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There’s gonna be a Neumann Prep Reunion June 26th. I might attend… haven’t made up my mind yet. For more details, get on the Neumann Prep Reunion Facebook Group

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Wendy ParkerApril 5, 2010 at 5:52pm
Subject: Invite
Your Host: The Neumann Prepsters
Host’s Message: Seriously, this event is gonna be AWESOME.

We’re transforming the old gym into the hottest hot-spot ever.

Includes: 2 Full Open Bars, ’80s DJ, Hors d’oeuvres, Dinner, Desserts, Old Friends & Special Surprises!

COST:
$75 / person if paid before 5/20
$100 / person if paid before 6/20

Please see the EVENT WEB PAGE for info & payment details.
What: Neumann Prep “Junior Citizen Ring Dance” Reunion
Where: The School Formerly Known as Neumann Prep
970 Black Oak Ridge Road,
Wayne, NJ 07470-6306
When: June 26th, 2010, 8pm
More info:
Brought to you by the Class of ’90, this trip down memory lane is open to EVERYONE who ever went to Neumann Prep. We want to tear the roof off that mother. So break out your Dippity Doo and your Aqua Net and join us for a spectacular evening. It could very possibly be the best night of your life.

WHEN?
Saturday
June 26th
8pm – midnight
After-party at HoJo’s (or whatever it’s called now)

WHERE?
The School Formerly Known As Neumann Prep.
In the Old Gym.
But don’t let that scare you.
We’re turning it into the hottest club in Jersey.

WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO THERE?
With 2 full open bars, amazing appetizers, a smorgasbord to salivate over, delectable desserts, a stellar dance floor with an incredible DJ spinning all your 80’s faves, photo booths, old friends, lots of laughs, special guests and wild surprises… what AREN’T we going to do there? We’re gonna reclaim that school, by golly! Breakfast Club style.

PAYMENT INFO:
RSVP and Pre-Registration a MUST!
$75 per person if paid before May 20th
$100 per person if paid before June 20th
No paying at the door… sorry.

TO PAY BY CHECK, make it payable to:
Wendy Parker Events / Memo: Neumann Reunion Payment
1226 South Crescent Heights Blvd.
LA, CA 90035

TO PAY BY CREDIT CARD, go to:

(link) http://www.facebook.com/l/14e94;www.wendyparkerevents.com

Click on the “Buy Now” button.

This will take you to the paypal page and you can either:
1. enter in your paypal login info
2. Click on “continue” if you want to pay via credit card
Please follow the instructions to process your payment.
All credit cards are accepted.

If you have any questions, email us at neumannreunion@gmail.com

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD THIS INVITATION to any of your classmates that weren’t included on the guest list.

It’s Easter so I called lots of family. My dad asked me if I went to church. Of course I said “no.” I asked him back and he said…

“I went to church today. I couldn’t tell if the priest was a pedophile or  embezzler.”

Hahah!

Of course we then discussed the plight of the church, how the present scandal was nothing new and how the vows of chastity had been manufacturing pedophiles for centuries.

Yesterday I played lasertag with Marc Hertlein at Ziggy’s SF Lasertag. It was great fun!

After, I went over to Mark Alexander’s where we  throughly enjoyed dinner, sake, music and the best of times. I now need to enrich my sake and Cornelius collection!

With a sensor and some processing power, it shouldn’t be hard to make a toaster that can actually make perfect toast every time. I’m astounded that such a product doesn’t exist. It wouldn’t be expensive in large quantities.

Possible sensors include

• visual camera
• infrared camera
• gas sensor – Sparkfun has $5 alcohol and carbon monoxide sensors. I wonder what burnt toast “smells” like.
• standard “darkness” knob
• ambient thermometer

Possible controls include

• shutting off at the right time
• a bell to alert the consumer of soon-to-be-done toast and done-it’s-getting-cold toast
• delivering different power levels to different parts of the bread (eh, sounds expensive and not useful)
• changing the wattage, allowing “keep warm”, “warm throughout” (no more lava pop tarts!), and “crisp” settings

Hurdles

• Easy to use interface
• Technical challenge: it’s never been done!
• Really, it’s never been done?

I should make this.

PS. Ha, this fancy $130 toaster sucks. I can do better.

local version:

I’ll be at the Switchboard Music Festival in San Francisco this weekend. Join me!

