Congrats to Frank Slootweg

[Wodisch]

Congratulations, Sir Frank!

Welcome to the royal court, but sorry to see someone leave the wizard's lounge ;-)

Kind regards,
Wodisch

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Michael,

What does..."Nogmaals hartelijk gefeliciteerd.

Met vriendelijke groet,"

...translate into?

Dutch for again my congrats

and a friendly salute.
Robert-Jan.

[Clemens van Everdingen]

Frank,

Congratulations !
I have not been busy in the forum lately but saw your congrats thread and couldn't resist to reply.

See you !

Clemens

[Frank Slootweg · Accepted solution]

Thanks for all the kind words.

I am glad I 'finally' got my new headgear. The last few points took a
long time (see also below). I tried to kick the counter when it was at
2499, but it refused to roll over! :-)

The new headgear probably has more class, but I kind of miss the old
one, which was more cute. Well, I guess I can't complain. (Well, I can,
but I shouldn't! :-))

I enjoyed my time in the Forums. While I am a 'newbie' (only 20 months) here, I am not a newbie in forums in general, and even less in HP-UX and HP.

I have some 19 years experience in the Usenet 'forums' (Newsgroups),
mainly the comp.sys.hp.* groups. While I also appreciate that audience,
I appreciate this audience more. I think the general attitude in the HP
ITRC Forums is (even) more professional, i.e. people have real-life
problems/questions to which they want solutions/answers. I.e. attitudes
are more practical and less theoretical. I like that, very much. My
thanks to all, .... well most :-), of you!

While there is good news, i.e. my new headgear, I am afraid there is
also 'bad' news, at least I hope it is 'bad':

In a little while (last day May 22), I will be retiring. HP has been
good to me (and I have been good to HP :-)). While it is a little
sooner than I had originally planned, the circumstances were too good to
let them go by.

I do not yet know if I will keep participating in the HP ITRC Forums. I
will probably take a break for a while, but quite possibly I will become
active (addicted? :-)) again at a later stage. Because I will not be
working anymore, my knowledge/expertise will probably fade quite quickly or/and become obsolete. I'll just see how things go.

Thanks again. It has been fun!

[U.SivaKumar_2]

Hi,

Hearty Congragulations...

regards,
U.SivaKumar

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,

Congratulations !
Welcome to the club.

Regards,
Leif

[John Collier]

Frank,

This is supposed to be an acceptance speech, not a farewell.

Please don???t get me wrong. If you want to use this chance to advise everybody of your upcoming changes, I can understand. After all, how many times will you have the collective ear of the forums at your disposal?

Don???t look at it as a bad thing. You aren???t the first person that I have known that has gone through similar changes in their life. They didn???t mold and fade away when they retired and neither will you. From what I have seen from you, you don???t have the personality to allow that to happen ;-)

Good System Administration skills never become obsolete. The software may change a little and a few of the keystrokes may be different in the years to come, but your knowledge and experience will always be in high demand.

Enjoy this turn in the road of life for all it???s worth. I, for one, fully expect you to return to the forums in short order to keep your ???finger on the pulse??? of the industry and share what you have learned with future (and present) Sys Admins.

We have all appreciated it up until now and I promise that it will be appreciated in the future as well.

Congratulations!

[Frank Slootweg]

[No points for this please.]

John,

Thanks for your kind words.

I had my doubts as to whether I should announce my retirement at this
moment and in this thread, but I didn't know if I would have another
(good) opportunity, and didn't want to 'leave' without a trace.

I look forward to retirement. It is of course somewhat scary, but it is
the next logical step and a new set of opportunities and challenges.

I still have my trusty HP9000 715/64, so I won't forget HP(-UX). OTOH,
my primary system will now be a Windows box. Can you imagine the sheer
terror of that Outlook? :-) OTOH (yup, that's my third hand), I have all
kind of UNIX tools on it, so it's just a UNIX box with a broken kernel.

As to 'returning' to the Forums later: I don't know about that. I have
heard that my new manager is much more strict about that than my old
one. I also will have to get management permission for a cable internet
connection (no ADSL in my tiny village), because modem access in The
Netherlands is metered (and, as you know, we Dutch are cheap-skates) and
the Forums need mostly-on(line) access.

Well, these ramblings have probably violated all the posting-guidelines
in the book, so I might as well stop now.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Frank, my records show that you are now 56 (or maybe just turned 57), and your latest reply somehow gives me the impression that you will only stop working with HP, but will continue to work somewhere else (so not "Pensioen" or a definite goodbye to work)

A new job could explain new forum behaviour, but if you have ADSL at home, and you *are* retiring in the pensioen meaning of the word, I see no reason why you should stop enjoying the forum.

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn