May 2008 - Posts
They've invented the Flux Capacitor.
Ok, so they call it a Memristor, but read what it does:
The memristor is formally defined as a two-terminal element in which the magnetic flux Φm between the terminals is a function of the amount of electric charge q that has passed through the device. Each memristor is characterized by its memristance function describing the charge-dependent rate of change of flux with charge.
That, to me, is a flux capacitor. And others think so as well.
Flying Deloreans and Mr. Fusions can't be far behind.
I knew it all started with D&D. If I had seen this at the age of thirteen, who knows where I'd be today?
The chart is sadly accurate.
About the only thing missing is the entire BBS era. And there should be a progression of modem speeds in there, from 300 baud pulse to 56k.
Click the picture for more detail.
You know that old saying about a butterfly flapping it's wings causing a hurricane a thousand miles away? Well, a thunderstorm in Chicago causes repercussions around the world.
I finally landed at O'Hare at around 10:45, which was well after my connecting flight to scenic Champaign - Urbana has left the tarmac. And of course that was the last flight of the night.
I had already decided I would just rent a car and drive home. Unfortunately, there were several hundred people that had made similar decisions. So I got on the Hertz bus and they promptly kicked me off for not having a reservation. Then I got on the phone and started calling around, finally finding Budget who still had cars on the lot. 
When I got to the Budget office, I was approximately 50th in line. With three workers behind the counter, I settled in for a long wait. When I finally got to the counter, Angel (really, that was the name on her gold nametag) hooked me up. I ended up in a enormous Chevy something or other. Turning to leave, I noticed there were more people behind me in line than there were in front of me when I started.
So at 4:10am I finally pulled in front of my house. My bag, which American would not let me pick up at O'Hare, finally arrived in Champaign at around 3:30 the next day. I figure I still spent less on the rental than I would have staying at O'Hare, and I got to sleep in my own bed.
My final thoughts on MMS? While the event was good, it wasn't great and from my perception not as good as last year. I can't quite put my finger on why. It could be that I was looking for more in-depth info this year. The newbie stuff is great for the folks that need it. But the older the conference gets, the deeper they need to dive into existing products. Let's spend on hour on the sms_def.mof (or the configuration.mof) file. Have a session that walks through a distributed app in it's entirety, and let's have it not be the standard "web SQL Server" app. Take a group of servers, a web site, a sql back end, and a custom service. Better still, let's add some Linux monitoring in there as well. Then let's add the alerts and subscriptions, and figure out how to make them make sense.
The Meetup points were a great idea, I just wish I would have discovered them sooner.
The closing party was nice, but seemed to be geared for younger folks than me. The Halo farm was cool, the performers were OK (except for the juggler. I hope that wasn't his best stuff). But it just wasn't my thing. I'm not sure would be better, though, so I'm not going to complain too loud. My only suggestion might be, if Wayne Brady is still booked there, to get HIM to come and perform for the closing party.
I thought the venue was great. The Venetian is both beautiful and big enough to handle the crowd, and still has room to bring in more attendees. The food was OK, the service was great.
As before, the most important facet of the event was networking, making new contacts and hashing around problems, thoughts, and plans. That is what made the conference worthwhile for me this year.
See you in 2009!
Weather in Chicago delays my flight out of Vegas. Making me miss my connecting flight from O'Hare to Champaign. And since it's the last flight of the night to Champaign, looks like I get to drive home.
I should have caught the 6:00AM flight with the Richard from PS*Soft. If all goes well I'll be home by 2:00am.
How was your flight out?
Mark your calendars. MMS 2009 April 27 - May 1, Las Vegas.
See you there!
Some miscellaneous thoughts around MMS and the Venetian hotel.
Venetian Coffee - Good. Better than average, and kept stocked throughout the venue. I'd like to see the pots they use to make coffee for 4000 people. More like vats, I'd guess.
Venetian Food - When feeding 4000+, it's OK. At any particular restaurant throughout the casino, it's very good. If you're here on a budget, I recommend the food court which is somewhere in the Grand Canal shops. They have a Panda Express and a couple three other places that you can get dinner for around $10. There's also a Denny's, a Subway, and a McDonald's within walking distance.
Microsoft bought their Midwest customers dinner last night at Canaletto, and it was excellent. The main thing MMS is about for me is connecting to peers, and it was great to dine with our local TS, a specialist from the SCOM team, and other customers in my region.
Casino - apparently smoking is a prerequisite to gambling. Who knew? Seriously, I can't get used to folks smoking in public again. Not that I mind so much - I'm not an anti-smoking zealot by any means. I'm all for an individuals right to commit suicide by cigarette. I've just gotten used to the Illinois ban and it's still jarring every time I have to walk through the casino.
Rooms - wow. Suite sized rooms, two tv's in the main room and one in the bathroom, bathroom has both giant tub and separate shower. The rooms are a bit pricey, but nothing like what they would be without the MMS discount.
Air Conditioning - In Vegas they know from air conditioning. I've essentially been freezing the entire time. It took me a couple of days to realize that the room was turned down nearly all the way on the thermostat.
The Reality of the Cloud
Ok, I missed some of this due to working some last night (a new Ops Manager RMS Server!), excess sleep and work to catch up on this morning. But I did get there in time to hear internal Microsoft talk about number that are beyond comprehension : 5000 servers per server admin, hundreds of thousands of total servers, trillions of row updates per day in Ops Manager. Yikes.
They piloted Ops Mgr SP1 on a small 1000 servers. Once that's complete they'll extend it to 39,000 servers.
It's hard to think that they face the exact same problems we do, but on a much more massive scale. On top of that they have to dogfood their own products, which is something I wouldn't want to do in early pre-releases.
OS Deployment with SCCM : Part 1
This session was pretty well full. Given the capabilities of SCCM and OSD, I'm not surprised.
This slide deck is going to be a must have if you deploy OS's with SCCM, and the video should be first-watch on the DVD if you get a chance.
OS Deployment with SCCM is as complex or as simple as you want to make it, and this session does a great job giving us an overview of the process, including some custom scripting and task sequences. There is very little you can't do around OSD with SCCM.
There are four sessions around OSD and SCCM. They're going to be to complex to try and blog, so I'll just leave you with the fact that they will all be must haves (and must see) when the DVD comes out.
I also highly recommend the blog by The Deployment Guys, a TechNet(tm) blog that is not necessarily limited to deployment with SCCM but is very high - level and useful.
Ask the Experts
Where were you? Eighteen community and Microsoft experts up front, great questions, fabulous answers. This is the session not to miss, but a lot of people missed it.
MVP's and Microsoft employees from SCCM, SCOM, NAP, and other disciplines I've forgotten about were represented.
Download it if you can.