Worked a day last week at the Crucible for a corporate training event building part of a large crazy control panel. We didn’t finish it at the event so I’m being paid to finish building it. Cool.

I hooked up with an  acquaintance on Monday night to modify a mechanism to work for an online video ad for a big client. The acquaintance was happy with my work. Cool.

I just took on a third tutoring student. 3rd grade reading. Pretty cool.

I was just asked to teach 2 sessions of  a week-long intensive classes at the Crucible starting next week, “Youth Radical Robots”. Cool.

The SWARM robots are  still in India after a month of wrangling with locals. For the last 2 weeks I have made it a ritual to call every night and ask “Ok, who is now blaming who for sitting on who’s hands today? And how can we get things moving?” Uncool.

SWARM was just asked by Velocity Circus to do a gig in San Diego on April 21st. That’s good because it’s a gig. That’s bad because I have to  guarantee the orbs will be back. It took 9 days to get the orbs from San Francisco to Kanpur. So far it’s taken 32 days and they are still sitting in the same spot we left them. Serious potential for Cool AND Uncool.

In more pleasant news, I’ve been wrangling with the computer system of a local machine shop for the last 10 days, getting paid to remove viruses, diagnose DSL problems, install software and the like. Just yesterday, I believe we had a major victory, defeating the slow DSL service. An AT&T tech was here for 3 hours and he found that our line from the telephone box to the office was poorly balanced so he switched to a different line. Only time will tell if this  sporadic problem was really fixed. It’s totally cool hanging out with the machine shop guys and hearing about the totally exciting projects they’re working on… like a motorcycle that doesn’t… darn it, I’m not sure if I can talk about it!

In tutoring news, yesterday I taught a 9 year old how to pay for pizza. You wouldn’t think this would be rough but oh my this was a horror. I’m tutoring this 4th grader and for the second session in a row he was really bad. He grumbled, mumbled, fought, threw papers, swore, drummed on the desk, ran around the room, bitched AND moaned.  So Delphino, the completely awesome staffer at the YMCA helped me convince him to do a little math. In 1.5 hours we successfully did 1 math problem. “You and 3 friends agree to split a pizza. The pizza man is at the door and he wants his $12 dollars. How much should each person chip in?” We had to work in earnest on the answer for 10 minutes, but he got it! Cool.

A few days ago I needed to grab some lunch before teaching at the Crucible. I thought “Hmm, I could pay $5 for a sandwich at Subway or… hey what about those McDonalds Dollar Menu McDouble Cheeseburgers? Certainly 5 double cheeseburgers is more food than just 1 Subway Sandwich.”

Dearest reader, I’m sure you know how this ended. Poorly. I got 3 McDoubles and continued my day. After 10 minutes I felt  rejuvenated having put food in my belly.  About 40 minutes later I got this “not so good” feeling. Like maybe I had eaten too much salt and/or fat without enough… without enough of anything else. Blah! I felt buzzed and bothered and had a little extra trouble focusing on my tasks all evening. :-(

From the McDonalds website:
390 calories – reasonable for a buck
170 calories from fat (44%) – pretty high, don’t eat these every day!
920 mg of sodium (38% of your RDA) – It’s a fucking salt sandwich!

My friend Barry now has a weekly radio program on KSRO radio. The station is based in Sonoma County. It’s called “The Clean Energy Show with Barry Cogbill” :-) He talks about solar power, energy efficiency, green jobs and other stuff each week!

The show airs Wednesdays from 12:30pm to 1pm on AM 1350, KSRO

He already has a few shows “in the can”. Listen to previous shows on the KSRO website.

My little corner of the internet gets a  surprising amount of look-sees.

The blog gets about 800 hits a day according to WordPress Stats

Lee.org got about 4.7 million page views in 2009 and 15 million file requests.

Last week Lee.org got about 100,000 page requests!

Take a glance at some stats from Analog:

Analyzed requests from Tue, Apr 25 2006 at 12:03 AM to Sun, Mar 07 2010 at 12:57 AM (1412.04 days)

Figures in parentheses refer to the 7-day period ending Mar 07 2010 at 3:53 AM.

Successful requests: 65,999,273 (414,283)
Average successful requests per day: 46,740 (59,183)
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