Tomorrow is my last day to go into the HP offices as an HP employee.  I thought it would be best to let all my friends and co-workers know via the traditional good bye letter:

— begin letter–

It is traditional to send out a spam-a-gram when leaving, so here it is :-)  (Friday, May 28 will be the last day I can check my email box.   See the contact information below.)

Why am I sending this to you?  It is because we had worked together at sometime in the past.  Perhaps during my time working on Compaq Inline (96-98), in the Market Intelligence group (98), AtHome Showroom (98-99), Athome Store & the other eCommerce solutions (MyStore, SMB, CA, ISCS, etc.) that evolved out of that (99-2007), CTO for IT Office & EA program (2007-2009), or in ITI (2009-Present).

Why am I leaving?  For many years I have wanted to run a business from soup to nuts, to be in total control, to be limited only by my own capabilities.  I am not sure there will ever be a better time for me personally than now to do that.  I realize that I could easily spend a few more decades going along my current path without ever making that jump.  I plan though to take a little break in the summer to spend with my children.  But when their school starts backup in August, this new business will be my focus.

How to keep in touch? You can always email me at my personal email address:  Nathan.price@gmail.com  Feel free to add me to your Facebook (www.facebook.com/GadgetNate) or LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/pub/nathan-price/2/32/ab7)  networks if we are not already connected.  If you are interested in how my little venture progresses, you can check it out on my personal blog www.GadgetNate.com  (I haven’t kept it up to date, but that will change in the fall.)

–end letter—

I got a lot of supportive emails!  Thanks to everyone!  Here is a sampling:

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Good luck Nathan for your future endeavor.

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Best of luck!  I respect you tremendously for taking the challenge.  Please keep in touch and I hope only the best for you and your family.

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Wish you all the very best for future endeavors. Let be in touch.

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Good luck in your new phase in life….. given your attitude and drive, I’m sure you’ll make it!

Will definitely miss that lovely smile and can do attitude……

Take good care and God Bless you in your new adventure!

Keep in touch!

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Wow !!!!!

What’re you going to do ?

—-

Those were just a few of the emails.

It is great to have the support of people that I have previously worked with.  I wanted to give a little more details about my plans.  I know that a lot of people are wondering what I will do.

The first thing that we have done is trimmed back our expenses, way back.  We have also trimmed back on a lot of savings and investment that we were doing so that we could live within Sonia’s salary.  The immediate goal is to stay cash flow positive and not have to dip into savings.

I gave my notice 7 weeks ago.  I did not want to make a statement by leaving, and I wanted to give my management time to adjust to this move.  They have been great with this transition.  If you get a chance to work with my current team, I believe you will be happy to work with them.  Over the course of these seven weeks, I have been thinking about all sorts of plans, and what I should do.  My wife suggested I take it easy and spend the summer with the kids.  Initially I resisted this idea.  I kept thinking that I needed to hit the ground running and to start bring in as much revenue as quickly as possible.  But seeing how we have been able to reduce expenses and live within one salary, it makes a lot of sense.  The kids will grow up so fast, and they will be back in school in less than 80 days.

My plan for June, July and the first part of August is to just spend with the kids.   We have some things planned.  A week at Boy Scout camp.  A week of chess camp.  A road trip to New Jersey for a weeding, with many stops along the way.  Of course we are going to do swimming, study math and Hindi, and play lots of games.  Basketball, air hockey, ping pong, monopoly, risk, civilization, etc.

In the middle of August when school starts back up, I will then focus on my business. What is that?  Well, it has been a hobby for 4 years.  It only grossed $2,000 last year.  And it is something that doesn’t seem like a sure when at first, but it is something I am passionate about.  It is something that I think with focus, dedication, that I can be successful with.  It is a language learning website:  www.ISpeakHindi.com 

There are several other sites I have done some work on that I want to continue with as well:

www.ISpeakSindhi.com and www.HabloHindu.com

And there will be more.   I am not sure what the revenue potential is, but I hope it is in the tens of thousands.  It should be an interesting experiment.  I will be documenting my journey here.  So, stay tuned.

