Real Time View

Travel provides considerable insight. It never ceases to amaze me how many unexpected events occur on any given trip out into the wild blue yonder. Travel has provided the stimulus for many posts to this blog and to other blogs I support, but in reality, the connection between travel and inspiration is not only tangible, it is something every blogger simply has to do. Forget looking at the tea leaves, take the time to find the best tea house and absorb everything around you. Fair enough; travel is pretty much off the table for now. Not surprisingly, the concerns over the continuing presence of highly contagious strains of COVID have made it almost certain that this global pandemic is going to be with us for some time. And yet for many Americans, depending on which state you live in, there is a growing sense that almost normal has returned. Last night Margo and I were kept awake by a thunderstorm that lit up the sky. Rain finally fell closer to midnight but what it reminded us both ...

  The NonStop community is truly blessed with multiple blog sites and digital publications all focused on NonStop systems; have you visited the HPE Community blog and checked out the posts focused on NonStop? Whenever I need information and Margo throws a question my way to which I have no answer, I go to multiple web sites. Whether I start with a simply Google search or go directly to a vendor’s web page, it turns out there is very little I cannot find once I begin the search. However, there is so much information being posted to the web that sometimes we may miss an important post, or two, simply because promotion of the post slides on by. It has only been in the last year and a half that I have become fully aware of the HPE Community blog. In case you were unaware of this resource close to your typing fingers, it’s gradually building a library of posts in support of NonStop. At times, they may not be easy to find but typing in the names of product managers and marketing managers...

A brief encounter with an IT legend of the 1970s changed the course of my professional life. It marked my departure from the user community with a move to the vendor side and much more … Are we still enjoying working from home? Is our home office looking more like it’s permanent? Are we in any hurry to return to the normalcy we once knew? Do we truly miss social interactions around the water cooler or coffee pot? Have the changes we have experienced firsthand become our new normal? I have posted about this more than once over the course of the past year and a half. Or is that more like two years? It is strange to look back and recall the times when the pace of life was fast, almost thrilling for some, but now that the wheels have well and truly fallen off, do we want to return to that ride? Do we really look forward to changing our ways yet again? When it comes to technology, if you don’t like change then perhaps you should have chosen a different calling. IT is all about change. I...

Clouds go offline; data centers are compromised; critical infrastructure is held to ransom. Thank goodness for today’s modern HPE NonStop systems that we can run any which way we like! “Crash your car?” “What?” “Would you like me to crash your car?” You can imagine the look on my face as this dialogue continued. True, my hearing may not be as good as it once was and true, the cars I drive are low and working any sort of credit card reader through a car’s window can be problematic but seriously, crash my car? As it so happened to be on this occasion the attendant at the car wash was only asking me whether he could “cash my card?” He happily took my credit card, inserted it into the machine and we were on our way. For any member of the NonStop community, the above exchange might arouse a wry smile or two but it continues to be crashes of another type that only create a shaking of the head. In this day and age, surely systems shouldn’t be crashing for any reason especially those we in...

You move house and it’s traumatic; you migrate systems and it is less so – with NonStop system migrations, what to consider next? When we moved into our home in Windsor, Colorado, a small village to the east of Ft Collins, we focused on the actual move itself. Our primary goal was to transition furnishings from one home to the next whether they were right for the new space or not. Perhaps even more fundamentally, did the furnishing even worked with the new home’s layout? Looking back such a migration that focused on just the home and keeping all else the same ultimately saved us a lot of headaches. When it comes to migrating systems, much the same can be said about such a move. As the first stage in any planning session, keeping the current operating environment intact always seems to be the smart move. Get it all across to the new system then step back and see what is needed and what really contributes to the day-to-day operations. Trying to juggle a move to new hardware together wi...

  Attending one event in person and then catching content from a second held virtually proved challenging - First day - ATMIA US Conference 2021, Las Vegas Greetings from the road, once again! Last week we drove to Las Vegas where it all seemed so strange to be participating in an industry event that wasn’t associated with HPE. Up until 2020 we had always scheduled time to be in Las Vegas for HPE events so it was good to get back to the place. Whether they were the HP Technical Forum (HPTF) events – the events that replaced the ITUG Summits of years passed – or HPE Discover simply being with the community was always an experience in itself. However, on this occasion, Margo and I turned up for the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) US Conference. While our primary focus was on the ATMIA event where I was attending in person and yes, it was held in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino (and Conference Center), we also had to interact with our colleagues who were participating in this year...

  For the NonStop community there has always been an annual event that proved hard to resist; with changing times these events are virtual – but can we anticipate change down the road? Just recently Margo and I chose to return home via US Highway 129. It may not ring any bells, but for those who prefer to call it the Tail of the Dragon – 318 curves in 11 miles – it represents the epitome of mountain excitement. For Margo and me, having now driven the tail in both directions, driving hard through all these turns never gets old. Business took us to Florida for an extended week of meetings that were mostly conversations. Not everything went to plan and we didn’t get to see some folks, but just to have an opportunity to hit the road and meet in person certainly made the 4,500 miles excursion worthwhile. The mere fact that we made touring in a roadster work for us and we were comfortable in doing so, well, that was a real trick with a car better suited to day trips. This is all just...