The Bilzer Report

 Wow, questions pop up all the time from "the old days"

Scott Futryk, my partner at AstroVirtual  (https://www.astrovirtual.com/), posed the following today:On Jan 28, 2026, at 6:21 PM, Scott Futryk <Scott@anywhereanytime.us> wrote:

    1. How often was the Bilzer Report "run?

    2. Who was responsible and what was the source data?

    3. Who got to see it

    4, When did the executive staff see it?

    5. How many times per quarter, per month did the Bilzer Report get analyzed?

    6. On a scale of 1 to 100, what was the OVERALL VALUE of the Bilzer Report ?

    7, Was anything ever written about the Bilzer Report good or bad ?

Thx,

 

Scott

 

Co-Founder & Managing Director

AstroVirtual Inc.

www.AstroVirtual.com 

Silicon Valley, CA  95020

408-569-5900

 

On Jan 28, 2026, at 7:55 PM, charles house <housec1839@gmail.com> wrote:

1.  Monthly

2. Maria Bilzer, Carl Cittrell.  Daily order data from every HP office

3. All GMs, all CORP OFFICERS

4. Third day of the next month

5. I have no idea

6. 90

7. Don’t know.  I’m sending 3 pp from the book that Ray Price and I did some years ago

So, you, dear reader, are probably wondering just what was the Bilzer Report, and what difference does it make today?

I pulled a paragraph out of The HP Phenomenon (House and Price, Stanford Press, 2009) to answer: 

 

AstroVirtual built a Dashboard for the 1978-1985 timeframe for the Instrument Group data.  If you persuade me hard, I could insert some learning from it.

As usual, there are cartoons for practically anything.  Here's one for today's political turmoil

The corollary is that there are a ton of great ideas that have been tried before, and found to work extremely well, that have been forgotten in the meantime.   Such is the Bilzer report!

Bill Terry RIP

 Two weeks ago, I posted that Bill Terry had passed away.   The San Jose Mercury-News just published his obituary this morning, at https://www.mercurynews.com/obituaries/william-terry-palo-alto-ca/

Obituaries are often sources of surprise for readers who thought they knew the person.  A note about Bill in that obit was a big surprise to friends of mine, but Bill and I had talked about this more than once.  "Bill found joy in simple pleasures as well. He was an avid stamp collector who appreciated history through philately."

What?   Why would Bill and I talk about that?   Well, long story short--I'd been sickly as a youngster, missing nearly 100 days of school in 3rd and 4th grades.  And if you miss a lot of school, how do you learn important things like history?  Well, stamp collecting is indeed a historian's delight.  Not only does the US honor all sorts of historic figures and events with stamps, most other countries do as well.  So for the avid collector, stamp collectding is a terrific hobby by which to learn facts that honor that country's heritage.   Moreover, it is an easy hobby, easy enough to do when bed-ridden or wheelchair-bound, Franklin Roosevelt, wheelchair-bound for his entire presidecny, was an avid philatelist, so was I, and so was Bill.  Bill's knowledge was so thorough through such means that he would routinely surprise if not stun engineers at HP with his broad collection of factoids, gathered from who knows where (at least as they viewed it).

The other thing noteworthy about Bill that the obit covered nicely was his dedication to Santa Clara University, somewhat unique within HP executive circles which was preponderantly Stanford oriented.  I taught both places, and have had extended family graduate from each (not to mention Berkeley or Caltech).   Most HP engineers were dismissive of the Santa Clara and San Jose State programs, but we surely got some great engineers from those places, and over the years, they've proven their worth.  The key thing for Santa Clara U for me, and for Bill, was their dedication to the ethical and moral worth of the pursuits.   In particular, two men--Jim Koch and Geoffrey Bowker-were key for years.  

Jim served as the Dean of the Leavey School of Business in 1990 to 1996.  He also was on the Informix Board of Directors, which is where I first got to know him.  He was the founding director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society (now the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship), which examines the intersection of technology and organizational change.

Geoffrey and his accomplished wife, Susan Leigh Star, were the founding STS leaders for SCU for Koch's department, a department that Bill Terry supported with great enthusiasm.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_C._Bowker.     

One never knows in advance how one person's life--their actions, their values, and their support--will play out in your own life.  What's the phrase--"never burn a bridge"?   I wasn't happy (duh, really?) when Bill Terry tried to scotch my XYZ display back in 1966, but later I had to agree that he did allow it to continue even though he could have stopped it.   But when he was in Cupertino, he graciously invited our Logic team to work with his engineers (in particular, Bert Forbes, who took us to IBM Santa Theresa and the rest became history).   And then he was very supportive of the HP Corporate Engineering role.  But more than that, long after we'd both left HP, he was supportive of both the UC Santa Barbara Center for Information impact on Technology and Science (CITS), and later of MediaX at Stanford.

I could go on and on, but I shall not do so here.   Just raise a cup tonight to this great man, Bill Terry.

Madder than a wet hen

 Where did all of these idiomatic phrases come from?   How many do you remember?  And apologies for the phallic ones, which were especially popular with my step-father

Happiness:

    1. Happy as a clam in a mudbank

    2. Happy as a pig in shit

Unhappy:

    1. Madder than a wet hen

    2. Mad enough to spit nails

    3. Mad as a March hare

Capability:

    1. Can't carry a tune in a basket

    2. Couldn't pour piss out of a boot

    3. Dumb as a box of rocks

    4. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer

    5. Not playing with a full deck

Busy:

    1. Busier than a one-armed paperhanger

    2. Busier than a cat covering up shit

Memory:

    1. She can remember things that never even happened

    2. Slip one's trolley

Candor:

    1. Lying through one's teeth

    2. We're using alternative facts

    3. (Vulgar) Couldn't say "Shit" if they had a mouthful

If these are your 'thing" chances are you grew up in.a rural environment, maybe even in the South--boy, is that pejorative or what?

Why do I bring this up?

Well, Jenny is MADDER THAN A WET HEN about our HP printers.   This is (gasp) blasphemous.  She and I both bleed blue, we met at HP, we each worshipped HP, and we have always venerated their goals, not to metntion their products.   Until now.  She swears, with enthusiasm, I'LL NEVEER BUY ANOTHER HP PRINTER after the series of insults with our current pair.

Start with the fact that if you once signed up for the Automatic Ink Delivery, nothing ever works again.  Yes, you get the ink, and a healthy charge.  No, you cannot buy ink at Costco or Best Buy or Staples and installit yourself.  The machine denies the cartridge even though it is an HP cartridge.  and the work-around to get it to accept the cartridge takes thirty minutes, and HP wants $35 to talk to an 'helpful' person.  And the machines forget how to do dual-sided printing at their discretion, and forget how to let you scan on occasion (usually only when you urgently need it), and . . . we could go on forever, but . . . .

This stuff all used to work beautifully, reliably, faithfully, and was the best thing since sliced bread.  And, it isn't like we aren't good ink customers.  Each of us print about 5,000 pages per years--that's known as a 'Ream box", meaning ten reams of paper.  That's a lot.   I know, I know, not a very wise thing to do for the environment, but . . . .    And that's a lot of ink.   And we've done something like this for more than 30 years each. 

MAD AS A WET HEN