Ad Nauseam - ramblings of a technologist

April Fools!

here’s a video we put together on April Fools.  I love facebook.

Another Meme goes mainstream

from the MSN.com homepage today:

well, that meme's old and busted now.  What's the new hotness?

Unrelated but cool: this morning I released the first in a series of interviews with the Office Communication Server (OCS) team on new features coming in their latest version.  There's some cool stuff coming - check it out!

economic crisis hits home

whew, what a week!  I've just wrapped a series of videos that will start releasing next week in conjunction with a pending product announcement - it's really cool stuff.

Of course, the US presidential elections and the economic crisis have been top of mind for me, and fascinating to watch unfold.  I really felt like I was on the outside looking in at the economic collapse, in that other than the declining value of my stock portfolio (I can't even bring myself to calculate the loss - too painful), it really wasn't going to affect my day to day activities.

Then, I read that Mother's cookies were had closed their doors effective immediately, and those little pink frosted circus animal cookies with the sprinkles were a victim of that closure.

Where are we going now?  And what are we all doing in a handbasket?

Hyper-V Unleashed - my chat with the authors

I have to admit, my job is pretty cool.  I've met a bunch of cool people and new friends as a direct result of my work on TechNet Edge.  Last week was no exception, as I got to sit down with the authors of Hyper-V Unleashed to talk about their adventures in virtualization.  You can see the video at this link:A chat with the authors of Hyper-V Unleashed

While I love my job to death, there is one downside to it:  trying to explain to people what I do.  The dialog usually goes like this:

Nice person I've just met: so what do you do?

me:  <nervous smile>  My job title is actually Technical Evangelist

n:  <boggle> what does that mean?

m:  yeah, I'm pretty much in charge of Happy Thoughts.  I just make sure people are thinking happy thoughts.

n:  really?

m:  yeah.  I also do a lot of walking around and talking to people.

n:  come on, what do you really do?

m:  ok, I try to help drive early adoption and buzz around emerging technologies.

n:  <blank stare>

m:  Happy Thoughts.  I'm in charge of Happy Thoughts.  What do you do?

Interview with James Governor, IT Analyst

James Governor is an analyst with RedMonk.  He gave a great presentation on Sustainable IT earlier this month at the Microsoft virtualization launch event.  His presentation was very insightful and entertaining, and I managed to catch up with him for just a couple minutes after the presentation.  You can see the interview I did with him on TechNet Edge:  Green IT with James Governor.

Hyper-V Server

I recently wrote up a short and sweet overview of Hyper-V Server, explaining what you can and can't do with it.

It's up on TechNet Edge, where most of my bloggish activity is happening these days.

Check it out here:

Hyper-V Server Overview

the swag is in the mail

Last month at TechEd, we gave away a bunch of Edge t-shirts, and let people know that if they missed out on one, they could still drop a postcard in the mail and we'd follow up and send one out.  Surprisingly enough, postcards did start trickling in, from remote places like Norway and W Conshohocken PA.  One card even included a tasty crab dip recipe - how thoughtful!

I spent this morning stuffing t-shirts in to envelopes, and also took the opportunity to clear out some of the stuff that's taking up space in my office and squeezed in what else I could into the envelopes.

Enjoy the swag guys, and thanks for visiting Edge!

TechEd Rocked

I'm back from TechEd, and was greeted today by the first "Postcard to the Edge" request, all the way from Missouri.  We have a smallish stash of shirts that we held back to send out, but if we have a huge number of requests, they'll have to wait  until we place an order for more shirts next month.

I took a few pics at the event that I'd like to share:

I took this one myself, at one of several parties we attended during the week. Turned out pretty good, eh?  That Edge crew is a good looking bunch.  I think David's pulled off Blue Steel pretty well here.

Listen, I know that most IT folks aren't highly concerned with fashion, but socks with sandals is never ok.  Black socks with shorts is also not ok.  The two combined?  Fashion Fail!

This is what appears to be Florida Gator pajama bottoms coupled with a button down shirt.  Seriously.

Cross Platform What?

We just got out of the Opening keynote at MMS, where Bob Muglia and friends showed some industry changing stuff: 

Cross Platform Extensions for Operations Manager, and Virtual Machine Manager 2008.  In the demo, they showed an application running on Windows, Linux, and Solaris, with apps running on Apache and IIS, and databases in Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL.  All of the components were managed natively by Operations Manager.  One single console managing all those platforms, showing status, reports, and automatically resolving issues.  Really cool stuff.  We also announced that we're going Open Source with the packages.  Yeah, us.  Microsoft.

Not content to stop there, in the Virtual Machine Manager demo, they showed how the new VMM console allows you to manage Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and VMWare environments.  Anything you can do in the VMWare management console, you can do from VMM, including live migration, plus it utilizes the VMM advisor to help you decide where to move your VMs, and the new PRO tips can even dynamically provision, deploy and move vm's in your environment for you.  Awesome!

We have some coverage of these announcements up on Edge, and there's more to come.  Here are some links to get you started:

Larry Orecklin is a GM in System Center.  He gives a brief "view from the top" of these announcements.  If you're short on time, watch this video.

Robert Reynolds is the director of Product Planning for System Center.  His video is a little longer, and goes into a little more detail about the standards we're adopting and some of the scenarios these new products enable.  His video is a little longer, and you can watch it here.

Barry Shilmover is the cross platform guy in the Operations Manager team.  If you want to see cross platform extensions in action, watch this video where Barry takes us through the same demo that was done on stage at MMS.  It's all real - no smoke and mirrors here.  I saw the racks of equipment myself. (actually, if you saw this video, you've seen the racks too - we just weren't allowed to tell you what they were before today).

