Author: geoff

Derek Maxwell, RIP [updated]

I just learned that a former colleague of mine, Derek Maxwell, died yesterday. He and I worked together from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s: he was the go-to guy in product marketing for our PC networking products such as PC-NFS. Soon after he arrived, the so-called “planets” re-org saw our entire group restructured and renamed as an independent business unit, SunSelect. The potential for chaos and duplication was high, and much credit goes to Derek for sustaining the relationships with the product teams in the other Sun business units. Eventually our group was folded into SunSoft, and for a while Derek worked for me when I was acting director of PCN.
Derek and I had a number of interests in common, including motor racing, and we often found ourselves comparing notes on the strange gestalt of being an expat Brit in America. Unfortunately we drifted apart after I joined SunLabs, and Derek moved into various marketing roles in the OS and storage organizations, although we often exchanged non-work email.
Speaking of email, Derek’s always ended with the signature:

“Tha fhagail fhein aig gach neach !” – “Everyone has their own particular destiny”

Sadly, his own came too soon, in the form of a massive heart attack at the age of 49. Farewell, Derek. We’ll miss you.
Here’s the internal announcement from Sun (and yes, it’s OK to redistribute it):

It is with great sadness that we pass on the news that our friend and colleague, Derek Maxwell, passed away last night from a massive coronary.
A 17-year Sun veteran, Derek was well-known not only to the Storage Group, but throughout Sun. In his earlier years he worked in a variety of Sun organizations and projects including Sun-MC (Management Console), a program for managing and diagnosing problems on SPARC-based Solaris systems. He’s been part of Sun Storage since its inception, dedicating his expertise and passion to Storage Management over the last few years and most recently working as a Product Definitions Manager for SAM-FS/QFS.
Long-time friends and colleagues of Derek describe him as a man with a true generous spirit, who reached out to others and always had an easy smile for all who crossed his path. He maintained a tremendous passion for his work and was often known by his work team as the Sun “go-to” guy, because of his breadth of knowledge and Sun expertise.
Derek leaves behind his wife, Sandra, a son and a daughter. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they work through this difficult loss.
[…]
Due to the many years that Derek spent at Sun, it is impossible to reach out to all those who knew and worked with Derek. Therefore, we appreciate if you can forward this message as appropriate to those who have not received the news.
Thank you for your support.
Nigel Dessau and Nancy Hurley

Suez 1956; Lebanon 2006

Over at The Belgravia Dispatch Greg has posted a series of interesting emails he’s received on the subject of Israel, Lebanon and US policy. All put recent events in historical context in a way that politicians and journalists have long since forgotten how to do. This caught my eye:

Israel is radicalizing people who have little use for armed militia, but have less use for being indiscriminately bombed out of their homes and livelihoods. The Germans were fond of “community punishment” techniques during their battles with European resistance movements during the war, and we all know how much that endeared the Germans to their fellow Europeans. Giving a blank cheque to Israel is as mad as Kaiser Wilhelm giving a blank cheque to Conrad von Hötzendorf in 1914.
Of course, our government will take no such drastic action, particularly not having “committed” itself as it has, but how ironic that fifty years ago this summer our government rather brutally brought the Suez crisis to an end by squeezing Britain until the pips squeaked. I would defy anyone to reconcile the strategic worldview of the United States as reflected by these two seminal events.

Indeed. But then considering Eisenhower and Bush, maybe the contradiction isn’t so surprising.

Heads-up: celebratory imbibition

In anticipation of my departure for Seattle on August 8, a few of us will be getting together for drinks on Friday August 4. The rendezvous point is the Naked Fish on the Middlesex Turnpike on Billerica, MA. I’ll be getting there at 5pm; some of us will be staying on for dinner (they do a really good Coconut Encrusted Haddock). Pass the word to any Sun, ex-Sun, ex-Mosaic, ex-PC-NFS, or ex-386i folks that you know….

Alec's 5th podcast, the first from Birmingham

Here‘s the latest podcast from Alec. (536KB MP3, 2:16) You know that he’s glad to be in an English hospital when he inadvertently refers to it as a “hotel”, right? It sounds as if his leg is in a brace rather than a cast, which is good: there’s nothing more miserable than a plaster cast in a heatwave….
Anyway, he doesn’t have Internet access yet (though he’s planning to experiment with GPRS through his mobile), but SMS is working, so if you know his number…. (13375p34k optional.)

