Real Time View

Picking up a newspaper from under my hotel door the other week, I saw an advertisement by Hertz promoting their latest car offering – a bright “velocity-yellow” Corvette. Under the picture (shown above) was the caption: Reserve some Whoa! As most readers know by now, anything with a picture of a ‘Vette will always catch my attention, and later that same day, as I passed by the Hertz lot, there were five of them lined up waiting for customers to pick them up. Hertz is a GoldenGate user, with GoldenGate supporting their mission critical applications on NonStop, and over the years I have seen Hertz’ folks attending user conferences and events. While I can only guess at the types of the applications running on NonStop, I have to believe that each time I reserve a car some part of the transaction passes through a NonStop. However, what did surprise me was, that as I was paging through earlier postings researching items for this post, I came across the May 31, 2008 posting “Heading for the e...

For more than a year now, I have been travelling between Boulder, Colorado and Simi Valley, California. Symptomatic of the changes taking place across our industry, where companies have become more interested in the skills and knowledge you can provide, than where you live. However, some executive positions still require a hands-on approach, and this is what has happened in our family. Frequent travel between the two cities has become an integral part of our life these days. There’s always a downside of course – I was looking for tools the other day that I thought were in the garage, until I remembered that they were in the other garage. And when I went to the refrigerator, I remembered too late that what I wanted was in the other refrigerator. And then there are the usual household expenses that need to be attended to, along with the frustration that follows when you realize you are paying for services you can’t actually use! The climate in Colorado means that you need to turn to cont...

Last weekend I spent a couple of hours at the Orange County Auto Show, and looked at all the new cars. In the picture above, I am looking longingly at a Lamborghini Gallardo – a piece of art, as far as I am concerned and better housed in a living room than in a garage. Unfortunately, selling this type of car has suddenly become quite problematic as so many deeply-discounted used ones are coming back on the market as their owners struggle under the current economic conditions. There was also a collection of older Corvettes and Camaros on display - and they attracted just as big a crowd. And I couldn’t tell you the number of times I heard “I used to have one of those! I wished I had kept that one!” As I watched the crowds looking at the older cars, I was reminded of the things we elected to keep, and the things we just can’t wait to unload. And even for me, with the numerous cars and motorcycles I have had over the years, there’s been several that I still regret having sold. My Honda CB7...

I spent last weekend back in Boulder, and the fall is definitely in full swing across the Rockies. On the flight over Friday night, you could clearly see the Aspen forests reflecting autumn’s golden colors in the early evening sunlight. While there is still a few more days to go before the trees in my garden turn completely gold, changes are already under way. And the picture I have included here is of the view from my driveway looking back at the Aspens at the end of the yard. On Saturday, a good friend of mine from Texas came over for the weekend. With the colors turning the mountains into a giant green and gold quilt, it was the perfect time to take the motorcycles out of the garage and tackle the peak-to-peak highway. Not being too ambitious, we rode 100+ mile portions on Saturday and Sunday, taking in the northern loop from Estes Park on the Saturday and then riding the southern loop out of Golden on up through Black Hawk on the Sunday. While we were out riding across the mountain...