2005: In
February, Audra gave birth to our second child, a wonderful son we
named Jaron Bryce Lemke. We've been amazed at how much more
(exponential!) time it takes having two little ones at home, and thus
we haven't been updating this page much lately. It's about all we
can do to find time now and then to post pictures to SmugMug.com
for our friends and family to see. Let us
know if you need the password to see our family pictures.
I'm still at PalmSource (formerly Palm Inc., 3Com, U.S. Robotics,
and Palm Computing -- you know, the Palm Pilot people), and in fact
will celebrate nine years there this August, as the longest-tenured
employee still at the company.
Current Palm OS devices: Steve has finally ditched his aging Nokia "dumb" phone and now carries only a PalmOne Treo 650 (unlocked GSM on T-Mobile); Audra upgraded to a new and very cool Zire 72.
2004: Amber passed away in November
at the age of 11 1/2. We miss her terribly, and Sienna is now an
only dog.
Current Palm OS devices: Steve has a PalmOne Tungsten C (which has more impressive specs than the Apple PowerBook Duo he had when he started working at Palm back in 1996) and a Treo 600, and Audra just upgraded from a PalmOne Zire 71 to the new and very cool Zire 72.
2003: It's all a blur (new baby and all)...
2002: New page: Steve's referrals - pointers to people and companies that are great to do business with.
2001:
On October 21, Audra gave birth to our first child, a
darling little angel we named Brina Marissa Lemke! I was
fortunate enough to be able to take my sabbatical from work and spend
four weeks at home with Audra and Brina. We have more pictures of
Brina available online, but they're not publicly linked from any of
our other Lemkeville pages. If we know you and you haven't seen the
pictures, contact us and
we'll let you know where to find them.
Everyone says that having a baby will turn your world upside down,
and they're absolutely right. However, I never could have imagined
just exactly what this meant until it happened to us. Our lives will
surely never be the same again, but we wouldn't have it any other
way...
We found some neat baby-related Palm software:
I compiled a list of product suggestions and pointers for new parents-to-be. If you or someone you know is expecting a baby (especially their first), check it out and hopefully you'll find something of use there.
I upgraded from my old wireless Palm VIIx to the new Palm i705. This new, smaller, rechargeable PDA adds always-on wireless and lets me read my Outlook (work) email and surf the web just about anywhere (in the USA that is). The i705 effectively replaces not only my old VIIx, but also my Skytel two-way pager since it has incoming message notification. Very cool product. Yes, I do really wish it had a color display, but it's still (in my opinion) the coolest Palm device to date. (The latest Sony, the PEG-NR70, is pretty slick for a non-wireless Palm powered device.)
For
networked MP3 playback or streaming web radio from your stereo
system: Audiotron by Voyetra
Turtle Beach. This $295 device enables us to instantly play ANY song
in o ur collection of 700+ CDs, or random play across our entire
collection. It's brought our music back into our lives in a big way
(rather than just sitting in our CD storage cabinets where it was
invconvenient to listen to). In addition, the company hosts a mailing
list for users, and is very proactive in listening to our feedback
and sharing pre-release (beta) updates! Lately I've been working on a
Palm application to control the
AudioTron remotely over wireless 802.11...
To
control our home theater system, we use the Home
Theater Master MX-500 programmable remote control. At first, I
tried using the Philips
Pronto, but it didn't have enough buttons and was too complicated
to program. The MX-500 is a really great remote. You can get it for
about $90 from BlueDo.com.
If
you live in Silicon Valley and want to get one of these locally
without having to mail order it, you can get it for about $140 from
Home
Tech Solutions (a really great home automation store in Cupertino
near Miyake).
Also, if you want to know anything about programmable remote
controls, check out the best remote site on the net, RemoteCentral.com,
where you'll find reviews for any remote worth buying, message
boards, and file areas where people share IR codes and custom remote
layouts.
To
share baby pictures with grandma, I bought a Ceiva
digital picture frame from Good Guys for $200. Through January, there
is a $100
rebate which drops the price to $100. Grandma just plugs the
picture frame into an outlet and into a phone jack, and we (my
cousins and I) can upload pictures of the great-grandkids at any
time. Grandma's picture frame will dial up the Ceiva service every
night and download any new pictures so she can see them when she
wakes up. Pretty slick, huh? The Ceiva service costs $5/month but
that's a small price to pay for automatically sending pictures to
Grandma without having to print them out and mail them.
To
make the most incredible espresso drinks (cappuccino, latte,
mocha, etc.), I got a Capresso
C1000 espresso machine as an early Christmas present from Audra
(though I think she likes it as much if not more than I do). At $700
(brand new on ebay),
it may seem expensive for an espresso machine, but it's worth every
penny. Plus, I have friends who paid $900 for the same machine. We
figure that within a year or two it will pay for itself since we can
now make better espresso drinks than Starbucks
without having to leave the house, which is pretty handy when you
have a new baby at home. It's also great for entertaining: friends
who have visited us agree that it makes wonderful espresso
drinks!
