Jimmy.Brainflush.com

On the eve of the Macworld SF 2007 Keynote event, I bring you the top ten signs a Jobs keynote is near.
10. Bandwidth guy at the office gets presents with IP addresses in the FROM: box.

9. Pricing out a trip to said keynote locale on Orbitz or Travelocity, but not Expedia.

8. Most people work from home.

7. I go to macrumors.com, and it’s like I’m visiting really cool relatives that I haven’t seen in a while.

6. Compulsive, random links to apple.com are placed everywhere..

5. Quirky assimilation of turtlenecks in the workday apparel.

4. Rumors including global domination are actually given second or third traction runs on major nublog sites.

(nublog - not really news, not really blogs.. more of a misshapen reformation of a rumor; pronounced noo-blahg)

3. Compulsive gathering of all Apple related items into a collection shrine-worthy, usually within Isight of one’s computer monitor.

2. Inappropriate use of I. “How am I doing today?! I’m I-fantastic!, leading coworkers to assume you’ve fallen off the Iwagon.

1. Listening to or buying anything U2 in the iTunes music store..

Steve Morton is my Hero
Mars Roving
Snow

It’s clear to me that this ManageFusion went a lot faster than the Vegas trip. Coming in that day early was, it turns out, probably the biggest difference. Maybe it was the magic of Vegas though. Then again, they say you always remember your first time.

Today closed with a really cool presentation by the rocket scientist who leads the Mars Rover project for NASA. Totally, unbelievably breathtaking. Near the end of this presentation, when they showed the orbital picture of the little Rover from space, I think we all collectively shed a little tear of emotion; for the Rovers, for the foothills each named after the Columbia crew, and for these little rovers doing things never done before.

The NS Sessions I attended today were really fantastic.. very tech-heavy, which was really awesome to see. I also begged and pleaded for placement on the beta for Polaris.. we’ll see what happens.

It’s partly cloudy in the free wifi cafe in the Orlando International Airport. I’m outside of a Borders, freaking out about the wide open nature of my communication; (thank you Laura Chappell).

It’s in the eightlies outside, and it’s in the thirties, and snowing, I hear, in Chicago. I’d try to delay my flight for another week if I thought I could pull it off. An older man with very large eyebrows sits across from me with his wife.

It’s amazing how many couples sit and just occasionally stare at each other. Maybe it’s made slightly more amazing by the soundtrack of ‘She’s A Rainbow” from the ‘Stones.

And with that, on behalf of Mick and the boys, and with thanks to Altiris for another fantastic show, I bid you a good afternoon fair reader. Look for an update next week on the altirisbook.com site, and the joys of establishing pilot deadlines.

Well, as United says so well in those commercials I love so much, ‘It’s time to fly.’

Client Suite Announcement
Swag Update
So far today:

Announcement: Client Security Suite.

Altiris announced their newest suite of products, a combination of all of the awesome security and application auditing tools, which are a must have in any client organization.

I was sort of wishy washy on this until Laura Chappell brought the fear of the possible into my skull and luckily into my backpack. She’s given us a great suite of tools to work with.

Had a bit of luck in the swag department.. with a hat and t-shirt that I’ll actually wear. It seems as if the most prized possesion has to be the tech law tshirts.

I’ve learned a bit more about Polaris; unfortunately I can’t talk about it. Spent some quality time with our Assigned Engineer.

For all the big budget, and the excitement, Altiris still comes across as a family company.. a small organization where everyone knows everyone..

Nevermind that they’ve doubled their headcount in the last year and easily have had the same amount of gains of products through acquisition and rebranding.

I’m exhausted. And we’re just past the halfway point.

I’ll try to check in tomorrow after we close out.

Jimmy

Keynote Rocks to “I’m a Little Teacup”

SVS is HUGE
Christmas is coming early.l

It wasn’t enough that the ManageFusion houseband was back in session, or that between this and the last ManageFusion 20-25 products came out or were updated.

