Oh Those Gas Prices Keep Rising

Oh Those Gas Prices Keep Rising, originally uploaded by justindsmith.

It finally happened. There is no ceiling. The prices only go up.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Cherry Blossom Festival, originally uploaded by justindsmith.

So the Cherry Blossom Festival was today. It's more of an asian festival. You would think this would be some grand festival. Culturally revealing. Unfortunately I must have missed that part. All I saw were hamburger stands, shaved ice containers, and little markets setup with crafts that didn't seem to lean one culture or another. But hey, I went. I tried.

Oh Glorious Deadlines

Oh Glorious Deadlines, originally uploaded by justindsmith.

The deadline draws near.
The sound of typing rings clear.
He places pixels on a screen.
While other engineers dream.

Super burrito

Super burrito, originally uploaded by justindsmith.

Eating at a taquaria in San Francisco with some friends from church.

Coit Tower Pictures

So on Saturday I hung out with some friends in San Francisco. We went to Coit Tower, which is the second largest hill in San Francisco. It overlooks the bay and the city and you can get a pretty good view of everything. We went during sunset, so some interesting sites!

The first picture isn't from the tower, it's from the wharf down by the bay. (After we went to the aquarium.) The last one is a little blurry upon close inspection. I should have taken my tripod. Maybe that means another trip?

Also, we had a guy setup a video camera during the service this morning. He's supposed to get me the DVD some time this week. If everything works out I might be able to get a video up here. This is a work in progress. We shall see if everything works out.

VMWORLD

So yesterday I got the chance to go to VMWORLD up in San Francisco, which is the virtualization industry show that we put on. Lots of companies, lots of people, lots of free t-shirts. I didn't get any free t-shirts because I didn't have the right kind of badge. I got to go with an employee badge, which pretty much let me do everything except get free stuff.

The show was pretty fun, if just a little overwhelming. When I first got there I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. So the first thirty minutes was spent wandering around looking at all the flashing lights and computer monitors. Luckily one of my managers spotted me and let me in on all the secrets, like how I could just walk into any of the sessions. This made killing time a lot easier. Plus there was free Mountain Dew and cookies scattered around. This made killing time a lot more sugary.

I worked the booth for our product for about three hours total. I was supposed to work for two, but with people filtering in and out and there not being enough people to really work the booth I stuck around. It was a lot of fun getting to put my marketing face on and talk to customers. I think overall it was good for me to meet people that actually use our product and hear what they had to say about it. A lot of good things and a lot of suggestions.

Below are a few pictures from the show that I was able to snap with my phone. [Click to make them bigger.]

The first two show the big blackboard that was setup that had two artist drawing (usually) comedic representations of key words that we use in the virtualization biz.

The third is the stairway leading to the event. You actually came down these steps to get to the event. Going up them means you were leaving. So I took the pictures from inside the event. Makes sense? Good.

The fourth picture is the vmware booth.

The fifth picture is the actual booth that I worked at. The monitor to the left was the one showing off our product.

Church Band Pictures

Well, the church-service-band-extravaganza went well. Below are a few pictures from the service (warm-up, not actual service) of the band playing. They're clickable to make them bigger. Enjoy!

Next up, going to VMworld to work a booth! Although I'm not sure when that is exactly. I was supposed to work tomorrow (Tuesday) but they gave me a pass to get in on Wednesday. So now everything is up in the air. At the least I'll be able to go and just check things out. And at this point I think I'd prefer that over having to answer intricate details about software.