If text is more your thing, you can read the official press release here.

MMS Rocks!

8 Things Meme

Sometimes, I don't think the Internet is even trying anymore.  Philip tagged me with a new blogging meme.  A really creative one.  It basically goes like this:

• list 8 things about your self.

that's it.

Clearly, all the good ideas on the Internet have been used up.

Not one to be a spoilsport though, I'll play along...

the complete Meme Rules:

• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My 8 things:

1. In the late 90's, I was a silver medalist in the Utah Tae Kwon Do championship.  The gold medalist went on to open his own school.
2. I have driven a motorcycle once, for about 100 feet, before wedging it into a cow feeding trough.
3. I try and choose parking spaces next to expensive cars, because I think those drivers will be less likely to ding my doors.
4. my first car was a $400 1973 VW Beetle.  In the winter, I had to scrape ice off the inside windshield while driving to school.
5. in 11 years at Microsoft, I've had at over 10 different offices, 12 different managers, and 3 job roles.
6. I'm addicted to "one day, one deal" type websites, like www.woot.com.  I've spent over $3000 on things like "100 nightlights for $10"
7. with just 10 more country visits, I'll have achieved my goal of filling all the stamp pages in my passport before it expires in 2010.
8. 5 years ago, I celebrated Easter on the back of a camel watching the sunrise over Uluru.

lessee, I'll tag Joey, David, Wendy, Steve, Giovanni, Jason, Daniel, and Jon.

it is entirely unlikely that I will get around to commenting on people who I tagged,  hopefully they'll find this trackback.

nuts and bolts of OS development

I'm watching the interview that David did with Iain McDonald, it's pretty good!  Iain's been in Redmond for a while now, but he's managed to maintain his Aussie sensibilities and down-to-earth personality.  I love his description of how product names happen - a bunch of guys go down to the bar and work it out over drinks.

I think Iain is also the first Edge interviewee to drop the f-bomb in an interview.  I wonder if we can get in trouble for that.

Potpourri

I occasionally come across things that I think "wow, I need to blog that," but I generally forget about them, or decide that they don't really warrant a post all on their own.  Rather than just cast them aside, I'll start occasionally rounding them up in posts like this one...

--

Neil came in to my office again with a camera, and this time we talked about how to set up a failover cluster.  I've written up a cookbook that takes you through building the environment that I used to record the screencasts on WDS, iSCSI and failover clustering of hyper-v.  It's not super deep or overly technical, just the basic steps to get the pieces configured.  Let me know if it's something you'd like to take a look at.

--

I had lunch last week with Martijn, who happened to be in town meeting with some other teams.  We talked a lot about the cross section of people who blur the line between IT Pros and Developers.  Now that we're giving PowerShell to IT Pros, they start looking more like Developers, and there are plenty of Developers that get pushed in to IT Pro roles as well.  Martijn has some good insights in to those people and I really appreciated meeting with him.  Thanks Daniel, for putting us in touch.

--

I wasn't planning on attending Mix this year, but I might try and arrange a trip just to see Steve Wiebe reclaim his record.  I'm pulling for Steve to win this one, even though I have a Billy Mitchell autographed bottle of Rickey's Hot Sauce:

--

I made a trip to the doctor's office a couple weeks ago to get something for a nagging chest cold I was dealing with.  I know there's a running joke about old magazines in doctor's waiting rooms, but this one must take the cake:  a 1987 issue of National Geographic:

It contained a fascinating article about this new technology called MRI.  I wonder if it will take off.

.

my interview with Bob Muglia, bigwig

In December I interviewed Bob Muglia for Technet Edge.  You can see it here.

I've met a few Vice Presidents and CxO's in my time at Microsoft.  A few intimidated the hell out of me.  A couple were pretty down to earth.  None so much as Bob though.  I've been a fly on the wall of a couple of his staff meetings, and have been consistently impressed with his ability to uncover the real state of the business and do so in a gracious and respectful manner.  You know what else impressed me?  When I emailed him asking if he'd be willing to do an interview, he replied personally, just a few hours later, with "I'm glad to do this!"

It really was clear when I met with Bob that he has a real passion for our products.  He really does install all of this stuff on his own, and I've heard the feedback he gives product teams when he sees things we should do better.  When you look at the evolution of our server products over the years he's been in this role, you can see how that passion is paying off.

I have a request for you:  At some point you've been using a Microsoft product, and asked yourself "what were they thinking when they made this?"  If you'll let me know what product you were using, and what made you want to ask that question, I'll grab my Edge camera and do my best to find an answer for you.

0 to WDS in 6 minutes

I usually manage to stay behind the camera on TechNet Edge, but Neil showed up in my office the other day with a camera, and wouldn't leave until I showed him how to set up and configure Windows Deployment Services (WDS) on Server 2008.  You can see the results here.

I did leave out one minor configuration step that happens automatically when you first configure WDS - if your WDS server is also your DHCP server it needs to be configured to not listen on the DHCP port, and add a DHCP setting that redirects the boot requests to a different port.  The WDS console will do this for you automatically when you first start it up.  If DHCP runs on a different machine, you just need to add the Scope Option 060 value PXClient.

locked and loaded

It took a year and a half to do it, but Neil's IT Pro Evangelist team is up to full headcount, now that Joey is on the team.  Please head over and welcome him!
Small world observation:  during his interview, Joey and I realized that we worked at the same company and played hoops together some 15 years ago and 1000 miles away.  When we were talking last week, I found out that he used to be the DJ at the dance club I frequented in high school.