Life in Rochester, Minnesota
Recent events brought my thoughts to Lake Michigan and a period of my life unknown to most.
In 2000, I lived in Rochester, Minnesota (USA) for six months. There are good chances that you have yet to hear of this place. It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere known for only two things: the Mayo Clinic and IBM. Needless to say, I was there for an assignment for the IBM labs.
Rochester is IBM’s centre for its midrange series. Most notably, the iSeries (formally known as AS/400) and pSeries (formally known as RISC/6000) platforms. I was initially assigned to the recently acquired Lotus Notes multi-platform engineering division based in Dublin (Ireland) by my former director at IBM. I was one of the few who knew all the platforms on which Lotus Notes/Domino was released: Windows, AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, AS/400, MVS, and -of course- the newly introduced Linux. When a new major Notes/Domino release was coming out, I was temporarily assigned to the IBM Labs in Rochester officially to help port the software on AS/400 and AIX and to understand their processes and procedures so that I could better cooperate once back in Dublin. However, aside from my official assignment, there was something much more interesting. Back in 2000, IBM had a clear vision that both the AS/400 and RISC/6000 would eventually converge in a single platform, onto which you could install the operating system of choices using LPAR partitions, similarly to what happened on the mainframe (z Series). For the record, this is the current IBM Power Series.
While slowly embracing Linux, it was clear that it could have been the third operating system that could run on that platform. They started their effort to bring Linux to the RISC/6000 Series. Well, I helped and remember passing days compiling/trying to run the Linux kernel on an IBM 43p workstation. At the end of the day, I started my assignment in February, so I experienced a lot of snow during those days. There was only a little to do other than work. I also got in touch with someone from the University of Minnesota as they had ported Linux on Mainframe, and that would have been helpful a few months later when I installed one of the first Linux on Mainframe in Europe, back to the University College Dublin (UCD).
While I had a successful and proficient six months on my job, the personal experience was challenging.
It was back in 2000. I was 24 years old, and I was alone on another continent. Communication was nothing like today. To give you an idea, I still had a modem dialup at home in Dublin. Cell phones were still based on 2G, and the USA and Europe had different frequency bands. So, my Irish mobile phone was useless in the USA. I called my relatives once a week from the hotel.
IBM provided me with a hotel (ah, policies!). So, without a house, even having dinner was challenging. Why? Because most of the shops and restaurants closed early. But I did have a car. So, I was so desperate many times during the week that I drove to Minneapolis for a decent meal, even during the snow. And that city is one hour and a half away! During the weekend, I explored the area. What I liked the most was going to see Lake Michigan, mainly in Wisconsin but also in Illinois. It was so big that it felt like a sea rather than a lake!
It was an amazing view! I loved the walks by the lake. It helped me relieve my loneliness. I should have understood that my bond with water was strong back then. Unfortunately, I was young, inexperienced, and without guidance, so I missed visiting Milwaukee and Chicago, even though technically, I had a short layover there.
So, if you happen to be in the area, please walk by Lake Michigan and remember this crazy girl. 💜
Photo of the IBM Rochester campus by Wikideas1 - Own work, CC0
