Real Time View

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 ...

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...

  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...

On a sunny and oftentimes breezy Boxing Day in Sydney a gathered fleet of yachts makes a dash to the headlands of Sydney Harbor where, with just the right conditions (and from this photo and the set of the sails, that looks to be the situation), they will turn south and for as long as they can, these yachts will be on a reach, the wind coming from the north east. Navigators will be pouring over displays to determine the likely conditions for the passage across Bass Straight hoping for smooth sailing all the way to Hobart. It was the summer of 1973 when I had the opportunity to be among the spectator fleet onboard Theme, the yacht I raced on for four seasons. Looking back on the day, we were witness to one of the favored yachts, Bumble Bee III, destined to compete in the upcoming Admiral’s Cup regatta out of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, ran aground on the rocky Sow and Pigs reef. Amidst the great expectations held for this yacht when it makes its appearance at Cowes, there was shock. S...

A long time ago, walking around the campus of Tandem Computers we would watch Lockheed P-3 Orion aircrafts returning from their mission of surveillance over the Pacific. One of our colleagues with a military background would explain all this and tested us with a question from time to time as another Orion flew past “and what is its mission?” Around that time, I was attending a Meta (now Gartner) conference in Phoenix along with other participants from Tandem and the night sky was putting on quite a display. Picking out the constellation, Orion, one of our group participants turned and playfully asked our military coworker, “and what is its mission?” And it continues to resonate with me to this day. I am constantly being challenged on what is my mission and, in many instances, the context is unclear. Am I looking at the night sky or am I focused on items much closer to home. When it comes to missions, they can be given to us or self-imposed. To execute we need to accept them, of cou...

As winter days became shorter, Margo and I found our way deeper into Florida. We drove up and down the Florida peninsula stopping by Orlando and then Ft Lauderdale. The temperatures climbed the further south we drove; this was expected. Overnighting in Orlando gave me an opportunity to capture the mood of central Florida in a series of happy-snaps on my mobile phone. The view from our hotel room highlighted a bridge that provided passageway between both banks of the lake. This week I was reminded of this as we watched the Superbowl. There were surprises just as there were a number of outstanding performances – outstanding, yes, just as they were unexpected. However, having driven the length of Florida it took little imagination to think back to 2007 when the Superbowl was played in Miami and to the halftime spectacular centered on the entertainment provided by Prince. Just minutes before Prince was scheduled start his performance, the rains descended in earnest. When asked whether ...

So much has been written about how difficult it is to predict the future. The topic is simply self-explanatory – the future is unpredictable and for many, attempting such a feat is tantamount to a total waste of time and effort. And yet, for as many years as I have been posting to this blog, going all the way back to 2008 and the post My Wish for NS Blades, simply contemplating what might be has me turning to my magical lamp to check in with the genie. Perhaps not, but every three years which in IT years I view as being close to an eternity, I “have at it” and put pen to paper. Well, my fingers to a keyboard at least. If you look back through the labels created for this blog and check the regularity of the posts about my three wishes for NonStop, separation of three years seems reasonable. Having said that, when contemplating the future for NonStop today you will see that four years have elapsed between this post and the previous post. I put this down to the COVID year as opportunities...

Everything shines on a modern cruising yacht With 2023 firmly in the books, it proved to be a statement year for Margo and me. That’s right, we didn’t buy a new car all year. This may come as a surprise for many of our regular readers but our ongoing support of our clients was such that we simply didn’t have the time to take in any of the car shows or to walk showrooms floors.   Perhaps even more shocking, we were given the opportunity to take delivery of an upgraded C8 Corvette – the new Z06 model – but we turned it down delaying such purchase for at least one more year. You might say, we resisted all temptations to jump on opportunities to drive away in shiny new cars. A blogger I follow on LinkedIn provided insights into what distracts start-ups during their first months of operation. To save you scrolling back through constantly changing LinkedIn feeds, her observations were right on the money. What she wanted to convey was that after working with a company to the point of a pr...