Took the LAS to SFO to SEA flight today with Virgin America. I have to say it was the best experience flying in a long ever. First leg was in a window seat in coach and I have to say the leg room was amazing. At least 10" from my knee to the seat in front of me. The inflight entertainment system, Red, is really full of good content. I didn't even bother keeping my iPhone on. I was able to create a playlist of songs from Foo Fighter and Orbital. The next leg was in first class. I was able to upgrade the night before for $50. OMG I swear first class comes equipped with a time accelorator. The 2 hour flight felt like it was only an hour. I have to say that if Virgin America can score more legs they will dominate the cattle car class of airlines.

Once again I am off to Seattle to partake in the madness that is the Penny Arcade Expo. I was going to do the same trek I did last year with the West Coast Train Trip but unfortunately my cohort in the trek had to back out. This year I will be traveling on the dork planes from Virgin America both there and back again. I have to give it to Virgin America, I was going to be in a middle seat but their First Class upgrade was only $50. Hell if I am going to pass that up. Last time I was in First Class was a kid on a standby ticket with the family. I hope to get some Fallout 3 action and I might try and find my way into a DnD 4e game. I'll definitely be in for the concerts with Jonathan Coulton, Anamanaguchi, and Freezepop. It's too bad the first night concerts are during the movie, The Gamers:Dorkness Risin.I want to see that but at least it is on Netflix now. I'll be posting pictures and updates during the week.

In Other News

I got my hands on a new Dell PowerEdge 1900 and I will be running ESXi on it. I plan on virtualizing about 10 servers on the thing. The list so far is;

• Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller. (DNS, DHCP, AD)
• SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 SSAS Data warehouse
• SQL Server 2008 SSRS, SSIS
• IIS 7, FTP
• Sharepoint Services 3.0 SP2
• System Center: Operations Manager
• Windows Server 2008 Cluster
• Development Server with Visual Studio 2008

I'll be busy for a while I surmise.

Since today is the 100 day mark since I posted Looking Forward 2008 I figure I would go over and review some of the things I have done on that list and the modifications to it.

Gaming

Gaming has been pretty light this year. I did drop my subscriptions to WoW and Tabula Rasa, I am glad I am subscription free until Age of Conan is released, which I have already pre-ordered. Hellgate: London has been taking up some time now that there is a crew for me to run around with. As for PC gaming in general, I don't think I will really be purchasing that much since most games will head to consoles first or there will be some horrible DRM(see  here) to deal with. Consoles have as well been pretty light as well so far. Rock Band is always bringing me back with the DLC content and with GTA IV released last week it my GTA OCD is back with 100% looming at the end of a dark tunnel. I'll get around to a PS3 once MGS4 is released and finally move up to Blu-ray. I still have not picked up a Wii only because it just something that I know would collect dust in between parties. I just can't see myself sitting around playing the Wii like I do with my Xbox 360. So as for the list I created earlier.

• Super Smash Bro Brawl (Wii) - Saw it, not interested unless for parties. NO BUY.
• Spore (PC) - EA's new DRM has put me off. NO BUY.
• Age Of Conan (PC)  - Seeing as a lot of LV friends are interested I have preordered it. BUY.
• Warhammer Online (PC)  - WoW Clone. NO BUY.
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) - This is the reason I am getting a PS3. BUY.
• Splinter Cell: Conviction (X360)  - Meh so far. NO BUY.
• Star War: The Force Unleashed (X360) - I loved the euphoria engine in GTA IV. BUY.
• Prototype (X360) - Delayed to next year but still a going to get it. BUY.
• Ghostbusters (X360)  - Everything so far makes me want to buy but I'm in a wait and see mode. WAIT.
• White Knight Chronicles (PS3) - Still nothing new about this but I am looking forward to it. BUY.
• Fallout 3 (PC) - Probably only one of two PC titles I will buy this year. BUY.
• Left 4 Dead (PC) - I will wait for reviews but it is still on the buy side. BUY.
• Battlefield Heroes (PC) - Its free. DOWNLOAD.

Events

Since neither of the two events have happened yet there really isn't much to say. I did move into a new home and I love it so far. Nice to have a desk again and to have some work area. It's in a decent area and the drive from and to work is great but the neighborhood is a bit noisy and the damn dog next door is a yappy little poodle. Hate poodles.

Tech

I did finally get my home network moved over to Windows Server 2008. I rebuilt my VM host machine as a 2008 AD, DNS server and virtualized with the Hyper-V from 2008 three servers; IIS7 server, SQL Server 2008, and a development machine. I still need to install Visual Studio 2008 and everything is set. I also have  Sharepoint services running but I haven't opened it out to the cloud just yet. I need to work on securing it first.

I have not tried the latest release of Ubuntu yet since I don't really have a machine right now to install it on but I hope to get to that sometime in summer.

Movies

Seen a few here and there.

• Cloverfield - Saw it and it was decent for a drama movie but not really a monster movie.
• Jumper - Didn't see, it goes to Netflix
• Diary of the Dead? - Still didn't see yet. Netflixed
• Teeth (HA) - Still have not seen this one either. Netflixed
• Vantage Point - Didn't really want to see this.
• Be Kind Rewind - Never had the time. Netflixed
• Run, Fatboy, Run - Saw this and was hilarious but just not as funny as Hot Fuzz or Shawn of the Dead.
• Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - Still on the fence about seeing this. Just seems to over the top.
• Iron Man - Amazing is all I have to say. Can't wait for Avengers and Iron Man 2.
• Speed Racer? - I'm just not sure about this one either.

