Real Time View

When I was in high school there were the usual visits to the career guidance center. Actually, not so much a center as it was a room where a counselor would entertain students, listen to their likes and dislikes and offer some measure of guidance as to what should be considered as a possible future career path. When it came my turn it was more of a case of throwing a dart at the board. I was clueless. However, it was during my time at Normanhurst Boys High School in suburban Sydney Australia that the first inklings of where my career might take me surfaced. Inklings, but at the time not passions, began when family friend took me to an insurance company as its first computer was being deployed. The year was 1963 and the IBM mainframe being installed was an IBM 650 - sold in the 1953-1962 period – as the IBM 360 product line really didn’t get rolling until a year or so later. I took a souvenir from that visit back to school; a white paper tape full of holes. I kept hold of that simple ro...

Margo and I have tried to attend as many gatherings of the NonStop community as possible. This has meant a lot of driving was involved even as we did resort to flying sometimes. How else can you get to London other than perhaps by boat? You might even say that it is the whole package we find so attractive; the travel, the dining, the conversations the events themselves. There have been times where we have considered scaling back our participation, but then again, as we unpack from one trip or the other we immediately start debating the pros and cons of solutions presented at such events. This month it was Canadians’ turn to hold a regional event. CTUG, or to call it by its full name, the Canadian Tandem User Group, is an ever present reminder of times past and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for them to do. The NonStop community enjoys a history few other mainstream vendors can possible duplicate. Maybe, SHARE, the IBM mainframe groups enjoy a similar heritage and as I have a firs...

As we get deeper into the last month of the quarter, which for some may also be the last month of their financial year, it is inevitable that we look back at what happened in 2022. It’s a time when measures are taken to finish the year on a high note even as there will be those reviewing their product mix against changing market conditions. There is never a good time to change course and yet, staying the distance can be every bit as detrimental. But perhaps as we look back at the year, there will be conversations started that will need to be revisited as scattered among the many stories we hear are surprisingly numerous gems to be uncovered. For Margo and me these last couple of months means we will be toiling for long hours at the tasks at hand. Not so much on keyboards as on steering wheels. With the return to in-person events we have a desire to attend as many as we can even if we do succumb to the long-haul flight every now and then. But as story tellers, there is a constant need...

The many times that Margo and I have driven across the Great Divide there have been occasions when the rules of the road needed to be stretched. On a number of occasions it was late winter - early spring and Mother Nature hadn’t relinquished her hold on the environment. Yes, when the snow falls you cannot argue with it; water may always win but snow comes a close second. Say what you may but oftentimes the prudent move to make is to turn around. In the April 24, 2022 post No risk! No win! With many other chances taken! to our social blog, Buckle-Up, we recalled how you can never count on favors from Mother Nature. As it so happened she began showing her indifference to our plans the moment dawn broke over our Cedar City Utah hotel with just the mountain crossing to cover before reaching home in Colorado. No sooner had we begun the climb to Vail Pass then all lanes of traffic came to a halt.  Between the concrete separation-barriers there were small openings so first responders cou...

With summer in full swing and with temperatures climbing higher than we have seen in quite some time, it’s hard to imagine that seasons will be again in transition in oh, say three months’ time. Living alongside the Rocky Mountains we have come to expect anything and, each day we step outside, we can be at a loss as to what the will weather do; clear skies aren’t all that helpful. It’s not all that often that I start with a weather commentary but this year, it’s getting harder to ignore. Floods in Australia and fires in Portugal! Tornados in the US and more fires even as there are swarms of jellyfish in the eastern Mediterranean! Predicting the weather so it seems remains as much a hit and miss exercise as it has always been; here in Colorado the story goes that “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes and it will change.”    At the end of August I will wrap up fifteen years of posting to this blog, Real Time View. Shortly I will begin my sixteenth year and y...

Driving along a desolate stretch of Interstate 70 taking us eastbound out of Utah, there is an exit that has intrigued us ever since 2006 when we began commuting between Colorado and California. On this recent occasion we were returning from the HPE Discover 2022 event in Las Vegas. At first sight and ignoring the reference to Emery, seeing the exit to Mussentuchit always gets us talking. Perhaps it is the exit to a cattle ranch seeking a unique identity. But just pronouncing it brought a smile to our faces – “Mustn’t Touch It” seemed pretty obvious. Margo and I smile as it seems to be an oblique reference to the history of NonStop and before that, Tandem Computers. For as long as both of us could remember, the mantra among many in the NonStop community on deploying a solution on NonStop was the warning to all others in IT that given the nature of the mission critical applications, no IT professional was to touch it. Interfere with its operations at your own risk. Connect it directly t...

Pouring a good measure of any adult drink over ice cubes is a common enough practice. Mixologists will tell you that for some drinks it’s better to pour from a chilled bottle to lessen the impact of a warm fluid on the ice. Then again, for most of us who from time to time imbibe on such concoctions, such a dilution process is welcome. In our household, an evening cocktail has become part of our routine. Disclaimer: it is neither an encouragement to do the same nor a suggestion that it is required. Eventually, the understanding of the humble martini comes down to simple chemistry where the eventual solution proves to be to our liking. And with that, comes the chemist’s clarity that “you prepare a solution by dissolving a known mass of solute (often a solid) into a specific amount of a solvent.  For the NonStop community, its successful history is liberally littered with solutions of every kind. These are solutions of a different nature, obviously, and yet, to succeed they h...