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San Jose, CA to Arches National Park Visitor Center & Park Headquarters - Google MapsArches National Park Visitor Center & Park Headquarters to San Jose, CA - Google Maps Ben at Promonotary PointRaj-Ann at Promonotaery Point UtahCharu and Jyoti at Promonotaery PointNavneeta, Simmi, Ruby and Raj-Ann at Jackson Hole WyomingCharu, Navneeta and Kanwal at Grand TetonEnterring Yellowstone Waiting for Old Faithful Old Faithful erupting Buffalo Yellowstone Gang at YellowstoneBen at Devil Tower in Wyoming Mt. Rushmore Crazy HorseCalamity Jane and Wild Bill Hicock graves in Deadwood Deadwood Downtown Wooly Mammoth Pit Mammoth Site in WyomingRocky Mountain National Park Grand Junction Colorado Colorado National MonumentDelicate Arch at Arches National Park Utah Arches National Park Utah Bryce National Park Bryce National Park 1Grand Canyon Grand Canyon from air Essential Ben at Hiking Grand Mark getting ready for Grand Canyon Hike Randeepgetting ready for Grand Canyon Hike Hiking Grand Canyon 1Hoover Dam State Line Upi and Pinki joined us in Las Vegas At Excalibur Las VegasUniversal Studios In Hollywood Our Van

 

In the summer of 1995 I rented a 16 passenger Ford Van took 8 kids and two adults on a 30 day, 6000 mile western drive that spanned  ten states. This trip pre-dated smart phones, GPS and Google maps. I and my daughter meticulously planned the trip using Delorme Software package on a PC. Software not only helped as plan the route, it also helped us make the reservations at Best Western Inns along the route. Software also highlighted all the sites worth seeing  within a 20 miles of our main route.

Kids included  Raj-Ann, Ben, Charu, Jyoti, Arpit, Randeep, Simmi, and Navneeta (all cousins). They had to be over 9 years of age and had to be able to take care of themselves. My sister Ruby and my brother in law Mark Holt joined on this epic tour. Each person was allowed one duffel bag as every thing had to fit in the van and we planned to do laundry at least every third day.

We traveled through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado and Arizona; in case of Nevada and Wyoming we were in and out a couple of times.  We saw great Salt Flats, great Salt Lake,  Sundance , The Mormon Temple in salt Lake City; the Promontory point where the Pacific Central and Union Central railroads joined each other in 1868;   National Parks or National Monuments visited included : Grand Tetons, Yellow Stone, Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado national Monument, Arches National Park, Bryce canyon, Zion National Park, CanyonLands and Grand Canyon.  We stopped in the Old West town of Deadwood,  where Wild Bill Hickok and Annie Oakley are buried.  Wooley Mammoth Pit in Wyoming where hundreds of mammoths were trapped and buried in a  land slide was one of the many interesting side tours.  Visiting Crazy Horse monument was another one.We visited Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Hollywood, Universal studios and Hearst Castle. We traveled on the storied Route 66. On average we drove only 200 miles a day and made numerous side trips  to take in local sites. We visited, Winnemucca Nevada; Salt Lake City, Provo and Ogden Utah; Jackson Hole, Sheridan and Cheyenne Wyoming; Rapid City South Dakota; Sidney Nebraska; Denver, Vail and Grand Junction Colorado; Los Angeles, Hollywood, Santa Monica and San Simeon California.

I have included maps of the trips in the photos. It was a fun filled trip with Yellow Stone and Grand Canyon without the doubt being the highlights of the trip. Trip was run with a military precision and went without a hitch for the most part. It has been 21 years since the tripand kids still talk about it from time to time.

I flew a 9 hour training mission on B52 Bomber (https://www.wired.com/2016/04/gods-green-earth-b-52-still-service/) in July of 1976 from Fairchild Air Force Base ( http://www.fairchild.af.mil/ ) in Spokane Washington. I was a system engineer at Singer-Link, which was designing a flight simulator for B52 (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/us/b-52s-us-air-force-bombers.html?_r=0) at the time. The flight was a part of our introduction to the plane. B52 was already in service for 24 years at the time. It is still flying with USAF.

B52 was a part of the nuclear triad that included nuclear submarines and ICBMs that US had as a nuclear deterrent. It was designed to be a high altitude, long range bomber and with aerial refueling could stay airborne for very long times. It is powered by 8 jet engines and is massive in size and carries a very large payload. During the Vietnam war, which had just ended, it would fly from Guam for bombing runs over Vietnam. It carries two set of crews; one doing the actual flying and the other resting. Plane had three stations: pilot and co-pilot, a down stairs station for the radar and fire control and a third station in the back for a gunner. Gunner station is not accessible to the pilot during the flight.

