Pauline and I have been partners for 14 years. She is someone I love and respect. I find it difficult to argue with her since she is usually incisive in her analysis of problems. The word tenacious also comes to mind.
We met at university. I was a lab demonstrator and she was the second year student taking refuge behind the safety screen, convinced that John Pirie' s shards of glass in a flash was the invention of a madman - he should have used anti-knock granules instead.
After a somewhat protacted courtship - Gordon can be a bit slow on the uptake - we started seeing each other. Since then we have been a couple, even when separated by several hundred miles, for several months at a time.
In our time together we bought two houses (Warrington and Watford) and travelled a bit inbetween. Currently our world path is as follows:
We aren't into holidaying in the Costa del Sol way but we have done a tour of Scotland (many thanks to Microware for the fuel), visitied New York (thanks Martin) and toured the North Island of New Zealand (thanks Uncle John).
We will soon be doing a tour of Australia - Melbourne, Adeliade and Sydney - starting on March 4th 2002 and returning on March 23rd 2002. Not very long but it should be fun. We are hiring a campervan and a lot of driving. It will be good fun.
Pauline's website is located .
I first met Allan when I visited the Microware HQ in Des Moines, Iowa back in February 1997. I remember him giving this great off-the-cuff description of how the new low-level bootstrap code for OS-9000 would work. It was going to be called Modular ROM and it was a huge improvement on previous approaches to bootstrap code which left OEMs with too many ways of screwing up the port of OS-9000 to their hardware. A lot of the code was in C and only a very small amount of assembler was left.
Very impressive! He really impressed me with his communication skills. A greate person to learn from.
Allan eventually got fed up with his work in the US HQ and was presuaded by my boss, Martin Long, to make the move to the UK office where things were hotting up. We had recently landed a big deal with a major OEM who wanted the OS running on his MIPS-based hardware. We didn't have the a production version of the OS on MIPS even thought the company had completed about 90% of a MIPS port in the past, before stopping the project.
We all met Allan at a barbeque my boss had. He had put on a bit of weight since we last met but was pretty much the same guy. He was looking forward to the UK and seeing the sights.
We both spent a log of time in Eindhoven (The Netherlands) working on the MIPS project for our customer. During that time we ate out a lot, got a bit fatter, occassionally thinner and enjoyed our work. We both had quite firm views on what was wrong with our employer and what it needed to do to fix things.
It was fun.
Allan told me that he is never going back to "coding in a cornfield"; especially now that he has diving as a hobby. He has really got into diving, and skiing and that is the image I now have of him. Now, with me in NZ, I get these e-mails with hyperlinks to photos of his skiing sessions.
Allan is now leaving his employer of 10+ years and going to work with the company we both did the MIPS project with. I wish him the best of luck. It looks as if he may have landed a dream job - plenty travel and communicating ideas. The only hurdle he needs to surmount now is the work permit people in the dutch government!
I have known Martin since university. We shared a flat on The Spital, in Aberdeen for a year. We have kept in touch and chat every now and again.
Martin works to help technology startups get funded and bring their ideas to market.
Martin invited Pauline and I to join him and some friends (Andre, Kathryn and Natalie) for Christmas 2000 sailing around the Whitsundays. It was good fun but we didn't get much wind until the last day so we didn't really get a lot of sailing in ... it was mostly motoring! But, we had fun, saw somewhere unusual, did a bit of snorkelling and went out to the Great Barrier Reef for a day.
Martin used to live in New York and still keeps an apartment there but has now moved to Palo Alto. He and Natalie are getting married in Christmas 2002
I have known Philip since second year of secondary school. We both went to Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen. Philip, therefore, is one of my oldest friends. We both went to the same university and did the same degree (Natural Philosophy). However, whereas I didn't complete my PhD, Philip did and is, therfore, Doctor Philip Smith.
When I left university and went to work for Daresbury Laboratory we still kept in touch but very rarely. Philip eventually left the academic world and went to work a little known company called PIPEX. PIPEX became one of the major ISP players in the UK before becoming part of UUNET. Philip was responsible for configuring POPs in his early day and moved up to planning the network in his later days at UUNET.
Philip left PIPEX in 1998 and went to work for Cisco in Brisbane, Australia. He is some kind of roving networks guru and spends most of his time away from home visiting customers and getting involved on projects far from home.
This is a pity since his home is very nice!
Philip has visited myself and Pauline several times since we have come to NZ - June 2001 and November 2001. On both occassions he got pretty poor weather with November being particularly awful.
I first met Bob when I joined Open Telecommunications.
As is usual, for me, in a new job, I was initially unsure of all my new colleagues but quickly found that Bob and I shared a common view of certain aspects of system development. The discussions that he and I have regard work were similar in narure to those I used to have with Allan when we worked together.
Bob is from the Pacific Northwest (i.e. Seattle). He's pretty laid back about most things and he has tons of hobbies. Well, tons compared to myself who has none! His workshop is neat and compact and full of all sorts of tools. He and Denise are also fishing nuts.
It was kind of reassuring for me to find someone like Bob in my new job since I had started to convince myself that I was incapable of writing another line of code. Bob had been through that phase and emerged, unscathed, from the other side. Anway, he said, "this isn't meant to happen until your 40th birthday, you're a few years premature, Gordon".
Denise is Bob's partner. She and Bob have been together a bit less than myslef an Pauline but they are married!
Denise comes from Puerto Rico but grew up mainly in Germany and went to school in Paris. She speaks more than one language and is, therefore, the nearest person I known to a human Babel Fish.
Denise is currently working for Fujitsu New Zealand as someone senior in professional services. She's got a big tema under her but is more than capable of handling it all. I guess the fishing must be a great stress remover.
Denise is a demon squash player and plays regularly. She does not seem to paly the game by halves; but then, that would not be Denise's way.