723 Marsh Road #3 Menlo Park, CA 94025 December 1987 Dear Friends and Family, I hope you'll forgive me for sending out a duplicated letter this year, but I just haven't been able to find the time to write individual notes to everyone. At least this way everyone gets to hear all the news. It's been an eventful year. In the first couple of months, I spent most of my time working on drafts of my Ph.D. thesis, madly trying to finish up. I don't remember much about that time, other than sitting in front of a keyboard hour after hour, revising and re-revising. Late in March I began a nice long break from thesis writing. On March 24 I left on a five week trip through New Zealand and Australia. I went along with a friend from church, Mark Baushke, and a couple from Los Angeles who were friends of Mark's, Jerzy and Sharon Rub. We planned our own route and set our own pace. It was a wonderful trip, an experience to remember for a long time. And in case I forget, I have 600 slides to look at! After I got back late in April, I took a few days to recover; then the first week in May I leaped into a new full-time job at a research lab in Palo Alto, called DEC/SRC (Digital Equipment Corporation/Systems Research Center). The lab is purely a research establishment---we don't do any product development at all. Of course, we do try to do work on things that will be useful and interesting to the rest of the company, and to present our results in a way that will be helpful to the product groups. We specialize in the software aspects of distributed systems, very much the sort of thing I worked on at Stanford, but we also have florishing groups of hardware, theory, and compiler people. I like it there. I had hoped to have my thesis finished and approved before I left on my trip, or at least before I started my job, but it didn't quite work out that way. Somehow my advisor always found a few more things he wanted improved. And of course, without me around to goad them on, he and the other busy folks on my reading committee didn't read the draft I left for them while I was travelling. But I did finally manage to finish up in May. My boss was gracious enough to let me work on the thesis on company time---in fact, he said that finishing up should be my first priority. So in June I had the excitement of graduation. At last! My mom and my sister came out for it, so I duly rented my cap and gown and doctoral hood and went through the whole ceremony. It's nice to go through a ceremony like that after nearly six years of grad school. It helped make it more tangible that I was REALLY finished, really not a student any more. It was fun to show Mom and Mary around the Bay Area, too. My old roommate, Paul Veers, also graduated that day, with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He was only out here temporarily while working on his degree, and has now returned to his job in Albuquerque (along with his new wife Karen, a girl he met at our church out here). Having lost my roommate, I moved on July 1 to a one-bedroom apartment in a more central location between work and church (which explains the new address above). I've enjoyed buying furniture and decorating a place all my own. I'm still serving as treasurer at my church here in California, and this year I've also taken on a new challenge---teaching Sunday school. I'm having lots of fun with my class of 5th and 6th graders. I've also been hosting a weekly Bible study group for singles (mostly) at my apartment. It's been a great way to study the Word and to make some close friends. In August I used my first Frequent Flyer award to fly to Milwaukee for a weekend and attend my 10th high school reunion. (Am I really that old?) I was the co-winner of the "longest trip to reunion" award! It was great to see a lot of my old friends again. I only wish more had been there. My family is doing fine. My mom is still living in the family home in Milwaukee. She now has a new kitten to keep her company. Mary and her daughters are living a couple of miles from Mom. Amy will be graduating from college this spring, Beth from high school. Amy plans to get married to Jeff Horn, then go on to law school in the fall while he does graduate work in mathematics. That should keep them busy! Beth hasn't chosen a college yet, but will probably be going away from home. My brother Bill and his wife Nancy are still living in Sudbury, Mass. Bill's daughter Leigh is in college in New Hampshire. I'll be in Milwaukee December 21 to 28, staying with my mom. Bill and Nancy will also be there, so we'll all have Christmas together. Hope to see some of you while I'm in town, too. And if you get out to the San Francisco area, please look me up. Christmas joy through Christ Jesus,