Officially Old

I got to invite many of my friends and colleagues, some of whom I’d known for close to 20 years (none of my earliest colleagues from my years in Boca Raton are out here), and we had a pleasant lunch at the Fish Market in San Jose, which IBM paid for (that’s always a sign of a good meal!).

1227 after lunch:

[From left: John Patrick, Diane Goldman, me, Tony Rall, Jon Reinke, Glenn Deen, Brad Wade, Diane Reese]

I had considered holding the lunch on a trip to the East Coast, so that my immediate manager and more of my offical teammates could be there, but then I wouldn’t have been able to have my best friend and most important colleague present.

1225 at fish market: At my QCC celebration lunch

One of the customs at a QCC lunch is that the employee’s manager sends out notes to the employee’s friends asking for letters of congratulations which are then printed out and put into a binder which is presented at the lunch. My friend Sam sent me such a letter; Sam, this photo is just for you.

Missing and Weakest Links

Other than having my QCC lunch, things have been pretty quiet. Last night, though, I was unhappy; my Internet connectivity vanished for no apparent reason (I had all green lights on the DSL modem, but my router couldn’t talk to the Internet). I couldn’t reach my ISP by phone last night, so instead, we watched the special Star Trek episode of The Weakest Link. It was a lot more fun than the regular episodes I’d watched near the beginning of the show’s run; even the sniping and back-biting didn’t seem too serious. And I was glad to note that each star’s charity got a $10,000 donation even if the star was eliminated (a change from the usual game).

I finally reached my ISP today just before lunch; they didn’t see anything wrong, and by the time I got home, nothing was wrong. I hate trying to fix intermittent problems.