Dear Friends and Family,

As I finish up this letter it is snowing silently outside on a soft gray morning in Pittsburgh. There is enough of a breeze to be ringing the porch wind chimes. And I am trying to let the peacefulness of the moment sink in—I hope you have a chance during the season’s hubbub to find some peaceful moments as well.

It’s always an interesting exercise to try to summarize a whole year and give you a flavor of our lives. As you’ll guess from the news below, we have all been working extremely hard this year, but we have also had some time for family fun—especially enjoying weekend bike rides together and now that winter is setting in, we have begun read-aloud times, a surprisingly pleasant activity even with two teens!

May the coming year bring you happiness, good health and peace. Enjoy the moments, one by one.

With love,

“Here’s Lookin’ at You, Cortex…”

Walt’s work at the University of Pittsburgh has involved significant teaching and brain imaging. In the spring semester, he taught a research methods course to 180 students. It’s been many years since he’d taught such a large class. He put his lecture notes on the web (http://schneider.lrdc.pitt.edu) and had over 60,000 hits by the end of the semester. But, students always want more. They complained that the notes should be on the web three days before the class to allow them to print them and come to class. This, of course, mismatched Walt’s style to provide material at the last minute.

Walt has continued his functional imaging research. Analysis of attentional brain imaging data showed that attention occurs at the earliest visual area for special feature processing. In a study of skill learning, he is identifying a circuit of areas that support learning of new materials but then drop out as performance becomes automatic.

Psychology Software Tools (PST; check us out at http://www.pstnet.com), our company, continues to grow. It has been a hard and very hectic year. PST moved into our new “world headquarters,” a new 8500 square feet office complex with very nice offices for our 25 employees. We also developed a production facility including milling machines, band saws, etc., for mechanical systems and several electronics benches for electronics assembly. PST released two major products. Our major software product, E-Prime was released in beta (early try out) form. This is a graphical interface involving over half a million lines of code. E-Prime has been well received, selling 500 systems in the first year. We also released an Integrated Functional Imaging System for doing brain imaging. It has been quite a job getting production up on these complex systems. The staff installed IFIS on 10 MRI scanners around the country. We roll this system into research labs or hospitals, where they can then get good brain activation in the first subject. Walt hopes this system will speed many researchers’ efforts to complete studies to map brain performance.

As those of you who email us know, Sue has recently “retired” from PST. But she still does graphics and promotions consulting, editing and even some catering there these days. “I’m still looking to discover that mysterious Life of Leisure. It’s probably here somewhere—buried under the laundry…”

Stay in Touch: E-Addresses

Walt: walts@pstnet.com

Sue: sues1514@hotmail.com

Jean: djinn169@hotmail.com

David: shnitzl1@hotmail.com

“The Little Store with a Heart as Big as the World”

Sue’s busy with the Ten Thousand Villages store, mostly. (She took on the role as President of the Board of Directors this year.) Sales have been very good. Some recent advertising and a very nice TV soft-news piece (4 minutes aired 3 different times by the station over Thanksgiving weekend) have really been bringing in the customers. Having only been open a year and in a tiny retail space (only about 800 sq ft of "floor") we are already one of Ten Thousand Villages top five stores nationally (of about 200 stores)--sales expected in the $275,000-$300,000 range. Location is everything! In our first year of operation we have been able to support, at the equivalent of full time income, more than 250 Third World artisans and their families—what a blessing!

Family Matters (It Really Does!)

Jean is a high school sophomore now, continuing to excel academically—proving the exception to all those “blonde jokes” we tease her with. She is enjoying doing the technical aspects of theatre, even serving as stage manager for one of the plays—but she’s also looking to auditioning for on-stage roles as well. And she has joined the Crew (rowing) Team! (As a basically non-athletic family, we enjoy seeing her reach out to try new ventures—and she picked the one sport you can do sitting down!)

David became a teenager this year! He’s in eighth grade, finishing up at Falk School. We are now trying to decide on a high school for him—hmmmm, the all-boys Catholic high school or a co-ed college prep? Although girls are not yet an interest, he says they might be “someday”, so he’s leaning toward the co-ed—the jury is still out on this one. Actually his main interests continue to be “electronically-inspired”--- computer and video games, and a developing interest in learning programming and robotics.

Jean and Sue continue to enjoy Girl Scouts together. We had our first ever (in eight years of scouting!) camping trip “in tents, on the ground.” It rained one evening and flooded most of the tents, but we all survived and SOME of the troop is up for doing it again. The experience was made especially memorable by the emergence after the rain of the seventeen-year locusts, which just crawled up by the hundreds from holes in the ground—climbing up trees, tents, poles—and our legs as we sat around the campfire. Truly an amazing experience!

David is advancing in his Boy Scout troop, earning the rank of First Class, then Star this year. He has set his sights on making Eagle Scout. He went to scout camp with his troop in July, then to Construction Camp in August (where he earned 6 different merit badges in a week—they really worked those kids! No time for fishing and swimming…).

We did get to vacation some this past summer, with a week at a state park cabin in Cooks Forest and then a trip to New England to visit friends and see the territory. While in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, we drove to the top of Mt. Washington. Walt and the kids decided to hike down (about a 4 mile trail). Sue drove down to meet them at the bottom—expecting to see them in about 2-3 hours. Six hours later, just as it was getting dark they finally showed up—exhausted, sore and stiff, and complaining about what these folks in New Hampshire consider to be a trail. It seems that New Englanders consider a trail as just being within 50 feet of a pile of rocks (cairn). Though hundreds of people clamored down this “trail” everyday, there were NO signs of wear in the four miles of boulders they trekked down. But the views were spectacular, and no big rocks rolled on any of them.

On a sad note, Sue’s dad did not recover from his accident last December and passed away at the end of January. It was comforting to bring the family all together with so many of his friends for a memorial service. His ashes are now scattered with Mom’s in the lake that was just out their backdoor and that they so enjoyed.

The Puzzler

For a change of format this year, we ask that you send in by email, fax or snail mail your entry, just a paragraph or so is fine, telling us “What I will tell my grandchildren about the Olden Days back in the 20^th Century.”

What did you do to celebrate the turning of the Millennium; or what was it like “back then” (you know, those stories your grandparents told you about walking 20 miles to school through 5 feet of snow and uphill both ways…); or even what gadgets you used to use (like a slide rule or typewriter).

Think about this, and get your entries in by February 1. We’ll compile them and give awards in categories like most imaginative, inspiring, humorous, etc. Everyone who enters will get a copy of the compilation. (Kids are especially encouraged to enter—you can change the question to “What I’ll tell my children…” if you want.)

Mail entries to: Email:

Schneider Family sues1514@hotmail.com

511 Bevington Road Fax: “ATTN Sue Schneider”

Pittsburgh, PA 15221 412-271-7077

Last year’s Puzzler winners were the staff lunch group at PST, who won a year’s subscription to Games magazine.