As for the other movies, the more expensive things get this year the more I just want to wait for Netflix to get it. I love Netflix. Unless its a group outing I don't really plan on seeing the other movies in theaters.

Its that time of year again where I am absent from the Vegas summer sun. This time around I have 10 trips from now to end of August. I will be in Jackpot, NV; St Charles, MO; Orlando, FL; Council Bluffs, IA; Vicksburg, MS; and Seattle, WA.

For most of these trips to the properties I will be helping with installing the new backed database for our kiosk system.

Last year I was in Orlando for an SSIS class but this time I will be off to Tech Ed: IT Professionals. I'm not entirely happy that they split it from developers and IT professionals since I dabble in a little of both but I still should be getting a lot of information and training in some of the new 2008 products. I can't wait to hear more about the SSIS upgrades in SQL Server 2008.

Once again this year I will be heading out to PAX in Seattle in August and once again taking the West Coast Train Trip. Last year was a blast and expect nothing less of amazing this year. The only difference this year is I will be coming back to Vegas after PAX on Virgin America. I've been waiting for a chance to get into the geeked out Virgin America planes every since they launched their service. What better then to do it after PAX.

Well this year is a packed year as usual and look forward to getting thru another year alive and sane.

So this is a disturbing new copy protection that EA has decided to use. Like with Bioshock you have to activate the CD Key with an authorization server at EA but this time you have to also verify the CD Key every 10 days. What that means is that every 10 days you have to have have an active Internet connection or else EA will disable your game. This is entirely unacceptable to me as I like to game on my Macbook Pro and I am a heavy traveler. Yes I might have an Internet connection at Point A and Point B but the in between I am most likely not to have an connection to the Internet (ala planes).

Even though I already have Mass Effect I was on the fence about getting the PC version. I was going to get it if there was a significant mod community attached to it but now I know that I will absolutely skip Mass Effect. As for Spore there really was no way I wasn't going to get it but as it stands I am going to pass on Spore since this copy protection will not allow me to play the game when and where I want to unless I had a constant Internet connection.

If this is how EA wants to handle its PC games from here on out then there really is no need for me to buy PC game from EA. Just another nail in the PC gaming coffin.

On Mass Effect & Spore Copy Protection

So a friend of mine from Minnesota said I should look at his house on Google Street View. So I checked it out and low and behold I see my rental car from my trip last August to Minnesota.

But that's not the best part. He then says we were photographed ourselves while we were outside smoking. So I move south and alas Google has me albeit very blurry.

Yeah I have read the stories of people freaking out with Google being "evil" for taking pictures that any other normal citizen could have taken and uploaded to the web and it really doesn't bother me. Its not really private if a passerby can see it. I foresee a high investment in the curtain industry.

Even if I had some paranoid fascination with pictures stealing my soul I can ask for my soul back.

Sorry it has been a while since I last posted. Work has been exceptionally hectic and things are finally calming down, for a little while. In the last two weeks I have been in Jackpot, NV and in Black Hawk, CO. We finally had some time to get some MSSQL Server upgrades in that have been needed for quite some time. I also finally finished a few SSIS packages for marketing that I have been working on for the past three months. Its sickening how long it took to finish them but now that they are in production maintenance will be smooth.

I finally moved out of the mountains and into the frying pan. I am now down by the airport, which is not as bad as you'd think. The flight path is perpendicular to where I live so unless its an old MD-80 I'm not hearing it landing or taking off. Although I'm not home when the 747s roll off so I wonder how those sound.

I like the new place, its fun to have my own stuff again. Above all its wonderful to have a desk again. I hated working on the bed as it just doesn't get that productive for me.

Well I'm off to work on more computers. My virtual servers that have Windows Server 2008 RC0 will be dying in a couple days so I need to rebuild those with the real versions. Also I am tempted to finally move my gaming machine to Vista Ultimate 64bit. I just need a couple more sticks of RAM and off I go. Oh if you are wondering I am playing Hellgate: London. I dropped my subscription for WoW, and Tabula Rasa. I haven't figured out if I am going to get a sub for Hellgate but so far its good without it. Other then Hellgate I am usually on a Steam game so add me if you would like, my name is Bluenullity there as well.

Well off to work on servers. Will update again with pictures of Black Hawk, CO.

IMG_0235.JPG
Originally uploaded by Bluenullity

Here are a few shots from my new Rebel XTi. They are mostly just random shots here and there. I will post some more early this week once I get out and get more shots. I am looking at getting three more lenses.I want to get a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens, a 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS lens, and a 24mm f/2.8. I would love a 24mm f/1.4 but damn thats like $1,200.

My eyes are teary.

My soul is empty and numb.

It is not winter.

Ever since I moved to Las Vegas I have been rather happy/cheery. But lately I've just been getting a little bit more and more depressed. I usually have the winter blues but since there is no real definitive winter here I rarely get that way. It is not as bad as it was when I was in Wisconsin. I had no friends, no excitement, no nothing. Wisconsin nearly (literally) killed me. I can probably guess why I am depressed but thats a bit to deep to go into here.

At least I'm not hardcore emo like my bro. (Stop teasing me bro)

/emo off.