blog.scottlowe.org

For the last two years, my wife has accompanied me on my trips to VMworld. I’m lucky that she’s willing to travel with me and put up with long days (and sometimes long nights) during what is a very busy time for me, particularly in light of the fact that there traditionally have not been any activities designed to include spouses. This, by the way, is not a knock against VMware specifically; it seems to be a little bit of a trend in the industry. I’m not a huge conference-goer, so if anyone has any experience to the contrary I’d love to hear it.

John Troyer’s activities are an exception; his VMware Communities receptions, both in 2006 and 2007, were very inclusive of spouses or significant others. My wife enjoyed attending both of those events.

Aside from that, however, there aren’t a lot of reasons why spouses would want to attend. (This is aside from the obvious reason of wanting to be together.) This year, as my wife and I look ahead to VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas, she’s decided that she’d like to try to arrange some activities for spouses during the event. Perhaps a trip to a day spa, or a quick jaunt out to the Grand Canyon, or maybe just lunch near or at the Venetian. There would be some costs involved, of course, but at least they could all meet, have something to do while we’re at the conference, and have a good time.

So, if you are planning on attending VMworld 2008 and are thinking of bringing along your spouse—I’m primarily thinking of guys bringing their wives—I’d love to know. Shoot me an e-mail or post in the comments and let me know if your spouse would be interested in participating in some of these activities. Thanks!

Well, it’s official—I’m headed to Tech-Ed 2008 in Orlando, Florida, in early June! Microsoft was kind enough to offer me a complimentary “Press Pass” to attend, and since I was going to be in Orlando around that time anyway on vacation, I shuffled some things around to make it happen. I plan on using the time to gather as much information as possible about Hyper-V, SCVMM 2008, and related technologies. Rest assured that as much of that information as possible will find its way here.

The free “Press Pass” from Microsoft must mean a couple of things:

1. Prominent bloggers are apparently considered members of the press.
2. I must be a prominent blogger. (Woo hoo!)

This will mark my second conference of the year; the first was VMware Partner Exchange 2008 in San Diego last week (my summary of the event is found here). Of course, then we have the “big daddy” of virtualization events later in the year in Las Vegas: VMworld 2008. I haven’t registered yet—I know, I really should register. But since Microsoft was kind enough to provide a free Press Pass to their event, I was kind of hoping VMware would offer a free Press Pass to VMworld as well. So, VMware, what do you think?

I’m in San Diego this week for VMware Partner Exchange 2008. I’m signed up for mostly “Advanced Technical Track” sessions, so I’m hoping to gain a lot of knowledge and value out of the sessions. I don’t know how much information, if any, I’ll be able to share here; I suspect that a great deal of information will be covered by NDA and can’t be shared publicly.

If you happen to be at Partner Exchange, feel free to catch up with me.

After hitting VMworld 2007 in San Francisco hot and heavy (and trying to liveblog as many sessions as possible, as well as the keynotes), my wife and I took yesterday to do some additional sightseeing beyond what we’d done on Sunday prior.

Armed with one day MUNI pass for each of us, it was on the buses and the cable cars all over San Francisco, hitting the major highlights along the way:

• the Bay Bridge;
• the Port of San Francisco building and the Ferry building tower;
• Pier 39;
• the Golden Gate Bridge;
• Golden Gate Park (specifically, the Conservatory of Flowers); and
• riding a cable car downtown.

We wrapped up the evening with a large pizza from Blondie’s Pizza, and then returned to the hotel (the San Francisco Marriott on 4th Street) to pack and get ready for the return trip home.

Today, we traveled home, stopping off in Chicago along the way.  And, for the first time in many, many trips…our return trip was not delayed, canceled, or otherwise troubled in any way!  Someone was praying for a safe trip back for us, and I’d like to thank whoever that was.

It was a great trip, and I have tons of photos from yesterday (I may upload them somewhere; I haven’t decided yet), but in the end I’m glad to be home.  Thanks to everyone who helped make this trip a great one!

Before I embarked on the busy schedule that is VMworld this year in San Francisco, my wife and I spent the day today strolling leisurely around the city.  Before we’d even known it, we’d covered a total of about 6 or maybe 7 miles on foot, and seen more of the city than we’d planned on visiting today.

Our trek started out downtown, just down from the Moscone Center at the San Francisco Marriott, where we’re staying.  From there, we walked over to Union Square, Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39.  From there, we visited the sea lions at Pier 39, then made our way over to Ghiradelli Square.  Next on the list was Coit Tower (we were in that general area anyway), and that about wiped us out.  Those hills leading up to the tower are tough when you’ve already walked 3 or more miles in the space of just a couple of hours.  (Either that, or we are just horribly out of shape, which is quite likely.)

Once we’d visited Coit Tower, it was all downhill from there, both literally and figuratively.  We were famished (we hadn’t eaten anything other than some banana nut bread for breakfast much earlier in the morning), and so we set out to get something to eat.  In our searching for a restaurant, we stumbled into Chinatown.  “Why not eat Chinese?” I said, and so we set off to find a Chinese restaurant in which to eat.

After a series of false starts, we finally decided on a place.  The wait staff’s English was not good, and so we had a hard time placing our order, and the food wasn’t anything like what we’d expected.  Not to say that it was bad, but it wasn’t what we expected.  Not even close.

