I climbed out of bed this morning to watch the Discovery space shuttle touch down safely in California, and I could not help but be a little wistful at the sight. This was the shuttle my partner Abby and I travelled to Florida to see launched last month. But our July 13 trip was in vain. We got as close as the lagoon six miles away from the launch pad, just a couple of hours before launch, when the mission was scrubbed. We were disappointed; we'd scraped aside a week of free time and rescheduled our flights twice to make the launch date. But like the 3000 customers who saw their trips to San Francisco scrubbed, we had to try to accept and understand the cancellation. The sands of Cocoa Beach helped. You can read more about that journey and its consolations in an entry at my personal blog, Half-Baked Light.

For the persistent 3000 user, though, there is a consolation mission coming up. HP will be updating its 3000 users about its post-2006 plans for the server on Aug. 18. This meeting of OpenMPE, the only user group left to serve the HP 3000 customer, will also be Web-cast. Watch this space and the 3000 newsgroup for details on how to tune in via your browsers. Send an e-mail to OpenMPE director Donna Garverick by Thursday if you want to attend in person. HP needs to know how many chairs to set out.

If you were headed to San Francisco to network with other 3000 users, the OpenMPE meet will be one of two places to connect in person. The other will be earlier in the week, Monday, Aug. 15. That's when the HP 3000 Luncheon takes place south of San Francisco. The lunch is free, hosted by HP 3000 software companies Marxmeier Software AG, Screenjet Ltd. and QSS. But you have to get your reservation in quickly, by Wednesday morning, to have your buffet plate waiting along with the smiling faces of your 3000 family members.

Send an e-mail reply to [email protected] to have us set aside your luncheon plate. Watch this blog for news from both meetings. These are launches nobody's going to scrub, so I'll be there to see the lift-off of spirits and hopes in person.