Quintus Arrius, in the movie Ben Hur, implores the rowers to give him "Battle speed!... Attack speed!... Ramming speed!"  On October 15, 1997, the rocket powered car, ThrustSSC, driven by Andy Green, set a world land speed record of 763 mph. ThrustSSC is the first car to break the sound barrier on land. The qote, "I feel the need, the need for speed", from the movie Top Gun, says a lot about what drives our native code compiler team. Who doesn't want more speed and fast optimizing compilers? ...

I went to visit Mount St. Helens yesterday. Unfortunately, it was raining and we couldn't see the volcano.  We stopped at the Johnston Ridge Observatory (JRO), named for David A. Johnston.  Johnston was a USGS volcanologist who was on duty at the ridge the day Mount St. Helens exploded on May 18, 1980.  "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is It!" was all he could report when the mountain erupted. Johnston was one of the 57 people who lost their lives.  The JRO is 5 miles from the volcano on the ridge wh...