Real Time View

Enjoying lunch in our new community, the lifestyle afforded by being in Florida and living alongside the Emerald Coast’s intracoastal waterway certainly has its upside. Having only recently taken up full time residence – yes, Margo and I are now in possession of our Florida driver’s licenses – we are beginning to come to terms with a lifestyle balanced equally between a vacation-like atmosphere and the quieter side of a planned retreat. It seemed only fitting that our first true guests joining us for a luncheon at the Jimmy Buffett styled Chill and Grill, was none other than my former partner in tech, Brian Fitzgibbon with his wife Nancy. They happened to be working while vacationing nearby and it proved a time of reflection. Not so much being right next to the water, mind you, but rather times spent living and working in Sydney during the last years of the 1970s.  I feel a little edgy I feel a little weird I feel like a schoolboy That's grown a beard I'm livin' in the ...

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...

Attending virtual events with more to come, the signs suggest that this is now normal; have you composed yourself ahead of what’s to come? I have to admit, when this image came to me in a tweet, it brought a smile to my face. Who else but the local authorities in San Jose would have come up with this, based on the expectation that travelers in their city would understand the reference. Given all that is happening around us in these times, it’s pleasing to see that at least one authority retains a sense of humor. On the other hand, I am sure it had the desired effect. Silicon Valley will always have its detractors but it is with signs like this that the human side of technology comes through, resonating with us all. We didn’t make it up to Silicon Valley on our last trip to California; Monterey was as far north as our time allowed. It’s unusual for us to skip an opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues but I wanted to make sure I was back in time to wrap up assignments before...

Well done, BITUG committee! Edinburgh, Scotland didn’t disappoint and the level of participation was tremendous with all keynote sessions very well attended … We left for Edinburgh, Scotland, as planned. We had dinner at the airport, caught a flight to London where we enjoyed lunch at Euston Station before taking the train to Edinburgh. All rather straight forward with the only hitch being that we should have caught the train from Kings Cross as our Virgin “express” stopped almost everywhere on its swing through the west of England and we arrived at our hotel some six hours later. Saw plenty of green hills and lots of sheep, mind you, and the weather was way warmer than we had anticipated. Yes, last Wednesday Scotland enjoyed warmer days than residents in Spain and even LA experienced. There will be much more coverage of the social side of the event and the experiences we enjoyed in the company of other attendees will be covered in an upcoming post to our social blog, Buckle...

Within the NonStop community change has always occurred at a measured pace, but with NonStop X and virtualized NonStop will that still be the case and can the NonStop team do it all by themselves? It has become a popular practice, fraught with danger and unintended consequences, changing lanes without signaling in the hope of jumping into a lane that is moving a lot faster! In some metros signaling that you are about to change lanes typically encourages the slower driver in that lane to accelerate; closing the door on any opportunity to capitalize on traffic that is moving more quickly. Indicating your intent, such obvious signs of being courteous, is taken to be signs of weakness; a passive driver unsure of their next move. However, the desire to get to a destination more quickly is inherent in every driver on America’s freeways (as it is in other countries I have visited) even if that means taking risks. When it comes to technology, it has always been a race – an opportunity t...

They aren’t the standout element of a product and they may not attract any attention at all and yes, they are the rock that is the foundation for many of the products found on NonStop! Finishing up the walk-out lower level of our home was expedited considerably as it was being framed when we made the decision to buy the home and move to Windsor, Colorado. Having lived for almost twenty years in the village of Niwot, Boulder County, we elected to sell our former home and downsize to something more manageable. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to watch the framing of our new Windsor home to the point where during the framing process, we were able to customize certain aspects of each room and our requests were accommodated in a timely manner. On the other hand, our former Niwot home took almost a year to completely frame. Weather is a factor in Colorado, particularly when working on a house that at the time didn’t have a roof. In the intervening years, so much has changed wh...

What was on display at HPE Discover 2016 led me to take a closer look at some of the start-ups where Pyalla Technologies has a presence and the results add further weight to the argument about just how far NonStop systems have come – who would have guessed just a year or so ago!  Wandering the exhibition hall at this year’s HPE Discover, for me, it was a treat to see as many cars on display as there were. Whether it was the HPE sponsored Formula E or what I recall was a Nissan Leaf or even the BMW i3 pictured above, there seemed a lot more engagement with cars at this show. Of course, there was the opportunity to race a car against other attendees; that was part of the HPE Labs exhibit but the “controls” were a tad artificial and not to my liking, so I wasn’t tempted to join in the fun. The BMW i3 is a pure electric play and where HPE was involved had to do with gathering information from many sources in order to keep the car on course and in practical terms, safe. The i3 ha...

Looking back at what was presented at recent Regional User Group (RUG) meetings here in America it was clear that the commitment to keeping NonStop systems attractive to the next generation of developers is materializing. And it all has to do with HPE’s commitment to open systems and industry standards … While dancing across the grass this past week with our just-turning-three granddaughter Ella, I was reminded of the fears of youngsters. It was a simple case of not wanting to attract insects and bugs for me, but for her, it was all about the possibility of running across snakes. In a suburban Boulder garden? Not likely, although there was an occasion where good friends from one of my clients joined us for an outside  barbecue  only to see one of Colorado’s rat snakes slither along the stonework of our home. So perhaps it wasn’t such an unusual concern of Ella’s, after all. Reading the latest update from the Node.js community I couldn’t help but remember this incid...