Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 23 March 2026 During my time at Compaq, and later Hewlett-Packard, something unexpected happened. I discovered that my employee access included an extensive internal repository of technical-training material. This was not a small collection of product manuals. It contained thousands of pages spanning: student guides; instructor material; laboratory exercises; certification tracks; assessment material; and documentation covering a broad range of enterprise technologies. The repository represented years of accumulated technical knowledge organised into structured learning paths. At the same time, my normal role was already highly demanding. I supported the complete software stack of core telecommunications-monitoring platforms operating in complex, mission-critical environments. The material could easily have remained an interesting resource that I intended to examine “when time allowed.” Instead, I made a decision: I would create the time...
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about returning to my family tree after a break of roughly ten years. At the time, I knew that I wanted to restart the research seriously. What I did not expect was how quickly the project would begin to grow. It is growing geographically, historically and, perhaps most dangerously, in the amount of material accumulating around me. I now have research running across Germany, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Moldova, Ukraine, Turkey and other places connected with different branches of our families . I am researching my own ancestors and, for the first time, incorporating Viorica's family as well. And I have already managed to push parts of my own family tree back into the early 1800s . That may not sound extraordinary to an experienced genealogist. For me, after leaving the project largely untouched for a decade, it feels like opening a door that I had forgotten was there. The willingness of people to help One of the mo...