Today was a quiet day; no Lab Expo, no trip to the car dealer. Boring.

Well, it was boring for me. Jeffrey had a bit of excitement at the YMCA childcare — their portable classroom caught fire. No one knows quite what happened, but I suspect that a spark blew over to the trailer from the barbecue and eventually caught.

So they evacuated the children, found a fire extinguisher, and fought the fire until the fire department arrived a few minutes later and ensured that it was well and truly out.

No one was hurt; the fire was entirely on the outside of the portable, and they were back inside in about 45 minutes. But it did give them something to talk about!

The weather is finally cooling off a bit — someone up in San Francisco deciced to pay the natural air conditioning bill, I guess. There’s a nice cool breeze coming through the windows for the first time in a week — very nice!

Tomorrow, we go to a party and set up a Field Day station. For tonight, Shabbat Shalom!

So now I have my car back, which greatly simplified the afternoon’s agenda.

Oh, and the towtruck guy was right — it was the battery. And I did get my oil changed as long as the car was at the dealer, so now I’ve gotten back next Monday morning for more productive pursuits.

15 years

Today was the 15th Anniversary celebration of the IBM Almaden Research Center; there was a morning program for invited guests (people like the mayor of San Jose), and then in the afternoon, there was a Lab Expo highlighting about 80 projects from groups all over the lab. I was amazed how many things are going on of which I knew nothing before today — I didn’t have enough time to see everything, but I enjoyed the exhibits I did visit. And now I know what they do in the lab down the hall from my office — Quantum Cryptography.

4 years

Happy Anniversary, Hal and Audrey!