July 12, 2008
That’s right folks.
Black Warrior Technology has become an official member of the Microsoft Small Business Racing Team.
Which means The Arrowhead of Awesomeness can officially appear on the #00 Toyota Camry driven by Michael McDowell for Michael Waltrip Racing.
Why?
Because there is no type of sport that does more for its sponsors than racing/motorsports. And the motorsport that does more for its sponsors than anyone else?
NASCAR, without question.
Every NASCAR driver receives special media training, and is fully briefed on sponsors. Which totally rocks. Think about other professional sports. How many times have you heard any kind of ball/hockey/soccer/what-have-you player talk about a sponsor before, during, or after the event? Not at all. But NASCAR drivers, owners, and crew members constantly thank their primary sponsors by name whenever the cameras are running.
Why?
Because the teams know that without sponsorship, they have no rides. Without rides, they basically have no team. Which is why having your logo riding around right beside the numbers on a car during a NASCAR race totally rocks.
Not only that, but NASCAR fans are some of the most rabid fans anywhere. They are fiercely loyal to drivers, teams, manufacturers, and sponsors.
Why?
Because everything that goes into the creation of the grand carnival that is NASCAR matters to them. They’re no different in that regard than superfans of any sport anywhere. But the loyalty that fans of other sports have is pretty much limited to teams and players. OK…sure, there are bat, ball, glove and sportswear manufacturers who benefit in other sports. But only because they are directly associated with the activity of that given sport.
NASCAR is different in that they offer nearly any company from nearly any industry the ability to sponsor a team.
Why?
Because NASCAR also knows that sponsors also bring their own fans, typically greenfield type of fans, who have never been to or watched a race before in their life.
And, to be honest…
The attitude of NASCAR appeals to me. NASCAR races are preceded with a prayer, a singing of our national anthem and presentation of our flag, replete with a flyover of some kind of military aircraft normally timed to roughly coincide with the “la-and of the Freeeee!” crescendo.
Not only does the respect for God and country mean something to me, but the fact that NASCAR works hard to be a family-friendly sports matters VERY MUCH to me. It’s important to me that The Arrowhead of Awesomeness won’t be shown next to the Playboy, Penthouse or some other porn empire’s logo. Let alone plastered on the backside of some Vivid Video starlet.
Thanks to Microsoft and its amazingly awesome Small Business Specialist sponsorship program they entered into with MWR, the price point for all this is an astonishingly low price. $4K? That’s chickenfeed for the kind of exposure you are getting.
So the question you should be asking yourself shouldn’t be…
Why?
The question you should ask yourself should be…
Why Not?
And the only question I still have for myself is…
Why Didn’t I Do This Sooner?
|| posted by chris under biz, hardware, media, more cowbell, motorsports, thumbs up || comments (8) ||
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July 9, 2008
The first of my speaking engagements at Worldwide Partner Conference went smashingly well yesterday. That was the Windows Mobile keynote in room 372 BCEF talking about Mobility in Small and Medium Sized Businesses.
The room was full, and I don’t remember anyone leaving during the session at all. Despite the fact that my own Awesome Per Minute ratio was through the roof.
Of course, the reason the keynote went so well was totally thanks to the amazingly kickass job that Laura Johnson and Steve Doe did laying out the case for Mobility in small and medium-businesses.
I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to share Black Warrior Technology’s approach to Mobility and Windows Mobile in particular.
The second of my speaking engagements at Worldwide Partner Conference happens Thursday, July 10th, which is tomorrow, at 1:30p. It’ll be in room 382 ABC, which is the room across from the Green (Mobility) Lounge.
I’ll be speaking about specific examples of Black Warrior Technology’s approach to Mobility and Windows Mobile that have turned into huge wins for both our customers and our company.
Which, like the hokey-pokey, is REALLY what it’s all about!
|| posted by chris under biz, hardware, mobility, nostalgia, opinion, rx, thumbs up, travel || comments (0) ||
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July 6, 2008
There’s no single more important thing to the long-term health of any network system than accurate time.
