The Final Shift

The above image has always been very poignant for me. That's Avrora and Orest in the Dominican Republic with their mom.  This was in June 2011.  Orest was nearly 2.  Avrora was 6.  I didn't take the picture (I was in the US working); however, I always felt the picture was from my POV.  My daughter ready to walk out into the light.  My son looking out but turned somewhat, wondering if he ought to go back.  Are they moving on, walking away, growing up?  Or am I slipping away into the dark with my daughter accepting and my son not so sure?  Or is this the future,my children are that bright future and my mortality and the present is the dark, narrow tunnel?  Or is the darkness the fear of change and the bright that future?  Or....?  There are a million different thoughts which go with the future.

 The future is now though.  Whatever the meaning of the above, I am facing the future today.  Today is my last working day at NERSC, the supercomputing center I have been at since June 2001.  After 14 years, I am shifting from HPC geek to rocket scientist full time.  I am trading in the Singularity (Rapture of the Nerds!) for the Space Enthusiast (If Only We Had the Will Power!). 

Or perhaps I am just trying to escape Skynet. IN SPACE!

This shift signals the end of my career in supercomputing.  I first logged into a Cray YMP in fall 1990.  Out of the past 25 years, I have had an account on a supercomputer somewhere within DOE with a short stretch from 1998 to 2001 as the exception.  I have worked as a user or admin on Cray XMPs, YMPs, C90s, J90s, T3Es, XT4s, XT5s, XC30s and XE6s.  I have worked on IBM SP3s, SP5s and a mongo iDataPlex.  I have also worked on Thinking Machines CM200 and CM5s.  Even the odd largish SGI Altix, white box linux clusters and even a Linux Networx cluster.  I have managed file systems which both span multiple supercomputers and even one which spanned multiple states.  I've assembled a data transfer system which can packet cannon a sustained 2.5 terabits per second for bandwidth.

I've done a lot.  I've seen a lot.  I've also made it to the point where everything I saw in the beginning of my HPC career is being revisited.  Its not just a silly saying when everything old is new again.  In all the architecture meetings and data handling meetings, this has been almost the uniform theme.  And its uninteresting.  When that happens, its time to go...

Fortunately, for me, I'd laid down the plans pretty thoroughly to move on.

And now I am.

From now on, I am a full time rocket scientist.  Its more than a little scary.

Its a major life change.  I have been working 17 hour days for the past year.  Now I'll shift down to 12 hour days, still long, but it will allow me to be better engaged in many things.  Especially my kids.  For that, I am grateful if nothing else.  However, this is a new business and I AM THE BOSS.  HOLY SHBT.

One of the life changes is that I am going to forgo doing much with the blog.  The rapid updates recently were as much to see if I could get the old backlog of articles I'd saved done before I wound this down.  However, I will not completely abandon the blog.  However, for the most part,  The blog will update with original content only.  It will probably only be weekly rather than daily.

However, I threw up the ads on here (for those of you not using a blocker).  If there are enough clicks for a cup of coffee at a coffee shop per week, I'll guarantee a new article.   In fact, let's turn this around.  I'll write an article on space, HPC, the robopocalypse, Ukraine or a paleo post every time I get a cup o joe paid for.

Actually, let's nuance this a bit.  A cup of coffee is worth a Ukraine update or Robopocalypse report or equivalent.  Cup of coffee and a munchie is worth a xenopermian or equivalent.  A serious research article will require a full meal folks.  :P

Appropriate end music.