Not the Architect

When I joined Tandem's Rainbow project in 1982, building a new OS in ADA for new hardware, there was a long list of unsolved architectural issues. Everyone on the project agreed that we needed a system architect who would decide these questions and focus the team's efforts, but it didn't happen. Management didn't choose an architect. Each group worked on its own part of the system without coordination.

In 1984, I became known as "Not the Architect." I didn't aspire to the politically explosive title of Architect, and I had no management charter to decide things. But I could call meetings on issues, try to clarify issues and areas of agreement, and write up the results, and if people didn't solve their problem themselves in one meeting, I would call another meeting. I had some modest success on several issues using these methods, and the group actually ordered this official nameplate for my office with this title. Alas, our progress wasn't enough, and Rainbow was eventually cancelled.

Pete Seeger

Lilli got us tickets to a Pete Seeger concert at Foothill College, for February 2, 1992. Then she had to go out of town, so Jesse and I went to the concert. They were awesome tickets: we sat on the stage, in folding chairs, about 6 feet from the Man. I had loved his music since I was a kid, and I was transported. Jesse was ten. He wasn't impressed. After about six songs, he leaned over to me and said, "Can't we GO?" I said, "No. You don't have to like it, just remember."

Hinsdale

I grew up in  Hinsdale, Illinois, the "village on the county line," a small town outside of Chicago, population about 12,000. This is a commuter ticket on the CB&QRR, which bisected Hinsdale. There were nice commuter trains to downtown, 20 minutes, air conditioned double-deckers, and the California Zephyr came through on its way to the far West. Many trains passed through town, and one just got used to waiting for them. When I was little, the trains had steam locomotives; later they were all replaced by diesels (built a few towns away by Electromotive), but sometimes late at night they'd move a steam train, maybe for some rail fan trip, and I'd wake up to hear the distinctive whistle, six blocks away.

Ground Observer Corps

My dad was Chief Observer for Hinsdale in the US Ground Observer Corps during the 1950s. These civilian volunteers watched the skies for enemy aircraft. Our post, on top of a building known as the Hinsdale Community House (burned down later), was known as Coco-Metro-zero-four-Roger. It was a little unroofed plywood pen about six feet square, unadorned except for a telephone in one of those all-weather clamshells. If an observer saw any aircraft, he logged it on a clipboard and called in a report to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where all observations were tracked. Dad organized the volunteers and assigned observing shifts, and took a turn in the booth himself. I was ten or so, and got to go along a couple of times. The observers didn't use binoculars or anything; they just filled out a little checklist for each sighting, and called it in. There was no attempt at aircraft type recognition either, though I do think the form asked if it was a jet or propeller. Jets were rare.

Brookfield Zoo

Growing up in Chicago in the 1950s, I didn't realize how lucky we were to be able to visit two great zoos. I think I can remember seeing the  famous gorilla Bushman at Lincoln Park Zoo when I was little. We went to the Brookfield Zoo more often.

Den 5

Cub Scouts. I kind of liked Cub Scouts, but I never realized how much work it was for the parents until my son Jesse joined.

1957 Boy Scout Jamboree

I was a skinny and bespectacled Boy Scout, but I had a great time on my trip to the Jamboree. We took the train from Chicago to Valley Forge, which was hot, and dusty, and teeming with kids in shorts and knee socks. At one point, the Everly Brothers sang a concert for a few thousand scouts: they must have been just starting out.

Bomb Fuse

My dad was a bomb disposal officer in the U. S. Navy during World War II. This is one of the few souvenirs he brought home.

My first car was a 1951 Dodge which the family called "the bomb." So I used this on the key ring.

Dad's Slide Rule

Slide rules were completely superseded by pocket calculators in just a few years. Dad used this one occasionally, and I had a similar cheap bamboo one in high school. When I went to  MIT, in 1961, I went to the Coop and bought an expensive slide rule, like every other freshman. Mine is a yellow aluminum Pickett log-log decitrig; I used it on freshman physics quizzes and homework. (I soon learned that there were people called "nerds" who wore their slide rules on their belts, and discussed them in too much detail.)

