Last NEC lunch
Jul. 31st, 2009 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylNice celebratory lunch to at The Jack in the Green to mark the end of life of the NEC supercomputer and the departure of friends for pastures new.
The event struck just the right tone. The food was excellent — I had a goats cheese starter followed by tomato risotto — and those who opted for puddings were suitably impressed. The right people came, although there were a couple of unfortunate last minute omissions, and the speeches, when then came, were short, complimentary and struck just the right note.
For all that we've had some minor annoyances over the years, the systems have proven themselves over their lifetime to be extremely reliable and absolutely dependable. And we've also been very lucky in the consistently high standard of support we've received from the vendor, both in their willingness to tailor pieces of software to our specific requirements and in their ability to solve some of our exotic problems in amazingly short order. With hindsight it's very clear, to me at least, that we made exactly the right decision back in 2002.
For all my occasional carping criticisms, I'll be sorry to see the NEC go.
The event struck just the right tone. The food was excellent — I had a goats cheese starter followed by tomato risotto — and those who opted for puddings were suitably impressed. The right people came, although there were a couple of unfortunate last minute omissions, and the speeches, when then came, were short, complimentary and struck just the right note.
For all that we've had some minor annoyances over the years, the systems have proven themselves over their lifetime to be extremely reliable and absolutely dependable. And we've also been very lucky in the consistently high standard of support we've received from the vendor, both in their willingness to tailor pieces of software to our specific requirements and in their ability to solve some of our exotic problems in amazingly short order. With hindsight it's very clear, to me at least, that we made exactly the right decision back in 2002.
For all my occasional carping criticisms, I'll be sorry to see the NEC go.
