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Sorry for the lack of new stuff… this post, however, will not be a fun post. This last week my Mom was complaining about chest pains, and shortness of breath, so my cousin (who just happens to be a cardiologist) told my mom to see her doctor. My mom went on Monday and everything was fine until they did a stress test. a minute or so into the stress test they pulled her off and immediately scheduled a catheterization on Wednesday. She went in for that and they found it was much worse than they thought. Friday morning my mom had to go in for triple bypass surgery. Luckily my cousin (the cardiologist) was able to pull some strings and was able to get the best heart surgeon on the east coast. he apparently doesn’t do many heart surgeries, because he now teaches and runs departments lately, but I’ve been told that he did it as a favor to my cousin.

Everything went well, and my mom’s surgery went well. The procedure ended early which is a good sign as there were no complications. She’s now recovering at Washington Hospital Center. I flew down as soon as I heard, but I have to go back to Boston tomorrow night for work. I will be flying back here the following week, when my Mom gets out of the hospital, and I’ll be taking a week off of work to stay with her initially.

Hopefully I’ll be posting more fun things soon; I’m leaving for Vegas again at the beginning of August cuz I’m headed to Blackhat!

So I think I lucked out this past weekend… I was only supposed to be in San Fransisco’s bay area for a few days. I flew in on Mondy and was supposed to fly back home on Saturday, but there was a problem in getting gear to one of our customer sites. So I was able to extend my trip and fly back on Wednesday. however for the weekend I was able to get a hotel at the end of Napa Valley and visit wine country.

It sorta sucks being at a really nice place by yourself, and (again) no girlfriend, so I decided to go on a group tour. the first place I called was Platypus tours, but they were all booked solid for the next week or so. But I was able to get on Napa Valley Wine tours. I would highly recommend them, and if you go, ask for Lawrence. He’s a nice friendly guy, and the next time I come back (and I will be back) I’m going to ask for him again. We went to 9 wineries in total, Black Stallion, Hagafen (an Israeli winery right next to the Iranian winery, go figure), the Andretti winery (owned by ex-racecar driver Mario Andretti), Trefethen (one of the oldest wineries in Napa), Montecello (named after Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello), Silverado (the winery owned by Walt Disney’s daughter and the heir to See’s candy), Plump Jack Winery, Domaine Chandon (a lot of sparkling wines), and finally the Laird Family Estate. I had so much wine. However the best wines I think I had here was actually from the winery I visited the day I arrived in Napa, Cuvaison. Cuvaison had an outdoor seating area where you could taste the wines and they were all incredible, with gorgeous views. I bought 12 bottles to take home, but unfortunately they don’t ship to Massachusetts, so I have to check them in on the plane.

Anyway see some of the gorgeous scenery:

I got Verizon FiOS this past weekend and it’s jetting!

I doubt you all care what else happened since InterOp, but if you do, click “more”.

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So InterOp is finally over. Next week is a relaxation week; I don’t have much scheduled. This past week in Vegas was fun, busy, stress-filled, and sleepless. I spent a lot of the week in the NOC (~12 hours a day). In the evenings I met up with some of out customers, OSH or Orchard Supply Hardware who have become really good friends of mine. Their chief architect introduced me to pai gow, and I spent a lot of time playing that game with them. Believe it or not pai gow helped me make up for my losses at the blackjack table, though most days I did pretty well at blackjack. just one night killed me (I was down quite a bit). My co-worker, Greg, also introduced me to roulette (which I didn’t do well at, and subsequently don’t like all that much). Overall I was up though, which is a good thing.
My last day there, all my co-workers went out to a nice dinner at R & M seafood (int he Mandalay Bay). this was actually a really good restaurant, and they had a good sake selection. Having sake is reminding me of how much I actually miss being in Japan.

Alright. I’m here in the InterOp NOC and the network is all online. After several extremely long days, tempers flaring, and frustration abound everything has finally stabalized. Now that I have a free moment, I figured I’d stop by and leave a posting. No pic this time, but I have some interesting ones I took while I was in Toronto and I’ll get pics from InterOp here.

