My first dressage horse, an off the track Thoroughbred (OTTB), was declared unsuitable by my trainer for advancement to the levels I aspired. This was due to the toll racing took on his legs. I gave him away to a coworker who wanted to trail ride.
I was laid off from Gould Computer Systems Division, in round 3 or 4 of post-acquisition reductions. It was a difficult period for Gould employees, watching a great computer company slowly disappear.
My divorce became final and two weeks later, my ex remarried his new girlfriend. I was very single.
Single, jobless, horseless. AND I turned 30 years old. Very depressing to say the least!
Within a few weeks time, however, my world was completely turned around again.
I purchased my first KWPN Dutch Warmblood from J. Ashton (Jeff) Moore, a fabulous big imported mahogany bay mare by Rubinstein. No, I did not exactly have a job yet, but I knew I would soon.
Next, after receiving job offers from Cray, Sequent, and Pyramid, I joined Sun Microsystems as a UNIX Support Specialist only because the hiring manager understood about horseownership and knew what dressage was. :-) Hey, these things are important!
I had a new job and a wonderful new horse. Things were good again.
That was 20 years ago. A helluva lot of living has happened since then.
I lived in the UK for 12 years, wrote a technical computer book, became a Brit, became a Sun millionaire, married a European, watched my millions disappear when the markets crashed, trained and competed my new KWPN Dutch Warmblood horses, moved back to the USA, and got promoted to Director of Operations for Global Product Development. Cool title, eh?
Sun was 7 years old when I joined 20 years ago. There were tons of good times, and some hard times. The hardest, it seems, have been recent. And with that, we had a big layoff in January. Mine was one of several thousand positions that were impacted.
My last Sun blog entry says good-bye. (Snippet shown below)
So, Monday, March 23rd, is actually my last day at Sun. It's strange to think about. And again, laid off right before a big birthday, the big 5-0 no less. (Ugh) Not unlike a friendly divorce, this is definitely the end of a very long relationship. I will miss Sun.
However, now rumours are rampant that the Sun Microsystems I knew and loved may not be around much longer. Google "Sun Microsystems IBM" And that may even be a little bit sadder.
See ya later Sun! Good luck & all the best!
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