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In addition to the regular June primary (vote No on 16 and 17!), voters in the 12th State Senate district are being treated to a special election on June 22nd to replace Abel Maldonado. Jeff is interning at the Santa Clara County office of the John Laird campaign; I know how I’m voting in that election!

The process of retiring from IBM is a long one; I passed another threshold on Tuesday, when I had my official retirement lunch. I picked the Fish Market in San Jose, the same place I’d had my Quarter Century Club lunch; many of the same people were there, but about half the group, like me, were no longer working for IBM.

The conversation flowed freely; so did the non-alcoholic beverages (IBM was paying, hence the restriction). I made a short (I hope) speech thanking everyone for coming, and I received my binder of farewell letters and my retirement gift brochure.

I didn’t open the binder until the next day; the first letter was from Sam Palmisano, congratulating me on my many years of service, and emphasizing how much IBM values its people. It was addressed to “Dr. David Singer”, which I found amusing.

The rest of the letters were from friends, and I appreciate every one of them, even the ones which remind me of potentially embarrassing moments which I thought were safely buried (did I really used to tape a “GO AWAY!” sign on my office door?).

I haven’t figured out what to select for a retirement gift; the options are varied but somewhat odd. Of course there’s the expected range of rings, watches, and clocks, but they also offer items like a griddler, a cordless scrubber, and a fax/copier. Nothing really resonates with me, but I’m sure I’ll figure out something before the deadline. Hmmm, maybe the soft serve ice cream maker….

Earlier today, a friend asked me how long I’d been blogging, which got me to look at my earliest blog entries. In the process, I noticed that I’d left a question unanswered in my May 22, 2000 posting (to be fair, it was only asked implicitly). I was writing about the W3C Advisory Committee dinner at the Amsterdam Grand Hotel, and I noted that Jean-François Abramatic, the W3C Chairman at the time, was seated in the “Legi Gregi” chair but that I had no idea who Legi Gregi was.

But that was then. Today, of course, searching for answers is almost a reflex, so I highlighted “Legi Gregi” in that posting, right clicked, hit “Search Google”, and 400 milliseconds later, I had my answer (courtesy of an article Toni Dabbs wrote for TravelLady Magazine): “Legi Gregi” wasn’t a “who” at all; it means “for law and citizenry” in Latin.

I’m glad to be able to clear up the record.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, my first blog posting was on March 16, 2000, so I’ve been blogging just under 122 months so far.

Since leaving IBM, I’ve developed a few new projects; one of the more urgent is to make our home office usable as my primary workplace; doing that requires sorting out the stuff that’s already in there. And while doing that, I’ve been finding things that had followed me home over the years; today seemed like a good time to return them to IBM. So that’s what I did this afternoon.

The drive up the hill was beautiful, as always; I did have to stop at the gate and use the intercom to be admitted instead of being able to badge in, and that felt strange. Stopping at the reception desk was unusual; this marked the first time I’d had to use my retiree ID card (and it took me a few tries to figure out where I’d hidden it in my wallet). But after few moments, I had a bright yellow “IBM Retiree” badge on my lapel, and I was able to freely wander the halls (though I couldn’t open any badge-locked doors).

I’d arranged to meet my ex-assistant so that she could help ship some items to my ex-manager, so I walked all the way through the building to my ex-office, which, somewhat to my surprise, was undisturbed since I’d left. The office next to mine was also vacant (its occupant was also included in this year’s Resource Action, though he’d been extended for a couple of weeks) — that seemed very odd.

As I walked the halls, I kept running into people I’d worked with; they were busy, but everyone I saw wanted to know how I was doing. I was happy to be able to tell them that I’m doing OK.

And I am; I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I first drove up to Almaden, but it’s just this place, you know?

One of the side effects of leaving IBM was the need to buy my very own laptop computer; naturally, I wanted a Mac. So when the upgraded MacBook Pros came out last week, I was quick to order one (15-inch 2.53GHz i5, 7200rpm drive, matte hi-res display), and I eagerly watched its progress on the Apple and FedEx websites until it arrived in my hands Wednesday, a day before the promised delivery date.

I had a backup of my old MBP, but I didn’t want to use the Migration Assistant to copy everything over, since many of the apps were now irrelevant to me (and some had been irrelevant since the moment I installed them!). I took fairly careful notes and thought I’d post them here to help myself the next time I need to change Macs (and if they help others, so much the better).

The physical unboxing, of course, was up to Apple’s usual standards; unlike a ThinkPad, there’s no silly wordless poster — the box and the contents speak for themselves. And the first boot experience was, as usual, straightforward (though I do wonder why there’s no Hebrew “welcome” in the initial video).

