Back at LISA ‘09 in Baltimore, I had a sit down with one of the other NJ System Administrators and we discussed what was the problem with the system administrators group that we belonged to an how to help fix it.  The problem we saw that the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) had was getting there name out and getting new members.  So out of this conversation over a few beers as well as pulling in another fellow NJ SA we came up with the LOPSA-NJ Professional IT Community Conference 2010 (PICC ‘10) to be held in New Brunswick, NJ on May 7th and 8th. 

We came back from Baltimore and jumped right in by finding a location and picking a date and forming the committee to work on getting the conference off the ground.  We have gotten 2 sponsors so far, 10 trainers and training classes, 3 keynote speakers and are now working on getting the Invited Talks and submitted papers together.

The training classes range from how to write better documentation, how to better manage your time, disk virtualization, automation with Perl as well as a class on automation with Powershell, as well as IT Policy writing and the tools to move from being a junior system administer to a senior administrator and more. 

The 3 keynotes we have scheduled are David N. Blank-Edelman on Friday night giving his "Through the Lens Geekly: How SysAdmins are Portrayed in Pop Culture?", Tom Limoncelli on Saturday morning and Eden Haber closing out the conference on Saturday afternoon with his “System Administrators in the Wild, What We’ve Learned from Watching You!” talk. 

The conference schedule is made up of 8 Training class on Friday and 2 on Saturday.  On Friday night will be the Conference Dinner and then the opening keynote followed by a movie. We haven’t gotten the movie figured out yet.  Saturday will also have the invited talks and submitted papers as well as a room set up for unconference topics.

Saturday will start with another keynote and then followed by the papers, invited talks and unconference tracks.  It’s shaping up to be a great conference.  We are hoping to get at least 150 local system administrators to attend.  If you are a NJ/PA/NY System Administrator and are interested then check out the website http://www.picconf.org and save the dates May 7th – 8th 2010.  Oh yea registration for PICC ‘10 opened up yesterday so to register go here.

DVDs

1. The Blues Brothers – B&N – $11.46 -  This is my all time favorite movie.  I remember going to see this at the now closed Eric Penn Jersey theater and laughing so loud.  The band is made up of classic musicians.  If you have never seen this movie take the time to get it. (wb)
2. Pink Floyd: The Wall a.k.a. The Wall (the movie) – B&N – $14.39 – Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall” was released 30 years ago and was an album that I own both on vinyl that I played all the time after it was released and on CD.  The movie was release in 1982 and stared Bob Geldof, we use to watch this movie a lot during high school at my house.  I went a few time to see it at the Midnight Movies at the theater at the Arnot Mall. (wb)

Books

3.  Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller – B&N - $29.25 – In Ad Hoc at Home…a cookbook inspired by the menu of his casual restaurant Ad Hoc in Yountville…he showcases more than 200 recipes for family-style meals. This is Keller at his most playful, serving up such truck-stop classics as Potato Hash with Bacon and Melted Onions and grilled-cheese sandwiches, and heartier fare including beef Stroganoff and roasted spring leg of lamb. In fun, full-color photographs, the great chef gives step-by-step lessons in kitchen basics… here is Keller teaching how to perfectly shape a basic hamburger, truss a chicken, or dress a salad. Best of all, where Keller’s previous best-selling cookbooks were for the ambitious advanced cook, Ad Hoc at Home is filled with quicker and easier recipes that will be embraced by both kitchen novices and more experienced cooks who want the ultimate recipes for American comfort-food classics.
4. Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking – B&N – $16.37 -  There’s nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread to fill a kitchen with warmth, eager appetites, and endless praise for the baker who took on such a time-consuming task. Now, you can fill your kitchen with the irresistible aromas of a French bakery every day with just five minutes of active preparation time, and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day will show you how.
   
5. Bread Bible – B&N – $25.20 – The title says is all.  After reading this in Barnes & Nobles a few times it’s a book I know that I need in my kitchen.  I have been wanting to start making bread like I use to with my grandfather, but i also want to learn the science behind the bread making.  (wb)




Electronics

6. Acer Aspire One AOD250-1842 – P.C. Richards & Son – $329.97 – Just 1" thin and under 3 lb., the 10.1" Aspire One D250 is sleek, slim and attractive. Robust features combined with its compact size make this netbook the ultimate take-me-with-you partner.