What blew me away about this morning’s presentations so far is Vendor integration. Altiris is pushing hard after releasing a new SDK to bring more vendors into the fold.

SVS Demos included demos of Office 2007 from a USB key. It’s awesome.

More after the afternoon session.

Rock on,

Jimmy

Keynote Rocks to “I’m a Little Teacup”

SVS is HUGE
Christmas is coming early.l

It wasn’t enough that the ManageFusion houseband was back in session, or that between this and the last ManageFusion 20-25 products came out or were updated.

What blew me away about this morning’s presentations so far is Vendor integration. Altiris is pushing hard after releasing a new SDK to bring more vendors into the fold.

SVS Demos included demos of Office 2007 from a USB key. It’s awesome.

More after the afternoon session.

Rock on,

Jimmy

Warm Weather

Flight Record

Brand Loyalty

Less Booty
My decision to wake up this early was predicated on posting here. My wake up call this morning came from Spider-Man, and it wasn’t nearly as cool as I hoped it’d be; just a prepubescent Peter Parker wannabe telling me to get up my Spidey sense and wake up.. kind of remeniscent of ‘Brian’ on Office Space (the guy working at Chochkey’s with all of the flair).

Unfortunately, I don’t have much to report as of yet. The conference starts in a matter of hours. When I went to conference registration to pickup my backpack and conference materials, I noticed a few things right away - first- I couldn’t register; the payment from my employer hadn’t reached here yet. Given the option of trying to find the authorized P.O. from work or authorizing a credit card, I chose the latter; this after spending 1/2 an hour trying to find the P.O. from work.

Then, serendipiity struck.

Somewhere between the hour I tried to check in and the second attempt, the payment processed. All was well. I grabbed my backpack, headed upstairs, and resolved to snag out all goodies and goodie potential, which I think I sort of failed with in Las Vegas.

So far, I must say I’m a little bummed. Not nearly as much freebies as Vegas. No blue chrome water bottle, no business card holder clock. BUt then again, maybe it’s too early to judge. Perhaps I’m weighing the total booty take away too heavily, too early.

I’m looking forward to Steve Morton’s opening address this morning in the way that little kids sometimes look forward to Christmas morning. Nothing beats that first day address. All of the exciting stuff usually gets announced then. Okay, it’s not a Steve Jobs announcement.. but then again it is a guy named Steve, and a company starting with an A..

The flight in from Chicago on United yesterday went well. They’re adding power stations with barstools along the concourseway. This is the smartest thing I’ve seen in a long time. The wireless from Oingo isn’t that bad, for 6.95 a day.

There was a guy I met there on the stools heading to Vegas to play poker, and I think he was a professional.. and I thought gambling professionally might be cool. I do find myself up at wee hours watching the stupid World Poker Tour on ESPN. Why does ESPN broadcast back to back to back to back episodes of such an addictive show at such a vulnerable hour?

I have this cheezy thing I do when I leave out of terminal one at OHare while flying United; I jack Gershwin up on the Bose headphones/iPod, grab my Starbucks, and head all the way down to my gate. Could someone BE any more brand loyal?

We’re expecting a high today in Orlando of 87 degrees. (This forecast brought to you by the Weather Channel) The first time here, I was six and it was the year of the first Columbia launch, which I saw from along one of the highways here. All I can remember is being very hungry while we waited for the launch.

We went to DisneyWorld and stayed in a Days Inn. Another memory I have is laying in a bed with my brother and sister (we’re all very young at this point) and staring at the soffit of the roof overhang. Actually that’s the most vivid memory I take away from it. The only logical explanation I could summon is that we had a wooden soffit on our house at the time, and this one was a shiny aluminum one.

Expect another update tonight after the Partner’s Expo, if not sooner; around lunch.

Three days until ManageFusion Orlando.
Book Site up soon.
Altirisbook.Com

So, what do you know?

It’s already fall. I knew it was officially fall when I saw the myriad of Christmas decorations being set in motion at Macy’s on State Street.