Coop card

When I arrived at MIT in 1961, all of us freshmen joined the Harvard Cooperative Society, known as "The Coop." (Pronounced as in chicken coop.) The MIT branch of the Coop was in a tiny building on Mass Ave, containing a reasonable bookstore, a barbershop, and not much else. The dollar membership got you a refund check once a year: I seem to remember that it was ten percent at first, and gradually shrank to much less. I got my hair cut at the Coop for twenty years.

MTA Token

Going to school in Boston was great. The MTA went everywhere, and there were lots of interesting places to go. The MIT dormitories didn't serve food on the weekends, forcing all of us nerds out into the real world to avoid starvation. I used to have Saturday lunch at Durgin-Park, down by Faneuil Hall, where you could get a huge meal, including soup, coffee, and dessert, for ninety-five cents.

F & T

The backside of MIT touched Kendall Square, Cambridge (where Charlie "handed in his dime" in the Kingston Trio MTA song). There was a Harvard Trust branch there, the subway station, and the F & T, a restaurant/bar, run by the Fox and Tishman families. The Multics team used to walk over from Tech Square for lunch there every day.

UOP

My first job in the computer field was a summer job at Universal Oil Products in 1962, thanks to Mr. Boyd. I started as a 1401 operator, running a 4K machine that replaced most of the EAM equipment for card handling, and that prepared input and printed output for an IBM 7070. I worked with some really wonderful people, who were kind to a newcomer and shared their knowledge freely.

Multics

Once I got out of school, I worked on the Multics operating system for almost 16 years, first at MIT and then at Honeywell. In its day, Multics was the best thing of its kind. Once again, I had the best possible colleagues and mentors.

Tech Square Parking Pass

Project MAC and the Multics development group were housed in the Technology Square buildings behind MIT.

Honeywell

A thermostat company that bought GE's computer division (including the Multics technology) ran it for a while, then sold it. This is my ID badge from the 18 months I managed a group in Phoenix.

APL Type Ball

The APL language was defined by Ken Iverson of IBM in the early 70s. Originally it required a time-shared computer and a 2741 terminal with this special typeball. A Multics APL interpreter was done in the mid 70s.

Question Authority

This is a nuclear power slogan from the 70s, but the Multics group liked it so much that we adopted it as our own. Just wearing a button like this was subversive in the corporate Honeywell environment in Phoenix in the late 1970's.

Air Jamaica

When my friend and neighbor from Hinsdale,  Wyman Macdonald, got married in Jamaica in 1973, I flew down to attend.

Petoskey Stone

A  Petoskey stone is a Devonian fossil colonial coral, Hexagonaria percarinata. These corals lived 350 million years ago when Michigan was under water. They are found only in the rock strata known as the Gravel Point Formation, near Traverse City, Michigan, where my sister Sally lives. They are primarily calcite, and polish up nicely; people make things out of them, like this figure of a morel.

Mushrooms

I got interested in mushroom hunting through the writings of  John Cage. I joined the  Boston Mycological Club and enjoyed the weekly mushroom walks in the summer. This name tag is probably from the yearly banquet.

Cruizero

I visited Brazil in 1973 and 1974. Wonderful country, friendly people, full of life and movimento.

Restaurante Brasilia

Although I had visited Brazil twice, the first time I had feijoada, Brazil's national dish, was at a restaurant in Harvard Square.

Tabasco

Hot food in good company. Good on feijoada.

Porsche 911

I've had three 911s. I wish I had one now, even with all the troubles and worry they bring. Nothing else is as fun to drive.

Beer Cap, Ballantine India Pale Ale

I was introduced to Ballantine India Pale Ale in the 70s, and still love it when I can find it. These caps have a rebus on the inside; this one shows a baseball glove, a heart, and a bridge: that is, "I left my Heart in San Francisco."

Hippo

From a Hippoburger I had in Paris in 1980 with Lilli.

