The 2024 Randall Christmas Newsletter

Well here I go again, dispersing more Randall trivia to a group of friends with questionable tastes for entertainment. Unlike last year when I waited until Dec 23 to start, I have uncharacteristically tried to get an early start.

2024 has been a year of significant new opportunities for the Randall Family, and for both Zyvex Labs and Teliatry as we will explain. Even with the early start, I am just now finishing up after Christmas,

    I hope this goes out before 2025.
I can't resist sharing more of Bryan Smith's Music Humor:

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Sarah Merrifield at Work
About Ian: Of all of the Randalls, Ian's path through life appears to be taking the largest turn this year. It all started when he met Bally Sports/FanDuel sportscaster, Sarah Merrifield (Is that a great name for a sportscaster or what?). Sarah had been going to the Equinox Gym where Ian works, and they started dating. John and Patrice met Sarah and were very impressed. A few months later, Salt Lake City acquired (from Arizona) a hockey team which is currently known as "the Utah Hockey Club", and they needed a reporter. So Sarah got the job, moved to Salt Lake City, and is currently following the Utah Hockey Club around the Nation. To make a long story short, Ian and his Pup-Dog Cooper have (temporarily) moved back in with Patrice and John, finishing the year with Equinox, and continuing his pursuit of skating, mountain (hills really) biking, and poking holes in paper targets. Ian and John also played Judo at the East Side Dojo, where you can see Ian getting promoted on the right. Sometime after he secures a job in Utah, he and Cooper will move to Salt Lake City. Ian will continue his career there in the personal training field.


Ian Gets Promoted.

John sets up Telescope
Total eclipse April 8 The Dallas area was in the path of the total solar eclipse on April 8. Patrice, having previously worked with astrophysicist Dr. Larry Taff, made sure we were prepared with the appropriate solar filter and glasses. Ian took part of the day off and joined his parents as we set up the telescope for viewing the event. The window to see totality was small, but we were able to enjoy the sight of the suns corona. Unlike last years partial eclipse, we did not get too many telescope pictures. We were too busy just watching the quite beautiful celestial event. We did get one telescope picture before the sun was totally blocked. And then a photo to show how dark it was in totality.

Darkness in totality

A partial eclipse

Patrice Tree & 2 Pups
Christmas
Patrice Activities: After having conquered the Master bedroom closet last year Patrice has turned her significant talents to trying to keep John out of trouble and from being a fashion disaster. In the later part of the year this meant interpreting and enforcing instructions from John's doctor after John's knee surgery. (see details of John's meniscus tear). Throughout the year, with some help from John, Patrice kept our gardens resplendent with Irises and other flora. Patrice has also enjoyed having Ian around which has led to regular recreation playing SkipBo and a game or two of "Thunder Road Vendetta".


Gwen alive and fiesty as ever
Ashley Update: Ashley had a guest appearence on the Reality TV show, the Barnes Bunch, as an adult educator. Ashley continues her career as a relationship coach making good money helping (primarily young men) with finding meaningful relationships. She is active in a local relationship community, is a frequent educator and vendor at events where she sells her Parfums that she creates in her secret laboratory. ( Irreverent Scents). Ashley's immortal kitty, Gwen, is still alive and well, late into her octogenarian kitty years, and is still accepting of having Ashley live in her apartment. To "Get Away from it All", Ashley drives out to Bakersfield and digs up fossils, many of which now adorn her apartment.

John and Patrice visited Ashley in Los Angeles this year and had a great time going to the La Brea Tar pits for the first time, and meeting some of Ashley's loved ones and partner, Daniel. John also had a chance to visit when on a recent business trip to LA.


John and Ashley at the Tar Pits

Ashley on TV

Cooper and Zephyr in Quiecent States
Pet Report: Zephyr, our loyal but mischievous canine companion, is entering his "middle age" dog years, but still acts like a spoiled puppy, mainly because John still spoils him. He has avoided any serious medical issues, mostly because vigilant dog parents catch him while chewing the flash drive, eyeglasses, bottle cap, etc. before he swallows it. Well, he did eat one small Christmas tree light bulb, and apparently, he can balance on his back legs to pull Christmas ornaments off the tree. He still (between regular naps) runs around the house like a deranged wolf primarily because John's knee problems have suspended running 10-15 miles a week through the park. So, Zephyr runs in his sleep (See Video). Fortunately, since Ian and Cooper have moved in, Zephyr and Cooper regularly fight over toys and roughhouse regularly in the house, or conserve energy as shown in the picture.

Zephyr Sleep Running.
John Junk:
CEO of Zyvex Labs: While 2024 will not be known for great growth at Zyvex Labs, it has been one that presents enormous opportunities. This started on Oct 13, of 2023 when Canon Nanotechnologies 10 years after acquiring Molecular Imprints (a company started by a good friend S.V. Sreenivasan) announced it was going to challenge the dominant lithography tool used by the semiconductor industry, ASML's Extreme UV photolithography tool with its NanoImprint Lithography tool. Zyvex Labs has the highest resolution and highest precision direct write lithography tool on the planet, and we demonstrated (proof of principle) that we could make nanoimprint masks, but our tool was extremely slow - many orders of magnitude too slow to be even a mask maker. Never-the-less, we thought let's see if we can speed things up, because if we can, it would be a very big deal!.


