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Happy Holidays to everyone,

The California Robbins are doing fine and we hope this letter reaches you in good health and all the happiness of the season.  We are “going green” this year and are emailing our holiday greetings to all.

Jessica (21)  is still living with us at home while she continues her education on a full time basis. Joey (24) is now living in/near LA and Jon (26) is still in San Jose. So, we have become empty nesters of a sort - with a good roommate to help around the house and watch the dogs when Sara & Dave travel.

Jessica (our roommate) turned 21 this year celebrating by getting a large crowd out to a local Karaoke bar for an evening filled with fun and embarrassment. She also went to London with Dave for a week in honor of her 21st to bond and vacation. She is attending Las Positas College - ultimately pursuing a nursing education and, along the way, EMT/EMS training. For the past year she has been a skills instructor for the EMT program at the school. Jessica also loves animals and volunteers at the local animal shelter walking and socializing dogs. Her and Josh celebrated their 3rd year dating and continue to be very happy together - they share a deep interest in Emergency Response programs. Josh is a certified EMT working on an ambulance and also graduated from the Fire Academy this past June. The other love of her life is her little guy Kingston - her Chihuahua.


Joey completed all but a few GE credits in his Cinematography BA at Brooks and was able to walk with his class last March. He is working as a camera tech in an upscale movie rental house (hdcamerarentals.com) and free lancing in a wide variety of feature and other film projects. A sort of struggling artist at this point. He seems happy now that he is working in the industry and continually runs into various well known actors and others in the business. Recently he demoed cameras for  Bruce Willis and Vilmos Zigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) who in turn purchased 2 cameras for Bruce's new film...

He could use your assistance in viewing and voting for a video he submitted a super bowl commercial contest for Doritos. Please Click Here to view and vote when voting opens on January 5th, 2009. There are several of his videos on the Video link above... Some other credits include: Completed A feature film called "Struggle"  in one night as a DIT (digital imaging technician) shooting with 5 cameras with out cutting for 16 hours; Cinematographer on "The Doritos" super bowl spec also shot in one night, completed in 2 days total; Equipment manager for Synthetic pictures  "Vegas Bound"  managing 7 camera crews for 9 nights in Las Vegas.  http://syntheticpictures.com/news.php

Jonathan scared us last year with his brush with Testicular Cancer. His aggressive fight and early detection beat it. He has remained clean and free of the disease and his checkups have become less frequent . He is the Product Marketing Manager for a company called Rhozet - a company that creates and sells software that converts digital video formats and helps companies like Yahoo, ITunes and others to stream videos. His role at Rhozet puts him in a position to travel a lot to manage booths at trade shows  - typically in Amsterdam, London, New York City and Las Vegas - with the largest two being in Las Vegas and Amsterdam. He recently moved to a pretty great apartment in downtown San Jose close to the night life a young, single professional would enjoy. Jon has also become quite a camera buff and has taken pictures and videos for the Saber Kittens (The Saber Cats arena football team cheer leaders) and often takes pictures for clubs at night - the latter gets him a lot of free access....

Sara celebrated a milestone birthday this year (but we don't talk about it like that). She and Dave celebrated by taking a trip to Healdsburg - in wine country. This sort of trip is just about the most favorite sort of thing for her. She loves seeing the wineries, gardens, eating at wonderful restaurants in outstanding settings - and, of course, tasting some wine along the way. It was great for her to be able to accompany Dave on a business trip to Zurich this year too. They both enjoyed the city and all the site seeing they were able to do while there. She continues to work for KB Home where they have had many lay offs due to the housing market down turn. Let's hope the economy turns around soon and real estate / building helps to grow the rest of the market again.

Dave continues to travel frequently in the US, Europe, Japan and India. He was actually at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai that was a victim of the recent terrorist attack to have a beer about three weeks prior to the attacks. Timing is everything.  In his new role as Chief Technology Officer for the IT group at NetApp he has become a frequent speaker in global briefings and events. He gave a keynote speech in Tokyo this past year for Nikkei BP (similar to the Wall Street Journal in the US) on the topic of Green IT - a practice that optimizes utilization of both the IT equipment (Servers, Networks, Disks/Storage) and the facilities that they are housed in - referred to as 'data centers'. This is a very hot topic in the IT world due to the prices of fuel/electricity as well as the many environmental aspects. Done well, it reduces companies electricity bills and can dramatically reduce green house gases.

On the down side - Dave and Sara were deeply saddened by the sudden, unexpected loss of our dear friend Phil Mackey. Phil was a bright influence on the world and will dearly missed. We often think of Phil and those he left behind.

Also,  late in the the year another friend and former work colleague of Dave's, Jim Pressel, passed after a brave fight against Pancreatic Cancer. An illness that took both Dave's mother and her father.

If getting older has taught us anything it is that we treasure more dearly every interaction we have with each other and our friends - you.

Well, that's a wrap!!

Peace and love to all of you, from all of us - Dave, Sara, Jon, Joey and Jessica

Please keep in touch

We would love to keep in touch with you all on a more regular basis ˆ so please send Dave an email when you get a chance. Ours are: Dave , Sara , Jessica  , Joey  and Jon.