vSoup #4 – Big Fat Pipes (With Me!)

For the first time in a week I plugged my iPhone in to sync, and it’s pulling down what I think might be my first official appearance on a podcast, on vSoup episode #4. I met Ed, Christian, and Chris at VMworld Europe last year, and I have to confess that when they asked me to sit down with them for this episode I was so excited about it that I put it in my calendar wrong. I appeared online, ready to chat, exactly 24 hours too early. Thankfully Ed was diplomatic about it: “Dude, it’s tomorrow.”

You can check out what’s being talked about in each episode (and see a great photo of me) over at vSoup.net, and the podcast is available in the iTunes directory. I also follow them on Twitter as @vsoup_podcast.

Those guys like to give stuff away, and they didn’t tell me but they are giving away a copy of Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman’s book VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive to a random person drawn from the pool of people who can correctly identify my day job, which I uncharacteristically state in the podcast itself. Here are two clues for you: in our line of work my employer is #2 in research in the United States, and we own a stadium on a site that was a Civil War training camp, hospital, and Confederate stockade.

I say it’s uncharacteristic for me to mention my employer because of the standard social media disclaimer: I blog on my own time, and my opinions are my own, which is true. Thing is, I’m proud of where I work, the work I do, and the direct financial benefit that private and public organizations, large businesses, and small businesses across my state, country, and the world derive from the sharing of my knowledge & thoughts, as so many others in the virtualization community do. There are many people like me where I work, doing the same for their different areas of expertise, and the collected benefits seem to get lost in the politics of the day, at least statewide.

In fact, if you keep an eye on the vSoup guys one of their upcoming prize packages will be sponsored by me, The Lone Sysadmin, in honor of my mysterious-yet-well-known employer and the state in which I live!