So off I went to sunny Las Vegas last week for IBM’s IMPACT 2009 conference and overall I have to say the conference was an unexpected lot of fun! Lindsay and I (she tagged along and enjoyed the rough life laying by the pool everyday) headed out to Vegas bright and early Monday morning and arrived just as things at the confernece started to pick up. The tone of the conference from the folks attending this year was different than in the past at other technical conferences for IBM or other companies I have attended. I know that a lot of times its a ton of information for most attendees to process and commit to memory so everyone gets the deer in the head lights look (or it might just be the drink specials in Vegas are too good to pass up and 8:30 presentations are a little too early!) as the sessions carry on. But this year was different. I really had an enjoyable time in my sesisons and others because of the complexity of questions being asked by folks in attendance. I felt it brought out a lot more understanding of the concepts I was presenting as well as drove others to ask questions as well to drive a lot more of the concepts from being words on a slide to something concrete in folks heads. Nothing beats a session that is interactive, challenging and ultimately helpful to those there and I feel that my sessions were that this year so like I said I had a really unexpected lot of fun in them.
Besides my sessions (2939 : IBM WebSphere® V7.0 Performance Update 2937 : IBM WebSphere® and Multicore Platforms: Performance, Scalability, Best Practices 2941 : The Top 10 IBM WebSphere® Application Server Performance Best Practices 2935 : Understanding and Tuning the Java Virtual Machine for IBM WebSphere® which saw me presenting something like 10000 times (ok it was 8 total) I spent a lot of time (breakfast, lunch, and dinner most nights) with WebSphere customers walking through scenarios and issues they were having. I found a ton of interest from folks on understanding exactly how to use the new hardware that has upped the game in performance here over the past few years from both a consolidation play as well as a flat out XTP play for specific segments of their business. Almost everyone is looking to save money from a licensing cost perspective, power perspective as well as the un thought about areas such as heating and cooling as well as floor space. This area has always been intersting to me so I am going to seed some topics on the blog here over the next few weeks out of questions I got asked at IMPACT to hopefully give some guidance to others out there to help answer what I am sure are similar quesitons. So stay tuned for those segments coming out hopefully twice a week or so. I also want to take the above presentations and break them down into a few 10 minute short snapshots in a youtube video and post them here as well so even if you weren’t able to attend IMPACT you can still get some of the benefit…or you could always just hire me. 
So what was cool about IMPACT 2009 besides $3 margaritas and KC and the Sunshine Band? I think that the buzz around the Cloud Burst appliance was excellent and really showed that a lot of folks are interested in building out corporate clouds for their dev, test, QA and possibly prod environments (lots of cool areas for performanc gains in this space but also lots of pitfalls), WebSphere eXtreme Scale also seeing healthy crowds for its sessions was great to see as well as its one hell of a solid product and can be very powerful for saving you money or building a big money app in the hands of the right development team, and lastly to circle back to my first point the customers of our product in attendance really made the conference. For all of you that stopped by to talk or attended my sessions thanks a ton and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Hopefully I’ll see you back at the Venetian for IMPACT 2010.
General, Work and Geeky Stuff eXtreme Scale, IBM, IMPACT 2009, JVM, WebSphere
In an effort to get my web presence more consolidated (actually known as I can’t remember all my passwords any more) I am going to be moving my work blog over here as well as hopefully integrate my twitter feed into wordpress and just make sure I am consistent in tagging posts correctly so folks can find what they need.
As promised I’ll get some more thoughts up about the IBM IMPACT 2009 conference here today. I will also get a racing update done later tonight as I got a big weekend coming up at Blackhawk Farms for the first real race of the season for me. Should be tons of fun and can’t wait to get the car out actually turning wheels. I’ll twitter away over the weekend to annoy the hell out of people with my new toy but hey…you guys who know me already knew I would.