   The 10.1" LED-backlit display presents you with bright, clear images for an enjoyable viewing experience, while a small-yet-powerful processor and ample hard drive deliver the pleasure of full-size notebook performance without the bulk and weight.

So that’s it for the my quick list for you.  Hope you all have a great Holiday and Happy New Year.

Logitech Portable Webcam C905 – Amazon.com – $59.94 /w Rebate – Make high-clarity video calls home with the best travel webcam for road warriors. The travel-size 2 MP Portable Webcam C905 goes where lesser mobile webcams don’t–smooth, razor-sharp full-screen video. High-precision Carl Zeiss optics, ultra-smooth AutoFocus, and light-correcting RightLight2 Technology work together to make your video calls look so real, it’s like being in the room with your spouse and kids back home. Enjoy crystal-clear conversations with a built-in premium microphone that suppresses background noise like airport chatter. Logitech even includes a protective travel case and new Logitech Vid–the fast, free, easy, one-click-to-call video calling software.

PowerShot SD1200 IS Light Gray – Best Buy – $149.99 – When a camera puts a smile on your face the moment you hold it, imagine how great you’ll feel when you see your first pictures! The PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital ELPH has everything going for it – exuberant color, the sculptured style of Canon’s famed ELPH series – and the innovative know-how that takes you to a whole new level of picture-taking accomplishment. Fun, smart and a style that follows you everywhere.

Eye-Fi Explore Video – Best Buy – $99.99 – Easily upload your favorite videos and photos wirelessly to your computer with this 4GB Secure Digital card. Share your memories online even when your computer is turned off.

Grateful Dead Scrapbook : The Long, Strange Trip in Stories, Photos, and Memorabilia – Barnes & Noble – $32.00 -Grateful Dead fans are legendary for their Dead-ication to the band and its enduring legacy of freewheeling musical exploration. The Grateful Dead Scrapbook collects rare removable memorabilia and evocative images culled from the Grateful Dead Archives at the University of California, Santa Cruz, including never-before-published photos, flyers, fan letters, and other ephemera.

Grateful Dead 2010 Wall Calendar – Dead.net – $13.00 – Yep, we checked. Still 365 days. Take it one day at time with this groovy 2010 wall calendar.

WACOM Bamboo Pen – newegg.com – 64.99 – Bamboo Pen gives you everything you need to enjoy pen input. Start using the pen to edit, mark up documents or collaborate with others. Doodle, sketch and personalize your materials. Or use the pen with the included Corel® Painter® Essentials to paint and make digital art. The ergonomically-designed pen fits comfortably in your hand, and the tablet’s textured work surface makes you feel like you’re working with a pen on paper.

Koutech IO-HU1300 13-Port USB 2.0 External Hub – newegg.org – $39.99 -
You’ll never think 13 is an unlucky number again after you plug in Kuotech’s 13 port USB hub. This high speed hub supports USB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 devices. There is a power adapter to supply extra power for bus powered devices.

Thanksgiving started for me at around 8:30 in the morning while I got the smoker ready for the big bird cook.  I actually used The Minion Method for the Charcoal burn.  Using this method kept the temp at a constant of 250 degrees for the whole 5 hour cook.  The turkey had been marinating in a red wine marinade sine Monday.  It came out of the marinade a nice dark purple color.  After the smoker had leveled out to a steady temp the Turkey was put on the grate at 9:00am.  I then moved back inside to start work on the Rye Bread Stuffing.  This turned out to be a great stuffing.  After getting that in the oven, it was time to start on another new recipe for Smoked Sausage Jambalaya another recipe that was a hit for dinner.  While working on all of these new recipes I had a pot of Cranberry BBQ Sauce cooking up, which was talked about a lot last year and was requested to be made again.  Other then making gravy and un canning the canned jelled cranberry sauce onto a plate I was really done cooking by 1:30.  My cousin Tim and family showed up around 1:45 and then it was a constant flow of family arriving till about 2:15.  I took the turkey off the smoker at about 2:15 and let it rest till about 2:45 and handed it over to my dad to carve while I got the rest of the food on to the table.   We finally sat down by 3:00 and the food was passed till about 4:30 as well as the great conversation.  The turkey was perfect and moist and had a great smoke ring around it.  The last person left around 8:00 and I was finally able to sit down and relax and to start thinking about Christmas dinner.

