The year did start off with some promise, Patrice and I both were vaccinated. In June we went to the beach for several days and shopped in Galveston without masks and ate some wonderful seafood, and then Delta and later Omicron came!

The good news is that, at least for a while, Ian and his pup Cooper are now living with us, which we very much enjoy. John likes having someone else in the house who will vacuum the floors. And Zephyr has another playmate which turns out to be Cooper. This s great at keeping our pup occupied and happier, although we have had a few items broken with their wrestling. Start the video and watch how frenetic Zephyr is and how he makes all of the noise while Cooper calmly maintains control of the contested toy.

In other activities not captured on Video: Ian has introduced some new family activities, including playing Skip Bo, Yahtzee, and Phase 10, almost every night. Patrice has an unusual approach to card games. No matter what cards she is dealt or draws, she proclaims them the most terrible cards she could posibly receive. More than once or twice she has made such pronouncements, and 30 seconds later lays down a winning combination of cards. Ian and John want her to enter a professional poker tournament.

Ian's health and fitness expertise has helped us with some new culinary skills and workout plans. Usually this is a good thing, except a platter of Christmas treats carry a note requesting 20 push ups or squats before indulging.

1. Shoes left unattended on floors have had their half- life extended from minutes to hours.
2. It has been months since we had to save Zephyr's life by forcing H2O2 down his throat.
3. He has only chewed on 2 Christmas tree ornaments and one gift so far
4. He has stopped chewing on furniture, baseboards, and drywall.
5. He is much better behaved when we have a squirt gun in our hands.
6. He still runs away with stuff he grabs out of garbage pales but he will drop it when Patrice goes "Crazy Mama" and threatens him with a water squirt.

Patrice has done little abstract art painting in this past year. Concerned about Zephyr eating anything left unattended, she stopped using our dining room table as her workplace. Lately she has orchestrated a conversion of our upstairs media room into her new art center. Ian has requested a commission and Santa brought lots of art supplies and other art enhancing accoutrements.

• CEO of Zyvex Labs: 2021 has seen Zyvex continue to get excellent support from 6 US Government programs and have some exciting progress in the technology. There is a lot of world wide interest in quantum technologies which needs atomic scale precision which Zyvex is well positioned to provide. It is now up to John to follow up with potential customers to bring in more revenue. Zyvex is having some success in finding industrial customers that aren t interested in Quantum Technologies but can benefit from some of the technologies that the company has developed to make atomic precision patterning possible.
• Executive VP of Nanoretina: This is a firm that we (Zyvex) have worked with for over a decade to develop an artificial retina. It was really the amazing Rahul Saini that developed the artificial retina implant that is now being used in Europe to restore sight to the blind. The first implants were done in the beginning of 2020 but progress was seriously hampered when the pandemic shut down the world. However, the implants have resumed with some exciting results. One patient in particular (#106) totally blind for many years was implanted over a year ago and now sees well enough to move around his house unaided, play checkers, and know if someone who he is talking to is wearing glasses. Zyvex, Rahul and (to a small extent) myself having provided the implant technology are not playing an active role at this time other than to cheerlead as Nanoretina is now talking to the FDA about trials in the US.
• Executive VP of Teliatry: I mentioned the Amazing Rahul Saini above and his major role in developing the Nanoretina implant. I hired Rahul in 2001, (one of my best moves at Zyvex) and for roughly 2 decades was Rahul s boss. But now in Teliatry, Rahul is my boss. We spun out Teliatry as a Biomedical Manufacturing company a couple of years ago because Rahul was convinced that the technology he developed for Nanoretina was going to be useful for a lot of other things. It appears that he was correct. Working with some excellent people at UT Dallas, Teliatry has provided large numbers of Vagus Nerve implants that are being used in 3 different clinical trials to rewire their brains to solve a number of problems. There are already some spectacular results including one young lady with a spinal cord injury who had lost the ability to use her hands. After implantation and some therapy using the implant she can now open doors and pick up cups and glasses to drink. Click here to see video. Rahul has masterfully landed two DARPA projects and has arranged a business agreement with a new Biomedical Device c ompany that will use Teliatry implants in a new product.
• CSO of Rapid Molecular Diagnostics:Working with a very talented group: Dr. Gary Maale, Matt Malle and Dr, Greg Tobin, we continue to try to develop a medical diagnostic platform technology for a wide variety of diseases.
• Adjunct Professor at University of Texas at Dallas: Primarily working with the World Class Control System Engineer Prof. Reza Moheimani on technology to support the development of atomically precise manufacturing, starting out with solid state quantum devices.
• Chief Maintenance Officer at Queen of Sheba Enterprises (Patrice Randall CEO) : While Patrice does most of the work around the Randall Household, John does provide some manual labor. My principal duties are: vacuuming, pool maintenance, front yard garbage and recycling placement, dog personal trainer, dog defecation facilitator, dog poop retrieval, furniture moving, appliance repair, take out go-fer, and whatever else Patrice wants me to do.
• Officer of the Texas Chapter of the AVS: I listed this minor role as an excuse to provide a link to a video of Prof. Alex Ignatiev of the University of Houston and CTO of Lunar Resources. When I was a grad student at UH I did a small amount of work for Alex. He has been a pioneer in using space as an industrial resource doing some molecular beam epitaxy in space in the 90s. He was about to retire when NASA reached out to him to do some additional space-based work including manufacturing on the moon! Really! I am not making this up! If you are the least bit of a science geek, watch the video, its about 50 minutes, but well worth seeing.