Real Time View

Last week I returned to A&A Corvette Performance to have prerequisite hardware added to the car - not to improve the safety of the Corvette, but to enable it to be pulled out of the dirt should I drive off-track. While some tracks provide lots of run-off area, and returning to the track is not all that hard, drop a wheel off the pavement at other circuits and you can very easily get caught in a gravel pit that’s impossible to drive out of. The installation process took much longer that I thought, but I kept reminding myself of the important role the “tow hooks” would play! The picture above is of the car with the rear tow hook painted bright red, of course, already installed, and waiting for access to a lift in order for the front tow hook to be installed. This year I have benefited from the support of Pyalla Technologies as the company has offset some of the costs associated with driving a street car on a circuit. Perishables, such as filters, brake pads, tires, as well as all t...

I had the good fortune of spending the weekend at Long Beach. I have only been there a couple of times; the first time I walked the streets of Long Beach was in March, 1977. I was midway through a three-week drive that took me from Edmonton, Alberta where I was living at the time, to Dallas, Texas, across to San Diego, and then all the way up the West Coast to Seattle before turning inland and heading back to Edmonton via Hope, British Columbia. The picture above is from an inside passageway on the Queen Mary, anchored just across from the foreshore streets of Long Beach. It was by accident that I had found my way to Long Beach for the weekend of the 1977 Formula One (F1) Grand Prix that was being held on the streets of Long Beach. Last weekend, the outing was pre-planned, and I had tickets to see the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach which featured Indy, and Indy Lights, races as well as a round in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS). As a passionate Corvette owner who routinely ta...

While I am sitting at my desk putting this post together, my thoughts are many miles away. This morning I received a reminder that EBUG is starting in just 2 weeks – by the time you read this, it may be as soon as next week – and it will only be the second time in more than a decade that I have missed this annual event. The picture at the top of this page is from last year’s event, the closing evening’s fun-filled outing in Prague – what a different atmosphere from that of the conference and exhibition! And good to see Keith enjoying himself! For more years than I care to recount I have participated in user events. My first memories of any user event go back to March 1976, when I drove from Edmonton, Alberta, all the way down to Dallas, Texas, to participate in one of the earliest gatherings of the user event sponsored by Insyte Datacom Corporation (IDC), the company behind the Datacom/DB product. In 1979 I made the even longer trip from Sydney to Richmond, Virginia to attend the ...

The past six months have flown by in a blur. There was Christmas and the New Year. There were trips to user events in Canada and Germany. All the while I was attending to the development of my own company, Pyalla Technologies, and on the lookout for opportunities to write articles and to provide consultations and commentary on marketing and business development needs. Yes, I made time to continue posting to the Real Time View blog and to the various groups on LinkedIn. For the past two weeks I have been in Boulder and the picture above is of me at the local Boulder Chop House enjoying an Apple-tini, celebrating 6 months in business on my own! Arriving back in Simi Valley I have been able to catch up on a lot of reading; technology and financial newsletters, as well as car and motorcycle magazines that seem to accumulate in the mail box while I am away. Somehow I have managed to organize my travels so that these publications only ever arrive when I am absent. Flipping through the ...

There are conversions and then there are conversions! Barely a day passes when I don’t see a car or motorcycle that has been extensively modified. Perhaps the most extreme cross-over, or “hybrid”, motorcycle I had ever read about was the Chrysler Tomahawk where the V10 engine of a Dodge Viper was mounted in a futuristic motorcycle frame. Conversions on this scale were never meant for use on the public road, however, that didn’t stop the adventurous from pushing the limits. The picture above is of a pair of road-going motorcycles converted for a Midwest customer and clearly sporting the very same Dodge Viper V10 engines! The existence of such extreme machines was brought to my attention by my good friend Aldo Adriaan who, being somewhat more conservative, owns a Boss Hoss motorcycle, another manufactured custom but this time, sporting only a V8 as its power-plant. Aldo manages education and training for the NonStop Enterprise Division, and is well known to many of us. A quick check...

In my posting of last week I depicted a fuse box that had been reworked to bypass those pesky fuses that kept popping. In that last post I observed how frustrating it can be when services fail and we can no longer do what we had planned on doing. However, while I could sympathize with whoever it was that eliminated the need for fuses, I also suggested that this was not one of the finest examples of thinking outside the box. Unfortunately, there are other times where we just need a temporary fix, and the photo above is of just one example – the collapsing awning held in place by two appropriately positioned crutches! This picture was taken by the same contractor who came across the fuse box and was kept as a reminder of poor decision making. The symbolism of propping up something with crutches didn’t escape me either. There has been many times where I would have gladly accepted a pair of crutches to help me rectify a deteriorating circumstance irrespective of the foolishness that it m...

A good friend of mine who runs a construction business received a set of photos from contractors who work with him. The photos, actually taken at the work sites, depict extraordinary examples of poor decision-making. Imagine nailing wood to a perimeter fence with nails 3” too long, so that rows of sharp-pointed nails protruded from the supporting rails surrounding a play-area for children or mounting a light fitting, with a regular light bulb, in a bathroom and placing it six inches above a functioning shower-head! But perhaps the best picture was from someone upset over regular power outages from circuit-breakers that kept tripping. Pulling all out the wires from behind each breaker and bypassing the fuses seems to have done the trick – and the photo above is of the newly re-configured fuse box. There’s definitely a strong case to be made for those who take the initiative and can do things themselves. I am in awe of neighbors who can fix leaking faucets and can wire a house for spea...