Road Trippin

Off to see my people, my professional colleagues.

When I was downtown, I thought of my time working down there at the University, the diversity of academia, of downtown, traffic was a pain, but it was pretty cool to be in the center of everything.

So I’m headed to the state capital, it’s a few hours drive. Load up some fresh CDs into the car’s CD changer. That will be my backup if the weather interferes with my XM radio reception. Turn on Radar / Laser detector, ready to roll.

Oh, it’s after 6:30 am, I’m gonna hit rush hour a little until I get out of our metro area. Bumper to bumper, but moving well. Then the open road, tunes cranking, road condition decent.

Great set of speakers & participants. One company in attendance was making the trade press for a very successful project. Not only was scalability of their application becoming impossible, even with over 300 Unix servers, but there were illusive performance problems that could not be found. They were able to consolidate over 100 servers onto a single mainframe with the newest virtualization software. The higher level tools available were able to pinpoint the performance problem to a memory leak.

Comparison of the newest virtualization techniques, performance monitoring and improvement, various operating systems. Advanced script writing. Great topics of conversation.

We have free time for discussions. It’s a great place to learn and grow, a free exchange of ideas. That 20 something I mentioned in Tagged will not be found there, he doesn’t want to learn, he wants to just get by, he wants to play the system. He'd rather talk sports than technology. There are even many experienced people who have the same opinion or maybe their bosses are keeping them so busy because they see no value in their staff having an opportunity to learn.

Speaking of bossy people. My wife was one of those who came not to appreciate this, although likely for another reason. Before my son was born she accompanied me on several trips to national conventions. Not crazy, have a good time, Vegas conventions. No, these are the kind where you are working, presenting, some by invitation only, or by call for papers. She would come to see my presentations and was proud of me.

Somewhere down the line, she changed her tune, she criticized my involvement in professional activities, she would say “not another boy scout meeting”. She felt she needed to do more with her life. She criticized me in many areas, as if I were competition. Well that’s a bigger story then will fit here.

So it was a good day. Interesting exercise for my mind. Good to see other experts from around the state and a few experts who flew in for the occasion. We know each other and take out work seriously. Boy scouts are always prepared and have high ethical principles and camaraderie. Why would someone think badly of that?

Long ride back home. Not going to make it back before my son’s bedtime. So I’ll stop at the next rest stop & give him a good night call. He wants to draw via telephone. He’s going to draw a cell phone and I’ll draw another yellow submarine. This one by hand. We describe what we’re drawing to each other.

He asks "Aren’t you going to color it?"
"Well I didn’t bring anything to color it with."
"You can color it when you get home", he suggests.
"OK, I will, we'll look at them together on Monday."

He’s going to bed, I’ll be driving another hour.

Nearing the end of a long day, long week. TGIF.