Rick Tavan

Hello.  Thanks for visiting my Web page.  It is very much a work in progress since Google retired its original web page builder in favor of this new one called "sites" which I have definitely not yet mastered. Many links are broken so please bear with me as I learn and fill in the blanks. 

I am a retired software exec, officially living in Truckee, CA, a beautiful town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Lake Tahoe. It has long been a refuge from the fast-paced life of Silicon Valley and now, with our great gratitude, serves as legal residence for me and my wife, Ann.  See the photo off our back deck.  When not enjoying the mountain air, we retreat to our flatlands home in Saratoga, CA near San Jose. Alas, Valley obligations restrict our mountain time more than we would wish. We also spend ample time catching up on the personal travel backlog that accumulated during my decades of business travel, most notably for TIBCO Software.  Recent destinations have included Little Cayman, Chile, Italy, Maui, Kauai, Aruba, Boston, Washington, D.C., Orcas Island WA, San Diego, Sedona/Grand Canyon AZ, Saba, Bonaire, England, Poland, Israel, Austin, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beijing, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Tokyo, Vancouver BC, Southern Maine, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Alaska, Siberia, French Polynesia, Pitcairn Island (almost), and various Baltic Sea and Adriatic seaports. [8/2024 Kenya - see pix at https://www.flickr.com/gp/rtavan/R0V3300ig2 .

I am a computer science graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Early employers were the MIT C. S. Draper Lab, Masstor Systems Corporation and 3Com Corporation.  My longest and last professional tenure was at TIBCO Software from which I retired in 2002.  After retiring, I served briefly as an advisor and on the boards of some small technology companies in Silicon Valley and the Tahoe Sierra but for many years now have been a full-time bum with no professional connections at all.  I keep very busy with interests including amateur radio, flying, skiing, SCUBA diving, photography, fishing, hiking, community service and liturgical chanting.  Ann enjoys sewing, crochet, costumery, puzzles, fantasy novels and Rennaisance Faires.  Our son Jeremy, a computer science graduate of Cornell University, works in IT security at Stanford University. He lives in Silicon Valley with his wife, Laurie and our grandson, Corwin.  Our son Dan lives in the Boston area with his wife Melissa and our grandsons Eric, Jacob, and Caleb. 

Please enjoy my little Web site. Originally a contrived exercise that helped me to learn a little about Web page composition, it has become a repository for brief essays on ideas and hobbies. 

updated 8/22/2024