With fall this year comes another rite of passage, ManageFusion Orlando, which gets underway next week, the ONLY place in North America for Altiris administrators to be. My schedule’s chock full of hands on labs and I will be posting on any and every development I legally can. Expect at least one update (if not more) daily, for those of you who can’t make it.

My goal is to simulate the experience online as best I can.. I was going to do this from the book site, (http://www.altirisbook.com) but with my schedule of late I haven’t been able to get the site online, which leads to the following announcement:

ANNOUNCEMENT: Altirisbook.Com Goes Online November 1st.

I haven’t written any new material in over a month; and look forward to getting the site and books closer to something legible by then.

Notes from the field, and pics from the event, will be here, beginning Monday, with the pre-travel bonus holiday festivities.

Note: The day before ManageFusion, Altiris normally has customer feedback sessions. It’s a good opportunity for you and your organization to talk to the people in charge and get some design ideas out to them, as well as bring solutions to problems you find in their products.

I’ve seen a few suggestions already making their way into the base code, which is really, frankly, exciting. Speaking of exciting, there’s Polaris.

Polaris is the codename for the next big rev of Notification Server - NS 7. And while we got a brief glimpse of it in ManageFusion Vegas, we were promised a bigger more robust view of it in Orlando. It’s the justification for my trip to my boss, and rightly so, as it will have a huge impact on an organization of our size.

This week I’ve been driving a brand-spanking new Dodge Charger, with a 5.7 Liter variable HEMI. The car is fast and it’s nimble. It’s a gashog compared to my Saturn, but it’s a muscle car. I mention this because it connects to ManageFusion.

The labs at ManageFusion are a chance to test drive. Whether it’s a mature solution that I haven’t had time to play with in my enterprise, or something brand new, or even if I’m just getting some new information on a product I already know quite a bit about, it’s the concept of the testdrive that really grabs and moves me.

It moves me to completely book all of my days in really sunny vacation places, with excellent weather, and beautiful scenery.

Why?

Because the test drive is, in a way, American. It’s the open road full of possibilities. It’s like the HEMI power ripping me up one of the many hills in my hometown on the way to or from the train station, minus the speed limits or project managers, or integration roadblocks that so often hold up the doing that makes this profession so much fun.

We can do more, and do it with higher effectiveness using Altiris then really can be done with other management suites.

Zenworks used to be the best. But Novell blew it, and lost to the undercut pricing of Microsoft and Exchange, thereby losing everything.

In the same town, but IMHO, Altiris is the Top Gun now. And to think, we’re all in this on the ground floor. Okay, I take that back.. the ground floor was a while ago.. If you can rememeber the long-s Altiris logo, then you got in on the ground floor.

Expect more on the book, the coming site, and ManageFusion, in posts to come.

I also want to apologize for everyone who had to endure the shameless defacement of the site. We should be good to go from here on in.

Thanks to Dave the Genius for correcting those issues.

And happy Friday.
Jim

Huge Sale- BOGO
So, while at the doctor;’s office for post op discussions on Thursday, mom and l peeked into the little surgery diary which was left open on the computer. It turns out the doc did a bit more than I bargained for.

So I sort of thought that, given the healing process, but getting it confirmed was kind of curiously reaffirming. My doc - Dr. Mimis Cohen, has done, from what I can tell so far (a week and a day later), a hell of a job, especially, given what he had to work with.

I guess I had a huge amount of cartilage in my nose, and the palate was so full of scar tissue that they just sort of had to redo the incision and start from scratch, sending the design team, if you will, all the way back to the uvula for seperation and re-flapping. I had a few procedures done that I didn’t understand and I really wish I could have screenshotted that diary to better understand.. but oh well, maybe it’s better.

The nose then, was very cartilaged up. So, they had to go all the way up and back, which I think ended up being helped by the palate redo, since they’re all in the same neighborhood. I’m most likely talking out of my ass, but that’s life.

Weird side effects: I’ve shed my facial skin today.. the whole face, just sort of peeled right off. I blame my pull back on the pain pills.