General, Home Life, Racing, Work and Geeky Stuff Blackhawk Farms, IBM, Racing
After a lot of presenting and talking it is good to be back home in Rochester. I really enjoyed this years conference as the attendees were excellent with a lot of good questions, the Venetian was a massive upgrade over the MGM, and most of all it was good to see all my friends around the company that far to often you go years without seeing only talking over Sametime.
I’ll post some more thoughts shortly and I think I am going to take my presentations and turn them into youtube snipits as well to pull out some of the highlights to jog peoples minds about what I talked about during my sessions. Trust me I understand that after 75 minutes of listening to me babble on with awesome information you probably feel overloaded…or just sick of my voice.
Work and Geeky Stuff IBM, IMPACT, Las Vegas, WebSphere
Just wanted to cross link here to my racing blog since I made and update over there about my little adventure at Autobahn Country Club last summer. Check it out here: http://www.trackpedia.net/blogs/john/archives/183-a-little-video-from-autobahn-last-august/
Racing Racing, Summer
You thought Jordan was focused on the court look at her!
The little girl playing with her crack aka Airdogs
Over the holidays at the Stecher household our little Bella got what has probably become the greatest present that any dog has ever received. Beth got her these mini tennis balls called Airdogs and for all I can tell they must be filled with crack or something because she goes absolutely nuts with these things.
Toy’s normally had a shelf life of about a month or so before she would be on to the next big thing (well I lie…it was really because I bought her another toy in that time) but with the Airdogs she keeps on going with them. She hauls them to bed with her, out by her bowl to eat, and pretty much anywhere she goes in the house. She also DEMANDS to be played with by us throwing her Airdogs off the walls so that she can do some pretty some powerslides on the tile floor trying to catch them.
Here’s some pictures to how Lindsay and I spent our Friday night partying with the Airdogs and our baby girl. If only I had a video it would be cooler.
Home Life Airdogs, Bella, Lindsay
At long last and mucho nagging…err i forgot Lindsay reads this must find better words…loving suggestions from Lindsay and a hell of a lot of hard work over the weekend our basement is finally all framed in! You probably can’t tell from the pictures I posted here exactly how much progress we made over the weekend but let me assure you that going from just a open slab of a basement to something you can actually visualize as a real life basement complete with new 60 inch 1,000,000 contrast ratio 1080p TV. 
On Sunday we finished up the bathroom frame in around the tub and since Rob and I actually got confident enough to build our own walls and not screw them up progress was quick. The only problem we kept running into was that every wall Rob and I built was about 1/4 inch to tall or 1/4 inch to short but with a little love tap from the hammer (well I typically bashed it about 1000000 times to get it in place if it was too big) they slide in perfectly. Last task for the day was framing in the HVAC ducting which was a pain in the ass to say the least. I think it literally took us 2 hours to do it but when she was done it was pretty damn impressive to step back and actually look at what was accomplished. Like I said I don’t think the pictures do it justice in the least!!
I really owe a ton of thanks to Rob and my dad for all the help. I never expected we would make as much progress as we did and I never could have done it without Rob coming over both days and busting his butt helping us. Of course none of it would have been possible without my dad. A little over a year ago this time I remember driving down to the hospital in Iowa City after his heart attack and coming to the realization that I really might never get to finish the basement with him and that thought for some reason made me more sad than anything in my life. I don’t know why that was what stuck in my head cause it seems rather odd I am sure or what else I was thinking about as Lindsay and I we’re driving down there but its stuck with me for a long time. I thought at the time it was because it was the one thing I had looked forward to more than anything to be able to do with him. Just to spend time building something together with him and admiring the really amazing talents he has to build something out of a pile of wood that a lot of days I think go totally unappreciated. Now looking back on the weekend its answered why it stuck in my head. Its not because Rob and I would have ended up in the ER trying to do it without his help or the fact that it was just nice to get it done finally. It was the fact that by doing the work with him I got to experience what he’s done his whole life…to see what 50 years of honing your skills at a trade does. I got to share in the fun and pride he takes in his job and most importantly just take some time out from the normal everyday business that consumes me to really just spend some time with the one person I really admire most in the world. Some day I REALLY hope my kids appreciate me as much as I do him and all that he’s given up and done for me in my life. Thanks Dad!