To
print, fax, copy, or scan stuff, we have an HP
LaserJet 3200m multi-function machine. It replaced a thermal fax
machine and an old Apple LaserWriter 16/600. We've always wanted a
plain-paper (non-inkjet) copy machine at home, and we can even make
color copies by doing a scan and print to Audra's Epson Stylus Photo
700 color inkjet (painless with the HP software). The printer cranks
out 9 pages per minute at 1200 dpi, but is totally quiet when it's
not doing anything. The fax machine has a 33.6kbps modem, which is
more than twice as fast as the typical 14.4 fax machine. I don't know
why all fax machines aren't 33.6 these days (or internet-connected
for that matter). The scanner does 600dpi in 24-bit color. This thing
is built like a tank, and is worth every penny we paid for it (though
it's not THAT expensive for what you get). Plus, it's Mac *and*
Windows compatible - BONUS! Put a JetDirect 175 on it and you get a
fully networked PostScript laser printer for all of the Macs or PCs
on your network. I can't say enough about this wonderful machine! The
3200 (not "m") is a little cheaper if you don't need Mac (PostScript)
support. Buy.com sells the LaserJet 3200
and the 3200m
as well as the JetDirect.
Wish List (or "possible future gadgets", circa 2002):
New page: Broadband and Wireless
Broadband information
New page: How to set up Mac
printing over TCP/IP - Lets you turn off AppleTalk on your
PowerBook, which makes it wake up from sleep MUCH faster! (This
assumes you are printing to an ethernet printer which supports LPR,
like most office HP printers, and even some of Apple's own
LaserWriters.)
2000: In March Palm had its
IPO, and in July Palm completed its legal separation from 3Com! Palm
was about 50 people when I started back in August 1996. Now we're
somewhere around 1200!
Coming someday (?): Pictures from our August Hawaii trip for the Palm
Inventors Conference.
New
page: My TiVo upgrade page w/pictures.
New page: Pictures of our family room remodel.
(final pics not yet posted)
New page: Pictures from my January trip
to Montpellier, France.
New page: Pictures of Apple's AirPort wireless hub
disassembly.
Millenium
madness: Is 2000 the start of the millenium or is 2001? Or is the
correct answer technically "neither"? Read
all about it. Be sure to read the whole thing to get the
full story. There's much more to it than the first screenful
that appears...
1999: New page: Pictures from our August trip
to Spain for the 3Com Inventors Conference.
On September 13, 1999, Palm announced
that they would be separating from 3Com, spinning out into an
independent, publicly traded company. Woo-hoo!! We're going public!!
For more information, check out the filing
announcement.
In October, Palm
announced a broad licensing and joint development agreement with
Nokia and in November, Palm
announced a similar
agreement with Sony.
1998: In February, Audra and I went to Hawaii for the first
time. We spent five days on Kauaii, and five days on Maui. We had a
great time! It was the first of what will hopefully be many enjoyable
Hawaii vacations to come. Maybe some day I can dig up some pictures
from that trip...
In June, we went to Yosemite with Audra's parents.
1997:
The
most awesome wedding: Audra
and I were married on June 20, 1997 at
Chambers
Landing (see picture at left) in
Tahoma (at beautiful Lake Tahoe). Chambers Landing was an
absolutely fabulous place to get married. People are still talking
about what a beautiful wedding it was, and we definitely agree! Some
interesting Tahoe links are TahoeNet,
and Tahoe Country.
After the wedding, we had a spectacular honeymoon in Europe. We
started with Germany (flew into Frankfurt and stayed in Rotenburg),
spent almost a week touring Austria (Salzburg, Hallstat,
Weissenkirchen on the Danube, and Vienna), another week touring Itlay
(Venice, Florence, Siena, Cinque
Terre, and Varenna at Lake Como), and flew home from Switzerland
(after visiting Murren and Gimmelwald). We have always used Rick
Steve's Europe Through the Back Door guide books for our travels,
and have never regretted it. We tape his Travels
in Europe shows on PBS, as they provide video memories of many of
the places we've seen.
On Wednesday, March 19, 1997, after waiting almost a month for it to
arrive, we picked up our new Honda
CR-V (one of the first ones). If you know Audra, you'll guess
(correctly) that it's green. On
Friday, March 28, 1997, the factory stereo was replaced with an
awesome Alpine system, and on Saturday, March 29, Dave
and I installed an Alpine
alarm. I have a web page that describes what
we did.
1996: On Friday, November 15, 1996, a
four-month-old stray puppy we've since named Sienna
walked off the street and into our garage. We posted signs and
reported her as a found dog to the humane society, but nobody called.
