BARUG to bump about on the bay
May 24, 2007
Bay Area HP 3000 users around San Francisco once fostered one of the biggest and best Regional User Groups. A legendary showdown over IMAGE database administration performance went down at BARUG. The RUG once hosted an annual conference in Santa Cruz, a legendary surfer's beach. The meeting included an evening's outing at the local amusement park.
That's a long way from the 21st Century landscape. More's the pity, since that BARUG conference exhibit area had a bodacious view of those beaches, the surfers, and California swimwear and tan lines. Right outside the windows, something for everybody to admire.
The 3000 community honors the past, so BARUG is reviving itself for one last time next month. On Sunday, June 10, the group turns back the clock for an afternoon and evening meeting, noon until eight. Right there on the same Santa Cruz beach, complete with the beach Boardwalk's bumper cars.
BARUG's Donna (Garverick) Hofmeister announced the outing, which the group bills as "The Last Great BARUG Meeting, or, The Second MPE Wake." Contact Donna if you're interested in attending; the 3000 group meets at 3 in front of the Boardwalk's bumper cars. HP is involved too, both in attendance, the announcing and as part of the attire.
Garverick's announcement page is hosted on the HP 3000 Invent Server, the public MPE system the vendor launched as a free developer sandbox. And on that Web page, user group meeting attire is listed as "a shirt with an HP or even better an MPE logo (but don't forget it can be quite chilly!)"
That forecast won't describe the feelings on that sunshiny beach. We're just guessing, but MPE legend Jeff Vance lives out near Santa Cruz, and he retires from HP about one week before the Wake. So maybe that's something that prompted the meeting's gathering place.
The 3000 community has hosted wakes before, meetings around the world that marked the end of another HP era: sales of new systems. That was three and a half years ago. Perhaps the sighting of a new wake will ensure another three or more years of useful community for HP's oldest business server.