Tandem

I had eleven great years at Tandem Computers. Allen Berglund left the Multics group and joined Tandem in 1980, and invited me out to interview in December of 1980. I really liked California and the company, and after Jesse was born in 1981, Lilli and I came out again to interview in the spring, accepted offers in July, and moved west in August. I joined the TMF (Transaction Monitoring Facility) group, and Lilli joined Technical Publications.

In my Tandem career I programmed on TMF, Rainbow, and Crystal; managed the QA of Catalyst and Work Group Software; worked in the Software Engineering Technology group; and programmed on Hybrid. Lilli became a pubs manager and then manager of all of Tech Pubs before she left to join a startup.

Tandem was a great company to work for then. President Jimmy Treybig set the tone for a company that was people-oriented, informal, fun-loving, and energetic.

In 1998, Tandem was sold to Compaq. Later, Compaq was bought by HP.

D00

A button from the early 1990s encouraging developers to convert their software for Tandem's D00 release, which addressed table space limitations that prevented Tandem systems from growing.

TOPS

Lilli won Tandem's TOPS award in 1984. The top one percent of the company went on a weeklong trip to Montreal, spouses and top execs included.

Ardent

Lilli left Tandem in 1986 to work at a startup called Dana Computer, founded by Allen Michels. The company was renamed Ardent in December 87. They produced a desktop supercomputer called the Titan. The company didn't make the big success it expected, and Lilli quit just after Ardent merged with competitor Stellar in 1989 to become Stardent.

Eurail

These are Eurailpasses from the sabbatical vacation Lilli and I took in Europe in 1989. Tandem had this lovely benefit, an extra six weeks' vacation every four years, and this was my second. We flew to Frankfurt, and then visited Heidelberg, Vienna, Venice, Rome, Sorrento and Pompeii, Florence, Interlaken, Maastricht, and Amsterdam. It was a wonderful trip.

Frankfurt Subway

A Frankfurt subway ticket from our 1989 sabbatical.

Taligent

I left Tandem in 1993 and went to work at this Apple/IBM joint venture, which planned to do a new operating system. Actually, it planned to finish the "Pink" operating system that Apple had started years before. C++ was the religion, and "the power of frameworks" was what the marketing folks were selling. When IBM looked at Pink, they saw that there was no security, and said, "Hire some guy that knows about security." That was me.

There were a lot of really good people at Taligent. The company had about 400 people and was spending over a million dollars a week. But Taligent wasn't able to finish Pink either; they discarded the Apple microkernel and switched to IBM's version of Mach, which had its own problems. The company then decided not to do an OS, but rather an application environment, "Common Point." That project, over 14 million lines of C++, encountered its own delays and problems. Top management quit. The replacement CEO, Dick Guarino, died of a heart attack. The company laid off a lot of people, including me, and was eventually absorbed by IBM.

Ocean City

Lilli compares every beach we visit to the Jersey Shore, and every beach town to Ocean City, NJ.

Beach Glass

When we walk on the beach we pick up beach glass. We have bags of it. Someday, I keep thinking, when we retire, we'll make a beautiful mosaic with it.

Problem's Name Tag

One of many, many cats that have shared our lives. A handsome Siamese, very shy, shed a lot.

CyberCash

I joined  CyberCash in 1996, and worked on their Java Wallet project with Sun. I also worked on CyberCash's SET protocol implementation, coordinating our participation in a joint project ("Smart Commerce Japan") with Visa, Netscape, IBM, Toshiba, and Sumitomo. CyberCash ran into money troubles and laid off all its old guys in 1998.

CyberCash Golf Tee

A CyberCash golf tee. Lilli took up golf in 1996 and got lots of advice from her father and brother.

100% Pure Java

While I was at CyberCash, I worked on a joint project with  JavaSoft's Java Commerce Group, building what was then called the Java Wallet. In 1998, I returned to work at Sun in the same group, by then moved out of JavaSoft into SunSoft.

