Part 2, really?
I wasn't planning on doing this, but my bud Gareth asked me too, so, to please His Royal Sheepness, I'm totally doing this.
'Murica!
A bit after Fred abandoned us to live in California while still working for Borland, he reached out and asked me if I'd be interested in doing the same. I thought a bit about it, and decided that it would probably be a brilliant idea, but first, I would have to interview and get the job.
The job in question was to work in the Internal Team and be focused on Quattro Pro for Windows. I talked to a couple of people on the phone, and I guess that it was satisfactory enough because they asked me to go to Scotts Valley for about a week and have live interviews there.
In September 1993, I left from the Charles De Gaulle airport and landed successfully in SFO after stopping in Chicago for a bit. This was the very first time I ever took a plane, so I was kind of excited. Right before landing in Chicago, I looked at the window and saw the huge highway exchangers and I was thinking "Whoa, this is like in CHiPs! how neat!" (I tried to see if I could spot Ponch and the other dude, but to no avail).
Fred and Christophe came to the airport to pick me up at around 11PM or perhaps a little earlier. We got to Scotts Valley and since I was hungry, we stopped at Denny's before getting to Santa Cruz. So, yes, my first taste of American food was a chocolate milkshake.
Coming to America
I nailed the interview and got hired. So, at the end of February, I flew again for California.
The first guy I met during my interview week, was Hidé(yuki). He and Fred became fast friends and I corresponded with Hidé via email a few times before leaving.
A couple days after I arrived, Fred took me car shopping, because for one, I needed a car, and secondly, he loved haggling with the salesmen. Got me a 1990 Camaro RS and I guess that's when I really started to like American muscle cars.
Since I still had my rental car, we played around with it (don't do this at home, kids). Between the attempts at burnouts or just smashing the brakes while traveling 60 or so, we did have a ton of fun. The car, not so much.
I met a bunch of people and I'm still in contact with a couple. Hidé, Gareth (Baaaahhh) and Glynne were the ones I would hang out with. Sadly, Glynne passed away a little while after going back to England (cancer sucks).
Fred and the other French peeps went back to France. Fortunately, Hidé and Gareth are still here.
Brits and Trips
Aside from a very few American people, we would mostly hang with guys from the International team.
I met Gareth at Feast Eddie's where we used to play pool. My English at the time sucked, but at least I could understand most people.
Fred told me: "Gareth is going to join us", and I was like, ok, cool.
In comes the Welshman, we said hi and then he talked to me for a couple of minutes. At the end of what I would characterize as a monologue, I turned to Fred and told him: "Dude, I have no idea what he just said, not. a. single. word!". The ever so magnanimous Fred translated for me.
To be frank, it was not just me that could not comprehend the man. Fred, Glynne, Gareth and I made a trip to Los Angeles to visit, and in the morning, we went to a donut shop to have breakfast and Gareth ordered a raspberry filled donut. The dude at the counter had no idea what G was talking about, so Fred had to order the jam filled delicacy. Kind of ironic that a Frenchman has to order for a Brit, really.
We did some more trips, including going to Tahoe on Labor Day week-end. We shared driving between Fred and I, and I drove most of the way back. I can't remember if we were on our way back, but I got stopped by the CHP for speeding. The officer came to my window and said I was speeding. He asked if I knew how fast I was going, and I was like, hmmm, don't know...
He pointed to the speedometer, and said that I was going faster than the max speed indicated on there (80MPH I believe it was). I think I was doing close to 100MPH. I feigned ignorance, and gave him my French driver license. He came back was told me to slow down and beware of drunk drivers.
I looked out for drunk peeps, but I didn't really heed his warning about the speed limit. The fact that Glynne was extra white after me driving the mountain road between San Jose and Scott Valley was a clear indication that I felt like Ayrton Senna or something.
Life at Borland
Those were a cool couple of years. Met a ton of people there, mostly Europeans and an American named Ken. Dude was hilarious and Fred would teach him all sorts of swear words. Good times.
That building was fantastic, the developers were the elite of the company, so we were seating on the top floor, in single offices, no cubes, nobody to bug you or anything, just you in a nice office with a door.
The other scrubs, namely QA and Tech Support were on the second floor because that's all they deserve, sorry Gareth. No elitism there, none whatsoever.
Borland was a great place to work. We had to crappy PCs to work with (they were pretty awesome at the time actually). I don't remember if they were Dell or something, but some had some 286 and some had 386. The 286 guys got the short end of the stick for sure. Those processors were horrendous, clearly not Intel's finest hour.
Sometimes we had those LAN parties and we'd play Descent at lunch time. Epic stuff.
My life at Borland was almost very brief.
I started at the end of February, and around May my manager asked me to come to his office. He announced that Novell had acquired Quattro Pro for Windows, which was the product I was working on, and, since I was on a L1 visa and those are not transferable between companies, I was gonna get terminated and would have 14 days to find another job at Borland or, get shipped back to France, or become an illegal alien or something. Then he added: "Don't fret yo! we'll take care of your plane ticket" (pretty sure he didn't say it like that, but I think it sounds 200% better).
I went around, asked if the Pascal or C++ compiler team needed a dev, alas, no bueno. I was getting a little worried, and that's when Martin Levy (yet another Englishman) pretty much saved my bacon. It was the I18N team pretty much and Christophe Job, who had moved from the French office got a job in one of the compiler team (that was my dream job in fact).
Martin needed a guy, and he offered me the job, which I promptly accepted. It was a great couple of years working with him, great guy.
A few month later, the great French peeps exodus happened, and I found myself surrounded by Swedes, Danish, Germans, Brits and whatever else. I would still hang out with Hidé and Gareth though, which was fun.
I played a few games of squash with Gareth, but he was clearly better than me, and it was too dangerous for me because I would hit the walls pretty hard. Too much running anyway, and I don't like to run.
With Hidé we went surfing a couple of times, love the guy despite the fact that he almost murdered me with his surfboard once. It was just a freak accident, so no problem, we cool.
Life after Borland
After a couple of years at the company, things got kinda bad. Phillipe (the CEO) left, the company made a series of bad choices (like acquiring Ashton Tate: DBase), or going at war with Microsoft. There were layoffs etc, and since I had recently got my green card (yay for the lottery!) I decided to move.
I interviewed at Netscape, and Pointcast. Both gave me an offer, but I ended up picking Pointcast. Needless to say, it wasn't the best decision ever. I had fun there, and Gareth actually joined shortly after me. At least I had some familiar face with me, and we were able to carpool.
One cool thing was that the office was right next to the golf course by Maude and 237 in Sunnyvale. So, on Tuesday, we would discreetly leave the office in the afternoon and do the twilight thing ($17 to do the full course). I don't think we ever completed the whole 18 holes because it gets dark so early around here, and we lost a lot of balls because we could not find them in the dark. We also lost a boatload of balls in the ponds, etc... We bought some golf clubs set at Costco, a regular set for me and a weird one for G, since he's a southpaw.
I have been commuting over 17 ever since. Then again, not like there are a ton of IT companies in the area. Pines, Strawberries, artichokes, mountain lions and skunks: yes, IT and Sasquatches: no. Especially sad that there are no Squatches around here.
Time flies...
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