Before I got to work, I ran Software Update, which found eight or nine updates, all of which were applied in a single reboot.

Then I started to work on my applications and data.

The very first thing I installed was 1Password — but then I realized that if I wanted to use my saved passwords, I needed Dropbox, so I installed it, let it copy things, and then finished setting up 1Password.

In previous migrations, I’d always installed Quicksilver next, but its future is uncertain, so I decided to wait until later in the process and see how well I could live without it.

The next step was to start looking at the apps in the old /Applications directory to decide their fate. I’d picked up a number of random apps over the years, many in bundles, and decided that I would only install the ones which I was actively using. So I have bid adieu for now to Acorn, Amazon MP3 Downloader, Audacity, Caffeine, DaisyDisk, DejaMenu, Flip4Mac, Google Earth, HandBrake, RealPlayer, Shovebox, TaskPaper, VLC, and WriteRoom. I wouldn’t be surprised to want some of these again soon, though.

It was also easy to say aloha to apps which I used because of my work at IBM, including Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime, Lotus Symphony, Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection, Mozilla Thunderbird, Second Life, and tn3270 X.

When it came to browsers, I was torn. Firefox has been my go-to browser for years, but it’s an awkward fit on the Mac since it doesn’t support Services; it also leaks memory like a sieve (though I guess it’s possible that the ton of extensions I’ve installed contribute to the leakage). I eventually decided not to install it for now and see if I can get by with Safari, OmniWeb and Google Chrome. I really like Chrome and would probably make it my default browser if 1Password supported it.

The apps I decided to migrate are AppZapper, Awaken, DEVONAgent, DEVONThink Pro Office, Evernote, Fluid, ForkLift, GPSBabel, Join Together, MailPlane, NetNewsWire, OmniFocus, OpenOffice, Parallels Desktop, PDFPen, PhoneView, Pixelmator, QuickTime Player 7, Skype, Snapz Pro X, Stanza, SuperDuper!, TextExpander, TextMate, Tweetie, WireTap Studio, and XMarks. In most cases, I downloaded a fresh copy, then used ForkLift to easily bring over the associated files in the ~/Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Application Support directories. In retrospect, I probably should have used AppZapper to identify all of those files instead of eyeballing it!

I expected to have to install Growl, but it came along automatically with some other program; I did have to reinstall the SmartSleep prefpane.

I installed two packages from their original DVDs: iWork ‘09 and the software bundle for the Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500; of course, I then went online to install updates for both of them.

I decided not to install the software bundle for my Epson Artisan 810 printer yet; instead, I turned it on and let the system find the right drivers. I’ll worry about the full bundle if I ever need it (and in the meantime, I have the Windows version on a different machine anyway).

The final piece of the migration involved data. My old mail files were in ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Mail Downloads (I’m not sure I needed the latter). My music was in ~/Music; my photos were in ~/Pictures. I also made sure to migrate ~/.profile and my ~/.ssh directory. And, of course, I had a lot of data in ~/Documents (including a Windows VM), though I did try to be selective in what I copied.

That marked the end of the migration, but I did decide to install a trial version of LaunchBar to see if it’ll replace Quicksilver in my heart and on my fingers.

Now, on to productive tasks!

I’d been eagerly awaiting the new line of MacBook Pro laptops from Apple so that I could replace the one I’d used while at IBM with one of my own.

I’d expected the faster processors, of course, and the automatic swap between the graphics processor wasn’t a huge shock, but I was surprised to learn that they’d added a 15″ model with more pixels onscreen. One of the few complaints I had in moving from my old ThinkPad to the MacBook Pro was the loss of vertical screen real estate — 900 pixels just aren’t that many, especially when using Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes isn’t a consideration now, of course, but I think it would be nice to have more vertical room anyway.

So I made a trip to the Apple Store to look at the new systems, especially the new display — but they didn’t have any on the floor yet! The manager told me that the first they knew of the machines was when the truck arrived, and that they hadn’t had the chance to update the floor displays. But she said they should have them out tomorrow — I’m hoping that includes the hi-res 15″ model.

I’m also undecided about the disk — the machine comes with a 5400rpm disk, but there’s an inexpensive upgrade to 7200rpm, or a rather pricey upgrade to SSD. I think I should pass on SSD at this point in the cycle, but 7200rpm is appealing — I just wonder about the impact on battery life. And I have to decide between the i5 and the i7; I’m leaning towards the i5 on the basis of price/performance.

Advice is welcome!

We made our first trip to Pinnacles National Monument yesterday. It’s spectacular, and being there during wildflower season didn’t hurt, either!

I’ve posted pictures to Flickr and Facebook; I also created a track log (which includes the Facebook photos, I think), using Trip Journal on my iPhone.