Alec's knee

It must be a Web 2.0 thing… first blogging, then podcasts, now an x-ray. Nice mechanical engineering, Alec. (Thanks, Bart.)
Alec's knee x-ray

Relo questions: where do you buy electronics?

Where do Seattle residents go to buy electronics? I don’t mean TVs and GPS’s; I’m thinking of power supplies, DRAM, heatsinks, and so forth. (Yes, I know I’m joining Amazon – but some things require browsing. I’m never going to buy a mouse or a keyboard without getting my hands on a physical example.)
When I’m in Silicon Valley, I tend to visit Fry’s, Microcenter, and the Apple store. I see that there’s a Fry’s in Renton, and an Apple store up in University Village….
Anyway, where do the local geeks shop?

Non-random 10 – the long ones

Instead of my regular “random 10” posting, I decided to pick ten of my favourite long tracks – no more than one per artist. It’s easy to do this in iTunes – simply sort by playing time – but it’s also misleading. For example, one of my favourite long tracks is the 25 minute 22 second “Who Do You Love” by Quicksilver Messenger Service, from Happy Trails, but for some reason the producer elected to carve this continuous piece of music into six tracks. Oh, well. Check out this little lot:

  • “Kincajou (Duck! Asteroid)” by Banco de Gaia (from Last Train To Lhasa) [36:09]
  • “The Sky Moves Sideways (Alternate Version)” by Porcupine Tree (from The Sky Moves Sideways) [34:42]
  • “Dark Star/The Other One” by Henry Kaiser (from Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It) [30:56]
  • “The Great Wheel” by James Asher (from The Great Wheel) [30:31]
  • “Dazed And Confused” by Led Zeppelin (from How The West Was Won) [25:25]
  • “Andromeda Suite” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from Chemical Playschool Volume 8) [25:08]
  • “Dark Star” by the Grateful Dead (from Live/Dead) [23:07]
  • “Bare Wires Suite” by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (from Bare Wires) [22:59]
  • “Heaven Taste” by No-Man (from Heaven Taste) [22:30]
  • “Tarotplane” by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band (from Mirror Man) [19:09]

Several hours of blissful stuff there. It’s particularly interesting to compare the original 1968 version of “Dark Star” with Henry Kaiser’s re-interpretation* from 1988.
—
* If you don’t know Kaiser’s album Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It, I can heartily recommend it. He tackles classic tracks by the Dead, Captain Beefheart, and Country Joe and the Fish, as well as unexpected fragments of pop history like “Ode To Billy Joe”, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, and “The Fishin’ Hole” – yes, the Andy Griffith Show theme!

Alec's 4th podcast

Just in from Bart: a brief podcast from Alec – who was still in Lille – on the frustrations of dealing with insurance companies and French doctors. He sounds a lot more “Anglo-Saxon” (his term) than earlier, which is much more like the Alec I know…. (456KB, MP3, 1:55, NSFW)
I’m told he’s now actually in an ambulance, on the road, heading for the Chunnel….

Relo questions: laptop

This isn’t really a “relocation” question, but it relates to my move.
After years of “creative diversity” at Sun (Sun Write/Paint/Draw, Applix, FrameMaker, StarOffice) I’m going to be entering a relatively conventional (MS Office, Outlook Exchange) IT environment at Amazon.com, and I’m going to have to get myself a new computer (or select one of the standard offerings from Amazon.com IT). Recently I’ve run various Macintoshes (iBook, PB12, PB15), as well as an Acer Ferrari 3400 for Solaris x64.
I like to use my laptop as my engineering notebook. It goes everywhere with me, and needs to be instantly available as soon as I open the lid. So it has to be light and small. On the other hand, when I’m at my desk I expect to be able to use a decent display at full resolution. Performance? Of course, but my experience is that disk speed is more critical than highly artificial CPU numbers. (And to get decent battery life the OS is going to be dialling back the CPU anyway.)
The problem is, my ideal system doesn’t seem to exist. Here are the key features I’m looking for, in priority order:

  1. Weighs less than 4 lbs
  2. 6-8 hours battery life
  3. 100GB 7200rpm hard disk
  4. Able to drive an external 20″ LCD via DVI
  5. WiFi, Bluetooth, USB 2.0 and FireWire
  6. DVD burner (detachable OK)
  7. Decent 3-D (Vista-compatible) graphics; not this shared-memory nonsense

Any suggestions?