Welcome to the Claar's!

27½ years is a long time. It's as long as I've been in San Jose. It's most of my adult life. It's longer than my kids have been alive. It's longer than my first marriage lasted. And it is how long I worked at HP.

Today is the first day I can't say "I work at HP", and everyone knows the company, knows someone that works there. Today is the first day I didn't drive to 19447 Pruneridge Avenue, Cupertino. It's kinda strange.

HP has changed a lot in that time. It went from a company that wanted to be the best there is to a company that wants to be "in the middle of our peers". It is a company taken over by MBAs, a company that has lost its soul. Sure, there are still a few old-timers--some even in mid to upper management--that remember. The rest, they don't understand. They can't see what was. Like looking at a mean old woman, and thinking she's always been that way, that she was never young and fun and sexy.

OK, don't get carried away, it's just a metaphor! ...although HP was a pretty cool place to work back then. It's not any more. There are still good people there--less and less every day--but the company I went to work for is gone.

Well, here's to new ways, new adventures!

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.