Since she and Amber seem to get along pretty well, we decided to keep
her. We've posted a few pictures we scanned
in so folks can see what she looks like. (Note that these pictures
are very old, though, taken back when she was just a puppy.)
On July 12th, 1996, I left Radius
after seven years there. What could possibly convince me to leave
after seven years? Well, I wasn't really looking to leave... Radius
was very good to me while I was there, and some good friends of mine
were still there. (Some of them later went on to create an
interesting internet start-up called Snippets.)
However, a chance to work at the Palm
Computing division of U.S. Robotics (which was later acquired by
3Com Corporation) was just too
much to pass up. Plus, some ex-Radius friends were already at Palm
(though they later moved on to create Palm spin-off Handspring).
Anyway, ever since I bought my first Palm Pilot 1000 organizer back
in May, 1996, I've been thrilled about the idea of working for Palm.
I started on August 12th, 1996, back when there were only about 50
people there. It's now well over 1000 people!!
1990-1995: After college, my first job was at Radius Inc. I
worked initially as a quality assurance engineer and then as a
software engineer. I worked on many interesting (and successful)
Macintosh-related products such as the Radius Pivot
Display (a rotating portrait-landscape display), PrecisionColor
video cards (the first color video cards with on-the-fly resolution
switching, called Dynamic Desktop), PowerView (the first adapter to
allow external displays to connect to PowerBooks), and VideoVision
PCI (a professional digital video capture and editing system).
Support for some of these ancient Radius products can still be found
at RadiusVintage.com.
There's a web page at YahooClubs for Radius
Alumni, and I also run a mailing
list to help keep track of everyone.
1989: In June, 1989, I graduated with a B.S. degree in
Electrical and Computer
Engineering from the University of
California at Santa Barbara. While at UCSB, I lived at Francisco
Torres (aka Club Med I.V.) my first year, on the 9-North. (I
created a Yahoo club for FT-9N
85-86). I subsequently lived in three different places in
Isla Vista: an apartment
at 6660 Abrego, upstairs in a duplex on Sabado Tarde, and upstairs in
a duplex on Camino Del Sur. [Here's another I.V.
link.]
1985: In June, 1985, I graduated from
Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, CA (where I grew up, near
Santa Barbara). I found a
DPHS Class of '85 web page run by Darren Caesar and Susie
Hobbisiefken. Be sure to follow the links from there to ClassMates.com
and HighSchoolAlumni.com
and register if you haven't already. Heck, you should do it even if
you're NOT from DPHS. It's a cool way to get back in touch with those
old high school friends! The bummer is that ClassMates.com charges
you $30/year to find out the email addresses of your friends;
fortunately, the others are free. Another interesting (and FREE)
alumni site is Alumni.net,
though it's newer. Yet another new (and free) site is GradFinder.com.
Santa Barbara is a
beautiful place to live. I'd love to retire there some day, except that
it seems to have become a prohibitively expensive place to live (and
that coming from someone who lives in the Bay Area).
Jump back to the top of
this page or keep scrolling...
Here's a somewhat dated picture of my wife
Audra, Amber, and
myself. Audra is a graduate of Cornell
University (with a B.S. in engineering physics), and the
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, with a Master's Degree in Computer
Science (with an emphasis in Computer Graphics). Currently she
works at EnRoute Imaging on
360-degree video technology for the new Sony
PlayStation 2. Prior to that she worked full-time at home for
Testarossa LLC (a
three-person startup) and loved it. Before that, she worked at
Electronic Arts and HP
Labs. Incidentally, Audra has a pretty cool web
page of her own, here at Lemkeville.
Presently, I'm living in Sunnyvale,
CA with Audra, our
Golden Retriever,
Amber, and our other dog, Sienna.
Previously, we lived in elsewhere in Sunnyvale, and before that in
South San Jose with an old work buddy Dave.
Dave and I owned a house together for three years. Shortly after
returning from grad. school, Audra, Amber, and I moved back to
Sunnyvale to shorten our commutes. After Radius, Dave worked at
Apple, and then went to EnRoute, which is how Audra came to work
there... Of course, not long after Audra went to work at EnRoute,
Dave sold his house in San Jose and moved to Phoenix.
Audra and I have known each other since May, 1991, back when Dave
first chose her as a roommate for his three-bedroom apartment at
Glenbrook in
Cupertino, across from The
Oaks Shopping Center, where we used to frequently walk to get
coffee at The
Coffee Society (that link includes an article from the local paper
that actually mentions our history there).
My golden retriever, Amber, is a wonderful
dog with her own web page. She used to
really enjoy coming to work with me back at Radius where it was
allowed (and encouraged). Alas, Palm doesn't feel the same way about
dogs in the workplace. Still, it's not so bad, since shortly after
she started having to stay at home by herself, we found Sienna
(or rather, she found us). Amber and Sienna are
best friends; they play with each other, and keep each other company
(and exercised) whenever we're not around. Having one dog is great,
but having two is even better.
