buckle-up

After spending weeks ashore with family, friends and business associates we have been all at sea. Business hasn’t stopped, but it’s been a lot easier with so much fresh input to work with – Sydney provides such a rich backdrop to any conversation about technology and Margo and I have taken full advantage of every opportunity that has presented itself for us to see different sides of a very much changed city of Sydney. It has been five years since we walked the streets of Sydney’s Central Business District (CBD) and it’s hard to compare what were once familiar landmarks with the soaring skyscrapers that have essentially popped up everywhere we turn.  Talk to Sydneysiders and it’s clear that it generates mixed reactions; cities are never finished, just ask your average Parisian. Then again, cities can leverage any natural beauty that they have inherited to present a fresh and sometimes even rejuvenated appearance. Sydney still has its Opera House and its Harbor Bridge, but as...

January is always a time to reevaluate priorities and to put into place plans for the coming year. When it comes to the business of Pyalla Technologies, LLC, we are both fully engaged now with Margo working hard to establish her latest venture, the monthly digital publication, NonStop Insider. As a result of working the way we do, we are discovering just how flexible we can be with our time; yes, we can work at any time, almost anywhere and this month we put this into practice. Call them BizCations, as we are want to do, but the bottom line remains the same - we fill our waking hours with work even as the scenery keeps on changing and for that, we have no complaints! As for our plans, it all happened rather quickly. The need to meet with clients in Los Angeles mid-January and then late-January left two weeks of “calendar free space” and, with no appointments we decided to, once again, take to the seas and see how well we could work far from shore. We had done it once before, but on...

Autumn leaves, Bermuda waters and Zion park – all in the month of October. Racking up the miles, on our return from Western Colorado (last post) we drove the Jeep to the east coast, hopped aboard a cruise ship to Bermuda, became leaf-peepers on a northern drive up the Hudson River Valley before stopping by Montreal and Toronto, and then on our return to Boulder swapped the SUV for the RV and headed to Zion National Park. For many readers, this has all the appearance of a normal month for the Buckle family, but even by our standards, it was a tad extreme. However, the opportunity presented itself and we took full advantage of the circumstances and in the process, covered a good portion of the planet in the process. When it comes to the fall here in North America, a very strong case can be made that it is the most picturesque time of the year and in our travels we came up with more than ample evidence to concur. Fall is colorful and fall is just a great time to hit the highways (a...

There’s no escaping the fact that with the early onset of winter this year there’s little opportunity for any further track time. The blue Corvette is ready to go – new suspension, new alignment and ride height, and with the track-ready wheels and tires mounted. Each time I walk past the car that is sitting rather forlornly in the garage it is a reminder of how much I miss track weekends and just how good the Vette really is – yes, close on 65,000 miles with all by 20,000 running the forced-induction (FI) set up and with some twenty five track weekends under its wheels! And the picture above is of the car laying idle, but hooked to its faithful battery charger, waiting for the seasons to change. Keeping it company, and just as likely to be spelled from any further track driving duties is the Viper; every bit as reluctant to test step outside with snow on the ground! Our home track, High Plains Raceway, is also out of action but less so due to early snow falls. The track is undergo...

This weekend we will not be at Buttonwillow, after all. A family illness necessitated our return to our home in Boulder, Colorado, where we will be spending the next couple of weeks, and we have no chance of a quick dash back to participate in NASA’s HPDE event at what has quickly developed into our favorite track. We hear this weekend the cars will be circulating in a counter-clockwise direction, whereas the previous time it had been clockwise. Check out the post of April 30, ’09: Are we humans? Or are we dancers? Perhaps the saddest sight to see is both of our cars sitting in the garage hooked up to battery charges, as pictured above, where they will remain until much later in July. With the arrival of the July 4th weekend we head to Copenhagen for a much-anticipated cruise, courtesy of Princess Cruise Line, around the Baltic that will take us to a number of Eastern European cities, including St Petersburg, Russia, Tallinn, Estonia, and Gdynia, Poland. In the meantime, it tr...

For regular readers of the business blog I maintain for the HP NonStop community: http://www.itug-connection.blogspot.com/ – you will have come to recognize that travel, food, cars / bikes, and music are pretty much at the top of the list of things Margo and I like to do. While we both like to read and watch movies, our passion to explore places, enjoy “new adventures”, and to sample different food and wines will remain a key part of our lives for years to come. While it’s still fresh in our minds, it is appropriate that the first posting for “buckle-up” (a suggestion from Margo, of course) looks back at our last trip to Europe. While we mixed a little business with vacation times and the enjoyment of the places we visited, we ran into the problem many US travelers face these days – the terrible exchange rate between US dollars and the Euro. By the end of the two weeks, we were really pleased to be back in the US where a simple Starbucks coffee purchase didn’t have us both cringe!...