Friday was a day of working at some side jobs and going into work for a bit……but dinner was a treat, we did another pizza off at my Aunt Bea’s house, but with a twist…we did white pies only.  We got pies from Top Road Tavern & Pizza, Fedelos Family Pizzeria, Abruzzi Pizza & Cafe, Kings Pizzarama, Palermo’s III(Ewing), Limoncello’s Pizza.  The winner for the second year in a row for the Bilancio Pizza Off was Palermo’s, it now holds the title in both the Tomato Pie division and now the White Pie Division.  It was a fun night just hanging out talking to everyone. Dean brought some beer he had just bottled that day.  It had a great taste but it will be better after it sits for a few weeks in the bottles.  It was an early night because I ate so much pizza that it just made me tired.

Saturday morning started with me heading to my Aunt Bea’s to hang out with my Uncle Fran for a bit, so since I go there early enough I got a home cooked breakfast which was nice.  We all headed our separate ways for a bit to meet back at the house for dinner.  Which consisted of leftovers brought over from my house from Thanksgiving as well ham from Bath Packing.  Dinner was great and of course the conversation was good to.

It was great seeing my uncle Fran and family since it’s rare that we see them much since they are up in Michigan..tried to talk them into coming back for Christmas but since the snow will be flying by then I doubt we will see them till the La Vigna Picnic in July.

Well time to go and see about Christmas dinner now….

To see all the photos from the weekend head over to here.

We found Elevation Burger at Harbor East, 1006 Aliceanna Street, Baltimore, MD.  They are a chain but there food was out of this world.  What caught my attention right off was that they clamed that the fries were cooked in 100% Olive Oil.  I had just had a discussion that afternoon with Jesse Trucks about how he couldn’t eat at the other burger place because they cook there fries in Peanut Oil, so I knew I was coming back again before I left with Jesse. They also claim that there ingredients are fresh, sustainable, and local when practical,  Nothing on there menu contains trans-fat, and that each restaurant grinds its beef on premises to ensure freshness and quality. 

The menu was small but it was hit.  They featured 3 meat burgers and 3 veggie burgers and one called the “Half The Guilt Burger” 1 beef patty and 1 veggie patty.  They also had a salad and a grilled cheese sandwich on the menu.  The burger that caught my attention was “The Elevation Burger”, double meet, and double cheese (real cheddar).  all there meet is 100% USDA-CERTIFIED organic, grass-fed, free-range beef.   You get to pick the toppings you want so I picked lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and raw onions. I also got a side of fries with my burger. 

My name was called and I was handed a 9×3 cake pan with my fries in what I call the little fries boat and the burger wrapped in wax paper and in a little wax bag.  I took the burger out of it’s little bag and took that first bite and knew we had made the right decision for dinner.  The meat was juicy and flavorful and the toppings were crisp and fresh and added to the flavor of the burger. 

The fries were typical shoe string fries and they were crispy and light and flavorful.  I had never had fries that were cooked in olive oil and I have had tons of fries in my life.  When cooking fries in olive oil it gives the fries a golden brown color, and the taste is unbelievable, I will be changing the way I make fries from now on…they were out of this world. 

So Elevation Burger was the right choice for a low cost, taste satisfying, good time meal for a group of conference goers on a budget.  For the burger, fries and a Stewarts Root beer + tax the total cost came out to $12.00 for lunch. 

Now if they would just open a location here in Lawrence Township.

Here is the Widespread Panic playlist from last night:

Lil Kin >
Radio Child
Up All Night
Can’t Get High >
Fishwater >
Christmas Katie >
Travelin’ Light
Diner >
Space Wrangler
Blackout Blues
Junior >
You Should Be Glad
Tall Boy
Climb To Safety

The Allman Brothers took the stage around 9:50pm and hit the ground running with Statesboro Blues. Even though the weather was hot and humid the band sounded great. I haven’t seen the brothers in about 2 years and I was very impressed at how well Derick Trucks has grown into the band. Greg sounded great and he hasn’t lost his grove, he pounded on the keys and never sounded better. Of course Warren Haynes sounded great so not much to say there. A few of the members of Widespread Panic joined the band for a few songs. I thought Jimmy playing with band was good, it was one of the best Dreams and One Ways Out I have heard in a long time.

