Historical Posts representing Adventure Continues: Second Quarter

I was presented with an opportunity to work for Hewlett-Packard in the San Francisco Bay area in the Summer of 1987. This was sort of a dream come true, but I also had to weigh it against living in such a beautiful place as Steamboat Springs, CO. But as was the norm for me I let the Adventure Continue, so California here I come. This first post is only about the first few weeks in California culminating with an appearance on the TV Show “AM San Francisco”. But first I had to get orientated with HP and figure out how to bring my family out. I went to the Bay Area first to start work and find a place for us to live. I was hired as a Systems Engineer for the Analytical Division of HP headquartered in Palo Alto but my home office would be the Santa Clara HP Sales Office. This division of HP was responsible for all of the instrumentation and computer applications associated with running a scientific laboratory. My Initial focus would be on the HP1000 LABSAM and LAS applications that basically provided automation and management for a laboratory. Our customers were typically using our HP GCs, LCs and Mass Spectrometers to process a large volume of samples.

It just so happened that I had joined this division just a few days before the entire workforce was to gather at a resort in the San Juan Islands for a big corporate retreat. I mean I started work on Monday and was given a travel itinerary for that Thursday. I was so green, I had no idea where the San Juan Islands were, sounded to me like a place in Central America. But my flight took me to Seattle and the land transit arrangements which included a ferry took me to Orcas Island of the San Juan Islands of the state of Washington. This was fairly cool for a young computer guy who had just come out of the mountains of Colorado. And topping it off, HP issued each of us an HP 110 laptop with a printer and floppy disk drive. The retreat was then mostly focused on teaching us how we would utilize this equipment.

What I really think was happening was that HP had a warehouse full of these computers and peripherals that they needed to unload since nobody was buying them. But it was still a really cool surprise and this resort on Orcas Island was very nice.

The following week back in the Bay Area I went through the HP Orientation. I remember during the wine tasting training I felt my first earthquake which would prove to be a significant aspect for living in California. I found a house to rent in Fremont and I headed back to Steamboat to move my family to California. I guess our many moves had prepared us for the chaos that surrounds a move across the country. But this was our first where the company took care of all the expenses. We just had to drive to San Fran in our VW Vanagon.

Sometime during all of this Connie came across an opportunity to enter a contest for a Clairol Makeover that would take place on the AM San Francisco TV Show the week that we would arrive. I think our real motivation for entering was for the new clothing that we would get to keep. Well of course we were selected because of my graying hair which was exactly what was going to sell Clairol’s new hair color product for men. So the schedule called for us to go into San Francisco the day before the show to receive the clothing and the hair makeover.

We would then come back the next morning to be on the show. What we did not know until the evening before the show was that our daughter Sidney had been exposed to Hepatitis at her daycare just before we left Steamboat and we were not alerted because we had just left town. Well sure enough we were not feeling very good but we were kind of committed to pull off this TV appearance. So we sucked it up and participated even though we were coming down with Hepatitis. Keep that in mind as you watch the video of the Show.

In the 1970s and 1980s, KGO-TV produced weekday talk/variety shows in the 9:00 to 10:00 a.m. timeslot following Good Morning America. A.M. San Francisco ran from 1975 to 1987/1988

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