Tonight was the award ceremony for Pack 1999.  Christopher earned his Tiger badge. 

He was at the Tiger rank, with the Tiger neckerchief.

After getting his Tiger badge, he changed to the Wolf rank which is signified with a different neckerchief.

We ended up doing three of the requirements yesterday which we had some help.

We visited the Klein fire station and got a wonderful tour of the pumper truck with all of the equipment.

We also visited the KUHF/Channel 8 studios:

They had a piece of art in the their waiting room that was made of old computer equipment:

We got to see the control rooms:

Operate some of the equipment:

After that we went to a UH baseball game:

Below is my first attempt at using the limited knowledge I have with regards to flash to do something “useful”.  It quizzes you on the following sounds:  क, का, कि,  and की.  It starts off by saying on of these sounds.  If you didn’t catch it, then click “replay” to hear it again.  Press the letter you think it is.  If you are right, it will say “correct” and go to the next one.  If you are wrong, then it will display “wrong” and go on to the next one.  In the upper right side of the screen, it keeps track of the number correct vs the total number.

I want to create some flash games to help people lean Hindi on my www.ISpeakHindi.com site.  I got the 30 day try to Adobe Flash, and got the book “Foundation Game Design with Flash” by Rex van der Spuy.  It is fantastic.  I have a programming background, but I think this book starts you off basic enough that I want my 11 year-old and 7 year old to go through it.  (They have been wanting to make flash games for a long time… And it isn’t that hard to do something simple.)

I’m only at the end of chapter 3, and this is what I have been able to create.  Note, every single graphic on this was produced by me falling directions in the book.  There is no, “just copy this graphic and place it here”, it is literally teaching how to draw all these things and create the scene.  Really great!

On the way to Qumran

saw a camel:

Lots of high tech looking farms:

At Qumran they sell beauty products that are developed from salts, muds, chemicals from the Dead Sea:

Qumran is where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.  There is a set of ruins of a small village:

Masada

Masada is the famous hilltop fortress where a set of Jews rebellion against the Romans held out until the very end.  The Romans finally made it to the top broke through the walls.  The Jews before suffering slavery and torture at the hands of the Romans decided to commit mass suicide. 

The Israeli arm forces have their swearing in ceremony on Masada (except the paratroopers that do it at the wailing wall).  They end the ceremony by saying “Masada will never fall again!”

You can either walk to the top on a very steep, difficult path or you could take the cable car:

The last few people to commit suicide drew lots to see what the order would be.  (The last man would have to kill himself.)

The cable cars were jammed packed:

The hilltop where Masada is located:

Lunch back in Quamran (too many people trying to get lunch at the same time… too long waiting in line!~)

This is the remains of  Jordan Army camp that was used in the war against Israel:  (This served as the set of the Afghan army camp in the movie Rambo 3)

Dead Sea

I took a dip in the Dead Sea.  The pictures are on my mom’s camera, so it may be a while before I can post them.  This should give you some ideas though:

Back to Jerusalem

Recording of the “Celebrate” show on DayStar

Our plane arrived about 30 minutes early to Newark, and our departing plane is leaving about 70 minutes late.  This combined with the original layover time means we will be in Newark for about 5 hours.  Let me catch you up with my day so far.

This morning went to watch Christopher’s Basketball game.  It was his first game (and second… they had two back to back).  I got to watch Christopher score his first point in a game.  It was great.  Here are some pictures to give you the idea:

My mom came over just before noon and then we went to Bush Intercontinental. 

There we are just at my house before leaving.

We are going with a tour group, and about a dozen or so people are coming from the Houston area.  My mom had different assigned seats so we did not get to sit next to each other.  The plane was completely packed, so I didn’t bother asking about adjusting seats.  And I think it might be a good idea to meet some of the people on the tour too.  I set between Kevin who is an Audio/Visual engineer from the southwest side of Houston, and Carole who is from Katy.

(more updates after we get to Tel Aviv.,  You can check our progress on Flight Aware at flightaware.com/live/flight/COA90/history/20091121/2042Z/KLAX/KEWR

Looks like our plane is still on its way from Los Angeles….