It does not have any creature comforts at all. I rode in the radar station and was seated on what essentially was a wooden stool for the whole mission. It was freezing cold as it was the lowest point in the plane. AC intake was next to my feet and it blew very cold air up my legs. Incidentally, men’s urinal tube was next to my left year.

We flew all over western United States. We went south to Nevada Firing range and made several practice bombing runs. We were refueled in the air. After 9 hours of very uncomfortable flying we returned back to the base. Since plane had been refueled, it still had plenty of fuel. Pilot decided to do ‘touch and go’ runs. Pilots have to do a certain number of landings and take offs to stay current on the plane. After several of these, I finally had to pull my plastic bag as I could not handle it any more. This flight is probably one of the most uncomfortable thing I have done in my life.

During my Singer-Link days I had ‘secret’ security clearance and was a part of teams that designed many Air Force and Navy simulators, including E2C, F4 Phantom, F111, C130, EA6B and Tornado. I flew on several different planes during those years.

I finally left Link in 1979 after 9 years. I was itching to get in to commercial world. Silicon Valley was already a hot bed of entrepreneurship and I felt stifled working for a defense contractor which was totally decoupled from its surroundings. I had become a master of hardware design but I was not sure I would fit in the commercial world. We already had microprocessors (8080 and Z80) by then. I had no experience with them as we were only allowed to used mil-standard parts which were always a few years behind.

It took me no time to find my footing in the commercial world. By the end of 1981 I was itching to try my luck in the start-up world. I along with two friends launched Excelan as networking pioneer in the spring of 1982.

Noorda and Novell Ray NoordaIMG_2431

 

 

Ray Noorda was the CEO of Novell. He had bought into failing Novell Data System and had turned it around. He ditched all the proprietary hardware and software and focused on Network Operating System software and  file server software on standard PC hardware.  He shipped complete systems by OEMing hardware for servers and NIC (network boards) from third parties. Under his leadership Novell grew rapidly and emerged as the market leader.

Starting at roughly the same point in 1984, Novell by 1989 had gone three times as far as Excelan as far as revenue was concerned. It was even farther ahead in profits. Even though, I was very proud of what we had achieved at Excelan, it all paled when compared to Novel. This was very educational for me as I was very contemptuous of Novell’s low spending on R&D, only 3% of the revenue; Excelan was spending almost 20% on R&D . Excelan was very proud of its technology prowess. Excelan could network PCs, both Apple and IBM variety to UNIX machines of all types; it could also connect them to DEC minicomputers and IBM mainframes. All this using industry standards of TCP and Ethernet. Excelan was seen by its customers as a savior as they had been buying all sorts of computers for various jobs. Novel, however, was a big innovator in Sales and Marketing. Novell practically invented the tiered VAR channel (Authorized, Gold and Platinum). It developed a third party product certification program (Novell Labs); it developed an education program to train and certify Network Engineers (CNEs); it had its own trade show (Network World) and its own trade magazine (LAN Times). Novell did not give a damn about standards; it just focused on file sharing between the IBM PCs using a file servers using a proprietary protocols. As PC’s sales soared, so did the sales of NetWare.

Novell acquired Excelan in 1989. After the merger I joined Novell board and worked as EVP of Novell and its CTO. Right after the merger, Novell decided to get out of the hardware business all together. With a big infusion of technology from Excelan, Novell very quickly was able to position itself as an enterprise networking solution with its Netware 3.11; which provided file sharing between PCs, Mackintoshes, UNIX machines, DEC minicomputers and IBM mainframes. This was Nirvana for enterprises. By 1991, Novell sales, profits and stock prices were skyrocketing. Novell stock grew 10 fold in two years. Excelan shareholders and employees had done well. Merger was seen as made in heaven for them and I was seen as a genius by one and all.

I championed acquisition of UNIX from ATT and to sell binaries on the Standard hardware through Novell channels. Novell did acquire UNIX but company had always seen UNIX as an enemy. Even when it owned UNIX, it was not able to overcome its visceral hatred of the UNIX as UNIX effort was not Utah based. Ray was of two mind, he liked the idea of UNIX being commoditized but bowed to his NetWare troops.

At this juncture Novell toyed with an idea of merger with Microsoft. Several meetings took place and a deal was agreed to also. Microsoft’s acquisition of FoxPro database without talking to Ray first put a kibosh to it. Ray had always hated Bill Gates; used to call him Pearly Gates. But after merger was called off, this hatred only grew. Ray acquired DR DOS to go after DOS franchise, just when Microsoft was successfully transitioning to Windows. He also tried to merge with Lotus; acquired; Wordperfect and Quatropro from Borland to come up with alternate bundle to Microsoft’s Office. All this defocused Novell, which had done well being being a tightly focused company.

