Real Time View

Taken by surprise to see our neighboring city called Severance, Colorado – it brought to mind separations we know all too well … and all good, mind you! When you move to a new town it’s not unreasonable to expect that you will take a drive to see other townships nearby. For Margo and me it took a little longer for this to happen, but eventually we did take the drive that led us onto some previously unexplored roads. Imagine then when just a few miles north of Windsor, Colorado, we happened upon the township of Severance. It turns out the townships of Windsor and Severance are more or less joined at the hip, sharing responsibilities for the Windsor – Severance fire brigade. However, Severance still maintains a separate city police department. Needless to say, I just had to back up to take a picture of the local Severance Police patrol SUV even as many storylines began forming in my mind. As time passed I more or less forgot about this photo until another storyline I was deve...

Hybrid IT, Clouds and transition from CapEx to OpEx – what’s it all mean for the new NonStop? There is always a degree of uncertainty whenever we head out onto America’s highways at this time of year. Will we be troubled by bad weather and road closures? Will road maintenance disrupt our plans in any way? Could there be mechanical failures of one kind or another? Driving to California means we had to traverse both the Rockies and the Sierras and with the uncertainty of fall conditions, this means we had to take the all-wheel-drive SUV. In the past, even in such a vehicle we have been tested by heavy snowfalls west of Truckee. There was a time when even our Jeep SRT8 struggled to stay the course when the snow on the highway turned to ice. But not this time! Apart from dealing with blowing snow in Wyoming – when doesn’t it blow in Wyoming? – our crossing of Interstate 80 was uneventful and “pumpkin” (our nickname for our Range Rover) never put a foot wrong. Oftentimes,...

You can tell a lot about an organization from their body language and when it comes to the NonStop team, they have to be pleased by all that transpired this week … Perhaps the best album that Bob Dylan ever created was Highway 61 Revisited. Many years ago Margo and I attended an event in New Orleans, the ATMIA annual conference for the financial community. As you can imagine it was focused on ATMs and it was the subject of the post, Covering all points on the compass, NonStop is hard to miss! ,but it had been our plan to drive up to Memphis via Highway 61 and that didn’t happen as the weather wasn’t the best and we were running up against the clock. The highway, or as it may be better known as route, 61 follows the Mississippi River north out of New Orleans and is often referred to as the Blues Highway and had been on my bucket list for decades. What made Bob Dylan’s album so memorable were tracks that included Like a Rolling Stone, Ballad of a Thin Man, Desolation Row and y...

There are always expectations when the annual TBC event comes along but for me, there are three items I will be looking to see being addressed ... In  the quiet moments during the drive from Windsor, Colorado, to Burlingame, California, there were plenty of opportunities to think on what lays ahead. Not in terms of road conditions, as almost all evidence of the snowstorms that had hit us hard during the week had evaporated (except for a few spots in Wyoming), but rather, with regards to expectations as the biggest event of the year for the NonStop community draws near. Margo and I have missed very few major events over the course of three decades – whether ITUG Summits (yes, Margo and I both served as ITUG Summit Chairs during our respective times on the ITUG Board), joint ITUG and DECUS events, or TBCs as these NonStop focused events   are now called.  As expected, the thoughts we had centered mostly on change. Maybe it did have to do with the two storms that...