NY blog, monday

Bare with me, I wrote this on my ipad and most pics are on my camera so I’ll be uploading them on Sunday when I get home

Wake up in the morning feeling… Wait a moment, no shitty songs in my blog.
Alarm off at 8, time for a shower and off to the Convention Center for a 10am kick off. I’m on 33rd and 7th so I’ve got to get up to 34th then down to 11. Seems like a quick walk but those blocks from 7 to 11 are looooong.

Got to the convention center which is huge and right by the Hudson river. About 3 or 4 conventions are going on simultaneously, so you can imagine its pretty big. Quick check in and into the Cloud Computing Bootcamp to get a general knowlede on the topic. The official keynote is until 1pm but this was a good way to get acquainted with the event.

After this had 1 hour for lunch, so I had a chance to get to White Castle again… That shit is addictive. BTW I find it amazing that there is no free web access at an IT conention, SysCon (event organizer) will hear abou this. Also a real bad thing of all IT events is that most of the attendees are male, almost no women and those few are mmm well not to attractive.

At 1 we get the keynote speech by Seve Shmuckenbrock from Dell, it even included a welcome video from Michael Dell. A nice keynote speech, got us into the groove of the event. He talked about the cloud, benefits, challenges and how the business is focused on the “yes, now!” idea. Yes we want it, we want it now. That is the main foundation and motivation of cloud computing as a whole. I liked he talked from a Dell perspective yet he didn’t try to push it a a sales presentation.
The second part of the keynote was by Bill Zack of Microsoft. Right from the start lots of people left, that speaks loads of how the public sees Microsoft. This was boring as hell and nothing more than a platform to push the Azure service.

The next presentation was by Jill Singer who is the CIO of the NRO. This actually was a great presentation, she talked about how she and the NRO has planned the migration to a cloud, her recommendation for any enterprise doing this and some best practices they are using. A real insightful presenation.

The next one was War on the Cloud, a boring sales presentation. It was so boring that midway throught the presentation half the people had; also there were 5 minutes left for q&a, not a single question, you know no one cares when there is not a single question.

A presentation on Entreprise Private Cloud was next. A pretty good presentation with the experiences of 2 companies – abiquo and roundarch. These experiences were pretty insightful, yet i still dont have an idea on how to start implementing could with my customers in Mexico, maybe later at the demo floor I will get some more insight.

Had a couple of more presentations, nothing to write home about but was able to hit the floor and see what the vendors had to offer. I found some interesting things mostly for storage and for x86 servers, not much for UNIX (AIX specifically); still some good offerings from which I hope to get more info to offer tu my customers and see what happens.

While I thought there should have been snacks and drinks during the day for us to take in between sessions, there were some great drinks and snacks to have during the opening of the floor; the thing was that by this time it was around 8:30 and I hadn’t had any food since 12 so my stomach was pretty empty and the scotch and beers got to me. Time for me to hit the road.
Made the 15 minute walk towards the hotel, grabbed some pizza and headed up to the room. Was able to catch some of WWE Raw on tv and winded the day down. Some might say I should take advantage of NYC but I must rest as tomorrow is a long day and, after all, I’m here to work. Hoping for some better presentations tomorrow and a great trip to Yankee Stadium to catch RedSox vs Yankees, for now…

Mr Khakbaz out!!!

Ny Blog, sunday

Bare with me asI wrote this on my iPad and most pictures are on my camera… Will upload them when I get home

Time to kick off a great week waking up early (for a Sunday) at 9am. I catch the 1st set between Nadal-Federer in the French Open finals; what a great comeback by Nadal after starting out pretty bad.

1030 I’m out of the hotel to walk around -the best way to be a tourist around NYC- to Times Square. This guy on a wheelchair singing “nobody jerks me off like you do”, once you hear that you know you are in NYC.

Check out a couple of stores looking for a Adrian Gonzalez redsox tshirt for the game on tuesday, still not hae been able to find it. At about 1145 it find an Olive Garden right in the heart of TS, this is probably the only place where an Olive Garden has such a spectacular view. I’ve got the Hershey Store within view, so I now where the next stop will be. BTW when at Olive Garden get the Portobello Filled ravioli.

Couple of more hours of walking just soaking up the city and sights. Got into a irish pub for a quick beer and it was off to the Brooks Atkison theatre on 47th right off Broadway for Rain: a tribue to The Beatles at 3pm

Holy shit the show is AMAZING!!! I just can’t put into words how great the show is. The theatre is pretty small so you have great views from any seat. Most tribute shows I have seen are just a cheap copy but this has a pretty good production but the performers are off the hook good. The guy who plays John Lennon looks so much like him it’s scary. All of thr band members are great. Paul plays a great bass, George has some amazing guitar solos, and Ringo is great on the drums (although he looks more like Wolowitz from Big Bang Theory).

Any true Beatles fan show watch this show. It is so worth the price of admission and you will be glad you took a chance on a smaller but great show.

At 5:30 I make my way out of the theatre and onto the subway on 49th to get on the N line to get to the Mets game at Citi Field against the Braves; the trains are packed. About midway I switch to the 7th line and at about 6:15 it get off and get into the ballpack.

