A strange thing happened this week. On Monday we got a notice in our mailbox from UPS.... "Sorry we missed you". It had no address and no tracking number. Instead of a recipient name it had a price: $26.67.
The only name on the note was C. Defeo - obviously not me, but I had no idea what the parcel was or who it was intended for (there are no Defeos on my street). I had not ordered anything that was being delivered by UPS.
I told my wife the only DeFeo I knew was Dr. Christian DeFeo from years ago at element14.
Today UPS showed up again with the package that my wife then paid for because it was indeed addressed to me, and surprisingly it was from Christian DeFeo.
The package contained an Arduino Pro Nicla Sense ME (an embedded AI Arm Cortex M4 with a set of Bosch sensors to measure motion, magnetic fields, pressure, 4 gases, temperature & humidity)
This is like the business end of a Tricorder integrated into a small module. I guess now that we've paid for it, I'll have to come up with a project to make use of it. 
There was no note in the package but I assume it was part of the Arduino Week give-away:
I think it is amusing that the parcel ostensibly came from Christian DeFeo since it looks like he is off pursuing a second PhD:
He was quite instrumental in getting me keen on element14 and I eventually met him at a trade show in Germany on a TRIP Prize sponsored by Cypress Semi.
It has been a bit of a strange sequence of events, but not unpleasant, so thank you Christian, or tariq.ahmad or danzima or element14 or Arduino or Bosch or whoever sent the Nicla Sense ME, it will eventually find a cool project home.
The moral of the story is - if you get a mysterious parcel from Christian DeFeo, it could well be from element14. 
