Real Time View

Another year has passed so now it's three years of posts that have been completed and for the NonStop community, I am into my fourth year of blogging to Real Time View ... It was somewhere towards the end of 2008, as I recall, that I returned home to Boulder: distracted with the holidays, trip home, and snow all around, I decided to go to the cellar and pull a good bottle of wine for the evening. Somehow, on the way to the cellar, I lost sight of my goal and instead of returning with a fine example of an Australian red, I came back with something you typically find close to the check-out counters at any grocery store. It was a time too when posting to this blog was very much in its infancy and the thought of coming up with a new storyline really concerned me, so to this day I am convinced it had something to do with me losing the plot on the way to the cellar! My wife was far from happy with my choice and proceeded to complain all evening, so much so, that for the next seven ...

Standing alongside a shopping mall I was surprised by a Toyota Prius hybrid gliding by, almost unnoticeable running on its electric motor. The frenetic love affair with the Prius among Californians, and the arrival of even more hybrid models, is evidence that they are increasing their market-share across the car-buying public. And for good reason – business can no longer ignore the requirement to lessen the need for energy. Buried within the prospectus for General Motors’ IPO, which will shortly take place, are several references to GM’s upcoming Volt hybrid car that is being marketed heavily as a good reason why investors should buy GM stock once the company sheds its government ties and returns to the public markets. In placing the spotlight so brightly on the Volt, GM is assuring investors and consumers alike, that it recognizes the pressure it’s under to provide the types of cars the marketplace is favoring. GM isn’t the only car manufacturer wooing the financial marketplace....

Out of necessity I have been doing quite a bit of travelling these past couple of weeks, and most of these trips have involved spending a lot of time on the road. For those who routinely visit this blog site it shouldn’t come as a surprise to read of how I continue to commute between Boulder and Simi Valley a trip, I believe, I could now do blind-folded. Or to read of the many times I have driven to Cupertino. There’s not a billboard or exit along any of these highways that I haven’t seen a dozen times and there’s little I come across that surprises me anymore. I’ve pretty much seen everything! It was on one of the recent trips to Cupertino that I crisscrossed the Californian coastal ranges and checked out a number of “wine trails” – around Solvang, Paso Robles and Cambria. Anyone who recalls the movie Sideways would recognize many of the vineyards that I visited. However, it’s not just the vineyards that hold my interest – roadside cafés often prove to be an interesting adventure as...

I spent this weekend in the Bay area and visited with my friends in Cupertino. I passed buildings on Pruneridge Avenue, Fremont Avenue, Stevens Creek: all familiar addresses to anyone who has spent time in Cupertino and Sunnyvale and who has had history with Tandem and now, NonStop! Of course, there’s still the Duke of Edinburgh, a pub that’s already been written about in earlier posts and where, if the walls could talk, so many details of much that has been implemented on NonStop could be heard! A lunch in this pub is always hard to pass up! A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend a lot more time on the HP campus on Pruneridge Avenue. On that occasion I had the chance to tour a temporary data center where a team of folks under the watchful eye of John Donelan, another Australian mate of mine, had assembled a very a large NonStop server. The server was destined for the new Austin data center, and was a part of the data center convergence program that Randy Mott, HP’s CIO, ha...

I love the California Coastline, particularly the shoreline and nearby hills of Monterey, down by Cannery Row and the Aquarium. I come back to the area time and time again. I can sit along the old piers for hours and watch the Otters feasting on crustaceans pulled from beneath the enormous kelp beds. The weather is always cool, no matter the time of year and more often than not, there’s a marine fog layer masking the surroundings. From out of the mists, yachts and sightseeing vessels make an appearance as they too are drawn to the many tourist attractions lining the blackened piers. It is not just the natural beauty that attracts me to the area, to be honest. Only a few miles away, twisting through the hills, lies the world famous Laguna Seca racetrack that every year hosts a round of the MotoGP motorcycle world championship. With Formula One no longer run in the United States, MotoGP is all that’s left to attract a global television audience, but I can’t think of a better venue anywh...

This morning I went to the local shopping center to have a duplicate door key cut. The process was simple; the shop assistant took my key and selected a similar one from an array of blanks hanging from a pegboard and then inserted both my door key and the blank in a cutting machine. Within seconds my unique door key had been duplicated, the blank “shaped” to meet my access needs! I can remember as a child paying visits to locksmiths and how it took a long time to get a duplicate key made, as locksmith searched for a similar blank – the variety of locks in the marketplace all those years ago made the process difficult. Today, there doesn’t seem to be any fewer lock manufacturers, but the standardization that has taken place has reduced the time to produce a copy and kept the prices competitive – for less than $2.00 today, I walked away with a working duplicate key. Looking this morning at the shop assistant scanning the pegboard for the appropriate blank I couldn’t help noticing that ...

At this time of year I have always spent a week or so vacationing in Europe, and on a number of occasions, this has included memorable times out on yachts sailing the Mediterranean. There’s something very special about pulling into the small fishing ports that dot the coastlines from Spain to Greece. My own personal choice has always been the strip of coastline stretching from Cannes through Nice, France then Monte Carlo, and on down to Portofino, Italy. Of course squeezing in a few days at the film festival, and arranging is so that it’s back-to-back with a weekend of F1 racing in Monte Carlo, isn’t something to be missed. But for me, perhaps the one place everyone needs to find time to sail into is Portofino and the picture above is one that I shot during my last trip to the ancient fishing port! When in this part of the world, it’s always very easy to forget about the routines of business and to just soak up the atmosphere. Listening to tour guides trying their best to excite yo...