Dear HP e3000 Colleagues,

Thanks for all your nice comments and for your fan-club
support.  I am amazed to see all the hoopla that the press
and TV have created for something that, as far as I am
concerned, is par for the course.  In fact, the wonderful
folks at HP's Boeblingen HP3000 division shipped me a loaner
HP3000 a couple of years ago while I was skiing in Zermatt,
Switzerland (that was before I bought my own "Gypsy" HP3000
which goes with me all over the place in a Samsonite suitcase
with a lot of bubble wrap).

So, for me, "working on the HP3000" and "skiing" are two activities
that go hand in hand.  Apparently, there are not that many
computer programmers who participate in skiing championships!  As
I mentioned to the reporters, these are WORLD championships,
after all, so *all* countries with a skiing federation/association
get an official invitation.  Being a native of Guatemala, I
certainly had the opportunity to participate and I decided not
to squander such an opportunity.

Perhaps it was the lousy weather and the postponement of the
downhill races (the "king" and "queen" of skiing disciplines),
but journalists were all over the place looking for stories.
Somehow, a small local newspaper found out about me (the "oldest"
and *the* lone member of the "smallest" team and a guy who had
brought a computer office into his room).  So, a tiny article
appeared which, apparently, everyone in the press/TV center read.
It was all downhill from there and I had to really discipline
myself or I would not have been able to do any HP3000 work with
all the interviews that ensued.  I invited everyone to my office
in my room, which has the HP3000 as its centerpiece (they might
have been more impressed by the 21-inch monitor which I carry in
another Samsonite suitcase, but there were several views taken of
the HP3000 as I mounted a DDS cassette, which is conveniently
located just below the "HP3000" nameplate, something I didn't
explicitly mention but which -- hopefully -- got implicitly
included :-)

There were many TV crews who actually filmed me (on and off snow) from
Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Monte Carlo, Norway,...  The most "fun"
were the Italian folks, who apparently had the chief trainer of the
Italian team analyze -- bit by bit -- my GS (Giant Slalom) "race"
(I personally would not call it a "race", but they kindly did so).
He would say, "here Alfredo is carving very well on this icy pitch"
as well as "here Alfredo totally screwed up on this deep rut but,
somehow, managed to recover".

I would not honestly call my performance race-worthy, because it
was more oriented towards survival while negotiating icy ruts the
size of bathtubs -- something I had not quite expected but the warm
weather made a mess of what would have otherwise been wonderfully
hard and consistent snow.  The organizers had to fool around with
chemicals and other "means" to "stabilize" the snow and the results
were interesting, to say the least.  For instance, I began as
participant number 101 (out of 102) and I finished (last) in 47th
place.  This means that *many* people didn't make it through the
"obstacle" course.  When an Oprah-like show from Rome interviewed
me "live" from the race arena the day after the GS, a legendary
skier from Italy (Piero Gros, the 1976 Slalom Olympic Champion)
stood next to me on the roof of the TV center and commented on my
race, which was displayed on a big screen at the show in Rome (we
could also see it on a monitor).  He said, "Alfredo obviously took the
safe line, which is not the fastest but was the smart thing to do
under the circumstances.  He can always take a faster line in the
future, as his experience with nasty snow improves."

As a direct result of my serious interest in learning the modern
way to ski (which is really just a couple of years old, thanks to
tremendous advances in ski design), I have been kindly offered help
by several world-class teams, a few of whose members are also
making the transition from the "traditional" way to the "new" way.
In a nutshell, the traditional way involved carving ONE clean line
with the inside edge of the outside ski whereas the new way involves
carving TWO clean lines (with the inside edge of the outside ski,
which still commands the majority of the "authority" over the snow,
as well as with the OUTSIDE edge of the INSIDE ski).  This, naturally,
is easier said than done, because the outside edge (the "little-toe"
edge) of the INSIDE ski is a scary thing with which to carve a clean
line.  I have enjoyed the wonderful feeling of doing this on gentle
terrain and the challenge now is to "build this skill up" on steeper
and steeper terrain, gradually (not to mention also doing it on nasty
snow conditions).  I have a lot of interesting work ahead!

I am very pleased to have earned the serious respect of excellent
skiers, who offered very helpful advice as I skied with them on
"reasonable" terrain.  That was awesome.  I am also extremely happy
to have been able to mention that I write software for IMAGE/SQL
databases, which run on HP e3000 computers and which hold the vital
information of many companies all over the world.  Let's see how much
of this HP3000 information manages to find its way into the news items.
Anyhow, this has been a nice entry point and I hope I will be able to
do more in the future.

You might enjoy looking at this picture, which appeared in a newspaper
in Basel (Switzerland) called "Basler Zeitung".  The photographer
gave the digital picture to me when he saw that I also used a Mac :-)

http://www.adager.com/jpeg/StAntonBildEins.jpeg

Notice the nice "HP e3000, Who Knew?" shirt that I always wore during
non-skiing photo & TV interviews.  Also notice the serial cable going
to the HP3000's console port (from the USB adapter just in front of the
keyboard).  Some TV crews actually included the HP3000 in their scenes
and I hope the HP3000 made it into the final programs.

For a more inclusive look at the whole hardware setup in my hotel room,
here is a picture I took:

http://www.adager.com/jpeg/3kStAnton.jpeg

For a view of my work while flying between Zurich and Los Angeles on
Swissair, on my way home after the skiing championships, a flight
attendant who had seen my story on TV took this with my digital camera
and asked me to email the picture to the crew for their album.  Sorry,
no HP3000 on the plane :-)

http://www.adager.com/jpeg/AlfredoSwissAir.jpeg


Happy computing, and happy skiing, everyone :-)

  _______________
|               |
|               |
|            r  |  Alfredo                     [log in to unmask]
|          e    |                           http://www.adager.com
|        g      |  F. Alfredo Rego
|      a        |  Manager, R & D Labs
|    d          |  Adager Corporation
|  A            |  Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000            U.S.A.
|               |
|_______________|