In Aug 2024 we noticed that IMEC, specifically Luc Van den hove, who I reported to in my two years at IMEC, published a image of 19nm full pitch (9.5nm lines) produced by the 380M$ ASML High NA Extreme UV tool. A few weeks later, Zyvex Labs produced that pattern reduced to 40% of the size (3.85nm lines) with better pattern fidelity (straight lines and squared off ends). Our lithography tool is too slow to make chips but we think it can make masks for NanoImprint that can reproduce these much smaller features and much more cost effectively than the ASML tool. The image you see here has been presented to the public and has attracted some attention and we have been approached by potential investors.
John with a Limp: About halfway through 2024, John's right knee started complaining when he ran, but he just kept running about 10 miles a week. After a couple of months and the knee still complaining, he went back to Plano Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, after an x-ray, 6-weeks of physical therapy, and an MRI, he had meniscus repair surgery on Halloween. He and Patrice spent two weeks of sleep deprivation with Patrice enforcing the instructions: keep your knee above your heart! John is currently finishing up another 6 weeks of Physical Therapy and (gently) trying to run again. John wanted to share the Arthroscope photo of what his meniscus looked like before it was cleaned up (the surgeon referred to this as Crab Meat), but Patrice would not allow it.

Teliatry John is also involved with Zyvex Labs spin-out company Teliatry and their spin-out company Auxilium MD. Teliatry is a biomedical device manufacturer which is pulling the biomedical implant industry out of the 20th century into the 21st century. The amazing CEO Rahul Saini (the first person that John hired when he joined Zyvex) understands the potential of creating an entirely new market of much more effective and more affordable devices. But developing these amazing new devices is not only expensive but time consuming.

So Rahul, realizing that this is a potential problem, is taking advantage of the fact that, by using scalable 21st century manufacturing technology, he can also make biomedical implants for the veterinary industry. This requires much less time and money to bring a product to the market. Their first product will be introduced in the next several months.


Teliatry/Auxillium MD Troups Dinner - Not shown - Lingchao Cao (recently hired).
The Relativity Report

Randall Ramblings:
John's brother Mike and his Wife Margaret are both retired and still in Houston. They are both still quite active organizing major bicycle events and doing some biking on their own. We are happy to say that Mike did not run over Margaret this year. Mike says that Margaret is a one-woman quilt making factory that produces personalized custom quilts, but only for those who deserve them. Mike is still active as a Master Naturalist, which is a volunteer position with Texas Parks and Wildlife. He is still a (sometimes) volunteer tour guide for Houston's Museum of Natural Science.

Johns Sister Cindy and Hubby Skip are still living in Houston and driving around Texas and surrounding states and keeping gymnasts in sparkly outfits.

Cindy's and Skip's offspring have produced plentiful offspring. Cole, Skip's son, had inherited a shack in Leander TX. This year they are building a house that can fit 4 boys, Mikey, Gabe, Baron, Tucker, a girl Abigail, and a Great Dane. Cindy's girls: Kelsie married Nick Weimann! It was a lovely ceremony that Ian and Ashley attended. Kelsie's daughter Rilynn, now 11 and about Cindy's size. She just brought home a straight A report card and had perfect attendance to boot. Kelsie continues to make money as a vampire (phlebotomist) manager.

Cindy's oldest Shelly, husband Matt, and their kids David and Sarah live in Magnolia. David, who is in the 5th grade, continues to progress as a track star, competing against 6th & 7th graders he is the fastest in his school. Sarah is demonstrating other motor skills as a cheerleader. Shelly continues to have a great career at Microsoft. Matt is both doing web design for a California company and supporting some websites for not-for-profit organizations he believes in.

The Stepchinski Report:

Patrick, Patrice's older brother is retired and he and Erica still live in Houston. Patrick says they enjoy some goofing off activities such as puzzles and other distractions. Erica is doing some volunteering for local food banks. Their daughter Leanne recently graduated with a PhD in Geology from the University of South Florida and is now working as a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Core of engineers living a short distance from her parents. Alan, after getting a Bio-Medical Engineering degree from UT, worked for Epic in Wisconsin developing Medical Software, went back to UT getting a Nursing degree. He is now a Registered Nurse working at St. David's North Austin Medical Center on night shift, in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Patrice's baby brother Nigel and wife Rhonda are also living in Houston and are also retired. Just for fun this year they traveled in their Mustang convertible to National Parks in the Midwest: Utah-Brice Canyon & Zion, New Mexico -Carlsbad Caverns, Arizona: Grande Canyon & Lake Powell and others. Rhonda said the trips included lots of good hiking. Nigel is still poking holes in paper targets, has a large collection of 2-wheelers, and he and Rhonda take lots of motorcycle day trips (but not as much as Nigel would like).

Their son Kyle is still working as a business analyst at Equifax and has really gotten into golf. He moved this year to the Galleria area where "more is going on". Their daughter Caitlin is a busy Mom and a Nurse at Texas Children’s, and is also an on-call forensic nurse for Ben Taub Hospital. Caitlin's husband Tyler is a Fireman. They live nearby Nigel and Rhonda, and have two beautiful little girls Annabelle(9) is doing cheer, tumbling, basketball, and volleyball , and Adeline(3) is mainly into swimming.

The Randalls wish you all a Happy and Prosperous 2025!

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