Out-of-Band Post

TechEd Day 1 Summary

By / June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post

Day 1 is coming to a close as I write it sitting pool side using the Samsung Series 7 Slate. I have learned a lot of new cool stuff is coming to the Microsoft world in the area of virtualization. However I am disappointed in the lack of technical knowledge that I’ve gained.

It is not that the technical knowledge wasn’t available, it was that I spent my day taking certifications. I started my day early at 7:30am for the Twitter Army, which lead up to going into the TechEd Keynote, I had to leave the keynote early to get to my first certification exam.

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TechEd 2012 – It Begins Now

By / June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post

Ever since last year when I first attended TechEd I knew I wanted to come back. I decided to wait until I was closer to becoming full time before I requested to go. Back in January of this year I spoke with my boss about attending TechEd 2012, he went ahead and moved it up the ranks to get approval and I was lucky to have been approved. I was told to schedule everything then ask for the credit card. I got myself setup for a conference pass and staying at The Rosen Centre Hotel which is right next door.

Over the past few months I’ve been getting myself more involved with the community which is one major thing I had regretted last year, this time around I am doing it right. I decided to take the #60Days2MCSE challenge which I then moved into getting more involved with #TheKrewe. I am now ready to take my 70-246 and hopefully become MCSE: Private Cloud Certified. I am also ready to meet up with all of the new friends I’ve made withing #TheKrewe and I am ready to help throw one of the best TechEd 2012 parties!.

Over the past week is has been crazy for me, getting my schedule finalized, getting last minute studying done, getting bills paid before I am out of town, packing… oh yea and working. However I have everything packed now, and at the time of writing this I am T-24 hours from leaving my house in Indianapolis, IN and driving down to Orlando, Florida to have the best week of the year. It is going to be jam packed and exhausting but I would not change it for the world.

I will be tweeting my whole drive down to Florida (only when we stop of course!) I will also be tweeting our arrival and how the Hands-on-labs are once I get myself registered! If you are unable to attend TechEd I highly encourage you watch my twitter feed which I will be posting pictures on, and hopefully I will get some time to blog too!

TechEd 2012 – The Schedule

By / June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post

If you read my post on Important Resources for TechEd you will notice that I mentioned building your schedule, and overbooking yourself for all sessions. After doing such a thing you probably feel like you will be overwhelmed but do not fret. Just take a look at my planned schedule for TechEd!

Some of the events I have on here is specific for me, or are parties that registration may be closed already. Make certain you track down registration for parties because these are the best chances to network and is an extremely useful part of TechEd.

Tech Ed 2012 – Important Resources

By / June 1, 2020 / Microsoft, Out-of-Band Post
Hello All! We are a mere 10 days until Tech Ed Day 0, with that in mind I’ve began throwing my schedule together and getting organized! I wanted to provide some links and quick notes on important things for you to know. I expanded on some of the quick notes with details about how I handled them.

Useful Links:

Quick Notes:

  • Plan sessions you want to attend
  • Take notes
  • Be involved with #TheKrewe
  • Network with other attendees
  • Pack appropriately
  • Be prepared for little sleep

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What do you DO?

By / November 5, 2012 / Out-of-Band Post

I get this question almost daily. It seems like a very easy question to answer, but when it comes to a technical job it becomes much more challenging to answer. When I started working as a Support Technician it was pretty easy. I am the guy who fixes computers, pretty much everyone understands that; even the older people I told it to. I usually got a reply like “OH! You are the guy that hates when they see me calling.” This is always fun to laugh off and tell them nah I love hearing from you it means I have a job!

When you move from front line defense in computer disasters it became much more challenging. Usually the questions start out at with “Where do you work?” The simple reply is I work at Apparatus, and I get another followup question “Oh, what do they do?” This is where it starts getting tricky. I usually just answer we are an IT consulting and managed services company, I know it isn’t the friendliest reply but I’ve yet to come up with an easier way to explain it.

Then it gets to the really tricky part of “What do you do there?” Most people can simply reply with their job title like I used to. However when you say I am a Systems Analyst people get a really confusing look on their face. So you try to clear it up, but when it comes to managing a small web server that supports one website to a server farm of 12+ servers that run just a few websites it gets much more challenging.

There is no simple answer to what I do, but I can say pretty simply you know all those websites you visit online. Things like Facebook, Google, and YouTube. I manage the computers that run websites like those, the websites I manage aren’t quite as popular as those however they still have anywhere from a couple people visiting it daily to over 10,000 thousand people visiting it per day.

The sad part of the answers I can provide are just a small portion of my job. Making the servers work isn’t everything, it goes into creating the servers, to helping people work using the software on the server. I also spend a good chunk of times in meetings about new environments and even teaching people about the environments you know about.

Overall when you want to know what I do… just trust me when I say that what I do makes the world what it is today.