Last visit to an old friend

A few months ago, IBM announced that they were going to close the Almaden Research Center, where I’d spent the last two-thirds of my IBM career. I had many good memories of my time there (and a few very bad ones!), so I was sad to hear the news.

I ran into a friend from Almaden, Ron Fagin, the other day while we were out walking. He said that the lab would be closing in just a couple of weeks, so I asked if I could come up and visit before The End. We arranged for me to come up this afternoon, and he met me in the main lobby.

I got my visitor badge and we walked down the main corridor. The place was pretty empty, but it didn’t take long before I ran into John Day – we’d worked together in the Research Computing Facility for many years. He’s now in charge of closing down the building and getting it ready to put on the market – it’s a big job.

Some things had changed, of course; the library was now a social area (the “Hilltop Hub”), for example. But many things had stayed the same, like this poster near Ron’s office for a new storage architecture…well, it was new in 2005.

The artwork outside the director’s office was the same, too – I don’t know what its official name is, but we used to call it “Flushed with Power”.

Ron and I took a walk around the lab to enjoy the views.

I even got to visit one of my old offices – well, I couldn’t go in, but it was an important place for me; I’d set up IBM’s first external Gopher server in that office and wrote Gopher for OS/2 there – and that put me on the path to the Internet Division and working with W3C.

I’m glad I was able to go back and see the place one last time before it closes next month. Thanks, Ron!