It looks like I have not bothered with a blog entry since March.

A lot can happen in 6 months…

• Data center closure
• Legacy migrations to a new datacenter
• Server consolidation
• Learning more than I wanted to about VMware
• NetApp configuration and testing
• Taking on a management role
• Having input in setting portions of corporate direction
• Hiring staff (all one so far)
• Vacation
• Family crisis (yeah, the fun never ends)
• and lots more…

It’s been a roller coaster.

I’m not sure what possessed me to write this, but I guess reflecting on the past year might be part of it. Yesterday being my birthday and checking off the calendar with a “one more down, only XX left to go” seems like a depressing thought. In reality, I’m not much good for worrying about the future, it’s coming and while I can attempt to mitigate the curves in the road, that’s also what makes it fun.

Last week was OCLUG where we got to see asterisk used in the kind of innovative fashion that it was intended for by Roaring Penguin software. Very neat things they are doing and I think I’ll adopt them in my home system (which I still have to roll out). Could be very interesting…

I was also at the OCUUG meeting last week, very small turnout, just three of us, but it was entertaining.

Ontario Linux Fest is the 25th, and I intend to be there. Last year was interesting and this year promises to be quite the lineup. I guess I’ll hook up wit the LPI folks again. The 303 exam pieces are starting to come together, not that I’ve made much of a contribution (nothing to date), but that could be interesting too.

Topics that caught my eye:

• OpenStreetMap
• Version control for mere mortals
• What makes OpenSolaris Interesting?
• VoIP for the small office

It’s only one day, but the list of talks is quite extensive.

We should consider something like that here in Ottawa. I know we have OLS (Ottawa Linux Symposium), but that is a pretty technical conference and not likely to attract average users. We should consider setting up a conference. We have BSDcan, PGcon, and OLS so far, maybe we need something like one of the Usenix conferences.

In 2009, there will be a one day High Technology Crime Investigation Association conference, probably in September. I think we could manage an additional conference in either June or August for a weekend that could have sessions - like above - for “mere mortals”. Perhaps in 2010 and we could steal from Arthur C. Clarke - “The year we make contact” Just another of those late night ideas, but why not? We could get a few folks from SAGE or LOPSA to come up for talks, perhaps get some folk from OCLUG and OCUUG to participate. This could happen.

You know, at this point, lots of people I know are thinking of what steps to take for retirement. I’m just starting to think that we are still just taxiing down the runway and we have not even taken off. Who wants top think about stopping when we are barely started?