Jump back to the top of
this page or keep scrolling...
Audra and I really enjoy listening to music and going to concerts.
In fact, our first date was at a Sting concert at Shoreline
Amphitheatre which is one of my favorite concert places. Other
favorite places are Villa
Montalvo and the Paul Masson Mountain
Winery.
Over the years, people/groups we've seen (together) in concert
include Joan Baez, David
Benoit, Berlin,
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Sarah
Brightman, Judy Collins
& Arlo
Guthrie, Phil
Collins, Shawn Colvin,
The Cure, Dire
Straits, The Fixx,
Fleetwood Mac, Fourplay,
Peter Gabriel, Indigo
Girls, Dave Koz, Sarah
McLachlan & Sheryl
Crow (at the Lilith
Fair), Loreena
McKennitt, Moody
Blues, Alanis
Morissette, James
Taylor, Sting, George
Winston, and Yanni. Wow,
that's quite a list, and there's probably still a few we're
forgetting! :-)
Separately, Audra has seen Pink Floyd (and undoubtedly others), and I
have seen The B-52's, Basia, The Beach Boys, Jimmy Buffet, Chicago,
The Eagles, Bruce Hornsby, Howard Jones, Elton John, David Lanz, Huey
Lewis, Oingo Boingo, REO Speedwagon, The Rippingtons, Lee Ritenour,
Rush, and Weird Al Yankovic. I'm sure many of
these have web sites, too, but I've spent enough time on this section
for now. If you're curious, go to Yahoo
or Google
and search for them...
Other people/groups I'd still really LIKE to see someday include
Enya, Billy
Joel, Mark
Knopfler, Sarah
McLachlan (again!), Mannheim
Steamroller, and Alan
Parsons. Since Sarah's taking a break from touring, I have to
make due with her Mirrorball DVD and CD, which are definitely among
my favorites! I was never really a fan of concert videos or DVDs, but
Mirrorball changed my mind.
Shows we've seen include Beach
Blanket Babylon, Fiddler
on the Roof, Les Miserables,
The Nutcracker, and
Phantom of the
Opera.
We have a growing collection of DVDs (click to
see the list), most of which we've purchased from Buy.com
because of their great prices (typically better than Amazon or other
DVD sites we've found), their great offers like discount email
"coupons", and their occasional free-shipping promotions.
Jump back to the top of
this page or keep scrolling...
Here's a picture of my very own (first)
on-ramp to the Information Superhighway. Yes, this is for real.
Construction workers from Pacific
Bell tore up the sidewalk (and a driveway) across the street from
my house in order to install my ISDN line. All this at no charge to
me, and for a line that cost a mere $25 per month which I only had
for two years.
Of course, that was two houses ago. Our previous house had ISDN
problems caused by squirrels eating through the ISDN wires up on the
telephone poles.
With our current house, the previous owners already had ISDN
(installed and working) when we bought the house. By the time we
moved in, however, the line was dead. Turns out some analog repairman
determined that the wires carrying my ISDN line were "unused" since
there was no analog dial tone, so he re-used them to fix someone
else's problem.
At one point, We had analog (POTS), ISDN and DSL, and then added @Home cable modem service
through AT&T Broadband.
Are we connected or what? :-)
I decided to get cable because I'm *EXTREMELY* disappointed in
PacBell as a DSL Internet Service
Provider. I used to be concerned that @Home wouldn't be very good
either, but as PacBell sinks lower and lower, I begin to wonder how
@Home could be any worse. [sigh] Turns out @Home isn't any
worse (so far). It's gone down a few times, but in general it's ten
times faster than DSL was, slightly more reliable, and cheaper
too.
Another possibility is Sprint
Wireless Broadband, which is a new wireless service that's faster
than DSL and doesn't rely on your cable company OR phone company. So
far, I've heard good things about it from people who have it in both
Silicon Valley and Phoenix, AZ... Only problem is that it's not
available where I live (see my Broadband
page for more information on this, and other interesting stuff
too).
Jump back to the top of
this page or keep scrolling...
Dilbert is a
comic strip written by Scott Adams about a nerd and his dog, Dobgert.
OK, so everybody knows about Dilbert (now), but back when I first
created this web page it was still relatively new. Hey, now that
everyone knows who Dilbert is, it's probably interesting to note that
I met Scott Adams back when I was first getting into ISDN and Scott
still worked at the PacBell ISDN Lab! I wonder where I put that
Dilbert strip he autographed for me... Scott also wrote an article
for Windows Magazine (back in 1995) titled "Men
Who Use Computers Are The New Sex Symbols Of The `90s".