I think I'm having stress!

Plans are made, tickets are booked, and Mother Nature plays havoc… Yeah, I was booked on a flight to Baltimore on Monday, October 29. Who knew? Of course the flight got cancelled and plans had to be changed. Could have been a lot worse, I know…

Click on Richard's picture and check the T Shirt he's wearing. Yes that's him behind the helm of Chardonnay II off Santa Cruz, California.

I have been getting nostalgic lately, looking at what happened over the years – how technology changed our lives and our careers evolved trying to catch up.

Oh, yes, I remember 1989 Tandem Computers Annual Report – and for those who long ago have forgotten the specifics, I was featured in it, with an artist-rendered likeness.

The SNAX/CDF product had been released, and for me, having been a part of this then modern development project felt fantastic! I was a part of something significant, it mattered, customers awaited it ready to deploy!

Fast forward to 2012 – yup, 23 years later. Time flies! Again, I am feeling great to be involved in a new, modern effort of putting NonStop on the clouds map.

I feel it may be a significant step toward enabling mission critical applications to access affordable and flexible computer power without a fear of ever losing a transaction in the process!

As the CRN (on-line magazine for VARS and Technology integrators) reported just this past Monday, October 29, 2012, “Google (NSDQ:GOOG) App Engine, Tumblr and Dropbox worked on ensuring the availability of their cloud-based services Monday after each suffered outages for several hours Friday.” The reporter, Jack McCarthy, added “Google said App Engine, its platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers, went down from 7:30 a.m. PST to 11:30. a.m., PST, as it experienced slowness and errors. As a result, 50 percent of requests to the App Engine failed.”

Even though Google reported that no data has been lost, all of us associated with Payments Industry see the scary picture of lost opportunities. Transactions that couldn’t be completed and customers forced to turn to competitors.

The article concluded: “This shows the cloud industry still has work to do to improve on overall availability and performance," said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of Thinkstrategies. "There are inevitably going to be disruptions to service availability, and it's key for service providers to minimize these occurrences and for cloud consumers to mitigate their risk by having a backup and recovery plan in place and by exploring ways to take advantage of offline service options."

Clouds dotting the sky can be highly photographic at times and have been captured beautifully in many paintings. However, as we have witnessed this week, they can also generate lightning and thunder and indicate the presence of highly disruptive winds.

Coming on Monday, as Hurricane Sandy ruined my plans and made me stressed – it was great news.

No, not that Google lost its cloud, but that it clearly demonstrated a need for the presence of NonStop to guard the applications from the capricious nature of the clouds!

If it’s June then it’s time for HPE Discover 2021.

For the NonStop community there has always been an annual event that proved hard to resist; with changing times these events are virtual – but can we anticipate change down the road? Just recently Margo and I chose to return home via US Highway 129. It may not ring any bells, but for those who prefer to call it the Tail of the Dragon – 318 curves in 11 miles – it represents the epitome of mountain excitement. For Margo and me, having now driven the tail in both directions, driving hard through all these turns never gets old. Business took us to Florida for an extended week of meetings that were mostly conversations. Not everything went to plan and we didn’t get to see some folks, but just to have an opportunity to hit the road and meet in person certainly made the 4,500 miles excursion worthwhile. The mere fact that we made touring in a roadster work for us and we were comfortable in doing so, well, that was a real trick with a car better suited to day trips. This is all just...

The folly that was Tandem Computers and the path that led me to NonStop ...

With the arrival of 2018 I am celebrating thirty years of association with NonStop and before that, Tandem Computers. And yes, a lot has changed but the fundamentals are still very much intact! The arrival of 2018 has a lot of meaning for me, but perhaps nothing more significant than my journey with Tandem and later NonStop can be traced all the way back to 1988 – yes, some thirty years ago. But I am getting a little ahead of myself and there is much to tell before that eventful year came around. And a lot was happening well before 1988. For nearly ten years I had really enjoyed working with Nixdorf Computers and before that, with The Computer Software Company (TCSC) out of Richmond Virginia. It was back in 1979 that I first heard about Nixdorf’s interests in acquiring TCSC which they eventually did and in so doing, thrust me headlong into a turbulent period where I was barely at home – flying to meetings after meetings in Europe and the US. All those years ago there was ...

An era ends!

I have just spent a couple of days back on the old Tandem Computers Cupertino campus. Staying at a nearby hotel, this offered me an opportunity to take an early morning walk around the streets once so densely populated with Tandem Computers buildings – and it was kind of sad to see so many of them empty. It was also a little amusing to see many of them now adorned with Apple tombstone markers and with the Apple logo splashed liberally around. The photo at the top of this posting is of Tandem Way – the exit off Tantau Avenue that leads to what was once Jimmy’s headquarters building. I looked for the Tandem flag flying from the flagpole – but that one has been absent for many years now. When I arrived at Tandem in late ’88 I have just missed the “Billion Dollar Party” but everyone continued to talk about it. There was hardly an employee on the campus not wearing the black sweatshirt given to everyone at the party. And it wasn’t too long before the obelisk, with every employee’s signature...

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