Real Time View

I have to admit, I am a sucker for dogs. Whenever I’d walk through a mall and see a pet shop, I take time to walk past the rows of puppy cages. My eldest daughter “rescued” a greyhound from a shelter and even in the heart of winter, when she was out of town, with snow piled high along the sidewalk, I still found time to take him for his constitutional walk. As the puppies stare at me through the glass of their cubicles, I find it difficult to just walk away. But these days, with the time I spend on the road, it wouldn’t be fair for any dog. I had a dog when I was a child. It was a brindle-colored Boxer that we simply called “Loco.” He wasn’t completely normal – he would follow the bread delivery van and retrieve every loaf dropped off. My father quickly tired of compensating the neighbors after each visit from the baker. And when I went to Rugby practice after school, Loco would somehow manage to fix his teeth into the laces of the ball and run away with it. No matter how we all tried,...

And now, having posted to the NonStop community blog, Real Time View for two years, I have started my third year of blogging ... Friday evening is approaching, and in the final hours of the day I’m multitasking, as usual. On Skype to my good friend Mark Hutchens in Sydney while scanning emails and checking financial markets. Out of nowhere, an SMS message arrives from another good friend, Brian Kenny – “stand by for sonic booms,” it says. Space shuttle Discovery is going to break orbit and land nearby at Edwards Air Force Base. Sure enough, in mid sentence with Mark, the dual booms rattle the windows. The base is not far from where I work, and only a few days ago, I had stopped by the rocket museum alongside the Naval Air Weapons Station, at Point Mugu, California, and the picture above is of me alongside some of the rockets on display. But these were all ancient relics of a bygone era and minuscule when compared to the Shuttle! It's now the second time I have heard the signa...

It’s been some time since I was last in Sydney and I really do miss the place. For nearly two decades I have been “commuting” between Sydney and America – often several times a year. After working in the U.S. I returned to Sydney at the end of ’87 so that I could join Tandem Computers in Cupertino. I had been living in North Carolina but U.S. visa rules required me to return to Sydney, work for Tandem Computers (Australia) for one year, and then reapply for a new U.S. visa. The picture I have included here is of Sydney's famous Manly Beach! All up, not a bad deal as it gave me the chance to convince local Tandem Computers management to create a Tandem User Group in Australia – a community that was launched in 1989. I came up with the name OzTUG and it gained enough traction with the community that it remains active as an organization to this day. In early ’89 I returned to the U.S. and while I waited for the visa, I commuted between Sydney and Cupertino. In all, twelve return trips...

I took the Corvette to the dealer for maintenance and while it was up on the lift, we found a big hole in the panel wrapped around the windshield-washer reservoir. It’s always an adventure-land for me, whenever the car is on a lift, as I get to wander underneath and look at the “unseen components” that contribute to making the car go, corner, and stop. And I am always amazed at the almost miraculous technology that goes into today’s cars, and at how little we pay for them these days. But what punctured the panel, pictured above, is anyone’s guess! Technology may keep changing, but maintenance remains a constant – today’s automobile requires routine servicing. Some manufacturers offer better programs than others, with longer service intervals but, no matter the program offered, all cars eventually find themselves in the service center sooner or later. Tires and brakes wear out, suspensions begin to sag and to lose their responsiveness, oils need to be changed, rust needs to be treated, ...

It was good to find time to just take it easy last weekend, and once again I relaxed by driving on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). On Saturday I had driven along four of the canyon byways that connect the valley to the coast, while on Sunday a more leisurely approach was adopted as, once again, I found myself briefly on Mulholland Drive before crossing to the coast and then heading up Sunset Boulevard. And the picture above was taken of me on Rodeo Drive, where time was found to do a little shopping and to have a late lunch. Walking Rodeo Drive and wandering through the stores is always entertaining – but at this time of year, tourists pretty much take over the place. I thought I heard as many languages as I had on my recent trip to the Baltic region! But it wasn’t the tourists that interested me as much as number of empty stores we passed. No, it wasn’t as though every second shop had closed down but rather, I only came across three shop-fronts devoid of goods. Compared with what I h...

This past weekend saw me once again driving around a race track. This time it was at the very impressive Auto Club Speedway, formerly California Speedway – the site of NASCAR and Indy Racing League events. The professionals race around the main course, which looks more like a “D” than an oval, while we ran only on a portion of the oval – the curved main straight that passed the Start / Finish line and includes NASCAR corners 1 and 2. We left the oval through a very tight left hand turn half way down the back straight, and continued around an infield road course. And the picture here is of the Infiniti coupe, prepared, and ready to leave for the track. The designers of the track threw in a couple of surprises and those drivers new to the course took some time to figure it out. It wasn’t just that it was a mix of high-speed straights with some diabolically slow corners, but on two sections of the track, the sequence of turns forced you to look a lot further ahead. As the goal of a driver...

Many external conditions influence the direction we take. Often it is simply something we have seen in the media or have overhead in a coffee shop. Other times, it’s just a situation or circumstance we may unexpectedly recall. The picture I have included here is from a few years back when NonStop solution architect Gary Stevens arranged for his son to take Margo, Brad Poole, and myself on a hot air balloon flight over Phoenix, Arizona. This picture reminded me of how the simplest elements can change the direction we are taking. The slightest breath of air can easily push a balloon off course. I always thought landing a balloon would be problematic and so it was with this flight – coming down, as we did, alongside an Ostrich farm during the commercially important egg-laying season! Not a happy farmer. Closer to ground-level, every little bump and pothole can deflect us from our desired path. While I am ignorant of all that goes into the maintenance of a hot air balloon (and I have to as...