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Surprises take many forms – some pleasant, some unexpected and even some that stop us in our tracks. What didn’t surprise me however were the many references made about NonStop at this year’s HP Discover event! It’s been about a month since HP Discover 2012 was held, and yet all that transpired during that week has remained with me ever since I pulled the RV and trailer out of Las Vegas and headed back to Boulder. For the duration of the event, the RV had been parked further down the strip and given the heat we all experienced I was glad we had a room in the Venetian. With really good air conditioning! There’s little that still surprises me even as automation continues to make inroads into our lives. As a technologist for several decades I associate automation and modernization as an integral part of progress and a contribution to simplifying my life. I have to say that to date, whether its automated car washes, automated check processing at an ATM (and now even cash dispensing i...

In the past couple of posts I first wrote of the value that comes with choice and then of how this is only warranted when there are options. In this post I move further along this path as I recognize that choosing wisely will be rewarded. It was only a few days ago when I walked onto the showroom of the local motorcycle dealership heading to the service desk, towards the back of the shop. Our Yamaha cruiser needs a service and I wanted to check on dates and times for our next service and the picture above is of me taking a look at what needs to be done. It had been a while since I had been on this bike and I just knew it would need an oil change.  I have been walking into this shop for over a decade, but all the same, I was caught a little off-guard by just how few motorcycles they had on display – the inventory was abysmal, to say the least. Later that same day I was making reservations for a flight to the Bay area and had entered the site of a well-known rental car agency an...

It’s great to be able to choose, but if there are few options available, it may not prove wise. Fortunately, when it comes to NonStop, the community has come to appreciate the greater product diversity now on offer … I have always liked to keep my options open. In today’s economy, I suspect, I will have few detractors as after all nothing seems guaranteed and there’s every chance that plans we initiate, full of confidence as is so often the case, will change and having options is important. Even though it’s now mid-June, what transpired at HP Discover remains fresh in my mind and one of the lasting impressions I have held onto is of the importance of really understanding all that is on offer today. In the last post I wrote of how I participated at this year’s event as a guest of HP, as a member of the blogging community. However, in the lead-up to the event and following an exchange with the Connect leadership, I volunteered to lead the new Cloud SIG. Clouds? The NonStop communi...

This year’s HP Discover event was well attended and HP left no stone unturned when it came to spelling out its vision, strategy and in providing supporting roadmaps; little room for ambiguity remains when it comes to NonStop!     My attendance at this year’s HP Discover event in Las Vegas had been “in the works” for many months, but the timing and logistics weren’t finalized till the very last moment. This year there were no weddings to get in the way, but before HP Discover, Pyalla Technologies and Margo had to participate in two back-to-back events in Nashville and we wanted to squeeze in a track event at Willow Springs over the holiday weekend and to catch up friends we hadn’t seen for quite some time. The upshot was that we were left with a very quick turn-around period in Boulder – flying back to Denver on a Wednesday afternoon before loading up the RV that night, including hooking up the trailer with the track car aboard, and then heading out on a 1,000 mile road t...

With all the talk about modernization and of NonStop truly being a modern system, it is worth noting just how easy it has become to run modern Java applications on NonStop today! The past ten days have seen me working out of a hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee, as Margo oversaw events for the association she now works for…. and I took advantage of the free room and the barbeque. But no sooner had we landed back home in Boulder than we packed the RV and headed to southern California for the long weekend, setting up camp just outside Rosamond and reveling in the lack of humidity at Willows Springs race track. Finally, we pulled up stakes and headed to Las Vegas where we are now baking in the desert heat, wishing we had a little more humidity, as we wait for HP Discover 2012 to begin! And the picture above is of me setting up camp and unloading the track car that for the next ten days will once again become our daily drive. What to expect? What will be demonstrated? Who will be th...

From the moment I kicked-off the LinkedIn group of the same name, it was a given that there would be a T Shirt developed. It’s a part of our heritage as well as our tradition dating back to Tandem Computers.   Look for me at HP Discover and get yours! I was only a few week ago that I flew into San Francisco, and from my window I could see the marinas that dot the water’s edge around the airport. For a number of years, soon after I had arrived in Cupertino, I had the pleasure of being part of his crew on Ray Walker’s catamaran “Two-Up”, as I recall it was called.   Ray was a product manager working in Bill Heil’s organization and had spent some time in Australia, and so we had an early connection – for much of the 1970s I regularly raced the summer program on Sydney Harbor. I was really excited    when Ray called one day and asked if I wanted to sail on Steve Schmidt’s yacht – a magnificent Santa Cruz 70, much bigger than anything el...

It’s hard to miss the media attention being given to Apple these days. Their latest quarterly results are mind blowing, to say the least, with some financial analysts even speculating whether Apple’s valuation will be the first to break through the trillion dollar market-capitalization barrier. Who could have guessed all those years ago when Tandem was partnering with Apple? There’s an air of excitement surrounding Apple that I haven’t seen around technology since Sony introduced the Walkman in the late-1970s and Motorola introduced the original Razr in the mid-2000s. And the picture above is of the wonderful display from flowering snowberry trees that surround the walkway to our house and yes, provide a fitting background to another technology marvel – the legendary Nissan GT-R, or Godzilla – that is now Margo’s daily drive. The iPod shook up Sony, but with the iPhone and then iPad Apple is shaking up the whole industry – redefining the PC and refocusing the world’s attentio...

The chance to exchange emails with Martin Fink helped firm up my perspective on Project Odyssey and the news looks good for the NonStop community … What is it about the business trips that I take to Southern California at this time of the year, particularly when they include a lay-over in Las Vegas? Is it the glamor of the strip? The warm weather that comes as such a relief following winters chills here, in Colorado? Or is it that with the holiday season well and truly behind us we start to think about what’s coming next? I have always been a slow starter at this time of year and I usually spend weekends catching up on my reading – books, magazines, as well as lots of blog postings that I had put to one side. There was a lot of variety as in among the usual car and motorcycle magazines, travel and vacation newsletters, etc. was the recent issue of The Connection together with several press clippings from a number of electronic publications that I had printed. The picture above wa...