I have picked up or been given several computer chips, rectangular with thin metal pins on two opposing sides and have walked over to Daniel's desk by an inside corner in a large open building. Attempting to stuff the computer chips into the chest pocket of my black Monkeyman fleece, I accidentally drop them and have to crawl under Daniel's desk to retrieve them. A couple of the pins are bent on one of the chips but I think I will be able to bend them back into position.
I tell Daniel that I am planning to go to Portland and we discus whom I might be able to visit or possibly stay with while I am there. The names we come up with are mostly all friends of mine, or maybe his, but I am not sure I know any of them well enough. Outside now, I am walking down an access road through a landscaped business park or campus and I come to a gate made of horizontal bars. I am still considering whom I might visit as I climb through the gate and continue down the road to a parking lot.
At the edge of the parking lot I step in some mud which squeezes up between my bare toes. I try to rinse off the mud in a puddle before I enter the next building, but the puddle opens up into a deep jagged hole filled with water and I fall in up to my armpits before I can climb out. I realize that the water is used for cooling a mainframe computer on the top level of the underground data center.
Entering the building, I am greeted by someone like a security guard or receptionist. I am concerned that they will be upset about the wet footprints I am leaving on the floor but they do not seem to mind. Instead they ask me whom I I have come to see, but I cannot remember the name of that person, who may or may not have been one of the people I was going to visit in Portland.

Initially I had no clue about the meaning of this one but I recorded it since I remembered it reasonably well, despite forgetting all the names. Thinking about it while half awake early one morning a few days later, the meaning became clear.
The fleece was my favorite coat back before I had ALS, remarkably soft and comfortable. It represents my true self (my ID?) Computer chips, together with Daniel being at his desk at work, symbolize my career as a computer programmer. My difficulty putting the chips in my fleece pocket, and the bent pins on one of them, suggest that my chosen career was not a perfect fit for me, though my picking up the chips under the desk suggest that I made it work. The idea that my career wasn't a great fit is reinforced by my muddy bare feet and my concern about the wet footprints. On the other hand, my ease in getting through the gate indicates that I was clearly qualified to get into the field and do well.
The conversation with Daniel, my falling into the puddle of mainframe cooling water and by inability to remember the name of the person I intended to visit all suggest reasons that my career was not a perfect fit. Daniel is particularly effective at networking in his career, something that I never pursued or did well. The dream implies that by my not knowing anyone in Portland well enough to visit them. Falling into the puddle represents my devotion to older (though not actually mainframe) technology and my failure to keep up with more current languages and techniques later in my career. Both were limitations born partly of fear and partly of disinterest. I find it interesting though that neither of them, at least as I understand it, were the real reason I retired early from my work with computers. That reason had more to do with fear of taking on greater responsibility and greater risk of failure, fears perhaps represented by the encounter with the security guard, an encounter apparently scary enough that I woke up in order to complete it.
I did love programming, and still do, but I enjoy it on my own terms - outdated technology and in support of my own personal interests - birdwatching and journaling for example. Perhaps this is symbolized in the dream by my pleasure in squeezing the mud between my toes.