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View Full Version : HP-UX Hobbiest in Central NewYork


afleetcommand
February 18th, 2008, 04:55 AM
Life in a box...let me see:

Raced Motocross and Harescrambles steadily from 1973 to 1989, entered the "A" class or Expert Class as it was called then in 1981. I picked up Riding and Racing motorcycles again in ernest as an old fart in 1998. Ran RMEC HareScrambles and discovered AHRMA Vintage stuff. Last race was the AHRMA H&H Harescramble National at Milliken Colorado where I won my class on a 1982 Husqvarna. Couple of midlife crissis injury's took that racing game away.

Spent 5 years as a Manufacturing Engineer Specializing in CAM and CNC machines.
Spent 13 years working for Companies selling CAD/CAM software doing everything from customer hardware & software support, training, product development, sales, and eventually product management. During that time moved to Colorado.

Ditched (pun intended) that career! Too much international travel! Caused some life changes and did a reboot. Started an excavation business in Colorado along side the Computer Career until time constraints made the computer career..end. Eventually sold out and "bought the farm" (An old, run down, Dairy Farm) in New York State. We are (My wife & I) are trying to reboot this old farm into a horse farm dedicated to the rehab of retired race horses...and we have made a lot of progress. It will be the bulk of my efforts for the rest of my life to re-build this place. The motorsports and "Tech Geek" sides of me still peeks through now and then with my hobbies.

Hobbies now are:

Old Dirt Bikes...My favorite to ride around here is an old 1979 KTM420

BIG old Chainsaws. My Saw collection is a "working" collection as I spend a LOT of time maintaining the 14 miles of trails, building stalls, building fence, generating firewood for the winters....etc. My two favorites are a McCulloch 797 123cc monster and a Homelite XL-903...they do a lot of time around here.

Raising the last of our kids.

Taking Race Horses from a future in "France" to productive lives in more accommodating homes.

What ever my wife wants.

1990 era Unix based workstations. I know there will only a few with a CLUE what a HP9000 715/100 PA7100XC Risc processor based system is; but I have a few up and running..refugee's from the town dump. A hobby for these CNY winters.

And this landed me here.

afleetcommand
February 18th, 2008, 05:04 AM
(Had to edit those pics out...the website I had them posted on moved to another place! If any one really cares, I will re-post those horse pics)

Druid6900
February 18th, 2008, 06:17 AM
Welcome to the forums and I hope we can make it interesting for you, although you seem to have led am interesting life as it is.

afleetcommand
February 18th, 2008, 07:26 AM
Maybe one hand can wash the other....and I can draw a few more into the HPUX - Apollo Domain "Dark Side!" My town dump has supplied me with enough to get started..(ebay to finish) what a shame to see those once proud workstations in the rubble!:lookroun:

Erik
February 18th, 2008, 08:27 AM
Welcome to the forums!

Enjoy!

nige the hippy
February 18th, 2008, 10:05 AM
Another dump-diver too!
Hello!

Terry Yager
February 18th, 2008, 12:46 PM
I've wondered before what happens to retired horses these days. Are you basically rescuing them from a dog-food factory, or what?

--T

afleetcommand
February 18th, 2008, 07:06 PM
Technically we aren't a rescue..we pick retired horses and re-educate them. Since we have been relatively successful building these horses and giving them a second career, we often have a few really nice ones to pick from when we have an opening. (there are so many really good horses that just get wasted) Its a very rewarding experience beating the odds with these horses. Most don't have a good ending. They bond with their trainers as they typically are very young at two years old when they start, they work their heart out, and the reward is to find their way into a can. You or your dog might be a customer for their by products.

The general pleasure horse industry hates places like ours as they have to compete in the marketplace with these sometimes stunning animals with a price point a fraction of what the typical breeder needs to survive...so the mythology has been built to make it tougher for ex-race horses to be accepted. We have built and passed on horses for adoption expenses... that just hammer $10,000 dollar plus horses in events that require athletic animals..but I'm not here to talk about horses.