Without accurate time, there is no way to assure than any transactions flying in that environment will maintain fidelity. In other words…
There’s no way to know that databases, Active Directory, file systems, or anything else that uses any kind of timestamp isn’t shredding itself to bits.
10 years ago or so, time sync used to be much more of an issue. Oh sure, you could always load a dialer program that would call Colorado (in the US) and get a time adjust to the master clocks. But that was a major pain in the tookus. And it cost you money with each call.
Thanks to the glorious achievement that is the Internet, and a little gem called Network Time Protocol AKA NTP (including its eponymous sibling Simple Network Time Protocol AKA SNTP), time sychronization became largely a moot issue in data networks during the 90s.
The key to time synchronization, at least as far as maintaining a healthy network goes, is not so much having correct time (more on that in a minute), but having consistent time, which are two very different concepts.
Although it might make your users mad when the clocks on their PCs are off a bit, it is usually far more healthy for the average data network to be 5 minutes off everywhere, as opposed to having different parts of the network running on-time whle other parts do not.
The consistency of time in a data network has far-ranging implications. For Active Directory, one of the primary functions that depends on consistent time is network logon.
That’s because Active Directory uses Kerberos tickets to validate logon traffic. The tickets, which are by design time sensitive and expire so that captured traffic cannot be replayed and used to compromise systems in a classic man-in-the-middle attack, rely on consistent time. We’re normally talking about a 5 minute (which is an absolute eternity, in computer time actually) for everything to remain both hunky and dory.
The stampede rush to all things virtualization is poised to make time synchronization a key network design issue, all over again.
Because when the magic act that is virtualization makes the hardware go poof, there’s one major thing that goes away forever…
The BIOS Clock
Sure, a BIOS clock isn’t the end all, be all.
But it will keep you, and your systems, in the ballpark.
So if you aren’t spending time planning clock synchronization for your virtual systems, you’d best get that taken care of, and pronto.
|| posted by chris under biz, hardware, it pro, migration, rx, time, virtualization || comments (2) ||
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July 4, 2008
There have been plenty of great female action stars on the big screen over the years…
Marion Ravenwood
Lara Croft
Every character played by Michelle Yeoh
and even…
Dora The Explorer
Pixar just gave us another one…
A long long time ago, in a lifetime far far away (20 years to be exact)…
I was in a session at a writer’s conference where a very well-known author basically told me I was full of it because…
Cartoons cannot, and will not, ever be able to adequately express emotion.
So all I can say now is…
Suck it OSC!
Best of all…
Emotion-expressing animation or not…
I got to see Wall-E with Cute as a Button right beside me.
And that’s always a good time!
|| posted by chris under epiphany, hardware, media, robot, rx, thumbs up, time || comments (0) ||
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June 26, 2008
The officially official version of Hyper-V just hit the download site today at noon Pacific time.
In an amazing feat of time-warping, this post was sent back in time to coincide with the exact moment of Hyper-V’s release.
Before you go all crazy downloading and installing Hyper-V, remember that upgrading your virtualization platform takes some planning and forethought…
If you care at all whether your virtual machines will still work, that is.
Some standard cautions about new versions of Hyper-V…
- Once you put Hyper-V RTM on, there’s no removing it.
- Virtual machines in a paused or saved state usually can’t be upgraded.
- Before you do anything else, export a copy of your virtual machines to an external drive exactly as you want them preserved.
- Archive all your exports into .zip files, so you don’t blow your only shot at an import later.
- Snapshots might not survive an upgrade. So merge your changes before shutting down your virtual machines for the upgrade. But push those exports first!
- Don’t forget to install the new Integration Services at some point, once you’ve verified your machines are all happy and working on the final release.
And for Pete’s sake…
- Keep a copy of the current version of Hyper-V that you are running, just in case. Otherwise, the export copies you pushed will be less than worthless.
In fact, why don’t you store that copy of Hyper-V used to make the export copies right WITH the export copies, so you’ll always have it if you need it.
In case the absolute very worst happens.
|| posted by chris under freebie, hardware, it pro, migration, rx, virtualization || comments (0) ||
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