Our first evening - June 24, 1976 - PART THREE

Okay - I guess I have to be honest, too, that I don't remember all the details of the evening. But here's what I do remember.

When we got to my friends' home, Geoff opened my cardoor for me and he got whatever I was bringing to their house out of the trunk and carried it in for me. This chivalry definately made an impression upon me and, in fact, although Geoff''s not opening my door for me these days, he still does carry in most of the stuff we bring home.

I don't remember any more details than Geoff does about our evening at Liz's and Steve's home but I do remember that, after we left, Geoff and I went to get a light bite and something to drink at a nearby place that had sandwiches, salads, beer and wine. I remember that I was suprised to learn how much we DID have in common - our love of movies and science fiction and we both talked about buzz (though we didn't call it that, back then) regarding the recently released "Star Wars" movie. So by the end of the evening, I had decided that even though we had been on such different paths a few years earlier, that it would be nice to spend more time with him.

By the way, there is an interesting California Free Speech history to the Shopping Center where Geoff and I went for our snack that night. Here's a link to that history. Pruneyard Story Link
The restaurant where we went that night is now gone - after all, it has been 30 years.

Our first evening - June 24th - PART TWO

I do not recall a large part of that evening, and it wasn't the drugs, or the alcohol, or being swept up in Ellyn's allure; nope it is just a vast expanse of time. Besides, at the time, I did not think it would particularly be an evening to remember, so I forgot to take notes. I do remember spending some time at the friends' home and sitting out by their pool chatting, all of them probably curious about this stranger that Ellyn had plunked down in their midst.

I will assume I was my usual witty self and hardly put together more than a few words all evening. Ellyn has already mentioned her dismay at find out I was a seasoned war veteran, although I do not believe escaping safely into the submarine Navy at a time when I could have been easily drafted into the infantry of Viet Nam was any kind of battle-tested badge of courage. I guess when the full facts came to light, she had pity for me rather than flaming hatred.

Our first evening - June 24th - PART ONE

As we mentioned in the last post, my little house was clean. Geoff and I had made plans for Geoff to pick me up to join a get-together at my friends' home. By the way, I was pretty proud that, as a 25 year old single woman that I owned my own home. It was a typical San Jose bungalo with about 1000 square feet, 3 little bedrooms, a fairly large kitchen, and a big two car garage. My father had loaned me the down payment to purchase the $36,000 home.

So, that evening, Geoff came to pick me up at my house. I recall him coming in and in those first few minutes together, I learned that Geoff had been in the Navy in the years from 1967 to 1973. Up until this time of my life, the peers in my life were almost 100% anti-war liberals. And during the years 1969-1973 when I had been at the University of Washington, I could easily be described as a "antiwar hippy". Here's some articles from that time period at UW: http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=2308/>

Learning that Geoff had been in the Navy while I was protesting the war gave me the first impression that we didn't have anything in common.

I had wanted to post a photo of me from my war-protesting college "hippy" years but, so far, I can't find the photo album so instead I found this photo from the web to give you the idea.

Thirty Years Ago Today

First let's get this out of the way - we aren't so cutsie as to have spent the last 30 years celebrating the anniversaries of the day we met. However, because this is the 30th anniversary, we did some calculating based upon when Geoff was hired and when he arrived in San Jose and we came up with June 24th, 1977. We'll be taking turns telling about the day.

ELLYN: Geoff already mentioned that we met at the Secretary's desk. Sue had been my department's secretary and Sue and I were friendly. While I was over in her area that day, I dropped by her desk to say "hi!" While I was there a young man I hadn't seen before came up to her desk to ask for a moving expense form. I asked where he had moved from and heard the story he's told above about him being send from MN to SJ for the year. Then I went back to my desk.

GEOFF: This was a long time ago, so I may not remember it exactly, but I went back to working on my expense forms and do not think I gave Ellyn another thought. Later in the day, I was in the room where our big, flatbed tester was. Ellyn came to the door of the lab. She asked what I was doing that night. I scrambled for something. "Uh, nothing". Oops. "Uh, I just got all my boxes from the movers and I have to set up my stereo in my apartment." I was missing my tunes. Maybe I should have gone with "I have to wash my hair". She said she was going to meet with some friends at their house that night and wondered if I wanted to come along. Somehow, I agreed to this rather forward approach from a young woman I had just met. Could be fun, even for a social misfit like myself. "Ok, but I gotta have time to get my stereo working first."