I took my first number two yesterday in a week, and rather than being thankful about it, my body got bloody mad.. literally. And that’s all I’ll say about that, other than the stool was mostly coagulated.. but hey how bout those White Sox?

I got some laundry finished today, and finished up some notes on a really good Tracy seminar. Also did my goal setting for August. It’ll be good to be home on the weekends this month.

I’m looking forward to final packing removal on Tuesday - then I might be able to talk. (a novel concept, no doubt.)

I actually miss talking. I miss work too. Working from home will be okay though I think. Especially since we kicked the bandwidth here at home up a notch.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

It was the night before surgery,
and all through the house,
Jim was stuffing his face,
until he felt like throwing up.

Half an hour before midnight,
and the two fisted liquid chugging continues,
but the tired is wearing,
the stress is wearing,
and it’s almost time for bed.

I don’t know what to say.
I had a good talk with mom tonight about friendships. How making them last works.
I got a good work out in.. and I’m unsure of when I’ll return to the gym.
I hope to before I return to work.

I’m on vacation now.. yeay! Man, I’ve picked some great vacations as of late, ey?

Moving, closing, moving. Moving. Boot camp. Somewhere in there was the June weekend in Canada.

My stomach is kind of upset with me right now. Dude, why so much food? And the night time protein? That should definitely have gone last. Not the pork chop.

My hope is that I’m not up peeing all night. Moreover, I damn well better not get hungry.

Surgery’s at ten. We’ll leave the house at 8:30, so I get a bit of time to sleep in. Ah, vacation.

So, I’m not completely sure that I’ll make it home tomorrow night.. But I have faith that I’ll be fine, and sleeping in my own bed. Besides, my new Netflix will have arrived. Entourage and ladder 43.

I’ve only had 2 or 3 anxiety waves, and I’m really tired. So hopefully I’ll sleep well enough.

When I clarify why I’m doing this, I return to a position of power over the situation. When I remember that, and focus on that, I’m much better.

This was, above all else, my decision. And It’s important to ask the right questions. How awesome will this be in 3 weeks? How awesome is it that other than just showing up, there’s really not a lot for me to do? Other than heal, and eat a lot of soft foods?

In that regard, this really is like a vacation. It’s also an opportunity to connect to a part of myself that I haven’t touched base with in thirteen years.

There’s a huge bit of spiritual self-evaluation going on there that actually calms the inner core me. Of course there’s the women too. Ah, women. They swoon over me now when I take the train, and maybe it’s that i”ve been driving too much and hadn’t noticed.

But yea, more of that will do the soul and the body and the mind well. Props to Tony and to my digital camera for opening my eyes and more importantly, getting me to take action.

It’s good to get uncomfortable, and move forward. It’s much better than just standing still. I’ll try to remember that as the next wave comes over.

Good night everybody.

Thanks for being there.

Fiji gets in some hot water

Myspace & 80/94

Selling Home Like Giving Away Old Blood Stained Mattress
The Fiji water company got into some hot water with the Cleveland public works department when they decided to run an ad saying “The Label Says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.”

So the Cleveland Water Works company does some tests and finds the Fiji water is crap. Read the full story here: http://www.cleveland.com/search/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1153297876167000.xml?ncounty_cuyahoga&coll=2

I was all intent on posting on MySpace tonight, but it’s so slow I flashed back to fifteen minutes ago and getting out of Indiana on 8094. At least the highway has an excuse.. it’s in Indiana.

And, I do believe I might have, possibly maybe sold my house again for the fourth time this weekend. I have zero emotion on the subject because by the fourth time? Let’s be honest here, it’s just the same old thing that always ends with me in regret and the outcome being unpleasing for both parties.

I go under the knife on Friday to repair the non working air leak also known as my nose. There’s also going to be some bondo action on other parts of my body where dents don’t belong.

I’m just excited about the soft foods. Can you blame me?

This is SO much better than myspace.

Consider me converted back home, Davey!

Jimmy