Ad Nauseam - ramblings of a technologist

April Fools!

adamca — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:14:02 GMT

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

Another Meme goes mainstream

adamca — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:09:07 GMT

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

adamca — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:02:52 GMT

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

adamca — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:01:08 GMT

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

adamca — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:44:22 GMT

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

adamca — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:34:51 GMT

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

adamca — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:10:58 GMT

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

adamca — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:23:32 GMT

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?

adamca — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:34:48 GMT

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

adamca — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:14:41 GMT

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:

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.
I have driven a motorcycle once, for about 100 feet, before wedging it into a cow feeding trough.
I try and choose parking spaces next to expensive cars, because I think those drivers will be less likely to ding my doors.
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.
in 11 years at Microsoft, I've had at over 10 different offices, 12 different managers, and 3 job roles.
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"
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.
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.