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Since 2008, every third year I have posted "my three wishes for NonStop." It’s now 2017 – what can we expect to read in this latest post and why is it important for the NonStop community?  When an opportunity presented itself to add yet another vanity plate, it seemed like a good time to add PYALLA3 to the list and to mount it on the Mini. Although, being 3, there was some thought given to mounting it on the BMW, given its engine had only three cylinders, but after further consideration Margo and I decided that this may be a little too cryptic. On the other hand, Mini notwithstanding, three has become a significant number when it comes to the posts to this NonStop community blog – every three years I have written about the three wishes I have for NonStop and here we are, three more years have passed by since my last update. To read all of the predictions I have made in the past, check out the label to the right of this post, Wishes , for more of what I had to say through t...

Anniversaries are always important and there’s always consequences should we fail to remember them. When it comes to blogging there’s no similar downside but all the same, from a bloggers perspective, there’s a genuine mix of surprise along with the thought of only having just begun – so yes, thanks for all you support over these past eight years! Last year I was a couple of days late in posting the anniversary post and opened with an apology that kicked off with me reminding myself not to forget writing the post; after all, remembering anniversaries remains an important consideration in all we do. But I do forget key dates and for many years now, following an incident I will not get into in any detail, the number of our car that we have driven on road courses for many years is 161 – yes, a reminder of the 16 th of January, my wedding anniversary. With the completion of this post, I will commence my 9 th year of blogging having first posted on August 20, 2007. As for the cars ...

Yes, it’s only one quarter away from being shipped to customers, and already the NonStop vendor community is very much  on-board  with this latest addition to the NonStop family of products … Kicking back and beginning to take it easy as preparations for the holidays continues unabated, even as our home embraces the festive seasons. The tree is up and decorated; the wine cellar restocked; and the food is in the pantry only needing to be cooked. Preliminary parties are behind us – only the big one to go and it will be over. However, this is also the season to simply take a deep breath and to be thankful we have made it through another year as we all begin planning for 2015. For the NonStop community, it’s going to be a very big year. Pictured above as a half-height blade, NonStop X, featuring a Xeon 4-core E7 processor - the latest product family in a long line of fault tolerant systems coming out of Silicon Valley, is tantalizingly close to reality. Just a couple of mon...

At any major event, there is no more anticipated presentation than the vendor’s roadmap presentations … but wait, there’s always more! Looking ahead and framing as my wishes is just one approach that I take to speculate, which I can do without suffering the consequences vendors would face should they speculate! It’s been six years since I first blogged about my wishes for NonStop – in the posts of February 12, 2008, and February 13, 2011. Now that it is February 14, 2014, it seems only appropriate for me to look at how far the NonStop platform has come, in terms of modernization as well as commoditization, and to express opinions on a likely future of the NonStop servers. Whether it’s coincidence or not, the previous posts have featured photographs of cars that no longer can be found in the garage. Does it truly reflect my ability to predict the future or not, they didn’t make the cut! The cars pictured above tell a story of their own and I am keeping my fingers crossed that t...

HP announced plans for NonStop to support Intel x86 architecture and the reverberations continue as users and vendors alike take it all in … but one thing is for sure, extending fault-tolerant computing to the largest server architecture worldwide will broaden the appeal of NonStop! One of the earliest memories of my wife, Margo, that I have of her going back to when we both worked for Tandem Computers, is of her telling an audience “not to set goals too low in case they will achieve them”. Not to be confused with the anonymous, yet better known, quote by motivational gurus, "Set your goals high enough to inspire you and low enough to encourage you!" with her expression, Margo made it very clear that she didn't suffer  mediocrity  well. Many of us within the NonStop community have publicly held the NonStop architecture in the highest of esteems and yet, in private, have expressed anxiety over just how much longer the NonStop architecture will prevail.  A fail...

The timelessness of NonStop on display as Intel's x86 is embraced - yes, the plan to support of x86 architectures as part of the NonStop product family has been unveiled at this year's NonStop Advanced Technical Boot Camp. While I was visiting Australia, I was kept informed of a young up-and-coming racecar driver. While only in his early teens, he was featured on American television as one of three youngsters worth watching as likely future stars. Colton Herta, the son of Indy Racing League (IRL) team co-owner, Bryan Herta, this year raced in two programs for open wheel racecars (smaller versions of F1 cars). In doing so, he managed to win the major series (in an F1600) while narrowly missing out, as we heard while travelling, on winning the second series (Skip Barber formula) by a margin of two points even though conflicts with the F1600 series meant he missed many Skip Barber events. For 13 year old Colton, campaigning against much older participants with years more ...

It’s all positive news with the availability of the NonStop BladeSystem NB56000c and when you look closer, you can see that the ongoing investment in NonStop remains strong and that the roadmaps presented by HP NonStop continue to be pursued aggressively and passionately.   Greetings from within the world’s tallest residential tower, the Q1, on Australia’s famous Gold Coast, Queensland. While we are not residing on the highest floor, the “hotel” does include floors much higher than the surrounding buildings, so the views are spectacular to say the least. I have been a visitor to the Gold Coast since 1962 as it became a popular vacation option for my family, but nothing quite prepared me for how other-worldly the experience is proving to be. The picture above was taken on the first night of our stay by a highly skilled photographer – no trickery involved – and almost 40 floors above the street! With business in Sydney behind us and just a couple of more “catch-ups” and site v...

When was the last time you really wished NonStop systems would do something different? Support something extra? Or simply wished you knew more about its future? The third anniversary of “my three wishes for NonStop” is only seven months away … This past weekend saw me yet again at a car track. This time, it was a return visit to High Plains Raceway (HPR), just outside Denver, and arguable our home track. Readers of my social blog may recall in the most recent post, Getting much needed seat time – but will it be enough? I backed our Corvette into the wall at Sonoma and messed it up. Fortunately, it’s all sorted out now and we were able to enjoy our time at the track. That evening came the word that Saturday would see me taking an instructor on track who would then approve me for a higher group – something I have wished forever since taking up the sport. Then again, I was reminded of the need to be careful about what we wish for in case our wishes come true – there are always som...

A persistent top ten most popular post has been one of the earliest posts to this blog, “It’s a sign!” so it’s about time the topic is revisited in light of just how fruitful fulfilling the needs of a niche has become.       There are so many times when we simply remark on how it’s just a sign of the times. Perhaps not as dismissive as the comment “Whatever!” but all the same, it’s a short-hand, somewhat equally dismissive way to reflect on how it’s just not our fault. We aren’t to blame. We aren’t involved. The snow that fell here in Boulder this weekend and pictured above was a reminder that seasons manifest themselves rather predictably. If there is snow on the ground then yes, it’s winter. The fact that we aren’t enjoying nearly as many snow days as we once did, well, yes, that too is a sign of the times. Readers of this blog will have scarcely missed that the most widely read post of all times was that of November 6, 2007, It's a sign! The post drew attention ...