TransIlluminant Baby

I joined TransIlluminant in late 1998. They handed out these little babies to commemorate the launch of the first TransIlluminant pilot. The company was renamed  Encirq in 1999 and laid everybody off in 2001.

RATP

A Paris subway ticket from our trip in November 1991.

Arrowhead

Don't remember where I got this. Had it since I was a kid. In those days there was a lot of Indian lore included in the Cub Scout and Boy Scout programs. It's probably not genuine or anything.

AYSO Referee Pin

Lilli and I refereed soccer for AYSO in California for a couple of years. Lilli served as Chief Referee for a season, we scheduled referees for several years, and I taught beginning refs the basic course.

NASA Visitor Pass

This pass let me into Moffett Field so I could help move boxes at  The Computer Museum History Center's west coast warehouse in 1997.

Cork

This might be the cork from a bottle of Asti at my 50th birthday celebration. Or some other great party.

Pirate Coin

A souvenir of a "Pirate Cruise" at a SET vendor meeting in 1997 in Florida.

Jesse's Tooth

One of the last baby teeth Jesse lost.

Puppet Head

One of Lilli's good friends at Ardent Computer gave her a little doll stuffed with millet. Our dog Al ate everything but the head.

Bottle Opener

Carried this on my keychain when I was in college. Cut my hand on it once and didn't notice till later.

David Byrne at Greek Theater

September 11, 1992.

Solaris Compatible

The UNIX wars were a terrible mistake. They divided the community and led to non-portable applications and a lot of waste motion, and left a niche that allowed Windows NT to get started.

Tylenol

I used to be prone to migraines, but Tylenol didn't touch them.

Film

Shot a lot of pictures in my day.

Hartono

When we lived in Phoenix in 1979, this Indonesian restaurant was our favorite. It was on the 8th floor of an office building: you just had to know it was there, there was no sign.

Grendel's Den

This was a great place to eat in Harvard Square.

Memory

Memory keeps getting denser, and old chips are worthless except for decoration.

Circus Circus

Token from a soccer tournament trip to Las Vegas, the year Jesse played on a competitive team.

Halloween

Prize for "Most Revealing Costume" from the Taligent costume party, 1994.

Arizona

You can see my bad-guy mustache on my Arizona driver's license from 1978.

Vostok

Visiting Russians gave out these pins to MIT students in the early 60s.

Duck

If this has a significance, I forget what.

Vocabulary Card

High school days. We were nerds then, though we didn't know the word. And language, of all kinds, was really what we liked best. This is a Greek vocabulary card.

Mayan Calendar Belt Buckle

Bought this buckle from a street vendor in Cambridge. It depicts the Mayan Calendar Stone, one of the first mathematical instruments of social control, precursor to the computer. Lilli and I visited the wonderful Archaeological Museum in Mexico City, and saw one of the original stones.

Kazoo

My tribute to my favorite book, Gravity's Rainbow. This is actually a JavaSoft kazoo.

Satygraha

June 11, 1989, we went to see Philip Glass's opera in San Francisco. I was afraid Lilli would find the music monotonous and boring. We both found it deeply moving.

Macintosh Icon

Lilli brought home a Mac Plus from Ardent in 1987 or so, and we spent a lot of time learning how to use the Mac and its applications. When I was at Taligent, most of the programmers were ex-Apple, and we used Macs as our productivity machines, for mail, documents, and so on. At first we compiled Pink on the Mac also, but later switched to IBM RS/6000s. Taligent employees got Apple employee prices on closeout Macs, and we equipped several friends with machines at a discount.

Oakland A's

August 28, 1984. We were lucky to live in an area with two baseball teams. It was easier to get to a Giants game, but the A's ballpark doesn't get as cold in the evenings.

San Francisco 49ers

September 18, 1990. Great seats, but expensive.

Swizzle

We took a trip to Cancun in 1989. This was just after a big hurricane had really whacked Yucatan, and all the folks there were extremely glad to see tourists returning.

Beads

New Orleans beads. What a town! Such food, such music, so much to see.

Guitar Pick

Both our kids played bass guitar.

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