Mark White:  

July 2009 What's happened since last time I updated? Let's see, I got hit by a car on the way to work last September (I was on a motorcycle). I sustained no major injuries, just a few bruises. The bike was worse off but the driver's insurance had to pay for all the repairs. I went to Winston-Salem over the Christmas holidays and visited my family there and in Durham, plus a number of old friends. It was nice to be home. In March I crashed on the race track and dislocated my right shoulder and a couple of fingers - ouch! Still undergoing physical therapy on my shoulder but I avoided surgery and it's getting better every week. I went to the Netherlands again in April to visit my good friends there for a week and to attend the World Superbike races at Assen - what a blast! We really had a fun time. And one evening we drove about an hour and a half to meet for dinner with one of my work colleagues whom I had never met in person. That was really cool. I survived another round of layoffs at my company (Sun Microsystems) back in January. I'm now an engineering manager and I had to lay off 3 people. That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, because these were people I'd known for years and considered friends. Luckily, we've remained friends and have met up for dinner a few times since then. This is kinda scary - I moved to California in 1988 to go to work for Oracle Corporation, where I stayed for 10 years. I left Oracle in 1998 to go work for a small company, Forte Software, because I was tired of the big company thing. 2 years later...Expand for more