What an amazing night! I celebrated the 50[SUP]th[/SUP] anniversary of the industry I grew up in! With my beautiful wife at my side and a table full of friends we all went down memory lane, ate, drank, and then enjoyed the auction.
The tour of the new computer museum was amazing. I was learning so much up until the 1970’s, then I was living it! There were minicomputers, microcomputers and the game systems they inspired, right in my sweet spot. Wait, computers and games I owned and loved are now in a museum!?!?!!? AARP here I come! I did impress my wife by knowing quite a bit of the computer lore. It took us back to the day we met. 32 years ago I was fixing a Data General Nova Computer that ran a department store point of sale system. She did alterations at the store and our eyes met across the room. I followed her to the lunch room and we have been lost in love ever since.
The dinner party was great. There must have been close to 300 people dressed in their finest: luminaries, co-workers, friends, and foes alike. We didn’t get a chance to talk to everyone but the people we did talk to were very flattering and left my wife with the impression that I’m a Very Important Person. Thanks for that by the way.
The auction was the fun part. The funniest bit was John Cooley paying $200 for a box of wine and the Auctioneer responding that it was $150 more then he paid for his suit! The CEO lunch auctions were interesting. Wally Rhines went for the most, $2,500, to no other than ex-Cadence CEO Joe Costello. That would have been my choice too but I have lunch with Wally for free so there was no need to bid. Here is a quick Wally lunch story: I was having lunch with a friend from Altera and Wally came to our table and chatted a bit. After Wally left my friend said, “Well done Dan, where did you get the Wally impersonator?”
The highest bid auction item went to me: the pit crew package for Flying Lizard Motorsports. eSilicon is one of the team sponsors so Jack Harding donated this one. While being on a Porsche racing pit crew was not on my bucket list it should have been. I have driven Porsches for the past 25 years and dream of driving one 100+ MPH (legally). I also have the utmost respect for Jack Harding. I worked with him at Zycad many years ago and, as the founder of eSilicon, Jack revolutionized the ASIC business model enabling more design starts than any other person I know.
All in all, it was an expensive dinner with the SemiWiki sponsorship, private donation, auction, and a new dress for my wife, but as you can see by the picture above it was well worth it! Getting EDA into the Computer History Museum is now my favorite cause and I can’t wait to take my family to see it when it is complete since I am part of that history. Thank you EDAC!
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