Home Improvement, Home Life Basement, Dad, Finishing basement, Lindsay, Rob
Got up at 6am today when Lindsay left for the fitness center and then to head back to Dubuque for a baby shower and got rolling with my dad on the basement again. About 8:45 Rob came over and we hammered away until noon with only minor blood lost by both Rob and I from splinters…shocking my dad was perfectly fine…you can tell who the computer geeks are. Err I mean awesomest cool people in the world are!!
Some pics of todays work for ya but not much typing cause I am tired as hell and ready for bed.
Home Improvement, Home Life Dad, Finishing basement, Framing, Rob
So after trekking down 180 2×4x10’s and over 40 other pieces of wood into the basement f-day had arrive (framing day for all you out there that don’t understand my odd languages). My dad got to my house from Dubuque today about 10am and was ready to rock right away…I unfortunately had to finish up some meetings at work to cap off the crap week that was but was on my way home at a little past noon.
I had been itching to try out my new air powered framing nailer and oh boy it didn’t disappoint. Anyone who tells you that framing by hand is faster is purely full of it. My dad which has been doing this for 40+ years now and is a staunch old school carpenter openly admitted we did just the bedroom two times faster than if we had done it by hand. I think it was way faster than that.
We made tons of progress and got all the basement bedrooms framed in and are set and ready to roll framing in the rest of the exterior walls, bathroom and hallways. Also going to pick up the one piece shower/bath combo from Home Depot and get that into the bathroom before we start framing that baby in. Figure for 300 bucks its better to be ahead of the game and have it in the house…of course fighting that -15 degree weather tomorrow hauling it down into the backyard will be lots of fun! Here are some pictures from yesterday and today.
John Stecher's basement hallway day 1
John Stecher's basement family room day 1
John Stecher's basement hallway day 2
John Stecher's basement bedrooms day 2
Home Improvement, Home Life Dad, Finishing basement, Framing, Framing Nailer
So last night ProBuild (formerly UBC – United Building Center) dropped off all the lumber for my dad and I to start cracking away at finishing the basement. Well lets just say getting all the fricking wood down to the basement was a treat in the half. Hopefully finishing the rest of hte basement is a hell of a lot more fun than hauling 200+ 2×4x10 foot pieces of wood down the icy hill in 20 degree weather. Lindsay being the good sport helped out and for her saying “God the weather isn’t the cold” had mother nature repay her by making her eat it on the ice in the drive way, the snow bank and take a nice gash out of her knee…yep thats how vengeful of a beeoytch that mother nature is…or it could be Lindsay just is that clumsy. I’ll let the reader decide. Pictures coming shortly
Home Improvement, Home Life Basement, Lindsay
Ya gotta just love weekends. I know everyone loves weekends but what do you really love about them? Is it the time you get to spend just sitting on your ass contemplating how much work you should be getting done all the while knowing your really not going to actually get up and do it until your damn well good and ready. Yep weekends are excellent.
This one was spent sleeping in late on Saturday then Lindsay and I taking Bella to get her hair cut at Petsmart (always a sweet $60 dollar bill) while we then went and walked around Menards to contemplate what the hell we needed to buy to finish the basement over the year here. After that we came home and just hung out…well I hung out while Lindsay cleaned…I think I did something but cant remember. See didn’t I say weekends are awesome!!
Sunday was spent working out (from which I am still sore today) and then watching a badass game between the Cardinal and Eagles in which I was one happy ex-Iowan seeing Curt Warner tearing up the Eagle defense and hopefully playing himself into a well deserved hall of fame slot. After that it was off to Billy’s house to do some work for Trackpedia and check on the little girl after his wisdom teeth removal.
Yep weekends rule…I’ll take another starting tomorrow please.
Home Life Bella, Billy, Football, Lindsay, Weekends