One of the team leads here, “Padre” is apparently going to feature one of our products on his webcast/website and asked me to appear on the webcast. Padre is one of the main people at http://thetechstop.net, so I may appear there in the near future. Padre also maintains all the webcams here, and I have been informed that there are a total of 8 webcams for you all to enjoy. Here are the addresses. Some are fixed cameras, and some are navagatible, however if someone else is controlling them, please don’t fight over control and wait your turn.

http://45.0.12.120  http://45.0.12.121  http://45.0.12.122

http://45.0.12.123  http://45.0.12.124  http://45.0.12.125

http://45.0.12.126  http://45.0.12.127  

Down the home stretch, I arrived at InterOp today. Aside from the hectic schedule, I’m hoping to be able to get to some poker tables and some blackjack tables either tomorrow night or next week when the conference winds down. My company put me up in the Mandalay Bay for the next week and a day, so I’ll probably be working through the weekend. The room is actually really nice, and it’s times like these I wish I had a girlfriend who could come with me and stay while my company pays for the trip to Vegas (winkwink).

I didn’t wrap up the last time. After InterOp Hotstage I was able to spend the weekend in San Fransisco. It was rather nice, I was able to go golfing, and I ate some of the best raamen I’ve had outside of Japan. While I was back in San Fransisco for the weekend I also decided to stop by Japantown again for lunch. I just happened to stumble upon the beginning of the cherry blossom festival (as pictured below). I wish I was there for the following weekend, as they had the 神輿 (portable japanese shrines) around the city. I had a great time when i saw them in Japan. I saw on JTV people taking these shrines and running down the street with them tearing into buildings, ripping off balconies, and causing destruction and mayhem. ながおかさん　said that they were probably 関西人 (south western japanese) because they’re “crazy” down there.

Finally I was also able to make it back into Chinatown (mainly to do my お土産　(gift) shopping). While I was there I bought my grandmother some really good tea (if you know her, don’t tell her yet. I’m going back to DC in a few weeks to give it to her) and happened upon Golden Gate Bakery, where they have “world famous” (according to my boss) dantat (egg custards). So I bought a box of a dozen to bring back for my co-workers and my friends back in Boston.

Ok. Normally I don’t embed video from other sites, but this one I felt I had to embed. (you need to view the full post to see the video)

Meanwhile work is busy as usual. I leave Tuesday to go to Toronto before I head to vegas on Thursday. Then this weekend is all InterOpNet before the show the following week. I’ll get pics up of Toronto and Vegas up soon.
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Not much of a post this time, but I jut found out that my email hasn’t been working. I’m not sure when it stopped working, but I fixed the problems and I can receive email again. oh happy day <g>. I even addedthis email account to my blackberry, though I may change that if I start getting too much spam.

So I’m back in Boston again, and majorly jet-lagged.  I’m leaving for Toronto next week before I head to Las Vegas for InterOp. If you’re around, feel free to stop by the NOC. I’ll be the guy who is either majorly stressed and trying to locate people on the network, or the guy who is doing nothing because we built our network bulletproof. only time will tell…

oh. also, Forbidden Kingdom opens tomorrow.

Sorry I haven’t been around for much of the past month. My company is providing the infrastructure and security for InterOp Net, the network of the InterOp trade show which is one of the largest networking trade shows around. For the geeks of you out there, we have our own public class A network, which means we own 1/255 of all the public IPs in the world. So I’ve been here for the past few weeks, working 12-14 hour days getting this network set up. My company is lending several million dollars worth of equipment to this show, and we’re only one of several vendors. Thats how big this show is.

I’m back in the San Fransisco bay area in Belmont, CA. We’re basically working out of a huge warehouse setting up the network. We’re even working on weekends; I’m actually in the warehouse right now, because we’ve finished with most of the network. so I decided to get online, write up a post and throw up some pictures. This is my company’s first time to this show, but I’ve been told from several people who’ve been at past shows, that this is the most technologically advanced network primarily thanks to the security tools and visibility my company is bringing to the network. People seem excited to see how this will go, and I am too. At the show itself, I’ll be working in the NOC (Network Operations Center), so stay tuned and I’ll bring some pictures back. Meanwhile, the live feed of hotstage is available for viewing. you may even be able to see me on the camera if you look hard enough (and I’m in the warehouse). we have two webcams. Webcam 1 and Webcam 2. no guarantees on how long these links will be active.

While I was out here, I was able to go to the Berkeley Chinese Martial Arts Tournament, which is basically the Wushu nationals. I saw a lot of stuff and took a bunch of video, and will probably put it up here when I have time (which at this rate will be in several years).

meanwhile here are pics of our network. lots of fun.