Meanwhile NetWare team decided to upgrade to NetWare 4 without being backward compatible and without offering the broad connectivity that NetWare 3.11 had offered. NetWare 4 was a big flop. Novell went into a steady decline. It hired Bob Frankenberg from HP as its new CEO to replace Noorda. Bob was not up to the job. I left soon after that.

I learnt many lessons during my six years at Novell. First and foremost was about the value of focus, especially in R & D. My 20% investment in R & D exposed the weakness; Excelan was getting only $5 of revenue for every dollar it put in to R &D. A whole lot of unproductive engineering effort! Novell was getting $33 for every dollar it put in R & D. Second lesson was that a business is never too big to fail. A CEO with two minds sends very destructive messages to the organization as it starts an internal war.

Ray Noorda was a brilliant but a flawed man. He was seen by his Utah minions as a traitor for expanding out of Utah and buying UNIX and rest of us saw him way over his head when it really mattered.

 

Ann and Kanwal, Xmas of 1971
Ann and Kanwal, Xmas of 1971
Ann in 1972
Ann in 1972
Ann and Kanwal in 1973
Ann and Kanwal in 1972
Prepared for India trip in 1973
Prepared for India trip in 1973
In Kanpur 1973
With Family in Kanpur 1973

I arrived in California in early December of 1971. I finally settled down in my job at Singer-Link in Sunnyvale, California. Sunnyvale was at the heart of emerging Semiconductor industry in Northern California’s Santa Clara Valley. Later, much later, Santa Clara valley came to be known as Silicon Valley.

Having been laid off 3 times, I had become very leery of longevity of any job. I became convinced that a job is an economic arrangement; Companies will keep you as long as you are  productive and the Company is doing well and not a day longer. One should not feel loyal or attached to the job a day longer than it is still fun and satisfying. I felt that I had not paid attention to the business side of the companies. All the companies I worked for were losing out in the market place and sooner or later would not need and could not afford to pay engineers. 1971 was also a bad year overall. Vietnam War and Space program were both winding down. Between the defense industry and the Space industry, a very large number of engineers were being laid off. Singer-Link was a defense contractor and I was not sure my job would last. Though, there were no signs of any imminent danger. I had promised myself and Ann that I will not be caught with my pants down ever again. I kept my resume up-to-date and kept applying for jobs and kept going for interviews all over US for next three years. I also signed up at Santa Clara University’s early bird program for working professionals. I broadened my educational base by taking courses in software and eventually in business also for next 5 years.

My job at Singer-Link was extremely interesting. We were designing Flight Simulators for Air Force and Navy. These simulators were essentially very large, specialized computers where we implemented complex algorithms in hardware to process data in real-time to produce images that a pilot would see  on his radar screen and out of the windows. I came to be the expert in radar simulation. My knowledge of both hardware and software gave me a special edge. I applied for several patents and was granted two of them. I moved up the ranks rapidly and came to be known as real hotshot in the company. I eventually stopped worrying about losing the job as the company and to some extent Air Force came to see me as a real asset.

By early 1973, it had been 5 years since I left home and two years since I got married. My family had not met Ann. We started planning a trip to India and finally traveled to Kanpur in the November of 1973. I had changed as a person. It had been 10 years since I lived in Kanpur. Kanpur had no facilities; no hotels, no restaurants, no airport. Our house did not have a proper toilet before I left for IIT but my parents had hustled to have one done before I and Ann showed up. It was great visiting family but the trip was very hard on both me and Ann. We did take special trips to Kashmir, Agra, Delhi and Khajuraho. A six weeks trip felt like eternity. I had not taken even a week off my work let alone six weeks until then.

My bosses at Link were worried that I may not return. They sent me a telegram saying that the company will pick up the expenses for the trip and I will get a 20% raise when I came back. It was first time I saw a tangible proof that companies take care of their star performers! That was a big help as plane fares in early seventies were about same as  they arenow but salaries were one tenth in dollar terms.

Return we did! I and Ann bought our first house in San Jose on her VA benefits. Under those benefits we did not have to pay any thing down and interest was also subsidized to the tune of 1%.

Life was settling back to normal in our new house in early 1974 when a telegram came from India that my dad had passed away in a motorcycle accident. I had promised him a trip to America before I left. That was his lifelong dream. Having made the trip the year before and having bought the house I was in no position to travel back. I was glad that he had met Ann. They both had taken an instant liking to each other. I was only 28 at the time and this was a big blow but one lives by the choices one makes in life.