Real Time View

For more than a year now, I have been travelling between Boulder, Colorado and Simi Valley, California. Symptomatic of the changes taking place across our industry, where companies have become more interested in the skills and knowledge you can provide, than where you live. However, some executive positions still require a hands-on approach, and this is what has happened in our family. Frequent travel between the two cities has become an integral part of our life these days. There’s always a downside of course – I was looking for tools the other day that I thought were in the garage, until I remembered that they were in the other garage. And when I went to the refrigerator, I remembered too late that what I wanted was in the other refrigerator. And then there are the usual household expenses that need to be attended to, along with the frustration that follows when you realize you are paying for services you can’t actually use! The climate in Colorado means that you need to turn to cont...

Last weekend I spent a couple of hours at the Orange County Auto Show, and looked at all the new cars. In the picture above, I am looking longingly at a Lamborghini Gallardo – a piece of art, as far as I am concerned and better housed in a living room than in a garage. Unfortunately, selling this type of car has suddenly become quite problematic as so many deeply-discounted used ones are coming back on the market as their owners struggle under the current economic conditions. There was also a collection of older Corvettes and Camaros on display - and they attracted just as big a crowd. And I couldn’t tell you the number of times I heard “I used to have one of those! I wished I had kept that one!” As I watched the crowds looking at the older cars, I was reminded of the things we elected to keep, and the things we just can’t wait to unload. And even for me, with the numerous cars and motorcycles I have had over the years, there’s been several that I still regret having sold. My Honda CB7...

I spent last weekend back in Boulder, and the fall is definitely in full swing across the Rockies. On the flight over Friday night, you could clearly see the Aspen forests reflecting autumn’s golden colors in the early evening sunlight. While there is still a few more days to go before the trees in my garden turn completely gold, changes are already under way. And the picture I have included here is of the view from my driveway looking back at the Aspens at the end of the yard. On Saturday, a good friend of mine from Texas came over for the weekend. With the colors turning the mountains into a giant green and gold quilt, it was the perfect time to take the motorcycles out of the garage and tackle the peak-to-peak highway. Not being too ambitious, we rode 100+ mile portions on Saturday and Sunday, taking in the northern loop from Estes Park on the Saturday and then riding the southern loop out of Golden on up through Black Hawk on the Sunday. While we were out riding across the mountain...

I have just spent an enjoyable weekend in La Jolla – a little north of San Diego. I attended a wedding Friday afternoon on the beach at Del Mar, an adjacent beachside community to La Jolla. The picture here is with the seascape behind me, as the sun begins to set. The young couple getting married had developed a playbook for the wedding, and had scripted the ceremony and the “readings” given by the various participants. Adapting to the seaside location called for a different type of ceremony and they did the right thing, as far as I was concerned, in putting traditional approaches to one side. Being back in San Diego for a few days gave me the opportunity for some serious downtime. So I took a harbor cruise on San Diego Bay – both the northern and southern loops. The boat took us past the many military establishments that dot the bay’s foreshore, and the skipper, a former Navy man, gave us the full treatment. I now know more about naval vessels than I ever wanted to know, but what did ...

I have just returned from spending a couple of days at the ACI Customer Exchange (ACE) event in Scottsdale, Arizona, where the theme had been “The Next Horizon”. A number of participants had wondered whether the picture selected, as the symbol of such a next horizon, was depicting a sunset or a sunrise. Perhaps the implications, of one over the other, with respect to the fortunes of ACI Worldwide, could become the subject of another blog posting, but it did remind me of another picture – The Blues Brothers. For readers who may not recall, in that movie Jake and Elwood Blues wanted to get their band back together and perform once more. Having convinced the band members to return, Jake promised them a “gig” for the evening, but as they drove out of Chicago and the afternoon turned into evening, out of desperation, Jake pulls into a bar that was promoting the appearance that night of a band called the “Good ol’ Boys” and passes off the band as the group. When he asked the publican’s wife ...

It’s very early Monday morning and I am about to head across to the ACI Customer Exchange (ACE), the annual meeting of America’s users of ACI products. The picture I have included here is of me at the hotel with my first coffee of the day. ACI customers have a very long history of using BASE24 products on NonStop. This will be the first America’s conference following ACI’s decision, late last year, to switch allegiances from HP to IBM, and I have to admit, I am very curious to how it will go. While at the European event in Vienna, in the early Spring of this year, I saw many at ACI in high spirits and looking forward to a new IBM-centric world, but I’m not all that sure it’s panned out quite as they expected. Many key members of the management team are no longer with ACI, and ACE would give me the first chance to look at many of their replacements. It would also give me the opportunity to see how the ACE community responds, and I will be particularly interested in the questions that co...

I have just spent a couple of days back on the old Tandem Computers Cupertino campus. Staying at a nearby hotel, this offered me an opportunity to take an early morning walk around the streets once so densely populated with Tandem Computers buildings – and it was kind of sad to see so many of them empty. It was also a little amusing to see many of them now adorned with Apple tombstone markers and with the Apple logo splashed liberally around. The photo at the top of this posting is of Tandem Way – the exit off Tantau Avenue that leads to what was once Jimmy’s headquarters building. I looked for the Tandem flag flying from the flagpole – but that one has been absent for many years now. When I arrived at Tandem in late ’88 I have just missed the “Billion Dollar Party” but everyone continued to talk about it. There was hardly an employee on the campus not wearing the black sweatshirt given to everyone at the party. And it wasn’t too long before the obelisk, with every employee’s signature...