Real Time View

  The trappings of the festive season are now all around us. Inescapable, it would seem. Choosing gifts, cards and the right wrapping paper. It’s all happening and for many of us, it’s not only the season of joy but a time to reflect. Where were we this time last year? A decade ago? And then there are the numerous business gatherings held at this time of year. Reluctant to throw around the word party and yet, for many enterprises, this is exactly how best to describe the occasion. Paper hats? Streamers? The clink of glasses? Perhaps not but regardless, there is no escaping what the season means for each of us.   For Margo and I there was our return from our sojourn in the South Pacific. Spending the last weeks of November in Sydney, Australia, watching as we did the weather turn from mildly warm to very warm, even as we kept an eye on the weather back home in Colorado. It seems an anachronism to view Santas in Sydney decked out in full Northern Hemisphere winter kit. Ringing...

Two articles caugh t my attention last week. Why is it that during the holidays we find time to read as many stories as we want in between family dinners eating turkey with the trimmings or maybe shrimps on the “barbie” and watching football or cricket, depending on the hemisphere where you live. It’s not that I am trying to escape traditions, then again, perhaps I am. Nevertheless, having the time to dig through publications for the occasional editorial gem is something I like to do. In the article I came across on December 29, 2022 within the digital NPR (National Public Radio) site, 2022 was the year crypto came crashing down to Earth the news looked pretty bad. “ In the future, 2022 may be regarded as a turning point for the world of virtual currencies, when they lost their luster and were cast out as a fringe product most people approach with skepticism and caution.” Well, that’s perhaps the biggest understatement of the year, right? But wait, there’s more. According to Lee ...

Driving along a desolate stretch of Interstate 70 taking us eastbound out of Utah, there is an exit that has intrigued us ever since 2006 when we began commuting between Colorado and California. On this recent occasion we were returning from the HPE Discover 2022 event in Las Vegas. At first sight and ignoring the reference to Emery, seeing the exit to Mussentuchit always gets us talking. Perhaps it is the exit to a cattle ranch seeking a unique identity. But just pronouncing it brought a smile to our faces – “Mustn’t Touch It” seemed pretty obvious. Margo and I smile as it seems to be an oblique reference to the history of NonStop and before that, Tandem Computers. For as long as both of us could remember, the mantra among many in the NonStop community on deploying a solution on NonStop was the warning to all others in IT that given the nature of the mission critical applications, no IT professional was to touch it. Interfere with its operations at your own risk. Connect it directly t...

The television shows that I watched, growing up in Australia, were dominated by American westerns. Televised mostly in black and white, which was meaningful the more I look back at those times and with little variation of plots, the endings always showed someone pulling off last-minute heroics. When it comes to the TV programming in Australia none was more exciting than the Lone Ranger who somehow managed to have access to a limitless supply of silver bullets. When a program needed heroics then why not a silver bullet? And with this much-loved western, the idiomatic term, silver bullet, entered our vocabulary. When Margo and I began taking cars onto race tracks more than a decade ago, much of the paddock talk centered on the benefits of one product over another. Just pour in this additive and you will realize immediate benefits. Swap out your tires and replace with these new compounds and you will find additional grip. Install this new wing and you will watch your lap times come down...

You move house and it’s traumatic; you migrate systems and it is less so – with NonStop system migrations, what to consider next? When we moved into our home in Windsor, Colorado, a small village to the east of Ft Collins, we focused on the actual move itself. Our primary goal was to transition furnishings from one home to the next whether they were right for the new space or not. Perhaps even more fundamentally, did the furnishing even worked with the new home’s layout? Looking back such a migration that focused on just the home and keeping all else the same ultimately saved us a lot of headaches. When it comes to migrating systems, much the same can be said about such a move. As the first stage in any planning session, keeping the current operating environment intact always seems to be the smart move. Get it all across to the new system then step back and see what is needed and what really contributes to the day-to-day operations. Trying to juggle a move to new hardware together wi...

No question; we know what we are driving this year! When it comes to NonStop, some questions remain but the answers will not be hard to find! This time last year I posted a blog about our trip back to Silicon Valley where I played tour guide to my good friends, Dieter and Chris Monch. Dieter and I had worked together back in Sydney, Australia, where Dieter had been Managing Director of Nixdorf Computers. Way back in the early 1980s, Nixdorf Germany bought the company I worked for, The Computer Software Company, renaming it Nixdorf Computer Software Company and leveraged the product, EDOS (and EDOS/VS) together with the skilled team of systems programmers to launch the Nixdorf line of IBM Plug Compatible Mainframes (PCMs). That’s right – PCMs from a manufacturer of key-to-disk systems, ATMs and an integrated hardware / software small business software package. Again, hard to imagine the thought process behind entering the PCM business with the slowest (but least expensive) alternative t...

What comes to mind when you think about home court advantage? NonStop has the experience and yes, the top score when it comes to running mission critical applications!   It has been almost two years since Margo and I last ventured onto a race track. Over the course of a decade we turned up at events in various cars but when asked, we both enthusiastically supported our beloved Viper SRT/10 as the true car of choice for track weekends. With regard to our favorite tracks, in time High Plains Raceway (HPR) became our favorite simply because it was our home track. Previously it had been a track out on the edge of California’s Mojave Desert, Willow Springs International Raceway (WSIR), which was our favorite and, for a time, it was our home track. If you have seen the movie Ford v Ferrari (or Le Mans ’66 as it has been called in some markets) you will be somewhat familiar with WSIR as in that film they made extensive use of the property, but drove around the track counter...

It hasn’t been hard to catch a sunset or two in California; for the NonStop community, it’s time to look again at twin stars (as covered in a post more than a decade ago) that is even more relevant today! Looking towards the far-off horizon especially when it has to do with watching the sun set over the ocean has always been a sight that has grabbed my attention. Of late, Margo and I have had the opportunity to drive up and down on California’s coastal highway where there was more than one occasion to enjoy brilliant sunsets. Margo and I now live in northern Colorado where it is not the sea but rather the mountains that frame the suns last rays but, all the same, it is a reminder that no matter what took place during the day, there is a finality to it all; the sun has set and night will prevail. Paging through older posts to this blog I came across the post of October 20, 2007, The pull from twin stars ... published just after the European ITUG event in Brighton, England....