I can’t stress how nice the stadium is, such an improvement from historic (nice word for old) Shea Stadium. Nice surprise that it’s free batting helmet night, so I get a souvenier to take home. Got to the team store to get a couple of gifts for my old folks (a shot glass and a magnet for their collections). A thing I hadn’t seen at other parks is that you have the chance to buy game used balls, bats and bases, along with other signed memorabilia like jerseys and lineup cards; a pretty cool thing for mets fan.

Got to walk around the park during batting practice, and then got to my seating area to watch the Braves some balls out of the park. Eric Hinske was cool with the fans, also Jair Jurgens threw some ball to the fans. One funny/scary moment was when a ball was hit one a line drive for a homerun; the thing was that is was hit si hard that everyone moved away, even some dude who left his daughter to be hit by the ball right on the shoulder; it was brutal and funny at the same time. The mother didn’t know what to do, confort the girld or be mad at her husband.

Got a hotdog and a beer tight before the game, so its game time and right from the get-go the Mets were in control and hitting Tim Hudson’s pitches hard. A 5-0 lead after 4 innings and some great pitching by R.A. Dickey (whoa his parents must have hated him) pretty much sealed it for the Braves. I was so cold and I had no jacket so I had to get some hot chocolate to help me get through the game.

At around the 7th inning I decided to walk around the ball park to see all it has to offer. Check all the pics here. Had to much to eat so I made a pitstop and right at that moment Brian McCann hits a dinger which I missed.

As I was to take the subway back to the hotel I decided to leave at the top of the 9th inning to try and not be all tight on the way back. Missed the braves 3 run ninth but the game was sealed and ended 6-4. Took the 7 all the way to Times Square and made the quick 8 block walk to the hotel.
All in all a great day, got to see a spectacular Beatles concert (the closest to seeing them live in my opinion) walk around Times Square, buy a couple of things and catch a baseball game along with getting to know the new stadium.

Back to the hotel which is pretty crappy but in a great location. I’m so tired right now so I’ll just hang around and get ready for the start of the 8th Annual International Cloud Computing Expo tomorrow at he Jvist Convention Center, for now…

MrKhakbaz out!!!

NY Blog, travel day

So I get to Monterrey’s airport pretty early (1015 for a 1235 flight) since the flight will be pretty much empty checking and security goes so quickly. Enough time to grab breakfast and sit around for a while tweeting with friends.

Boarding & everything goes quickly. We get one of those small ass planes, the kind that has 1 seat on one side and two on the othe and about 18 rows; I have no problem with that, the thing is they area made for short people, not that I’m tall (5-11.785, dang so close to 6 feet) and I hit my head when I stand totally upright.

A quick hour and 20 minutes later we touch down in Houston. Holy crap IAH is a huuuuge airport, I walk like 10 minutes at full speed only to get to immigration. A long line awaits, and by long I mean long and slow enough to get me nervous that I may miss my connection or that I won’t be able to get my bag and pass customs and drop it off to get onto the plane. It’s about 1:20 and I gotta board the plane to Newark at 3:05, time keeps passing and the line is moving sloooooow, about half way they open another couple of booths which helps out a ton. Finally at about 2:25 I make it past immigration and I’m off to the races.

I get my bag, go though customs and drop It off. Quick bathroom stop and we’re off to the races to make it to the gate and hopefully get something to eat. At 3:10 I’m near the gate and all I could get my hands on was a coke and some cheetos. Junk food that saved me for the 3 hour flight from Houston to Jersey. As soon as I get to the gate they annouce boarding for rows 22 to 30 -I’m on 28 so its time.
Flight goes without a hitch. I love Continental on long flights as, even in coach, we get a individual screens. I got to catch a Big Bang Theory show and some games

Also got to see Hall Pass on the iPad and a couple of CSI Las Vegas episodes, also read a little. Gotta love the iPad for long boring trips. So after 3 hours we touch down at Newark about 20 minutes before schedule so we had to wait on the runway for the gate to clear. Another long walk to get to baggage claim, thankfully my bag got here.

I was going to catch a cab but the line was like 50 group long so I took a 15 dollar bus trip right to Times Square. Holy shit didn’t remember how amazing this place is. Seriously, Manhattan is beautiful. Form the skyline right before the Lincoln Tunnel to getting onto 42nd street from 9th avenue. Made the short walk down to 33rd and 7th to the Pennsilvania Hotel which is right in front of Madison Square Garden. The hotel lobby is pretty nice, checked in and got up to the 11th floor. The floor halls are pretty old and the rooms are old and small. The one thing I love is the bathroom, it just screams NY.

After resting a couple of minutes I went out to catch something to eat at about 10pm. For the first time ever I had White Castle to eat, for anyone who has seen Harold and Kumar you know this is the holy grail. Damn it didn’t dissapoint, had 4 sliders (small burgers that are amazing! 4 seems a lot but they are sooo small). Walked around the hotel area a bit, got some ice cream and headed back to the room.
Up at the room it was time to unpack and iron out clothes and then catch SportsCenter and wind down as it had been a long day.

Hoping tomorrow kicks off what should be an amazing week in New York, but for now…

Mr Khakbaz checking out!