Real Time View

Anyone who has faced the prospect of driving on California’s Interstate 405 (I405), that bypasses downtown Los Angeles but represents a major arterial highway in and out of Los Angeles (LAX) airport, cannot escape the nervous twitches that develop or the sense of dread that begins to overwhelm them. Ignore the big green signs that direct you to popular tourist destinations of Santa Monica and San Diego and forget about the prestige and glamor that may lie beyond the exits to Wilshire Boulevard, Mulholland Drive, and Sunset Boulevard, this freeway that can grow to be as wide as 12 lanes in some sections, is among the most dangerous freeways to traverse in America. Hard pressed to catch a flight out of LAX there’s never any assurances that an accident will not occur only a mile or so ahead, or that construction workers will not close a lane or two, and what should take less than an hour ends up taking a lot longer, as every car comes to a stop, reluctantly joining everyone else in ...

My trip home to Boulder took me past Breckenridge , Colorado . Its late fall and the leaves are falling rapidly, with only a sprinkling of yellow remaining on small groves of Aspens. Even though it was late Sunday afternoon the streets of Breckenridge were pretty much deserted, as the town wrestled with catering to an in-between-seasons crowd. As I looked in shop windows however, I couldn’t help but notice how snowboards had completely overtaken skis, and how, even with clothing, the impact of the younger generation and their passion for boarding had relegated almost everything else to the back shelf. I recall overhearing, just a few years ago, a group of ski fanatics, outfitted in their color coordinated gear, expressing a disgust at the young people who wore jeans fashionably slipping of their hips, snowboards under their arms, messing the fashionable scene of winter sports … clearly, fashions change. But the move away from the difficult to control and just plain scary skis to the ...

It was great to see the general air of optimism surrounding last week’s NonStop Symposium. There were more attendees than expected, and most of the late arrivals were NonStop users. Nothing exemplified the upbeat atmosphere more than the very crowded Monday morning general session where there wasn’t a spare seat in the house, with many standing against the back wall. I even saw a wry smile on the faces of Winston Prather and Randy Meyer as the prepared to take to the stage. You could be forgiven if you thought that the former glory days of Tandem had returned and that once again, the community was taking flight!             Now, this is NonStop, not Tandem. And this is HP and no longer Tandem Computers. The transition from what I remembered from decades past couldn’t have been more seamless, and the sense of community more pervasive. As the week progressed and the activities of each day wound down, it became increasingly more ...