Here is The Allman Brothers playlist from last night:

Statesboro Blues
Les Brers In A Minor
Come and Go Blues
The Sky Is Crying
Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’
I Walk On Gilded Splinters
with John Bell, guitar & vocals; Sonny Ortiz, percussion
Trouble No More
Good Morning Little School Girl
with Jo Jo Hermann, piano; James van de Bogert, drums
Revival
The Weight
with Jo Jo Hermann, piano
Dreams
with Jimmy Herring, guitar; James van de Bogert, drums
One Way Out
with Jimmy Herring, guitar

Encore
Whipping Post

Now to the down side of the night. At this show there were 2 different types of fans. The we are going to get so drunk and wasted that we will look and act stupid all night and the we come to a show to actually see the show and have a good time and actually remember the show the next night.

I see these types of fans at most shows I go to. The first type get so drunk and stoned that they weave all over the place and act like fools, then they usually pass out and miss the show. We had a whole row of them in front of us last night. They enjoyed the whole two hours of Widespread Panic and the whole break before the Brothers then when the Brothers hit the stage they droped like flies and were asleep by the end of the second song.

It just doesn’t make sense to me why you would pay good money to see a show and then get so wasted you miss most of it and then feel sick the next day.

I also don’t understand those who leave the show in the middle of it to go home? But that’s a whole different post.

The end of July always has the La Vigna Family picnic and that always means a lot of work for most of my family, getting the games together for the kids and getting the property cleaned up and ready. This year was no different…well yea it was…it rained most of the week before the picnic so most of the work was compressed into Friday. Thursday was the worst of the rain and of course that was the night most of my cousins and I went to see a concert at the Blueclaws Stadium in Lakewood, NJ.

Tim Montague, Ira Bilancio and William Bilancio

The bill consisted of Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan. It was an interesting show. My cousins Tim & his wife Meghan, Henry and Ira all enjoyed the show in the rain. Henry, Ira and I spent all of the night down on the field just talking through Willie Nelsons set and then rocked through John Mellencamp. Bob Dylan came out and totally confused me. The band he has is great and sounded tight, but then Bob starts singing and I couldn’t understand a word he said, but that is the mystery that is Bob Dylan. We enjoyed the whole night rain and all. It was good to be at a concert with my cousin Ira who we don’t see enough of and when we do it’s not long enough.

The day of the picnic turned out great even though it was a little bit hot, but the people that made it had a good time. I shared the announcing and running the games with my 2 uncles, Dean and Fran. It was fun running the water balloon toss and of course the watermelon seed spitting contest. We raised some good money selling this years calendar and Dean and I caused some controversy in the family with the 50/50 this year. So I say that the 2009 La Vigna Picnic was a success and we are already planing the 2010.

Carolyn has had the surgery on her foot so they could get some samples of the bone to see if there is any infection in the bone. We haven’t heard yet back about the lab reports. We have been back to the doctors many times so they can change the dressing. So we hope to get a negative report back about the infections so they can close up the wound and we can move on to the fall without any more foot issues.

Avery is driving now…..with a licensed driver in the car of course. She is getting better each time we go out, so I think if we keep her schlepping Carolyn all over the place while she is not allowed to drive.

Well that’s it for now…not much going on with me other then work and more work and Karma.

Why is it when you have a camera in your hand you always take a picture of your self? I had to wait for one of the employees to get ready so I could take a photo of him for something here at work so I turned the camera around and took a self portrait. I do this with the cell phone to when I am bored or I take a photo of my foot. It’s a William thing my daughter thinks it’s funny and I am nuts

So this morning I had to take some photos for work for a proposal. I had to use my bosses camera, a Canon A2000 IS. It was easy to use and had a good size LCD display and the pictures came out well (because we all know it’s all about the camera, not the photographer). The one thing I didn’t like about it was that the SD card was in the battery compartment on the bottom of the camera, so I dropped the batteries out when I need to take the card out. I took this photo of the stuff on one of the admins desk. It turned out real well and the color was great and it just looked good.

I have a Pentax digital SLR that I got as barter payment for a mail server build job I did. I love taking pictures with it, but the problem with it is..it’s to big and not easy to just carry around and have with me in my bag to take a quick shot when one presents itself. I try to take my daughters camera out with me once in a while but she doesn’t like to give it up without a fight. So the next time I have a little extra money I am thinking of getting a Cannon PowerShot SD1100 IS. I like that they are small, light and have a quick write speed. Now my birthday is right around the corner on the 19th, so if one of you fine readers want to get me one as a present that would be great.

Till next time…..