With that adventure behind us, we made our way back downtown (via the Financial District), stopped off at the Apple Store downtown, and went back to the hotel.  We stayed there for a few hours, napping and relaxing, then set out to find some dinner.  (Let’s just say the Chinese food—what parts we did eat—hadn’t stuck with us.)  A San Francisco local directed us to John’s Grill on Ellis, which was not far from our hotel or the hotel where some of my co-workers are staying (and where we were supposed to meet later that night).  Apparently, this place is somewhat famous (featured in the novel The Maltese Falcon, and one of only a few establishments to survive the Great Earthquake of 1906), but I’ll remember it for the food.  Talk about excellent!  I haven’t had such a good dinner in a while.

After dinner, it was a quick meetup with some fellow engineers from ePlus Technology, then back to the hotel to call it a night and rest up for Partner Day tomorrow.  It’s going to be a busy week…stay tuned for updates as often as I can give them.

Here’s my VMworld 2007 schedule so far.  I’ll update this as my schedule evolves.  If anyone has any suggestions for other sessions I should attend, please let me know in the comments.

Tuesday, September 11

8:00 AM to 9:30 AM: General Session
10:00 AM to 11:00 AM: BC40 - Cutting VMware Infrastructure Backup Time in Half (Symantec)
10:30 AM to 11:30 AM: Private meeting
11:30 AM to 12:30 PM: SL12 - VMware Lab Manager Technical Deep Dive (VMware)
1:30 PM to 2:00 PM: Private meeting
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM: BC23 - Bulletproof VirtualCenter - A Guide to Protecting VirtualCenter (VMware)
3:30 PM to 4:30 PM: VMotion Between Apples and Oranges - Understanding CPU Compatibility Constraints for VMware VMotion (VMware)
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM: DV18 - VDI with VMware’s Next Generation Connection Broker - Architecture, Security, and Deployment Scenarios (VMware)

Wednesday, September 12

8:00 AM to 9:30 AM: General Session
10:30 AM to 12:30 PM: LAB05 - Security Hardening and Monitoring of VMware Infrastructure 3
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM: IO40 - ESX Server 3 - Patch Management (VMware)
3:30 PM to 4:30 PM: IO46 - VMware Infrastructure 3 Advanced Diagnostics Logs Analysis (VMware)
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM: TA57 - Security Architecture Design and Hardening VMware Infrastructure 3 (VMware)

Thursday, September 13

8:30 AM to 9:30 AM: General Session
10:00 AM to 11:00 AM: TA49 - iSCSI on VMware Infrastructure 3 - Techniques, Configuration, and Best Practices (VMware)
2:00 PM to 3:00 PM: TA51 - NFS and iSCSI - Performance Characterization and Best Practices (VMware)
3:30 PM to 4:30 PM: BC32 - Best Practices for Architecting VMware Consolidated Backup Enabled Solutions (VMware)
5:00 PM to 6:00 PM: IO44 - Top Support Issues and How to Solve Them - Batch 2 (VMware)

I’m thinking of dropping the VMotion compatibility session, since I think I’m fairly clear on how that process works (refer to this article and this article), but I’m not really sure what to put in its place.

In any case, I’m sure that my schedule will change as the event draws closer and I’ll keep this post updated as it changes.  If you’re interested in meeting up with me in San Francisco, post in the comments below and let’s get together.  Thanks!

UPDATE:  If you’d like to meet up with me at VMworld, Tuesday is absolutely out of the question.  As you can see, I’m already overbooked, and my schedule above still doesn’t reflect a few other obligations I have on Tuesday.  Ugh!  In any case, you’ll be able to spot me at VMworld because I’ll be wearing personalized polo shirts that have my name on the right chest and my company’s logo (e+) on the left chest.  Feel free to come up to me and say hi!

I just got the news today that I’m heading to VMworld 2007 in September!  It’s going to be a fantastic trip—I haven’t been to San Francisco in years, and I’m looking forward to VMworld, the keynotes, the announcements, and the in-depth technical sessions.  Drop me a line and let me know if you’re going, and perhaps I’ll see you there!

I purposefully scheduled a later flight out of Atlanta because I wanted to allow plenty of time to get from Duluth (where my training class was located) to the airport.  Knowing that traffic in Atlanta can be troublesome at times (cough, cough), I wanted to be sure to allow plenty of time.

Instead, my class ends early and I think, “Well, I’ll just head on down to the airport and get an earlier flight.”  Hah!  Right!  No, sorry—no seats on any earlier flights available.  Oh, and by the way, I can’t check in to my original flight yet because (get this) I’m too early.

So I waste a few hours until I can get checked in, then need to waste a few more hours before my flight is scheduled to leave.  As it turns out, there are numerous storms, snowstorms, bad weather, etc., in the Midwest, and the resulting chaos/delays/cancellations is overflowing into Atlanta.  Oh, joy!  Rumor has it that the airlines are overbooked and offering to put people up overnight in exchange for their seats.  A lady in the line with me to check in says she’s been delayed three times and has now been bumped to an entirely different airline.

This smells like a serious delay to me, and I ought to know what a delay looks and smells like—I’ve certainly seen my share.  I’m beginning to believe that the comment a co-worker in my class made is true: “Man, you have bad luck with flights.”  Tell me about it!

Next time I have to come to Atlanta, I’m renting a car and spending the eight hours on the road instead of sitting in the airport.

Well, barring some unforeseen disaster or God leading us otherwise, my wife and I are going to Stockholm, Sweden, around Labor Day.  A good friend of mine is getting married and we’ve been invited to the wedding.  It’s a bit scary, as the only foreign country I have ever visited was Mexico, and that was to a high-traffic tourist area.  Somehow, I don’t think that thousands of Americans visit Stockholm in September every year.  Anybody know any Swedish?