ELLYN: On that momentous Friday, I had plans to go over to my friends, Steve's and Liz's new home, to hang out for a while that evening. After I had met Geoff, I was thinking (very presumptiously since I didn't know anything about him) that he must be lonely since he was new in town and decided to invite him to go with me. Two important points: ONE: I thought of this only as an invite to a colleague who was new in town. I had absolutely no other motives. TWO: The fact that my house was cleaned up that day made me more comfortable in asking Geoff to join us. Who knows, if my house hadn't been clean that day, our paths wouldn't have crossed in the way they did. At any rate, Geoff accepted my offer and we made plans for him to pick me up at my little house later that evening.

We'll add the evening's story in the next posting...

Anti-trust and emission limits as Cupid

There's two reasons that IBM was cloning San Jose's HDD technology in Rochester, MN:

1) IBM had real fears that the results of the long Federal IBM anti-trust investigation would result in splitting up IBM so the disk drive capability needed to be in Roch's mid-size systems division.

2) California was starting to crack down on factory emissions and IBM San Jose's emissions from the disk drive manufacturing was nearing the emissions limit. So an additional disk drive location was required to increase capacity.

Of course, thirty years ago today, Geoff and I were totally unaware that anti-trust and environmental laws would play cupid in our lives in the coming weeks.

Here's a good article about the 13 year antitrust suit in the context of Microsoft and AT&T.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/stories/microtale19.htm

30 years of HDD development

The reason I and the other Rochester employees were sent to San Jose was to "steal" technology on building hard disk drives and to bring it back to Rochester. This was the time of the antitrust suit against IBM and there was a danger that the company would be split. Rochester, who built the AS/400, did not want to have to buy their disk drives from an outside source.

The product I worked on was one similar to this picture, but only capable of holding about 200M bytes of data. 30 years later, a drive holding 1000 times as much data can be held in the palm of your hand.

Ellyn must not have thought "Is that a hard drive in your pocket or are you just glad to meet me?" when we were first introduced by the secretary in our area. There is another archaic concept, the common secretary. They are now administrative assistants and only work for top management.

The next man....

Thirty years ago, I was a 25 year old single woman who owned my own home and had just bought my first brand new car (here's a good description and photos on another blog http://mjgradziel.com/honda.html). I had already worked for IBM for nearly 4 years at this point and had just returned from a six week trip to Israel and Europe where I traveled alone with stays with friends in Jerusalem, London, the Netherlands and Antwerp.

In telling our story through the years I have often joked that when I got home from my trip, that I had vowed to marry the next man I met but it wasn't quite that simple.

Wow, 30 years.

So I just passed the 30 year anniversary yesterday of my first day at IBM. It was in Rochester, MN, and I was immediately told to head for CA. I had rented an apartment already and had not realized I would be leaving so soon. I had been told about the temp assignment but did not know it would come so quickly. I was able to get out of the rental though and packed my stuff to go. I guess they gave me a week to get out there, because I drove in my 1973 Mercury Capri pulling my Honda 350 on the trailer my Father built for me. I had shipped my big items, like my stereo equipment.

I took a northern route through North Dakota and drove through Glacier National Park on the northern border of Montana, then down through Oregon. I remember driving along the northern border of Oregon and being able to see Mt. Hood on one side and Mt. St. Helens (pre-eruption) on the other.

Little did I know then what California had in store for my future.

Our paths are about to cross....

Thirty years ago, today, Geoff began working at IBM in Rochester, MN and he learned that he would be sent immediately out to San Jose for a one year assignment.

Meanwhile, Ellyn had been working for IBM for nearly four years in San Jose.

The plot thickens.....

It started in June 1977

In a few weeks, it will be the 30 years since our chance meeting at IBM. And now it's been 4 homes, 2 sons, 5 additional Star Wars episodes, and countless stories to tell.

We'll be adding to this blog throughout the weeks leading up to our April 16, 2008 30th Anniversary so we can share some of our stories with our family and friends. We'll try to keep them short and maybe even a little interesting.