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Sometimes, timing is everything. At other times, you just cannot rule out luck. Over the past couple of weeks Margo and I have really run up the miles. We drove from the Florida panhandle back to Colorado and then on to Monterey. After which, we drove the reverse route. All up, I seem to recall, we did more than five thousand miles over the course of four weeks or thereabouts. Regular readers will understand that this isn’t a one-time road trip, as we normally drive to wherever conferences and events might be held. One regular trip we have done many times has been the Colorado to Mississauga, Ontario, loop just so we can spend a day with the Canadian Tandem User Group. For many, sitting in a car for this amount of time is inconceivable and yet, for Margo and me it’s the time when we get to talk about what we can expect to hear at a conference followed by a further discussion on what we did hear. This time, however, external events played a larger-than-life part – it was the height ...

  Nothing too surprising running across this sign other than thinking more about where it was placed. A pleasant enough location you would think but hiding a secret albeit wrapped in a little humor. Situated close to the Intracoastal Waterway along the Florida panhandle, it fronts a small dock in a marshy estuary tidal known to be frequented by Alligators. Having already overheard locals advising holiday makers not to enter this part of the waterway to paddleboard, clearly strapped into a kayak makes a whole lot more sense. Like going in for kabobs made up of cubes of meat pierced by a stick came to mind. As an Australian who has spent time in Queensland’s far north, we know all too well the unpredictive nature of the local giant salt-water crocodiles, I have a healthy respect for these reptiles, be that alligators or crocodiles and there is nothing indecisive about me thinking about mucking about with boats this close to where sightings have occurred. With Hurricane Debby having m...

Margo and I have tried to attend as many gatherings of the NonStop community as possible. This has meant a lot of driving was involved even as we did resort to flying sometimes. How else can you get to London other than perhaps by boat? You might even say that it is the whole package we find so attractive; the travel, the dining, the conversations the events themselves. There have been times where we have considered scaling back our participation, but then again, as we unpack from one trip or the other we immediately start debating the pros and cons of solutions presented at such events. This month it was Canadians’ turn to hold a regional event. CTUG, or to call it by its full name, the Canadian Tandem User Group, is an ever present reminder of times past and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for them to do. The NonStop community enjoys a history few other mainstream vendors can possible duplicate. Maybe, SHARE, the IBM mainframe groups enjoy a similar heritage and as I have a firs...

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...

                 “I’ve got a feeling and I just can’t let it go!” This is a line from a haunting song by Los Angeles indie electro-soul band, Caught a Ghost. Not to be confused with the song from Frozen, it became the theme song of Amazon Prime series “Bosch” that was based on numerous novels by Michael Connelly. For those familiar with the novels or those who have viewed the Prime series, you will know that the main character Bosch enjoys jazz and the choice of this song for the series title may have been a surprise and yet, it absolutely captures the indomitable spirit of Detective Bosch. This is the same feeling I get whenever I hear news about the latest cloud offering or about the enterprise that has elected to migrate everything to the cloud. And this feeling is amplified whenever I read of news about yet another outage affecting millions of users. It is almost as if IT professionals have forgotten the first law of IT: Change. Call it...

From Photos posted on Whova For as long as I can remember participation in NonStop focused events has been the highlight of the year! I have had the good fortune to travel to events worldwide, from Europe to Asia and even to Australia. The opportunity to simply catch up with former colleagues and newfound friends has made any inconvenience experienced on the day a moot point. Then again, my enthusiasm for customer-focused events can be traced back to 1979 when I attended my first global gathering of the EDOS community. As an Australian working in the early days of IT, making plans for any overseas trip was always a mixture of angst and longing, given how the price of the airline ticket to almost anywhere on the planet was exorbitant. The companies I worked for wanted to maximize any perceived value on offer, so at the time before I joined Tandem Computers in 1988, these trips to international events seemed to always total something like six weeks. Many telexes and faxes were involved a...

Las Vegas, HPE Discover and the heat was on – HPE lights a fire as it goes Cloudless; really? Find out more … Summer in Las Vegas is not for the faint of heart nor is it for those who may be prone to fainting. Fortunately, for those who happened to have made room reservation in either the Venetian or the Palazzo, there was never any real reason to step outside. As has been our routine for the past couple of years, we drove our company command center down to Las Vegas, camped out in one of the RV sites, but with reason prevailing, we slept in air conditioned bliss inside the hotel complex. This isn’t to say we never left the facility, but rather, only when HPE arranged for social outings to popular venues. This year I returned to HPE Discover as a guest of HPE and as part of the HPE Influencer program. This is a group of mostly bloggers, pulled from many disciplines,  that have an interest in all things HPE – some of these bloggers have impressive numbers of follower...