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Availability: The cornerstone that keeps Nonstop Compute competitive!

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It may surprise many to read that as a teenager growing up on Sydney’s North Shore, I was already into cars. I made models of Formula One cars – back then it was a Ferrari “sharknose” and a Porsche (yes, Porsche were an F1 constructor for a number of years) – and I built slot-car circuits. My favorite configuration was the Warwick Farm race track; a circuit in Sydney’s western suburbs that, today, no longer exists. My mate Graham Long and I snuck out to the circuit one Saturday afternoon to see a club racing event and, from that time on, I must admit, I was hooked. This was the 1960s and it wasn’t long before I became a regular at a slot-car establishment in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby; nearby to my High School, Normanhurst Boys High School. I built a model of the Pontiac Tempest – a later model of which carried the badge, GTO, and it was a wild, overly large car for a slot car and my crashes were legendary, as an off-track excursion would take out several other cars. As I prepared ...
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The lazy days of summer are now behind us; autumn awaits.

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Children play in the puddles at Bradfield Park in 1958.  Credit: Bruce Adams Attending the HPE Nonstop Technology & Business Conference 2025 (Nonstop TBC25) had me doing a deep look back into the history of Connect and before then, to ITUG. This took me back so many years to Nice, France, in 1992 and to Orlando, Florida in 1993. My entire life within the Nonstop Community seems to have played out, bounded by Nonstop nee Tandem Computers’ events. But the time spent walking the exhibition pavilion (a less than stellar reminder of past exhibition floors spanning acres), led me to think back to my childhood, growing up in Lindfield, NSW Australia. Of course, to those that know me well, I use the phrase growing up quite loosely, as it continues to be a work in progress. Not sure what triggered the association but all the same, the fondness I have for Nonstop events is very similar to the fondness I now have today of my childhood home. What may have triggered these memories has ...
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Its summertime, and the heat is still on!

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Having served seafood from this house since 1889,  Old Key Lime House; considered the oldest waterfront restaurant in Florida. Our travels in and around Florida continue. This week, our travels took us to Boca Raton via Tampa and for many in the Nonstop community, familiar sites came into view. Who can forget how many times SunTUG held events in the Marriott Tampa Westshore, near to some pretty fancy restaurants. I seem to recall this became the place to go once winter was in the process of releasing its grip on all of us in the Midwest. When it comes to events, there have been many through the years that always seem to have pulled a crowd. SunTUG (Tampa), N2TUG (Dallas), DUST (Phoenix) and more with a number of international outliers that I can recall being enthusiastic recipients of all things Nonstop – SATUG (still have the mug), OzTUG, and of course GTUG and BITUG with these last two hardly being among the outlies. As I write this post, I am fully aware of the upcoming No...
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One more preview of my upcoming Three Wishes for Nonstop

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One of my most treasured photos – Jimmy and me, at a not that long ago N2TUG gathering. Following my first attempts at blogging, back in August of 2007 – yes, some 18 years ago – around the time of the European ITUG Summit in Brighton, UK, it was a good friend of mine and former ITUG board member, Sam, who came up to me and said, “Slow down with the posts; you write faster than I can read!” Not a put-down or in any way condemnation of those early posts but rather, a recognition that time is important for all my readers and dropping a post on a daily basis, albeit a lot shorter than what I post today, was perhaps not an ideal way in interacting with the Nonstop community. Give them time to read, think and perhaps comment otherwise readership will dwindle. How right he was, it turns out. Today, with post number 651, readership is as strong as it ever was and for that, I have to thank Sam. What started in 2008 with the first “Three Wishes for NonStop” can be viewed by scanning the Labels ...
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Summer – do we feel we need a break?

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  For those who have been reading my blog posts through the years perhaps a small celebration is due as this is post #650. Yes, at an average of 1500 words, it represents 975,000 words. Almost a million and if you tried to print it all out it would come to roughly 3250 pages. But enough of this. It may get more interesting of course if you add the number of posts to our social media, Buckle-Up-Travel, as well as the number of columns in The Connection and NonStop Insider but, as I just wrote, enough is enough as I am sure you get the point. Yeah; Margo decided to have a new business card with the title, Cofounder and Managing Editor as it is well deserved after reading and editing all of my 1,000,000 words! Coming at a time when so much is going on with NonStop, not the least being the renaming to Nonstop Compute, it should be encouraging to read that so much continues to be written about Nonstop. For our community, there shouldn’t be any topic left unaddressed. Integrated stack? Y...
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My June Journey

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  When this saying of Mark Twain popped up in my LinkedIn feed, I took it as a sign that this month’s post should feature commentary on the journey I took this month. It involved many miles, a conference, and opportunities to talk to well-placed industry experts. Time on the road is also an opportunity to escape routine and in so doing, provides ample time to simply observe what transpires around us – an important element even for the most jaded of IT professionals. From Florida, drive to Colorado to then fly to Dublin, London and Paris before an extended weekend in the Bordeaux idly drifting on rivers while passing wineries, musing all the time on what is happening today with NonStop. Or should I correct myself and say, with HPE Nonstop Compute. Yes, I am missing HPE Discover this year as I extended my stay in Europe. Put this down as yet one more case where I cannot acquire things ‘by vegetating in one little corner of the earth.’ Not even for a week or two. The desire to thi...
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In the field of tech, relationships matter.

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Enjoying lunch in our new community, the lifestyle afforded by being in Florida and living alongside the Emerald Coast’s intracoastal waterway certainly has its upside. Having only recently taken up full time residence – yes, Margo and I are now in possession of our Florida driver’s licenses – we are beginning to come to terms with a lifestyle balanced equally between a vacation-like atmosphere and the quieter side of a planned retreat. It seemed only fitting that our first true guests joining us for a luncheon at the Jimmy Buffett styled Chill and Grill, was none other than my former partner in tech, Brian Fitzgibbon with his wife Nancy. They happened to be working while vacationing nearby and it proved a time of reflection. Not so much being right next to the water, mind you, but rather times spent living and working in Sydney during the last years of the 1970s.  I feel a little edgy I feel a little weird I feel like a schoolboy That's grown a beard I'm livin' in the ...
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