As summer gave way to autumn, the leaves joined in the "celebration".

Residents of Minnesota began their annual rush to get in their last turns on the lakes and rivers before the cold made it unpleasant or impassable.

Having lived this cycle for nearly a decade, I began to realize that not everyone in the world had to endure such extremes of hot and cold.

My trips to Hawai‘i had opened my eyes to the fact that beautiful vistas can be found in warm, welcoming places as well as the frequently frozen tundra I currently called home.

Coincidentally, another trip came up, this one a business trip, that started me thinking about other possibilities.

This trip was a request by my employer, Control Data, to visit Honolulu to update the operating system on a CDC-3300 computer system in a data center that the company maintained there. It was easy work for me and great fun to experience working in Hawai‘i instead of just being a tourist.

Upon my return to the mainland, I was told that the data center was looking to hire a data center manager. It was an easy decision to throw my hat in the ring.

Sadly, it was not to be — understandably a disappointment for me that they decided that my mainland salary was too expensive — and that they could hire someone already on O'ahu at a lower salary and with no relocation costs.

All was not lost, because shortly thereafter I was offered a transfer to the CDC Star-100 project ,working on the operating system for the company's vector supercomputer.

The fact that the project team was located in Sunnyvale, California was a personal side benefit — that much closer to Hawai‘i for future travel and maybe, just maybe, a job opportunity might open up in the islands (and I would be more likely to hear about it in California than in Minnesota). And CDC paid full moving expenses!

The only downside was leaving the Minnesota friends to whom I had grown close — mostly CDC co-employees. We even played together on an industrial league softball team, the Pansies. I don't know how we agreed on that name but I knew I would miss them — don't know if they missed their star shortstop.

Next week, California here I come!