We hiked about 9 miles, with lots of climbing and descending. My legs haven’t recovered yet.

Great trip.

According to my offer letter, I was supposed to start at IBM sometime in June, 1976 (I’ve forgotten the exact date) and work on a compiler for the minicomputer that would be released as the IBM Series/1. However, I delayed reporting to work in favor of becoming engaged to Diane, and by the time I got to Boca Raton, the spot on the compiler team had been filled.

• First day at IBM: July 19, 1976, Boca Raton, Florida, General Products Division

My first job at IBM was on the team writing telecommunications code for the Series/1. I wasn’t enthralled, especially when it came to testing the code, because we had to short out the peripheral cards to load in our code, and I didn’t realize that there was only low voltage in the Series/1’s card case! And the idea of dealing with information that left the machine and might or might not return successfully was strange, too.

So after a few months, I made a deal with my management — if I would provide a complete unit test plan for the code I’d written, they’d transfer me to the Operating System group (just down the hall). They were happy to oblige, so I wrote the first of many productivity aids, one which read the structured assembler code and annotated it according to our unit test scheme (“Test Plan 7”). It took me a day or two to produce the test plan for all of my code, and away I went.

The Series/1 was an interesting beast; it had 64kb address spaces (we only used one in the first release of the OS) and not enough registers. It also had short and long forms of many instructions (the short form had, if I remember, 256 bytes of addressability from “here” — anything else took the long form). We were perpetually running out of room in the address space, and it struck me that it would be a good idea to have a peephole optimizer which would convert long form instructions to short form when possible. So I wrote it, learning PL/S in the process. And people loved it — it was in our “Quality Plan” almost immediately. That was the first time I really understood how much leverage smart tooling could provide.

I created quite a few other tools while I was in Series/1 development; I’m not sure why other people didn’t do the same thing, because I found that doing so always saved me time, and then providing the tools to my colleagues really provided a big payoff, at no extra effort. And I even got to learn new languages in the process (most of which I have, mercifully, forgotten), which I greatly enjoyed.

I mentioned that we were writing “structured assembler” code — this was in the days that using structured code instead of GOTO statements was considered an “Improved Programming Technique”. There were many “Improved Programming Techniques”, not all of which were used well.

In particular, we documented our code using a technique called HIPO — the documentation for HIPOs said, very clearly, that they were not used to document the logic of a module, just its overall function; however, our “Quality Plan” called for us to use HIPOs as flowcharts to document the logic. I found this silly (not to mention very tedious), and so I wrote my first memo at IBM: “HIPO: Threat or Menace” (playing off a National Lampoon cover), quoting the HIPO documentation to make my point. In those days, we actually hand-wrote memos, and the secretaries typed and distributed them — my department’s secretary tried very hard to get me to change the subject line, but I refused. In hindsight, the subject line probably didn’t help my case, but the HIPOs vanished.

It’s been a long time since anyone has had to type a memo for me; I can’t remember the last time I got a real hardcopy memo, for that matter. Email has taken the place of memos, and, for better or for worse, nobody else sees them before they go out to the world.

I wanted to find a way to reuse the subject line of my first memo in my last IBM email, but the joke wasn’t all that funny in 1976 and hasn’t improved with age. So my last email had a more personal subject: “33.7 years – that’s not too many”.

• Last day at IBM: March 31, 2010, San Jose, California, Business Transformation/IT

And you know what? I never did get to work on a compiler at IBM!

Today was my last full day at IBM; I decided to spam thank some close soon-to-be-ex-colleagues before I left. Since I wasn’t sure that those who wanted to respond would do so before my IBM email address expired, I directed replies to an address at a domain that I set up for my family (let’s call it example.us, just to keep the real spammers at bay).

Mail for example.us is MX’ed to Google Apps servers; I’ve set up forwarding there for each of us to our real preferred GMail addresses. This has the advantage of letting me move from GMail if I want to, without anyone being the wiser.

But today, I discovered that Google isn’t consistent in its mail filtering. A friend at work thanked me for sending her the note and mentioned that she’d replied — but I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen her reply. And when I searched the GMail account, there was nothing from her. But when I looked at the mailbox on example.us, her note was there. And, in fact, there were several replies that hadn’t made it to GMail but were safely in the inbox for example.us.

So I guess I need to rethink my mail strategy and let mail for example.us stay there instead of forwarding it to GMail.

Life was easier when all my mail went to singer@almaden.ibm.com! (I’d worry about spammers getting that address, except that it’s been visible on the Web and well-spammed for many years, and, of course, it expires tomorrow.)

• How to Master the Art of Mindful Eating