herself with all of her Olin roommates. It appears she may have lured them in with the treats she is holding in her hands. From all reports, this has been a fantastic set of people to live with. On our last visit, Maya described how they worked as a team to do all of the household chores, treating it as a well-run engineering project. As much as she has enjoyed her college years, I get the sense she is really looking forward to starting the next chapter of her life.

Ever since my recently purchased Apple Macbook Pro arrived, the “A” key has been finicky. Press anywhere but the upper left-hand corner of the key and all was fine. Hitting that particular spot, however, would result in a missed keystroke. When your name contains four “A”s, five if you count my middle name, it becomes a hassle quickly. This morning, I took my computer to the Apple Store in the Natick Mall to have the issue addressed. I was in and out in 10 minutes and am happy to report that all is AAAAAA OK now. This is probably my first time in a shopping mall since the onset of the pandemic and I was shocked to see how few people were out and about. Perhaps it was just too early in the day (11:30 am). The lack of crowds did make it easy to get this shot of a “Celebration of Spring” exhibit. I was less interested in the display than the interplay of vertical and diagonal lines and shadows.

After Maya stuck her entire nose into this tulip yesterday, I decided to do some investigation for myself. I choose, however, to use a camera rather than my snoot. Here are some interesting facts about tulips that you probably did not know. At one point in history, tulips were the most expensive flower. In fact, in the 1600s the flowers were more valuable than most people’s homes, and cost almost 10 times what an average working-class man earned in a year. Tulips are known for their bold colors and beautiful shape, and most varieties are indeed almost perfectly symmetrical. The blooms have three petals and three sepals, but since the sepals are almost the same size and shape as the petals, tulips appear to have six petals to a bulb. Like many other flowers, tulips are edible! In fact, during World War II, tulips and tulip breads were often eaten by those who couldn’t afford other foods. The flowers can be used to replace onions in many recipes and are even used to make wine. Perhaps Maya was simply sizing up a tulip for her next recipe.

The kids joined us for dinner this evening for the second time in as many days. We enjoyed a wonderful meal prepared by Maya as head chef, with Susan as chief chopper, and me as sous-chopper and dishwasher. The centerpiece in our kitchen at the moment is a lovely arrangement of tulips that Susan gifted to us. After dinner, Maya decided to take a big sniff and stuck her entire nose into one of the flowers for the full experience. I asked her to do it again once I had my camera at the ready.

I spent several hours today studying photographs of power poles. I am working with a client to help improve a robot used to crawl along a live conductor while helically wrapping it with a fiber optic cable. The autonomous robot will significantly reduce the cost of expanding internet access, especially in remote areas of the world. Crawling along the power line is the easy part. Traversing the insulators at each pole is the tricky bit. Just when I have imagined a morphology that I believe will address the challenge, I come across a new insulator arrangement that cannot be traversed. I am nothing if relentless and will continue to iterate on design concepts until I have something better than the existing implementation.

Each of the teams attending the Amputee Soccer World Qualifier tournament in Mexico has been asked to prepare a short video to be played during the opening ceremony. Nicolai was appointed by the team to create the USA submission. Each spokesperson needed to respond to four questions submitted by the organizing committee. We shot the content in about an hour and I spent several more finishing the edits. It is not a work of art, but it meets the criteria and will be delivered in time for the deadline tonight.

Jeanine and Susan, her sister visiting from Vermont, went into Boston this evening to attend an Orchid Exhibition at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden. This year, the annual event featured 1,400 orchids and the theme was Prismatic. “Prisms capture light, which depending on the type of prism, separate visible light into spectral colors, as you see in rainbows. Plants, including orchids, utilize the energy of light for photosynthesis, which helps create the beautiful blooms.” I had originally planned to join them but got tied up at Kyle’s house. He and I spent the day replacing most of the water lines and some of the drains in his house. When it was time to leave for the show, we had not yet restored water service to the house and I did not feel comfortable leaving until we did. The photo above is one of many that Jeanine took at the show.

Maya shared this photo of the assembly line used to prepare enough grilled cheese sandwiches to feed a small army. For reasons that are still unclear to me even after a full explanation, these and about a hundred more were passed out by Maya and her floormates at an Olin party.

Nicolai shared some photos of his trip to Los Angeles last week. He traveled there to attend training with select members of the USA National Amputee Soccer Team in preparation for the World Cup Qualifiers to be held in Mexico later this month. The camp focused on “finishing” (make sure the ball finds its way to the back of the net) and was extremely valuable according to Nico. I will be joining the team for the five-day tournament to be held in San Juan de Los Lagos and will tack on a few days of vacation at the end in Puerto Vallarta.

Last year we secured permission from the Concord Natural Resource Commission to remove trees that posed a threat to the River House. Today, that work was performed starting with a massive oak tree at least 100 feet tall. At some point, the tree had been struck by lightning; probably the same bolt that hit the house. I found evidence of fire damage to the framing of the house on the corner adjacent to the tree while doing deconstruction. According to the arborist we hired, this tree, in particular, posed an imminent and serious threat due to its size, weight, and the direction it was leaning. The tree service we hired for the work was amazing. Pictured above is a worker being lowered into the top of the tree. After formulating a plan of attack, he secured the upper section of the tree to the crane, rappelled down a bit to cut off that section, and then rappelled all the way to the ground. The crane then lifted the top section up and over the house and placed it in the driveway where other workers fed it into a giant chipper. Clearing this treetop made way for the second tree, a pine which they took all at once. The bottom section of the oak was taken in two sections, each weighing about 5 tons each. I used the drone to take videos of the whole operation.

One of my clients has me architecting a polypeptide printer capable of running 100 times faster than their current machine. I am quite pleased with the current state of the design and we are ready to start early prototyping. The design makes extensive use of peristaltic pumps. Close to 1000 in a fully configured machine. Pictured above is such a pump that arrived today along with the stepper motor controller used to drive it. I am looking forward to putting this little fellow through its paces. It may take a little longer than planned as the controller arrived with no documentation and the printed circuit board is labeled in Chinese characters.