Author: marionvermazen

I am a traveler, hiker, avid reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, Spanish and French language student, knitter and genealogist. I am retired after working for almost 30 years in the Computer Industry. I live in Reno, Nevada with my husband Duke.

Duke and Marion’s Big adventure

Duke and I are off on a grand adventure. (490 miles so far) We are driving down into Mexico to do some exploring and to stay a week at a condo in Manzanilla. On Wednesday we left Union City and drove to Escondido down near San Diego to spend a day with my parents helping to instal the new printer they received for Christmas and to visit and hel;p with a few other tasks. Tomorrow we are off to Tucson.

I haven’t blogged in a while. Lot’s going on. One of the highlights was a trip to the Computer History Museum right before Christmas. My daughter works there but it was my first visit. It felt like going through a museum of my working career. They had pretty much every computer I ever worked on, IBM 360, Univac, PDP 11, Data General Eclipse, early CP/M machines, the Compaq portable that looked like a sewing machine, Sun machines, and of course PCs. The highlight of the visit was when the guys who had renovated the museum’s PDP1 computer ran it to lead us in Christmas carols. It was so cool to see them run the paper tape programs through the machine and flip the switches on the front of the computer to play the carols. The man running the PDP 1 was one of the original programers of the machine, Peter Samson. According to his wikipedia article “For the restoration project he reverse-engineered music tapes from the PDP-1 era and built a player for the museum.” I highly recommend touring the museum if you get a chance. i plan to go back again soon

My Tag Line

I’m changing the tag line on my blog. Back in May of 2005 when I was starting this blog I posted an entry about choosing my first tag line. What I said then about my brand and my tag line being like the tag line for my own company Me Inc is still very true. More than ever I think of this blog as being a reflection of me.

My original tag line was "My name is Marion Vermazen. I am a community builder and a renaissance woman." I still like to think of myself as a renaissance woman but community building was what I saw as my mission in my job building the PortfolioMinder community and customer care team. Now that I have moved on to pursuing my various interests full time, working for myself rather than for someone else (this is what some refer to as being retired) I have decide to change my one line self description. I like "My name is Marion Vermazen.  I am a renaissance woman working full time to live, to love, to learn, to be useful, and to be interesting."

Giving away Encyclopedias

Encyclopedias
I want to give away a 1988 Encyclopedia Britannica set, a 1988 Compton’s Encyclopedia set, and a 21 volume set called the Annals of America. If anyone knows of a person or place that would like to have any of these let me know and you will make my day. I’ll be happy to deliver them anywhere in the San Francisco bay area. They are all complete sets and are in great condition.

The Annals of America is kind of a cool set. It has the text of important American documents starting with  a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus to one of his patrons describing his Discovery of  the New World. and ending with a 1986 article about the Iran Contra Scandal.

What’s new
I am having a fun weekend. My sister and her husband are visiting form Seattle. Barb and Mike are here to meet up with a friend of Barb’s from high school in Australia. Paula and her family are on vacation in the U.S. and are spending a few days in San Francisco. They are coming over for dinner tonight. I haven’t seen Paula in 37 years!

Hiking up Mission Peak

Duke and I climbed Mission Peak today from Ohlone College. Mission peak is 2517 ft tall and  is one of the highest peaks in the hills to the east of the south part of the San Francisco bay.

It is a cool windy day here today. We guessed that the wind at the top was blowing 70 MPH but I just checked the wind speeds on Mt Hamilton to the south and according to the University of California Lick Observatory web site the wind speed there was 40 MPH. In any case the wind was VERY strong. It was hard to stand up and the wind almost blew my glasses off my face. The wind blown grass looked like a rushing river and the dry weeds chasing each other down the mountain reminded me of the tumble weeds in North Dakota. The temperature was about 50 Fahrenheit but the wind chill made it very cold when you were in the wind.

In spite of the wind, or maybe because of it, the hike was a wonderful adventure. We saw only about 2 other people.  We saw a magnificent red tail hawk land and take off right next to the trail. The wind and cold made the air exceptionally clear. The views were amazing. To the north we could see San Francisco, Oakland and Mt Tamalpais. To the west we could see the Sierras in the distance and below us to the west was the whole south San Francisco Bay.

There are several ways to climb Mission Peak. Today’s hike was out third hike to the top this month. . Our first ascent was on November 5. We went up the steepest, most direct and most popular  route. It is about three miles and starts on the west side of Mission Peak. Next we went up from Sunol Regional Park to the east on November 15. That route is about 5.5 miles. Next we want to take another route that starts on the east side of the peak. Maybe we’ll do that next week.

It was a wonderful hike. The views were wonderful, the wind almost blew us away, and I always love seeing the hills start to turn green.

 

Nora Ephron on blogging

I  really enjoy The Charlie Rose Show. He is such a wonderful interviewer. There is a quote quote from Charlie Rose at the top of his web site that captures why I like the show so much. Rose says, "I believe that there is a place in the spectrum of television for really good conversation, if it is informed, spirited, soulful." I love good conversation.

His show last night was very interesting, especially the interview with Nora Ephron. I have seen Rose ask a couple people about blogging lately. Brian Williams the anchor of the NBC Nightly News said basically that he blogs because his bosses told him to. When Rose asked Ephron about her blog she said

"What I like about blogging is that blogs are different. Blogs are almost like soap bubble, they’re what you think at the very moment you are writing it…… Sit down and write, and write it fast and if you’ve been working on it for more than an hour and a half it’s not a blog. It’s something else and you’ve taken too long on it because it should really feel as if it’s true at that moment and then not much longer than that."

I’ve included the link for the whole show below. The quote above comes at about minute 51.

 

Segment 1: Author John Richardson and art dealer William Acquavella discuss the work of their friend, artist Lucian Freud.

Segment 2: Filmmaker and author Nora Ephron.  Her latest book is "I’m Not Happy About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being A Woman".
               

 

      http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8958303134609212326&hl=en